New Covenant Theology

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00:18
Welcome back to Conversations with a Calvinist.
00:20
My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist.
00:24
We have a wonderful show for you today, and I'm very excited to welcome my guest.
00:28
His name is Doug Gooden.
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He is the president of Cross to Crown Ministries and the New Covenant School of Theology.
00:37
He is a husband and a father to three children, and I'm grateful to have him on the show today.
00:42
Doug, welcome to Conversations with a Calvinist.
00:45
Thanks, brother.
00:45
It's good to be here.
00:47
Yes, sir, and I wanted to mention how we met.
00:50
A few years ago, I did a debate on the subject of the Sabbath, and in my preparation for the debate, I found myself being in the camp of what would typically be referred to as New Covenant Theology, and so as I was searching out New Covenant Theology, and I was coming across names like John Reisinger and Fred Zaspel and things like that, I came across your name, and I came across your school, and I reached out to you, and you were so gracious that you said, give me a call, and you said, I'm going to go on a trip with my family.
01:23
I'm going to have hours in the car, and we spoke for over an hour with your family in the background, poor children having to listen to us talk about Sabbatarian Theology over your car's speakerphone.
01:37
Well, they're used to it, and that was a good way to pass hours in the car.
01:40
Okay, and that was a wonderful conversation.
01:43
It was very helpful, and again, it sort of helped me to understand that I'm not the only guy in the world who's seeing things the way that I am, and I knew that when it came to the subject of the Sabbath, I was on the outside of the typical circles that I run in because I run in Reformed Baptist circles, and so most of the gentlemen or pastors that I deal with are Sabbatarian, and so when they hear that I'm not and my position differs from theirs, I sometimes feel a disconnect there, and it turns out that there's a bigger subject here than just the Sabbath.
02:20
It really is, and that's what I want to jump into today.
02:24
I want to jump into the subject of what is New Covenant Theology.
02:29
I'm going to let you answer this question, but let me preface it by saying this.
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When we say New Covenant Theology, we are distinguishing that from other frameworks of theology which deal with the continuity and discontinuity between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, and typically the two camps are known as Classic Covenant Theology, which would be found in something like Presbyterianism, and Dispensational Theology, which was made popular in the last 200 years, of course, is not an ancient view, at least not in my perspective, and so we have these two sort of competing views, but they're not the only kids on the block.
03:08
They're just the only two that people tend to listen and hear from, so New Covenant Theology is distinguishable from both.
03:15
Can you help us to understand what that means? I can try, yeah, and I get this question all the time, and I find that one of the charges they like to bring against us, or at least, maybe that's too strong, but one of the things that they like to say to us is, you're new, you're new, this is a new thing.
03:33
Well, that's exactly what the Roman Catholic faith charged the Reformers with when they started out, so our concern has to be what does the Scripture say, not labels that history uses.
03:46
So to begin the definition, I want to just pull my friend Blake White's book, What Is New Covenant Theology? An Introduction, and for anybody who's looking to really understand this, I would say this is the place to start.
03:59
It's a thin book, as you can see, it's not very thick, but he lays out basically seven broad tenets that we hold to in New Covenant Theology, and then let me just go through just the table of contents to lay those out, and then I'll share kind of some alternative descriptions, but basically the first point is there's one plan of God centered in Christ.
04:21
So when we read the Scripture, though we don't go with the Presbyterians and say there's one covenant of grace unfolded in the way they do, nor do we go with dispensationalists to say that basically it's complete discontinuity between the old and the new, we say no, there is one theme, there is one plan in the Scripture, and it centers on Christ, not covenant, not any of these other things, but it centers on Christ.
04:46
So that's the heart of it.
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Number two is the Old Testament should be interpreted in light of the New Testament.
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We do not believe, with John MacArthur, who says this, that the Old Testament stands on its own, we would say that is not true.
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You can't fully understand the meaning of the Old Testament texts without Christ and the New Testament because it all speaks of him.
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It is the divinely inspired interpretive grid for the Old Testament is Christ and the New Testament.
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So we give priority of interpretation to the New Testament.
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That is not a rejection of the inspiration of the Old Testament in any way, but what does the Old Testament mean? Well, it means what Jesus tells us it means because it all pointed to him.
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And let me just stop you just for a second, because I want to give a hearty amen to that.
