Secularism's Insanity, then Credo's Promotion of Scholasticism

The Coming RV Studio and Upcoming Travel Plans

To the dividing line. Hey, there we go. We're doing things remotely today. Well, I'm actually here, but Rich is remote and I'm not sure why that was going on that way. Anyway, I was actually just looking over some of the material that has come in for the new studio in the RV, and I'm not sure when all of that's being put together.

Rich has plans within plans, but I leave, I think the 30th, if I recall correctly, maybe a little bit for that. I'm not sure. So we're coming up pretty quick on our first on road trip dividing line from the new studio.

It won't be completely finished. I have some ideas that will take a little while to initialize, shall we say, but we should be able to do something other than sit at the kitchen table this time around.

And I'm excited about that. And I hope you are, too, as we have a lot of plans to do neat things while I'm on the road, because I'm going to be on the road a lot. This next trip's 25 days. The one in July is 33 days, and I haven't even started booking September, which will include G3.

The G3 pre-conference put on by GBTS, which is where the rest of the staff roasts James White. Sort of looks like what it's going to be, but we'll see how all that turns out. And obviously I need to start making contacts as to coming and going from Atlanta and how we're going to get there.

And I know there's at least one church down in Louisiana that really wanted to do something. You've got to understand, I love folks in Louisiana. They're the nicest folks you ever run into, but I have to really love them to drive on Louisiana roads.

That's what I'm going to tell you. New Mexico, Louisiana. So far, in my experience, bottom of the barrel as far as the highway departments are concerned. Let's just say I'm glad I've got a big four-wheel drive to get out of some of the potholes that I've run into on freeways, on interstate freeways in both of those particular states.

Secularism, ESG, and the Collapse of Moral Formation

Anyway, so yeah, I've got to get down there. You guys are great folks. Just need to do something about those roads. Anyway, if you're like me, you probably have been sitting around recently, especially you start seeing the numbers coming out and asking yourself the question, I don't know how much this Dylan Mulvaney guy, and he is a guy, is getting paid.

And the first time I saw that guy prancing around like a fairy, literally, he was trying to act like a little girl, like a little fairy princess type thing. I mean, that's what he was doing. And I saw one just recently, just from a few weeks ago, where he's got teddy bears and it's just...

Anyway, the first time I saw it happening, I said, this isn't for real. This is not for real. He may go for a long time, but someday he's going to come out and he's going to grow his beard out. And he's going to go, got y 'all and became a millionaire doing it because he could.

I don't think he's done the surgery stuff. So yeah. Anyway, you've probably seen the numbers. I've seen as high as $5 billion loss. Not just in sales, but in value of stock and things like that. And Anheuser-Busch, which is actually owned from outside the United States.

And I don't know what they're paying him. He's set for life one way or the other. But if you're like most just regular, plain human beings, you're sitting around going, isn't this really stupid? I mean, aren't you supposed to have spokes people that are, you're supposed to sell more of your product?

Couldn't they see this coming? And I'm starting to see a lot of discussion of people saying, doesn't matter. This is all about index scoring and how your company is looked at by these people that are functioning on ESG, DEI, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I'll be honest with you. Hey, and I mean, I say this to my Christian brothers and sisters too. If you're going to throw around specialized terminology and acronyms, please define them. Because there's sometimes I'm just left going, okay.

It's a little bit like the debate with the fellow in Tullahoma who just, I'm looking out at the audience and everybody in the audience just staring at him going, are we going to come to a point? Are you going to slow down enough?

You can explain something at some point, maybe possibly. Why are we here? I don't know. Yeah, we don't want to do that. We need to, we have some idea of what all this stuff's about. Anyway, I guess the idea is that you can get loans and it's all about the score that you have.

And the people in charge, their pay is frequently tied to these scores that are produced by, they're not governmental agencies. They don't actually have any authority outside of the fact that they represent the minorities.

They represent LGBTQI, PP, RSTUV, WXYZ, all this racist stuff. And these people have all the power. It's not been gained validly. It's not by argumentation. It's not by having connection to history. It's based on fear.

