Live from GBTS with Jeff Johnson and Owen Strachan

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:39

Greetings and welcome to the Dividing Line. My name is James White. I am sitting here. I am the old, ugly guy in the group of three.

00:47

We have the young, good -looking guy, and then we've got Jeff Johnson. Yeah, thanks.

00:55

He's the man in black. He's, yeah, he's the man in black today. We are coming to you from inside Grace Bible Theological Seminary.

01:03

I, we did a, you and I did a program in here a couple years ago.

01:09

I think we were sitting like over here, if I recall correctly. And so up above we are, we have

01:16

Spurgeon looking down upon us and we've got the library spread out all over here. It's really, really a nice place.

01:22

It's really nice inside right now, but it's not really nice outside right now. Let me assure you.

01:28

To, to warm, to welcome me in my teaching, my first class here at GBTS, you all brought in an ice storm, an ice storm.

01:40

Whose idea was that? Not mine. It was Dr. Strand's. Okay. Dr. Strand thought, well, and you like ice storms because you're from like, you know, manly country.

01:49

Yeah, I'm from a real state. It's called Maine. And so we practice. What makes it a real state?

01:56

It's rugged. And so you have to work hard to actually exist and justify your living.

02:03

So that's where I come from. So I don't know about these, you know, others. That's true. I understand that.

02:10

So you would, you would know, you know all about Colonel Chamberlain. Oh yeah. Does everybody in Maine know about Colonel Chamberlain?

02:17

Many do. I went to college at Bowdoin College. Well, then you, oh goodness. Yes. Where he was the president for a number of years and actually instituted military drilling among the student body.

02:28

After he came back? After he came back from the Civil War, after he turned the tide of the Civil War. And so, yeah, his statue was right outside my, my dorm room and They haven't canceled him yet?

02:38

Probably. Probably. Probably been pulled down. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. If those of you who don't know, if you, what did you think of the movie

02:46

Gettysburg and who they had playing Chamberlain? Because he was the guy in Dumb and Dumber. I mean, seriously.

02:52

I mean, that's, that's a stretch. That's a tough transition. I mean, he did a good job. And, and then did you notice in Gods and Generals, which allegedly was before Gettysburg, he was 20 pounds heavier and much older because they shot the movie in reverse.

03:06

Yeah. Do you know what we're talking about? I have no idea. But it's entertaining. When, when you've seen the guy eating mustard, like out of the thing,

03:15

I mean, it's tough to see him as some august Civil War general. Yes. Yes.

03:21

Dumb and Dumber. Colonel Chamberlain, 20, 26th Maine, 23rd Maine, 28th

03:26

Maine. Which one was it? Oh man, now you've messed me up. Yeah. Sorry about that. Colonel Chamberlain during the

03:32

Civil War was a college professor who became a, a lot of people became officers, even though they didn't have a lot of experience.

03:39

And it was, they had the end of the line on Little Round Top at Gettysburg on the second day.

03:45

And they were about out of ammunition. The Alabamans were pushing them hard. And so he called for a bayonet charge.

03:52

That's right. Where they swept down the hill. And have you ever been there? I've not been there. You could sweep down that hill.

03:59

You could do it. It's, it is pretty steep. And they saved the day.

04:04

They, they saved the Union line and they saved the day that day. Did you know that he was shot in the last year of the war through, from the side, through his body, which was almost always fatal in that day because it would cross multiple body, you know, and he survived.

04:24

And then he was the one at Lee's surrender at Appomattox that ordered the salute from the

04:33

Union, trying to heal, heal things. He was an important guy. He was an important guy.

04:38

I just read Galzo's biography of Robert E. Lee and which is a very textured, fine etched portrait of Lee.

04:48

You're not allowed, you're not allowed to read books about Lee. Even reading a book about Lee now puts you on the cancel list, which actually happened on Twitter.

04:57

But anyway, I don't care about the mobs, let them come. And so I read, I bravely read a biography of Lee.

05:05

And Lee was seeking a victory in Pennsylvania and he almost got it at Gettysburg. He was close.

05:11

If he had gotten it, and Galzo kind of explores this a little bit. He could have allowed the sentiment, the anti -war sentiment in the

05:19

North to overwhelm the military cause and turn the tide. He would have. And, and he came within a whisker.

05:25

He did. I didn't realize how close he came. Well, I did in the primary. Sorry about this, but we're going to get, we're going to get.

05:32

I like talking about the South. Okay. Well, but let's, let's be honest. The reason, the reason he lost at Gettysburg was because Stonewall Jackson had been killed just a few weeks earlier.

05:45

And what would have happened to the history of the United States? It's, it's fascinating.

05:51

And unfortunately we can't talk about it anymore. You, you literally are not allowed to do historiography.

05:56

You're not allowed to recognize, tell you a quick story.

06:02

When I was in Germany a few years ago, I was talking with my dear friends there and I was informed that their education about their history stops in 1937.

06:14

They are not allowed to teach about what happened during World War II. Really?

06:20

And so these are, these are native born Germans who do not know who

06:25

Rommel was. Wow. And Rommel, Rommel was, Rommel was the most respected general in the

06:33

German army on the part of people like Patton. And Patton thought he was, he was incredible. Kind of mirrors. Yeah, they were mirrors of each other.

06:40

And Rommel was an extremely respectful, respectful man. The British in North Africa, when they fought, they just, they thought the world of them.

06:48

And he did not mistreat prisoners the whole nine hours. He wasn't a Nazi, all that kind of stuff.

06:54

And Hitler forced him to commit suicide by drinking, by taking cyanide. But they had never heard him.

07:00

And when you tell, when you tell a people to not study their own history, you're dooming them.

07:05

Yes. You're absolutely dooming them. How did we get onto this? I don't know. He's from Maine.

07:11

He's from Maine. That's, that's, that's, that's the whole point. Yeah. So, so Ornstrand is from Maine and Jeffrey Johnson is from.