05:36
I have a very dear friend who has actually been to my church and taught a few times, but he is a graduate of the Master's Seminary, and he holds a very, very strong view of what you just said, that the Old Testament stands on its own, to the point that anytime I would reference Christ in the Old Testament, even in passages such as that are so clear, such as Isaiah 53 or something like that, he would say, no, you're reading into that.
06:04
You're reading it.
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And I said, of course, I'm reading into it.
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I'm reading into it what the New Testament tells me to read into it.
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So I just had to comment on that.
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That's absolutely true.
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So is it your understanding that that is what Master's Seminary is teaching? That I can't say that.
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All I can say is that's he and he and he graduated many years ago.
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So I'm not sure what they're doing now, but he came out of that.
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He was actually a missionary.
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And so he has been somewhat disconnected from the seminary for a while because of where he is as a missionary.
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So I really can't speak to that.
06:36
I just know that that was his position.
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And he would send me papers, because he would want to argue with me, and he would send me papers that were from professors that he had that were arguing for different things.
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And then when MacArthur wrote his book on Isaiah 53, which was saying it was about Christ, I sort of ribbed him a little.
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I said, hey, look, here's this.
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Your main man agrees with me.
07:01
Well, that's my impression of MacArthur.
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I've read and listened to him a lot over the years, and he's dispensational in the sense that he holds to a premill view, and he does see a future something for Israel, but he doesn't go where the traditional dispensationalist goes in that.
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So that surprises me that Master's Seminary would be teaching that, although I know there's some pretty hardcore dispensationalists there.
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I tell people all the time, if you and a Jew come to the same conclusion about a text in the Old Testament, you don't understand it as a Christian.
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We must not come to the same understanding of an Old Testament text as a Jew does, because that is completely bypassing and ignoring the Christ-centered hermeneutic that Jesus himself taught.
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Everything's been transformed.
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Everything in the Old Testament has now been transformed with the substance here, the shadow.
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It was all there.
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The shadow was there.
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But now, I just used this analogy this morning.
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I'm doing a series on our live show on the Sabbath, and when Paul calls the Sabbath a shadow, he said it's like there's a light here shining down on this form.
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And in the Old Testament, they could look and see the outline.
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They could see the shadow, and they gained some understanding of what the thing that was reflecting that shadow was.
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They understood something, and what they understood was real.
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But now, the light is surrounding it, and we can see it in all of its fullness.
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And the shadow, we're not supposed to look at the shadow anymore.
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We're supposed to look at the substance, which is Christ.
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And now, we go back and look, if you will, at the shadow.
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We see, oh, that thing that we weren't quite sure was, that's the nose.
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It's a very crass illustration, right? But it's the idea that now we have the full interpretive grid through which to understand what the Old Testament was pointing toward, and it's Christ.
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And to read the Old Testament and not see it all about Jesus is to just ignore what Jesus himself taught.
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Moses wrote about me, he said.
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Remember, he had harsh words for those disciples on the road to Emmaus.
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Oh, slow of heart to believe all of the Old Testament taught when it taught about me, and I had to die, Isaiah 53.
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I had to rise again before I could reign and rule.
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It's all there, Jesus said.
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So that's the second tenet.
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The third tenet of New Covenant theology is that the Old Covenant was temporary by design.
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And this starts heading into those waters that get a little murky with us and our Reformed Baptist brothers, because they would agree that the Old Covenant was temporary, but where they won't come with us is that the heart of that Old Covenant, the Decalogue, was also necessarily temporary because it was the very heart of that covenant.
09:56
And I'm sure we can come back and talk about that, but we would look at everything from Exodus through Malachi, which is largely the Old Covenant scriptures, the instructions, the form of that Old Covenant.
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It was temporary, and it had a place, it had a purpose, and it points to Christ, but we're not under that covenant any longer.
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Number four, closely related, is that the law is a unit.
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This threefold division that our Reformed brothers love to divide the law into the moral, civil, ceremonial, and I don't know if you want me to but they, in short order, they take the sacrificial laws and the shellfish and some of those things that you and I were talking about offline, they would put that all in one category and say, yes, those laws were all fulfilled in Christ, we're not supposed to sacrifice lambs anymore because we have the ultimate lamb, who is Jesus.
10:51
And then the...
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Yeah, the ceremonies themselves are fulfilled in Christ.