These CEOs, these companies are cowards. They're just, they won't stand up for anything. It's right because the preparation that has been done for decades now in the United States, in the educational system that has resulted in a collapsed, inoperable worldview, a humanistic, secular worldview.

I keep hearing people saying, what kind of a parent would take their child to a drag show? And I say, the children of the preceding generation that are now fully secularized because they have no moral formation.

See, moral formation comes from not only an educational system that forces you to deal with ethical and moral issues, but it comes from a religious formation as well. It's a process. And that's gone. You listen to these, I'm watching right now, I'm watching a homeschool mom walking out with her son.

There's a homeschool place near us and I have a security camera over here and it's focused on my truck because I sort of want the tires and stuff to be on it when I get back out there. And I live in Phoenix now and Phoenix is LA East.

And so you get to see homeschool families, pretty young ladies in long dresses. And I'm just right now watching a homeschool mom walking out with a big box of curriculum and a young man there that has no idea, no idea how fortunate he is.

I try to tell my grandkids, and with the most serious grandfatherly look I can pull off, and I can pull off a grandfather look today better than I ever could before. I try to explain to them how blessed they are.

Because it's so easy to go, well, I don't get to do this, that, and the other thing, the kids do it. Regular school, you have no idea the blessing God has placed in your life, that you are not in that moral meat grinder called the public school.

You know, it's true. One thing I know that's true is the vast majority of homeschooled kids can get their work done in much less time than when they are in public school and have far more time to learn much more about life, do things with mom and dad, have chores.

Yep, chores, things that need to be done, things that are teaching you to do things, to be a functional adult, and likewise, to have interaction with your siblings. I was watching, well, I was going to pull it up, and I can't.

Family, Homeschooling, and the Blessing of Moral and Ethical Formation

Yeah, I can't, unfortunately. Well, can I? You know, it's possible, but it's going to be hard because I'll be very distracted in the process. Oh, wait a minute. Let me see here. I might be able to, well, let's see.

Rich, are you able to put my screen up? Because I thought I saw my screen up at one point. There I am with Cadence and Clementine outside the Easter pageant. You got it? It was up there for a second. I saw it up on the screen.

There it is. There we are last Saturday evening outside the Easter pageant. Hadn't really started yet. I mean, it's sort of early on, but with Cadence and Clementine, I loved that there was once I was looking around for him, and I couldn't see him.

You can put it down now. I looked around, looked around, and I saw Cadence talking to this guy in a... But where did he go? There he is. Cadence is talking to this guy in a scooter. That reminds me. I said I was going to get him something.

I still need to do that. And so I walked over, and the guy ended up being a member of the United Church of Christ. So that conversation was pretty interesting. No two ways about it. But then word started getting around that all the missionaries had been told they could not say anything to us.

They could not talk with us. So Clementine just goes scooting across. She sees two missionaries standing over in front of the visitor's center. So she just goes scooting across the street and just walks up to him.

Is it true that you all can't talk to us? Why do you think that might be? The young ones honestly, I think, get more tracks out than us older folks do. They really do. As far as just straight old track distribution is concerned, they do a great job.

Anyway, those young ladies, it's very, very, very easy, I think, for them to be told, well, you're missing out on this. I think, no, they have no earthy idea. And I love watching the interaction between Cadence and Clementine.

I honestly, Sunday night, I was watching them goofing off like sisters do and giggling about stuff that sisters giggle about. And I just could not get, and I'm dating myself here badly, badly, but I could not get the song from White Christmas out of my mind.

Remember that? That was the 19, what was that? 1955? Somewhere around there. I was not born in 55. I was born just a few years after that. But there was a song that Rosemary Clooney and the real pretty blonde, she only did pretty much that movie.

She was an incredible dancer, almost anorexic. But anyway, they sang a song called Sisters. And I just couldn't keep it out of my mind as I'm watching Cadence and Clementine. And from my vantage point down the road, I'm sitting there going, do they have any idea how precious it is to have the relationship that they have right now?