07:18

I'm from Arkansas. From Arkansas. You're talking about a great state. I'm from Arkansas. I'm just from Arkansas.

07:24

It's good to have our shoes on. It's good.

07:30

He didn't, he didn't hear that. He said it's good to have our shoes on. So anyway, so we are sitting here at GBTS during an ice storm.

07:37

We just, I just finished the first day of my class on apologetics. Some of the students have stuck it out and are watching us from behind the camera, trying to make faces at us and stuff like that.

07:49

Actually, they're really not, but they are, they're still hanging around. But other people have had to leave.

07:54

I'm looking out, I can see my truck from where I'm sitting right now. And there are icicles hanging off the bottom of it, every, every which direction.

08:02

And I can assure you, since I know that was purchased in Texas and I purchased it in Arizona. That's the first time that's ever happened to that truck.

08:10

It's sitting out there going, what did I do? How did I ever get here? So we, we are doing the class despite the inclement weather.

08:18

And so GBTS has undergone some major changes over the past couple of years.

08:27

Yeah, pretty rapidly too. Pretty rapidly. I'd say probably, what would you say the biggest changes are?

08:38

You two guys. There's actually a bunch of people. I was going to say probably this guy.

08:44

Yeah. Because I first started hearing about, I know troublemakers because I am one.

08:55

And so you start hearing about this guy and he's saying things.

09:00

And I just got this feeling that he wanted to say more, but he wasn't really able to say more.

09:06

But he was still saying plenty. And now you're down here where you can, you seemingly are saying all sorts of things.

09:15

Tell us a little bit about what brought you down here. Yeah, I put that on my tombstone. Says all sorts of things.

09:23

I might put that in my Twitter bio actually. James White. Well, what drew me here is

09:29

Jeff and I got connected a few years back and then reconnected a year ago. And I endorsed some of Jeff's books.

09:38

One on amillennialism that was really, really well done. And another on social justice that was really well done.

09:44

And I had respected his ministry. I won't speak for him, but I think he knew a little bit about mine, humble as it is.

09:51

And so in a time when a lot of men have gone silent, a lot of good men who used to speak loudly in a good way for a variety of reasons seemingly have gone quiet.

10:03

Jeff was taking a stand on major issues. And that drew us together in friendship.

10:08

And then he mentioned to me about teaching for GBTS. And it became a possibility.

10:15

And I moved my family this past summer to Conway, Arkansas. Have no roots here or connection here.

10:21

But it was sound doctrine that brought the north and the south together as we were talking about earlier.

10:27

And God has been doing a work here that is beyond what I would have expected even in a short time.

10:33

And Jeff is the founder and the president of GBTS. And I'm just honored to work alongside him.

10:40

What would you say about the founding of this in the last few years? Yeah, we're watching what God's doing. Five years ago when this started, it wasn't like we had a five -year plan and in five years we'll do this, this, and this.

10:51

And then we'll have this great seminary. It's really just been watching God work in a way that is beyond our expectations.

10:59

It began five years ago with knowing that we had a responsibility to train men in our own local church for the ministry.

11:08

And then we get a phone call saying let's start a seminary if that's the case. There will be some funding behind that.

11:16

And so we prayed as an elder board and then we started a small, small institution.

11:22

We called it Grace Bible Institution of Pastoral Studies. And we ended up bringing in my friend

11:29

Tom Nettles. And we brought in other men. We had Bodie Baucom. And it was a lot of me teaching and bringing in professors.

11:36

We had Dr. Joe Beakey in. And we were looking for our first full -time residential professor.

11:45

And we were looking around. We had a couple people in mind. And Dr. Beakey says put on the brakes. The first person that you bring in will end up being the face of your seminary.

11:54

You need to make sure you get the right man. And so that caused me to slow down my search.

12:01

I'm thankful that we did do that because I'm the one, you know, nevertheless, thankful we did that.

12:10

And then I've been watching Strand from a distance, Dr. Strand from a distance. And I remember —

12:17

A lot of people say we should keep watching from a distance. Yes. The thing about Dr.

12:23

Strand, what I've enjoyed about having him, like there's a kind of his

12:30

Internet persona from a distance. But then you work next to him. And being next to him has given me a greater endearment to him and a greater appreciation.

12:40

You get to know someone. He doesn't endear a lot of people on Twitter. So that would probably be a good thing.

12:46

I know some feminists on Twitter that you wouldn't want to meet them in a dark alley. Well, his boldness is what attracted me to him.

12:53

Like here is a man he's not willing to — Right. Yeah, that's what drew me to him.

12:58

But sometimes when you think someone's this great guy, then you get to know him behind the scenes. Right. You're like, oh, okay, he's not what you thought.

13:04

It's actually knowing him behind the scenes has made my appreciation for him to just only grow.

13:10

That's always good. Yeah. Yeah, that's always good. I've had the other experience myself, so I know how it goes.

13:18

It's been wonderful. It's been wonderful to bring him in. And then the other staff that we've been able to bring in this last year has just been nothing but the grace of God.

13:28

Yeah, and you're part of a crop that we've brought in. I came in the summer, hired last spring.

13:34

And you were a major hire for us in December. Jeff Moore is our

13:41

New Testament professor, just came on, Westminster Seminary grad, very sharp. Has taught

13:46

Latin, finishing his Ph .D. Has taught Latin. You do realize that that's the whole reason that — you know, they used to advertise in Latin.

13:58

That's how common it was. Even your advertising would be in Latin. Now it's like, he's taught

14:04

Latin. It's like we've completely lost so much of that. I mean, if you want to understand almost any

14:11

European language, learn Latin. And once you know Latin, it's like, oh, I see how

14:16

Spanish is connected to French and all the rest of that kind of stuff. But we don't do that anymore.

14:23

Whatever we do, we've got to keep emphasizing languages. I was so disappointed when

14:30

I was at another seminary years ago teaching. And they reduced the fulfillment for biblical language requirements to a

14:38

Janturn. You could fulfill both your Greek and Hebrew requirement in a Janturn class. Now, unless you are

14:45

Raymond from Rain Man, you cannot learn a language in 13 days or whatever that type of thing is.

14:55

So it was turned into learn to use your logos type of situation. And that's where people are.

15:01

You can't put out meaningful exegetes and stuff when you do things like that. And then, sorry, real fast, two other hires very quickly.

15:09

Scott Anuel, who is a VP at G3 Ministries, a really strong reform group.

15:15

What's G3 again? You wouldn't have heard of it. That has really become kind of the go -to collective reform organization, major conference every other year, 6 ,500 people.

15:28

You speak as a plenary speaker at it in case you didn't remember. And then Scott is very gifted in biblical worship, pastoral ministry.

15:35

So he's written a number of books, young but published. So he's an excellent addition. And then Ryan Bush is admissions and has years of field experience and a great heart for students, very sharp.

15:47

Interestingly does a podcast on hymnody. So we have four guys. I won't make this a commercial, but GBTS brought on four guys in December alone that have really ramped us up and built on the foundation.

16:00

It's not just me and Jeff playing ping pong anymore. So we have students here.

16:06

And so you have a beautiful classroom, beautiful, very functional classroom over here, smaller classroom.

16:11

There's probably more of the languages and stuff like that over on this side, really nice library in here. So you've got the physical location, but obviously there is also necessity of an online element of things too.

16:26

So how do you mix those together? Yeah, we love residential education.

16:33

Residential is our priority. I mean, just having these students, your class is a very large class for us. And a bunch of the faculty have been sitting in at different points in your class because we love students.

16:44

That's why we're here. We're not here because we don't love students. But we also recognize that it's 2022 and not every student can move to campus, is going to move to campus.

16:55

So we have the opportunity through Zoom, you may have heard of it, to engage a wider student body.

17:02

And we have a ton of students tuning into our classes. And we very much believe this is very important.

17:08

We have an online program technically, but Jeff and I and the team absolutely believes in lecturing.

17:14

And so every student tunes into every lecture as part of the class. Other schools, you can get an entire

17:21

MDiv now at reputable schools and never hear a lecture. It's incredible.

17:27

What are you doing? What are you hearing? Is it just reading? Oh, my goodness.

17:33

So, you know, different schools make their decisions for different reasons. There's good people out there. But we believe in lecture.

17:40

And that's a significant belief for us because a lot of schools have done away with that and have made education minimal.

17:48

You come here. You take eight classes total in Greek and Hebrew. You take eight classes in systematics.

17:56

I mean, we have 100 -hour MDiv. Everybody's cutting. Everybody's reducing. And we're ramping up because we want students to get the best possible education they can because the days are evil.

18:06

We don't need to be doing less training. They don't need less systematics. They don't need less Greek and Hebrew. They don't need more.

18:14

I think that's awesome. So we're doing apologetics right now. Let's say someone hadn't heard about all this and they're like, you know,

18:25

I really do feel like I need more training. Maybe not looking to do an entire

18:31

MDiv or something like that, but can people take specific classes?

18:38

How does that work? Can they audit classes? How can things function? Yeah, they can audit classes, but we're really restricted in what we're seeking to do.

18:47

We're not trying to be a seminary for everyone. We're trying to train men. And so we're looking for those who are in ministry or wanting to go in ministry, be missionaries, be pastoral ministry, to be in the battlefield.

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And we believe that it's good to train all sorts of people, but the local church's job is to be the training field of Christians.

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It's our job as a church -based seminary to train the next generation of pastors, ministers, and missionaries.

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And so we're really going to be – we are pretty picky on who we let in.

19:29

And we want – the Bible tells us to take what's been given to us and give to faithful men.

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And so we want to be careful. That's hard to do if you don't know folks. That's right. So we're not trying to be the biggest seminary.

19:42

We're trying to be faithful in raising up an army of ministers. And we've been said to be a strip mall seminary.

19:51

I heard that somewhere. In fact, I have a hoodie that says that. I love it. Yeah. I love it. We recognize that seminaries have become a lot of things.

20:01

Like Jeff was saying, they cater to a lot of different markets, and you can get degrees in 27 different fields.

20:08

Again, if that's what schools want to do, they can do that. We are trying to zero in on the most important mission there is, which is to pass on the word to faithful men, like Jeff said.

20:19

And so we're not trying to do 27 different things. And we get inquiries, like do you have this, this, this, this.

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And what we say is we have three different degree programs, but we're really narrowed in on this mission.

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And hopefully we can create a band of brothers field for our men. Men have lost that.

20:38

Men are yearning for a band of brothers field. They've lost it in one area of society and culture after another. Maybe some of them should have been lost.

20:45

But we believe that this matters for the classroom because you want to be able to go after men on certain areas in a loving way, but cut it straight on purity or on doctrine or on these sorts of matters.

20:58

So hopefully the setup lets us create a band of brothers.

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Hopefully the students enjoy being friends with one another, form friendships that last for their lifetime, and the church is blessed as a result.

21:13

So both of you have a long reputation of avoiding all controversy and things like that.

21:21

And so, so Jeff, you've put out some books recently that were specifically meant to, you know, not cause, not ruffle any feathers and things like that, right?

21:30

Like on natural theology and stuff like that. I've been thinking, you know, it'd be easy just to write popular level books.

21:37

That make you really popular and get you invited to everywhere. Yeah, just write things that everybody likes.

21:45

My audience is used to my level of sarcasm. No, I knew writing the book on Thomas Aquinas would mean that there would be some fires started by it.

21:58

But did you really know how much? I knew it was going to cause some trouble, but I didn't realize that it would cause the trouble that it did.

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But I wrote it out of a true concern. In my mind, just kept on going through this wolf coming into the church with fangs and claws.

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And I know this could get me in trouble too, saying that Thomas Aquinas has fangs and claws underneath the fur.

22:26

You know, but he looks like a sheep. He looks like he's part of the Reformed tradition. So many people like him, but I'm seeing the teeth.