And I just don't think you can know that until later on in life, unless you're wise enough to listen to your elders who are trying to tell you, you have got it good. You have got it so good. Even when you're doing your chores, you're learning responsibility.

You're learning to do things. I mean, those girls, oh, I know, I know, I know, I know. Some of you are going, get to the theology part. We don't care about this. Well, it's all tied together. The girls stayed over at our house.

I don't know, was that about a month ago? Overnight, I think two nights. And one morning, I was like, man, I'd love to have an egg. And so Cadence and Clementine said, we'll have a contest. We'll each make you an egg and you have to tell us who did it better.

So I leave the kitchen. I go in the other room and they come walking in. One, I think was so like over easy. The other was scrambled, which is what I normally have and stuff. And they had just, they got out the pans.

They did it all on their own. And I don't think I could have done that at their age. And it was great. I had to call it a draw. It was, it was, you know, what are you supposed to do? But it was so neat to see just what a fantastic job Eric and Summer are doing with the kids and homeschooling them and raising them in the fear and admonition of the Lord.

And of course, I've had the opportunity of baptizing both of those girls. And that's certainly a highlight of life as well. And so what a tremendous advantage that they have, that they have the opportunity at this young age of having moral and ethical formation to be faced with these issues, not just to be forced into a way of thinking by peer pressure in the public indoctrination centers that we all have to pay for the tunes of thousands of dollars per year.

So anyways, all this coming back to, this is where the next generation is. When you look at the surveys of the claimed sexualities of the generations and you look at generation Z, nearly 20 claiming to be LGBTQ plus, you know, that's not possible.

You know, that's not real, but you can force people into these self-destructive behaviors because they're not looking at the future. They've been, they have not been taught to look at the future because their parents don't look at the future.

Their parents are focused upon themselves and not the future. Therefore they have no role models other than to, you know, follow that line. And the result is the destruction of a once great nation. There's no question about it.

There's no question about that at all. And so that's what we're looking at as we look at, you know, the numbers on the election of a pro-murder Supreme Court justice. The Supreme Court, was it Michigan or Wisconsin?

One of the two. Anyways, up there. And the information coming out that it was primarily college students that created the 11 point gap in that contest. And that's what's coming. These people will overthrow the constitution.

They will embrace any kind of self-destruct. They will bring this nation down because they don't know anything else to do. They are ethically and morally malformed. And there's only one thing can fix that.

There's only one thing can change that. And we all know what it is. So anyway, I'm also looking at a picture. We, before we went out to the Easter pageant last week, we had family pictures taken. I did survive, by the way, guys, those of you who, who contacted me and I had made mention of on the program.

And, uh, I've only seen one of the pictures so far because there, no, it takes photographer time to do it, but it's a beautiful picture. My wife can not take a bad picture. She can't. From the time that we met, it is astonishing.

She can't take a bad picture. Even when I've tried to catch her and she hates me doing that. Just careful. Um, if I ever, if I ever do disappear, cause I was trying to take a picture of my wife when she didn't want me to.

Um, but she's, it's this beautiful picture of her and she's holding ransom and ransom is that point is that at that point of development, that first year where he's able to judge distances. And so he knows when mom or dad are getting too far away and he's being held by someone who isn't mom or dad or cadence or Clem, uh, or even Jani.

He has, I told him when he was born, he has four mommies and he does. But even when Nani's holding us, mommy can't wander too far off. And the, the concerned look on his face, I, I Lord willing, um, in the not too distant future when we attend his, his wedding, if they still allow such things, it may have to be done in secret, like in Braveheart.

Um, but, uh, I would just love, love, love. Oh my goodness. Wow. I I'm just, I'm just sitting here and this video pops up on my Twitter feed and it's people, uh, robbing a couple from a motorcycle and the guy just runs off.

It's like, wow. Anyway, um, that, that picture will end up, we will end up using that picture for the wedding thing. You know, you run the pictures and embarrassing pictures of like, speaking of which, you know, I've, I've been talking, I think about talking about this and we are going to switch topics here, but the level of evil that scrolls across our screen, um, y 'all saw, over the past month and a half, I've seen incredible murders on Twitter.