22:32

I'm seeing the claws. It's like this is dangerous for pastors, and then that's going to come down to the next generation into the churches.

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And I'm looking around for someone to push back on Thomas Aquinas, and I'm not seeing it happen.

22:50

And finally I said, I guess I'm going to have to pick up the stick and beat this dog out of the church.

22:55

Tried to, and that's what I attempted to do.

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And found out that he had a whole lot of supporters. Have you been surprised at the pushback and how many people were already quite enamored with a

23:17

Thomistic perspective? I'm surprised. It's baffling to me that someone who's the quintessential

23:23

Catholic theologian, he's not, you know, in just a tradition like Augustine. We both claim it's not

23:29

Augustine. There's a redeemable theology with Augustine. No, he's good. He's good on soteriology.

23:36

His ecclesiology is questionable. But there's things about Augustine that we really treasure and like, and we don't want to throw him out with the water when we throw out the bath water.

23:45

We want to keep him. But Aquinas, there's literally very little redeemable about him.

23:53

He was a brilliant man, and it's not like he was wrong on everything he said. But his theology proper is messed up.

24:04

His ecclesiology is messed up. His soteriology is messed up. It's like what area of his theology doesn't have some major problems with it?

24:12

Literally, he's the quintessential mind behind the Council of Trent. And he's being embraced among Baptist reform folks, and I felt there needed to be some pushback.

24:27

So I studied him for five years. I didn't just write a book and read a book about Aquinas and write a book.

24:34

You have to study Thomas for at least 50. That's right. That's what some people seemingly,

24:40

I think. And to be honest with you, even if you did, you'd still come up with different perspectives. Well, you study him, then you study his interpreters, and you study the schools, the different schools of interpretation.

24:52

And honestly, Aquinas is not that hard to understand. I mean, the interpreters and controversies around him make it hard.

25:00

But he himself, he's not trying to write Morse code. He wrote 100 books, and every one of his books has the same basic foundational premises behind these books.

25:13

And once you know how he thinks, I was getting where I could – I know this is what he would say on this topic before I read that topic because he's got these presuppositions he's working with.

25:24

And then when I read that topic, I said, yeah, that's exactly what I thought he would say because you know how he thinks because of the system that he's working – that is controlling basically the matrix of his thinking.

25:35

And so he's not super difficult to understand. But he writes a lot.

25:44

I mean I wouldn't say he's easy to understand because of the nature of the question and answer format.

25:50

Scholastic point. Yeah. But once you get that – I actually, in the process of studying him,

25:57

I wrote a summary of his Summa where I took away all the objections and just got to the heart of each question and made it into a catechism.

26:09

So I took his Summa and put it in a catechism, and I was going to make it an appendix to my book, but I realized it would be way too book.

26:17

It needs to be a whole different book. And so I was just – I gave myself to studying him, studying his best interpreters to the point that right now

26:30

I feel like I know where he's wrong. I know where he's making his basic mistakes. And then

26:36

I wrote the book. Man, all that time with Aquinas. Isn't that hard on the soul?

26:47

I mean – My wife would say it would be hard on the marriage. She doesn't like Aquinas for a different reason than I don't like him because I would talk about Aquinas.

26:58

It's Aquinas this, Aquinas that. Oh, goodness. That is dangerous. She's like I don't like Aquinas. No, I agree with her on that.

27:04

Yeah, no. That's not where you want to go. I've just heard people who have had to deal with Aquinas describe just sort of a dryness, an aridness that comes from spending that amount of time dealing with him.

27:21

And that's why I have not wanted to spend that amount of time. If I'm going to have to dig into somebody,

27:27

I'd much rather be reading the Institutes than the Summa. Yeah, absolutely. And if I'm going to have to disagree with somebody, because there are places where I would have to disagree with Calvin, obviously.

27:35

I'm not a Presbyterian. And I recognize Calvin would have driven me out of Geneva probably.

27:41

But there are reasons for that. That's one of the things where doing history seriously allows you to respect people who literally would have burned you to death.

27:54

I mean, let's think. That's just a reality. If you understand context, if you understand historiography, if you understand what has happened in the past,

28:04

I had the experience. I'm not sure if you've seen it. If you haven't, you might want to look it up.

28:10

We went to visit Germany before the 500th anniversary.

28:15

And that's when I got to speak in Luther's pulpit. And we visited the Wartburg Castle where he translated the

28:23

New Testament and stuff like that. But I knew at the Wartburg Castle there was another little thing that people don't know much about.

28:31

There was an Anabaptist by the name of Fritz Erba who was arrested about ten years after Luther was at the

28:42

Wartburg Castle for not baptizing his children. He read Luther's translation of the

28:48

Bible, believed it, and wouldn't baptize his children as a result. So he's in prison.

28:53

Luther knows he's in prison and supports his imprisonment.

28:59

And eventually he's put in the tower at the Wartburg Castle. Now you can actually walk up the tower, and about halfway up there is this door.

29:10

And you go in, and it's called the Terror Hole. It's just big enough to put a person into.

29:16

And it's pitch black because there are no windows or anything down there. And when you're tied up and you're lowered down to that, it's terrifying because it's about 40 feet down.

29:29

Can you imagine how cold it is in the winter, how hot it would be? Because there's no ventilation.

29:35

There's no windows. And the only way out of there is through that little hole. And Fritz Erba was put down that hole.

29:46

And you know how long he lived down there? Seven years. Without coming out?

29:53

Without coming out. Seven years before he died. And at first they would bring in Lutheran ministers to sit at the

30:03

Glory Hole, the Terror Hole. It was probably Glory looking at, well, let me out of this place.

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He was preached to for seven years, and he wouldn't repent.

30:17

And eventually he died down there. I don't know how in the world they got him out. I guess they had to lower somebody out and drag his body out.

30:23

They think that they found his skeleton outside in,

30:28

I think, 2006 in grounds near the walls of the castle. Luther knew he was there the entire time.

30:36

So it's the same place he's hiding from the emperor. And yet he agrees to the imprisonment of an

30:43

Anabaptist who dies there. And I had people in my group who were just shattered by that.

30:54

They're like, I can't believe Luther was a Christian. We're visiting all these places in Luther's life, but I can't believe he was a

31:02

Christian if he did that. And I explained to one of them, I said, if you take that attitude, you're going to have a hard time finding any

31:10

Christians for a long, long, long period of time in church history. Because that sacralism was how things were.

31:20

And if they weren't Christians because they did things that you think were terrible and horrible, then there basically weren't any

31:26

Christians for a long period of time. And eventually that person came to me before the end of the tour and said, I think

31:32

I'm starting to understand where you're coming from. The point is we honor

31:37

Luther. We honor what God did through Luther. But we don't create a caricature of Luther.

31:44

Same thing with Calvin. Calvin would not have welcomed me with open arms. Nobody in Europe would have welcomed any of us with open arms after Munster.

31:56

Because Anabaptists were considered to be revolutionaries. They're going to bring destruction.

32:03

And was that fair? No. Can I read Calvin and still just be amazed at his insights into so many things, even though I recognize he would not have embraced me?

32:15

Of course I can. If you can't develop that maturity in the study of history, history will be closed to you.

32:23

You'll not find anyone back then. I think Athanasius was just a wonderful early church figure.

32:31

But I recognize that the worship that he led would look very different than the worship that I lead today.

32:38

And yet you read his Against the Arians and he's using the same text to defend the deity of Christ.

32:44

That's where the connection is. The sad thing is a lot of fundamentalists break all the connections based upon any dissimilarity rather than rejoicing in the connections that are based upon the similarities.

32:59

That's where a mature understanding of history can open these things up and really encourage us in looking back upon those.

33:07

And that's what you were talking about with the Reformation is so important because we need a kind of reformational paradigm for our understanding of the gospel and of ministry and related matters.

33:21

But what has happened in the last five to ten years in evangelical circles is that the

33:28

Reformation has really been de -emphasized and patristics has been very much platformed.

33:35

Now, it's not a choice between one or the other. You were just citing Athanasius. We teach about these men here.

33:43

We revere saints of the past, including in the patristic era, and learn from them and cite them, et cetera, and so on.

33:50

Yeah, they're right there. But we do recognize at a school like this that the

33:56

Reformation is a real and necessary vital recovery of the heart of the gospel.

34:03

I mean, a theme that you've talked a great deal about, justification by faith alone, for example, five solas, as they later come to be called.

34:10

And so there's a move away in seminaries today, including Baptist and Reformed seminaries, from a kind of reformational paradigm grounded in sola scriptura.

34:20

And there's a real push from what is called the great tradition or classical theism. It's called different things.

34:26

It means different things. But there's a real push to actually kind of set aside our focus on soteriology and bibliology and instead focus on theology proper and how we agree with Catholics on those counts.

34:41

And there's a wide ranging discussion to have about a shared core between Catholics and Protestants in theology proper,

34:47

Trinitarianism, so on and so forth. But fundamentally, the work Jeff is doing, which is not controversy for its own sake, is working against that shifting of the paradigm away from the

35:00

Reformation and certainly Baptist thought. This move that is now embracing really a kind of Catholicization of evangelicalism, such that the end product is in a lot of Baptist schools,

35:14

Reformed schools. You're reading Catholic theologians almost more than you're reading

35:20

Reformed theologians, Reformation theologians. And you should read widely.

35:25

We encourage that. But that is not fundamentally a sound shift.

35:31

And it's occurring all across evangelical education right now. And so I'm very thankful that Jeff has courageously stepped up and really, really defended the sheep on this count and warned the church about Aquinas.

35:48

There needs to be, as well as that, a broader warning about the growing embrace of Catholicism in evangelical schools because it is not healthy.

35:58

It is going to lead, though it may not be intended to do this, to a confusing of the gospel and of Reformed theology and even of sola scriptura itself.

36:08

So there's a stand we have to take today that is being taken here, not because we're the ones that the church has been waiting for, but because honestly we're nothing and Christ is everything.

36:19

But we'll take the heat. We will stand up and we will say these kind of things in public.

36:26

And in doing so, we'll get some hate. But that's okay. My first debate in August of 1990 was with the man who was the first ordained

36:40

PCA minister to ever become Roman Catholic. And he was John Gerstner's favorite student.

36:47

His name was Jerry Matitix. And the topic was sola scriptura. And Jerry and I debated sola scriptura at least three times.

36:58

I think we debated about 12 or 13 times over the years. He's now a study of Akintist.

37:03

He's way out in Nona land as far as theology goes and doesn't believe the Pope and all the rest of that kind of stuff.

37:10

But at that time, he was the celebrity convert because he was

37:16

ABD, all but dissertation, at Westminster. And so he and Scott Hahn converted together.

37:23

And Scott Hahn now is at the University of Steubenville, really well known. And Hahn has taken covenant theology and Catholicized it.

37:32

And so those were the folks that I was dealing with at the very beginning of when

37:39

I was doing debates coming up over 30 years ago now. And so sola scriptura.

37:46

I thought we were all on the same page. Yes. I thought this was just simply something that we all could have complete agreement upon.

37:55

But now I'm seeing more and more that what sola scriptura demands and what it really means.

38:00

Because sola scriptura is not just simply an assertion of the Bible as the sole infallible rule of faith.

38:08

But that's based upon a recognition of what scripture is. It is theanustas. It is unique in its character.

38:15

And when you start sublimating scripture to a great tradition that becomes a lens over top of that, that's when you inevitably are going to end up with a fundamental denial of a meaningful soteriology and an emphasis upon what justification means and things like that.

38:40

So I've been very troubled to hear many people within quote unquote

38:45

Protestant circles reengaging in a positive sense.