Most of them are in Chicago. Um, almost all are black on black violence. This is, uh, two black guys robbing a white guy and a white gal. Um, but the heartlessness, the brutality, the there it's not only there's no fear of God before their eyes.

I mean, people try to criticize Romans one and Romans three for being, uh, too dark and too down on mankind. Are you kidding me? Just watch Twitter for a week and you'll go, Paul was a cockeyed optimist.

It's not just, there's no fear of God before their eyes. There is no recognition of their own humanity before their eyes. That's the end result. That's, that's the result of generation after generation after generation of blinded eyes, so much light around and squinting and, and saying, no, I, I, I will not do that.

I will not follow that perspective. I will not go there. Um, it, it's truly frightening because there's, there is, there is no human way to deal with this kind of behavior. Um, in a just society, these individuals would be executed quickly and somehow some kind of, we hate God's law.

We don't like God's law. We don't like what God's law says has crept so deeply into the bones of even evangelicals that we can literally sit back, look at the American criminal system, realize that what the American criminal system does because it rejects God's law, it rejects the execution of murderers.

It rejects the execution of rapists. Um, and it does not do restitution. Instead, it's a system of slavery. What, what do you, what do you call it when you take someone, take away all their property and put them in a cage?

That's called enslavement. And so you, you just become a slave for a certain period of time. Now there was a time when you actually couldn't work to make restitution, stuff like that. I don't know what that even exists any longer.

It's probably been rendered illegal or something. I don't know, but this isn't a just society and this isn't a just legal system any longer. Now it just does enslavement rather than actual punishment for these kinds of crimes.

And of course, I know on the mouth of two or three witnesses, you, you have to have some element of the spirit of God working in a society, granting common grace, or it is just simply anarchy. And when it gets to the point of anarchy, that's when people cry out for control.

And that's where you get tyranny. And instead of the tyranny of the many, which is anarchy, you get tyranny of the few, which is totalitarianism. There's only one way to avoid it. But right now, this society has no intention of doing that one word called repentance.

And sadly, the church has no intention of saying repentance either. Just doesn't. It just doesn't. I'm not even talking about the radical left-wing nut job heretics out there. I'm talking about in the vast majority of sound churches, you won't repent.

Repentance? What's that? Never heard of it. Anyway. Okay. So last, on the last program, I responded to the first half hour of presentation by Dr. Michael Carty at the Shepherds Conference and wanted to engage various of the issues about methodology, sources, to once again try to explain to folks, hey, these are my concerns.

This is why I think that this scholastic methodology is not an advancement at all. It will not, see, scholasticism will not produce, you know, there are some classical biblical commentaries that were written in the last century.

I think John Murray's work on Romans is just a masterpiece. It's wonderful. And there were numerous other commentaries and John and the concerned active lay person, you buy commentaries, you want to do work, you want to, all that kind of stuff.

You will very quickly discover that there are different kinds of commentaries. And especially when you buy a commentary in a quote-unquote scholarly series, you will find that the devotional theological and even contextually exegetical content gets buried.

The more the commentary seeks to show off its scholarly acumen or the more scholastic it is. So you will very often invest a ridiculous amount of money, even if you buy electronically in log-offs or accordance or whatever.

You will run into these commentaries where you will go for pages of discussion of what Bultmann said and what Barthes said, and just all sorts of establishing your credentials, shall we say, in citing this and citing that.

And very often you're just looking for some light on a difficult phrase or how was this understood at that time and you don't get it. Or it barely gets touched on at the very end and I'm not really sure how they got there and man, I'm really confused by having read everything that I had to read to get here.

And that's a form of scholasticism. I think most of that should be in footnotes if you're going to do it. There are times when you have to deal with textual issues, historical issues. And some commentaries, their intention is to go, this is how this group's understood it, and this is how this group's understood it, and okay, those aren't my favorites.