38:52

It's one thing to read this material. It's one thing to be aware of what was going on. But to privilege it in the way it's being privileged,

39:01

I don't know what the source of it has been. But it's a dangerous, dangerous thing. And evidently we haven't learned anything from the experience of Southern evangelical seminary.

39:11

Another problem with the great tradition is what tradition are you saying is great within the great tradition?

39:18

It's not like there's this unified tradition within the tradition. Even in scholasticism, people are thinking

39:25

Thomism. But Thomism, Thomas was one of the scholastics. There were other people even in his day.

39:31

And the other ones highly disagreed with him in many, many areas. And so it's not like even in the 12th and 13th century you could say, okay, everybody was on the same page.

39:39

No, there were some major, major differences that are being left out of this conversation.

39:45

And it's like there's this uniform idea of what their doctrine of God was. No. In fact, when

39:51

Thomas was on the scene, he was novel. In fact, he was condemned by many people. The University of Paris condemned his writings there for a while because he was saying things that was never said before.

40:02

He was bringing in Aristotle for the first time. He wasn't doing the great tradition. He wasn't doing the great tradition.

40:09

And so it's like, yeah, what tradition are we talking about? Of course, we are reformed

40:16

Baptists. We love our confessions, and we believe that truth has paved the way, and we're standing on the shoulders of giants.

40:23

And we're not trying to push out history or push out those who have gone before us. I'm thankful probably more than ever for John Owen and John Calvin and Charles Hodge, and each of the people who laid the foundation for my theology.

40:40

But this is a simplistic view of this great tradition as this unified, agreed -upon position on any particular topic.

40:50

Yeah, and if you end up saying that if you disagree from Nicaea or other creeds and confessions at any point, then you're effectively a heretic.

40:59

You have rejected sola scriptura, and you have embraced a

41:05

Catholic understanding of Scripture and of the creeds and confessions. Matthew Barrett in Simply Trinity basically makes the case that if you disagree with Nicaea at any point, you have rejected

41:17

Nicaea in toto, and you have become effectively, functionally a heretic. And so there's this new line out there that pays lip service to sola scriptura but functionally treats the creeds and confessions as if they and they alone interpret the word of God.

41:37

And there is nothing to be searched out, for example, with the phrase that Christ descended into hell, for example, in the

41:43

Nicaean Creed. Well, you've got to work out what that means there. As Jeff just said, within the great tradition, there are a range of opinions among God -loving individuals on what it means that Christ descended into hell.

41:58

There's denial all the way up to, yes, he literally descended into hell. And this, ironically, this great tradition movement is actually shutting down that millennia -old conversation over matters like that and basically shutting down biblical exegesis post these given eras and confessional documents.

42:23

And that's just not a sound understanding of biblical authority at the end of the day. Well, and the irony is that, as you guys know,

42:33

Calvin was willing to part ways with the majority post -Nicene view on certain important issues, especially in regards to the person of Christ and the concept of him being autotheos, he is

42:47

God in and of himself. And this raises the issue of, because I've said this for years and years and years, dealing with Roman Catholicism.

43:00

I've done debates with many of the leading Roman Catholic apologists in the United States. I've always said, of course, we have our own statement of faith.

43:09

We have our own confessions. But they are subordinate to, they are subordinate standards.

43:15

That means they're subordinate to the teachings of the word of God. Well, how does that function?

43:22

How do you end up making that work? Because if you elevate your confession of faith to the point of being the final word that cannot be questioned and cannot be put into a context, and you can't understand, how is that different from what

43:39

Rome is telling me I need to be doing? So I've said to Roman Catholics all along, my confession of faith,

43:45

I believe its authority comes from its consistency with divine revelation and scripture.

43:52

That's where it comes from. But it's every generation is called to, you know, what is,

44:00

I recently mentioned someone, the phrase semper reformanda, always reforming.

44:06

And I was reminded, well, that wasn't from the Reformation. And what can that possibly mean?

44:13

So those are things we have to be thinking about. You can't rewrite the confession for every generation.

44:20

There's no reason to do that. But at the same time, if you look at a document and you go, this was their understanding of this at that time, how do you bring scripture into that?

44:32

How do you actually have a distinction in levels of authority? Those are things that every generation has to think about.

44:41

And if you shut down that conversation, then by default, you end up with whatever that current tradition is considered to be as the final authority.

44:51

And that ends up displacing scripture. That becomes dangerous. Well, it's the same thing as a preacher. I'm a pastor, and I actually think

45:00

I hold to the 1689 more strictly than most people because I even think the

45:05

Pope is the man of sand. So I'm even on that bandwagon there. So I'm like, okay, there's not a really article there that I'm having issue with when

45:14

I'm reading confessions. But I came to the confessional stance after years of study, and I pick up this confession.

45:21

I'm going, well, that's what I believe. That's what I believe. That's what I believe. Okay, this is my confession. This is what I believe. I'm ready to stand behind this.

45:29

But when I preach and teach, and hopefully my preaching and teaching is difficult.

45:35

Hopefully it's based from the text. Hopefully people can see that it's not just the words of Jeff Johnson. But as long as the people are hearing this is the word of God being accurately explained and communicated, then it's authoritative.

45:47

Like you're saying, it's authoritative. You can question me, but you've got to judge me as a good Berean through the text, the

45:53

Bible. That's how we have to view any confession. Just because it's a multiple voice of multiple men doesn't mean that the multitude of the men that's behind the confession are any more inspired than just a single man.

46:10

We only got a couple minutes, so let me throw this out at you, and you know exactly where this is going.

46:18

What if you determine that the framers of the confession meant something in a single word in the confession?

46:30

Where you go, that's bringing an entire metaphysics in that's not found in Scripture.

46:37

So I'm talking about parts, not body parts, passions. And someone says, well, what they meant by that was a doctrine of simplicity that is very extended and fully dependent upon a metaphysics that comes from Thomas Aquinas and has roots in Aristotelianism.

46:55

How does Semper Reformanda impact your dealing with that phrase in Chapter 2 of the confession?