My shelves are filled with them, but they're not my favorites. But that's a form of scholasticism. And the scholastic method, whenever it has become predominant, by its very nature does not bring the sheep of Christ into the process.

In fact, to protect the position of the scholars who practice scholarship and scholasticism, obviously connected terminologically speaking, there is a purposeful utilization of specialized terminology that makes the lay person dependent upon the scholar to come to the final conclusions.

I've often thought, and it's been my goal in my ministry, to take difficult issues and actually bring everybody into the conversation, make them understandable, explainable, useful. I've done that with textual criticism.

I've done that with all sorts of theological issues, even issues relating to the Quran and Islam or Mormonism, whatever. You explain what you're talking about. You make it understandable to as wide an audience as you possibly can.

I'm not saying that there aren't some times where it's okay to sit around and speak scholarese, but those should be the exception, certainly not the rule. And so going back to what I was saying, there's been some tremendous commentaries in the last century that will stand the test of time, and they required scholarship on the part of the author.

But the author then made it understandable to a very wide audience, and that's what edifies the body. Scholasticism, whenever it has become predominant, has left the lay people out. It's meant for people who just love all the details and stuff, and I get it.

I get it. I've sat around with... I think of one time I sat around with a textual critical scholar and can't imagine what people sitting around us in a restaurant would have thought or were thinking as they listened to us having a very, very in-depth, very, very technical, very, very few people in the world would understand what we were talking about conversation.

It's appropriate for that type of thing to happen, but it can't be the goal, and it can't be the norm. Because if you're having that kind of conversation, does not result in your ability to then explain to the non-technical person the relevance to their life and to God's truth of what you're talking about at some other context, then you were probably either just stroking your own ego or wasting your time.

One of the two. That's my opinion on things, anyways. And so when we did the program on Tuesday, I had no idea. I had no idea that Credo Magazine and Matthew Barrett is the guy giving direction there, was dropping that day an entire issue, Volume 14, Issue 1, 2023, Reformed and Scholastic is the front cover.

Credo, Reformed and Scholastic. And let's just take a look at it here. Ryan McGraw, what is Reformed Scholasticism? Are Reformed fathers who use Scholasticism to convey orthodoxy? Christopher Cleveland, John Owen, Truly Reformed, Truly Scholastic.

Peter Sammons from Masters, Jerome Zanke, our forgotten Scholastic forefather. I'll be looking a little at that. Owen Anderson, Stephen Charnock, The Clarity of God's Existence in Providence, Franz Turretin.

But then under Columns, First Principles, Reformed Scholasticism, The Reformation as Renewal, Retrieving the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. Of course, it's the name of Barrett's book. Wholesome Protestant Doctrine, Gold in My Own Backyard by Timothy Gatewood.

I think, could be wrong, I saw some discussion about this, that Timothy Gatewood is Matthew Barrett's assistant. I could be wrong about that. I was just seeming that was the connection that was being made.

Steve Meister shows up from up in Sacramento. Reformed Scholasticism in the Pulpit, The Need for Clarity and Consistency in the Ministry of the Word. Well, there is a need for clarity and consistency in the Ministry of the Word, but I can guarantee you one thing, Scholasticism will never provide it.

That was one of the things the Reformers were responding against at that particular point in time. There is an interview between R. Scott Clark and Timothy Gatewood, why you should change your mind about Reformed Scholasticism.

If you love the Puritans, then you already love the Reformed Scholastics, Joel Beeky. Protestant Scholasticism is the historical link that binds us to the Ad Fontes approach to Aquinas. Of course, got to get Aquinas in there someplace.

It's just required. Now, this was, need to find the, where'd it go? Oh, I must've put it in the other program. This was also the episode, episode, the issue, April 12th, 2023. Derek Bright has an article, was John Calvin a Biblicist?

Now, Derek Bright, I responded to at the end of the last program, and we went through all sorts of just slanderously bad argumentation and accusations against me that Derek Bright was making. So it struck me as ironic that it was the same day of, well, actually this came out yesterday.