47:05

That may be too much for us. No, well, two quick things. One, I personally question and do not agree that this hyper, what

47:15

I would call very strict view of simplicity, because I'll hold to simplicity. And everybody will say,

47:21

Jeff, you don't hold to simplicity. Yeah, they say the same thing. No, I'm very — It's a definitional issue. Right, and so I'll hold to it.

47:27

And I think that most of the framers held to it in a way that I'll hold to it. There are some that —

47:33

So there would be people who would say, no, they held to it the way I held to it. Right. So I'm going to argue that, that they had this particular view that they were all

47:42

Thomists. No, I don't believe that was the case. And that would be a whole fact. As you know,

47:48

I'm working on an intense study of looking at original sources of the 17th century men, particularly

47:54

Baptists and the Presbyterians and the Westminster. And I'm getting more and more strongly convinced that there was a variety of opinions on simplicity even in that day.

48:04

I don't think they had a controversy about it. I don't think they were mad about it. I think that the average pastor there held to simplicity about the way most average pastors hold to it today.

48:14

And they weren't thinking in these Aristotelian metaphysical concepts when they were talking about body without body parts and passions.

48:22

Nevertheless, let's, for the sake of the argument, say that they are right, that the original framers did hold to this

48:29

Thomistic view of strict simplicity. Then I'm going to say who cares? What does the

48:34

Bible say? In the end, I am not going to be held accountable to submitting myself to a 17th century understanding of a word or two.

48:46

I'm going to have to do my own exegesis, and I'm going to have to give an account to God for how

48:51

I understand the word of God. And if I'm just looking at a few men and their conception of a word,

48:58

I feel like that is lazy on me to just say this is what they believe. That's what

49:03

I'm going to believe. Sorry. It's a capsizing of exegetical theology unto biblical theology unto systematics by philosophical theology and historical theology.

49:14

So I have a Ph .D. in historical theology, so I'm for it. And philosophical theology can be a real tool.

49:21

But we are not first and foremost at a school like this training our men to be philosophical theologians or to be historical theologians.

49:30

We're first and foremost training them to be exegetical theologians, to do business in the text, unto biblical theology, unto systematic theology.

49:39

So that's a big point of controversy here that has rarely surfaced.

49:45

In addition, you mentioned Southern Evangelical Seminary a few minutes ago. I don't mean to take it back from the discussion of 1689, which we're very thankful for.

49:55

But there actually are paths already cut that take you out of Reformed Evangelicalism into the

50:07

Catholic Church. Scott Oliphant has been very clear about this. He's written a review of a book called

50:13

Evangelical Exodus that's very important. Basically what happened at Southern Evangelical Seminary is

50:20

Norm Geisler was in the middle of it. Okay. Well, just for anybody who wasn't in the middle of it, because you're like, where's

50:27

Waldo, man? You've been everywhere. Once you get to my age, you've been through a few things. There was code for that.

50:35

It's okay. You're much younger than I am. It's all right. You can say that. But SES was sort of reformed, modified, reformed.

50:44

But Geisler loved Aquinas, and so subbed in Aquinas basically for theology proper and ethics to some degree.

50:51

And a lot of students would start reading Aquinas at SES and for various reasons heard this kind of siren song, and then came to believe that the sort of perspective we've been lining out here, a sola scriptura perspective, a theanoustos vision of scripture is naive and fundamentalist.

51:13

And so they left that behind and embraced the kind of glorious, great tradition vision of Catholicism, and now they no longer confess.

51:23

They weren't just students. They were staff as well. We were teaching there, students.

51:30

It was a whole group of people from SES. And SES itself has pretty much ceased to exist as it existed at one point.

51:39

When I went there, there were on -campus students, stuff like that. That's all changing rapidly.

51:46

And when you read the book Evangelical Exodus, there is a gateway drug that appears over and over and over again.

51:56

His name is Thomas. And it's Thomas. Very much so. Very much so, yeah. That was my experience when I was there. In fact,

52:01

I'm not sure if you've seen it, but when I debated Michael Brown on predestination election at SES a number of years ago, a conversation took place between myself and Dr.

52:14

Howell on presuppositional and evidential apologetical methodologies. I wasn't told it was going to happen.

52:21

It just sort of happened, and a camera happened to be running when it happened. And if you listen carefully to it, you will hear a lot of these things that we were talking about right here coming up over and over again.

52:31

And interestingly enough, ended up having a discussion of solo scriptura at the end because it's all related.

52:38

It's all related. And sadly, I've been around the block enough times to have met with many a person who has swum the

52:44

Tiber, and they caved in on solo scriptura. And so that's why, to me, it's such a vitally important thing.

52:51

And that's why I said earlier, I thought we were all on the same page. And naive little me, not realizing that every generation has to reaffirm and dig that hole and plant that flag.

53:05

You can't do it because your parents did it or your grandparents did it or your great grandparents did it.

53:11

Every generation has to make that commitment. Yeah, I'm convinced that the sufficiency of scripture is where the battle is. It always has been.

53:17

It's not just that the scriptures are authority. Yeah, we're confessing that. But are they sufficient?

53:23

Is it sufficient to give us all that we need to know about who God is and what we need to be to be right with God and salvation and everything else that we hold dear in our lives?

53:32

But with Thomism, it's an understanding of who God is, not through what

53:39

I would call natural revelation, which I affirm natural revelation. Thomism is looking at who

53:46

God is through the lens of natural science and seeking to know God through how we study the world.

53:53

And there's this premise, this presupposition behind Thomism that shapes basically how we understand scriptures.

54:00

And it's that there's this chain of being between God and creation. And because it's

54:05

Aristotelian philosophy, that doesn't have a clear distinction between God and creation because there's no creation out of nothing with Aristotle.

54:17

The Bible has creation as coming out of nothing, and it's not

54:23

God. Creation is not God. That is a huge biblical foundational presupposition, and that is the presupposition.

54:33

Now, Aquinas obviously will affirm it verbally, but he's working off the matrix of this chain of being, which leads to pantheism if you're consistent.