So right before, a few hours before, Credo Magazine was going to be dropping with articles like this. And he echoes a number of the accusations he makes here. But here's, once again, when one person utilizes straw man argumentation, that reflects upon the one person.

When an entire movement is dedicated to the use of straw man argumentation, then you start wondering what's really going on. So here is a paragraph from Derek Bright in Credo. Was Calvin a Biblicist? The answer is a resounding no.

So here's a paragraph. Biblicism can be defined as a rejection of everything that is not explicitly made clear or stated in Holy Scripture, thus eschewing secondary authorities such as creeds and confessions in favor of the Bible as the only authority.

Now, by now, most of us are just tired of having to respond to this kind of simplistic, dishonest argumentation. We're tired of it. We've spent quite some time making very clear distinctions and arguing from original sources that there is a reformed Biblicism, that this reflects, is reflected.

When I presented this in Calvin's response to Saddletto, which, y 'all ever heard of Heiko Obermann? Ever heard of Heiko Obermann? One of the most famous church historians of the last century. And he finished off his career teaching at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, which is about 90 minutes down the road from me here.

And I had the opportunity in, I think it was 89, if I recall correctly, of attending a doctoral seminar in his home. I was looking at possibly, it was a six-year PhD program. And I was just looking at what would even be possible financially with Palo Verde Dominican Ministries, stuff like that.

And so I was invited down. And so I attended a seminar in Dr. Obermann's home in, I guess I would call that, would that be Northeast Tucson? It seemed to me, or at my recollection, Tucson's obviously grown a lot since then.

So anyway, guess what the subject was? Yeah, it was Calvin's response to Saddletto. And so this is a topic that was becoming important to me at that time, because 89 is when I'm just starting. I mean, the first debate we had with Roman Catholicism is 90.

So I'm already having a lot of the encounters. And so I'm, you know, all the way through seminary, I've been dealing with Mormonism, Jehovah's Witness, stuff like that. Now we're doing, you know, now during seminary, I've finally had a really good church history professor.

And so I'm reading in that area voraciously. And so this was perfect to have the opportunity to listen in for many hours on an in-depth discussion of the context and background of Calvin's response to Saddletto.

So that's one of the reasons why I utilize that as sort of my resourcement for trying to accurately point out that John Calvin did not use the scholastic methodology of the medieval period. That does not mean he didn't use language, does not mean he didn't use certain terms or things like that.

But if you can't tell the difference between reading the Summa and reading the Institutes, then you're not really paying much attention. And I'm not sure you really have anything to say to this whole subject anyway.

They obviously did not want to use Peter Lombard. They didn't want to use the sentences. They did not want to reproduce the dry, crusted-over scholasticism that had enshrined the soul-decaying coldness of false Roman Catholic teaching that they themselves, you know, post-Tenebrous Lux, after darkness, light.

What was the darkness? Can you seriously say that the scholastic method of the medieval period was not part of the darkness? And why would it be part of the darkness? Because the scholastic method as seen in Thomas Aquinas is not based upon, it does not draw its life from the highest view and understanding of Sola Scriptura.

In fact, it's interesting. I forgot to do something. Sorry. Okay. Sorry. I had to turn the volume off on the phone there. The scholastic method in the medieval period would allow you to do debates and disputations and all sorts of fun stuff like that.

But what it was missing is what I have criticized over and over again, and I have not heard anybody on the other side even try, even try, to defend Thomas at this point. You know, I've heard people say, oh, you need to read Thomas's commentaries.

They can sometimes, once in a while, infrequently, but once in a while be great. It's like, okay, all right. So we've walked through Romans 4, and we've looked at this passage and that passage, and we've looked at stuff on tradition.

And when I wrote my article for the GPTS journal, I was very fair to Thomas, contextualized him, recognized where he was. And one of the points is he was at a time in history where there had been centuries of creeping diminishment of the centrality of the scriptures over against an ever-hardening, thickening superstructure of tradition.

And this is how he can look at the text of Romans 4 and come up with three different kinds of sin rather than seeing the beauty of justification by faith. It's because of that frozen structure of tradition that becomes the lens, and hence the ultimate authority.