54:44

And so this method is how he's understanding God, and it leads to a hyper view of simplicity based upon the study of all the particulars leads to this

54:55

God is completely opposite of that which he's created. And then he's not just unknowable, but he's undefinable.

55:04

And so I think then that becomes the matrix in which they understand scriptures. I think it's very important that we get back to scriptures as the foundation of our understanding of who

55:14

God is. So we're talking about all these things. We're obviously not afraid to engage these issues.

55:21

We try to do so. As much as it depends on you, be at peace, all men. So we try to address the issue, not personalities, individuals.

55:31

And we're not trying to kick anybody out of the kingdom of God, because we're not the gatekeepers.

55:37

We don't get to do that. Trying to sound a warning and trying to obviously the emphasis upon scripture, exegesis of scripture, staying firm upon that which is theanisos, which is

55:49

God -breathed. That is absolutely central, and we must be there. I was just wondering how in the world we got there from the

55:55

Battle of Gettysburg. That was a sort of convoluted path. But that's sort of how

56:00

I've been lecturing for six hours today. And so after that, the fact that I'm still speaking

56:07

English is probably a major accomplishment on my part. You young guys, you can do this all day long.

56:14

Us older folks, we have to get some rest eventually. So I really appreciate your joining with us today and letting people see our beautiful location here.

56:25

And we still embrace the Strip Mall Seminary description that someone tried to use to put us down.

56:35

These days, I think any school should be judged on the basis of what its graduates have been taught to be able to do for the kingdom of God, how they have been equipped.

56:47

That's the whole thing now. It's not how big your student loan debt is or anything else in the process.

56:53

And I'm hoping that maybe in the future, just simply because of what's going on in our nation, that's going to be the only way that the only schools that are going to continue are the schools that have that kind of a dedication.

57:06

The rest of them will have given in to the state church anyways by that point. And there you go. Yeah, something we say around here that Jeff introduced is we say it kind of rhetorically into the air, but it really does matter for us.

57:23

And it's to our students. Are you willing to go to prison for preaching the word and the gospel?

57:32

And we don't want the kind of man here who hesitates when asked that question.

57:38

We know that strong men of God who contributed in major ways to the kingdom had their moments of hesitation.

57:46

We think in church history of Cranmer or others, we think of Peter in the gospels. But fundamentally, this is an era when if you are going into the ministry and you are going to preach all that Christ commanded his church,

58:01

Matthew 28, 19 to 20, you need to be ready to go to prison. And you need to not only be ready, you need to be glad.

58:10

You need to have a bunion -esque spirit, not because you hate people or hate the government or foment revolution for its own sake, but because you love a great

58:18

God and you love people enough to tell them the truth in love. And so I pray we can have that kind of spirit here.

58:25

We take the kind of stand that we've talked about not to be controversialists, but because we have to give instruction in sound doctrine,

58:33

Titus 1 -9, and rebuke those who contradict it. And so that shapes our mission. Yeah, going back to the man, the ant of badness that was in the —

58:41

Fritz Erba? Yes. The terror hole. The man of terror hole. I mean that is a doctrine that you don't have to believe to be a

58:48

Christian. Obviously we believe Presbyterians and Lutherans are Christians. They understand the gospel.

58:54

So he may have thought to himself, hey, I don't have to hold to that. But he believed it. And he didn't just believe it.

59:00

He believed it was the word of God. And that's why we're getting back to Scripture. You have to believe. Whatever you believe is not philosophy.

59:08

It's not man's wisdom. You have to believe it's of God. This is

59:13

God's word. It is truth. And if that's in your bones and you know it's true, then that's the type of faith you have to have if you're willing to suffer.

59:23

Because if it's not of God, then let it go. I can let it go. But if it's of God, I'll die for it. No, I just –

59:30

I've looked down that hole. And so I know what it would take to be down there for seven years.

59:37

Seven years. Seven years. It's just – look at my – it's less than five minutes long, the video.

59:44

We actually brought our whole group up there and crowded into that room.

59:49

We did it in two sections, and I explained, and we videotaped one of them. I explained to nobody else visiting that – the

59:55

Barkburg Castle could care less about that little room. It's just like, what does this mean?

01:00:01

But our big emphasis was we don't want a caricature of the Reformation.

01:00:07

We want to know what really happened. And unfortunately,

01:00:12

I was informed that that's not the usual way that it was presented during that run -up to the

01:00:18

Reformation, that there was normally a caricature that was presented. That doesn't help anybody. But anyways, we have run through our time, and it went pretty fast, didn't it?

01:00:27

You probably thought this was going to take – we're sitting there forever. But once you get started, it goes pretty quickly.

01:00:34

And I want to point out that none of the students here who have suffered through my class today have fallen asleep.

01:00:43

None of them – nobody snored, anything. I think that's a – Of all you have been given, you have not lost one. I have not lost –

01:00:51

Okay, I'm moving out of the lightning bolt here. I'm going to come down on that one. So I don't know when the next

01:00:57

Dividing Line is going to be, to be perfectly honest with you, because I need to travel starting next week.

01:01:04

And hopefully, there won't be any more ice storms. It doesn't look like there are any more that are predicted. So that's good. But we will let you know when the next

01:01:11

Dividing Line will be on. Dr. Strand, Jeff, thank you both for being willing to have me hang around this place and for taking the time, even after the class, to join with us and have this conversation.

01:01:25

I have a feeling that some of the things that both of you said may already be starting threads on Twitter and Facebook, because we're live on YouTube right now.

01:01:36

So I have a feeling that that's probably going to happen. But, hey, that's not the first time that's ever happened.

01:01:43

And we didn't get into any of the other controversial stuff. I mean, you said stuff about women.

01:01:49

Oh, my goodness, man. Patriarchy. Man bun. Oh, man. Oh, goodness, yeah.

01:01:54

I actually agreed with you on that. But anyways. All right. Thanks for watching the program today. We'll see you next time on The Dividing Line.