So I was fair to him. I don't see a lot of people being overly honest with him on that level amongst the scholastics. Every system eventually, every... You look at the history of the church from, say, the 6th century up through the Reformation, it's going to repeat even after the Reformation.

There are periods of renewal. Many of the monastic movements were started by people who wanted to see spiritual renewal. They saw a fundamental degradation taking place, and they wanted to get rid of all that.

But what does history show you? As soon as that new renewal becomes popular, it starts attracting people. And eventually, especially after the originators die off, which they did faster back then than they do now, you have the development of scholasticism.

You end up... There's a reformed scholasticism. There's an Arminian scholasticism. There's a Methodist-Wesleyan scholasticism. Everybody develops that period of scholasticism over the next generations.

Part of that's necessary in the sense of codifying and answering questions that the original folks were too busy doing their Reformation thing to actually respond to. But much of it is simply due to human nature.

Human nature wants to tame Reformation movements and make it something you can put in a book. And so, over and over and over and over again through church history, you have had people seeking to do something good and right and proper, and then a few decades down the road, you end up with a dry husk of what they initially had envisioned.

Now, I would say that the one thing that the Reformed movement has that many of the other movements did not have and cannot have was a commitment to sola scriptura and tota scriptura. And hence, there always has to be...

And if a person wants to be at all, quote-unquote, confessional, they have to at least say what the confession says. There's always this emphasis upon this very high view of what scripture is, and hence, its primacy in the origination of our theology and our practice and our beliefs.

And that works as a counterbalance against the coldness and deadness of Reformed orthodoxy, because you can... Look at Europe. Look at the Northern European nations that had the brightest lights within them, had the brightest lights within them in Reformed theology and Reformed history.

Where are they today? Netherlands? Just think of the Dutch theologians, but where's the Dutch church today? All those Northern European nations had believing Lutherans, Dutch Reformed, they had the Bible everywhere.

Where are they today? You can have all the correct theology in the world if it is not spirit born and spirit applied. It will become dead orthodoxy, a stench in God's nostrils, a stench in God's nostrils.

And the problem is that the scholastic movements, unless they are constantly reined in by the need to be doing serious exegesis, founding their beliefs not in speculation and self-citation and, well, this scholar says this and that scholar says that, so we start building up...

What do you start doing? You start building up traditions. You start building up traditions. The tenebrous comes back as the looks becomes less and less bright. And every generation has to fight to keep what's central, central, because the tendency is to move away from that into a form of scholasticism that becomes cold and dry.

The Rise of Reformed Scholasticism and Its Critics

So I said in the last program, what has happened that we've gone from, you know, in the 80s, early 90s, this Reformed movement wasn't the first time it had happened in history, but we all recognized, hey, something's going on here.

God's using men like R .C. Sproul and this message of God's sovereign grace. You think of what happened with the Catholics and evangelicals together stuff and the strong reaction against that and the examination of what really matters and what bound us together.

Well, we were still a pretty small group. And yeah, we had a purple set of Stephen Sharnock sitting on their shelf, but they weren't going, well, you know, Sharnock seems to be using terminology that Thomas used here, and therefore we need to be resourcing Thomas.

And it's like, no, nobody was doing that. We wanted to get people to understand God's sovereignty and the primacy and power of grace. And reading Thomas Aquinas isn't going to get you there because for every good thing he said, he then vitiated that by his practice because of the day he lived in and the traditions he submitted himself to.

So we weren't going there back then. We needed to get the word out to more and more people. And so we reunited and we weren't, we weren't parsing every little word that someone would use. I'm not sure if you're actually viewing God as actus purus with that term.

Do you have your, are you really recognizing the inseparable operations that flow from Thomas's understanding of divineship? We weren't doing that. There were a bunch of people out there that were sitting there saying, you can't believe in divine election and be an evangelist.

That's so much more important. So we reunited. We could all get together. Hasn't taken long, just a couple of decades for the scholasticism to come back in. And the one thing scholasticism can never do and will never do is unite.