10:55
Yeah, correct.
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Right, which obviously is true.
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It's what Jesus said when John the Baptist introduced Jesus as the Lamb of God.
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I always say to people, why didn't anybody start laughing? He just called this guy a lamb.
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Yeah.
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What if he had said the duck-billed platypus of God? Everybody would have started chuckling.
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What in the world? But they all knew, they had a context.
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Oh, this is the one who's going to be the sacrifice on our behalf because they had seen millions of lambs sacrificed over their lifetime as a substitute for them.
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And now they could put that together.
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Oh, he's the ultimate lamb.
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He's the fulfillment of that.
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So the reformed guys would put some of the laws in that category and say, yes, they're fulfilled in Christ.
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Then they would take others that were, in their mind, distinct for the nation of Israel as a nation and say, those are civil laws.
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And since the church is not a nation any longer, we are from all nations, then we don't have civil laws for the church.
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So that leaves what they call the moral law, which they reduced to the 10 commandments and say, but those are the heart of God's standard of righteousness for all men everywhere for all time.
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And so they pull those out of the whole old Testament law and say, these are binding universally.
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And new covenant theology says the scripture teaches that nowhere.
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There is no trifle division.
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You can't pick and choose some laws.
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Uh, the laws to be taken as a unit and whatever the new Testament says about the law, it means all of the commandments of the old covenant.
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So again, we can come back and talk about any of these.
12:35
I just kind of want to run through the differences.
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Uh, number five is that Christians are not under the law of Moses, but under the law of Christ, which you can see just naturally flows from what I just said.
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Uh, we don't look to the old Testament for our marching orders.
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We certainly see the old Testament as inspired.
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And Paul even says the old Testament is profitable for training in righteousness, but we have to ask the question in what way, what are our marching orders? It's the commands of Christ and the new Testament is full of them.
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You know, again, I'm sure I'm anticipating some of where we'll go.
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Uh, we get charged with antinomianism in new theology.
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Like we think it's a free for all.
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Are you kidding me? The new Testament is full of the commands of Christ that are not suggestions.
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They're not recommendations.
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They're not life, uh, you know, life hacks.
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They are, I'm the King and Lord of the universe.
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And I'm commanding you obey this.
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That's right.
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We have to obey them, but we don't go back to Moses to find those laws.
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To call us antinomian.
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And for those who don't know what that means, it means opposed to the law or against the law, uh, to, to be lawless in another way.
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It's so unfair.
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And there's a little book, uh, that I found when I was doing my Sabbath debate called is John Riesinger an antinomian? That was the whole book was just trying to define whether or not Riesinger, who is, who's well, well known for at least, uh, for those of us who are in new theology would, would, uh, would know him.
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And to say he was antinomian is even the book itself says that such an unfair, uh, description.
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Yeah.
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Well, most reformed guys, when they define antinomianism included in that definition is anybody who rejects the 10 commandments.
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That's right.
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Antinomian by definition.
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And I've told people, well, if that's your definition, then yeah, I'm antinomian.
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But if you mean, am I saying there are no commandments for Christians? Of course there are again, that Jesus is King and he tells his subjects, this is what I want from you.
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When, when King Jesus says to me, love your wife, like I love the church, that's a command.
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And I am to pursue that obedience because he's my King.
14:49
Yep.
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Uh, number six is all members of the covenant community are fully forgiven and have the Holy spirit.
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Now I would quibble with my friend Blake here on the word community, because that's actually a, uh, a reformed word where they talk about everyone in the old covenant community.
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And, and they do this to, to bring infant baptism over into the new covenant.
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And, and that may be beyond the scope of this conversation, but I would just simply say, um, all members of the new covenant are forgiven and have the Holy spirit, because depending on how you look at community, we certainly all have people in our churches, the kind of people that Jesus called tears that are in the community.
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But if they're not true believers, then they aren't forgiven and they don't have the spirit, but everyone who is truly in the new covenant, uh, is forgiven of their sin and has the Holy spirit in distinction from in the old covenant.
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Every Jew who was circumcised was in the covenant, but most of them died in unforgiveness because they didn't have faith.
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The writer of Hebrew says that they, they, God was sworn his wrath.
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They will not enter his rest.
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He drove them into the wilderness and killed that whole generation because they didn't have faith.
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They weren't forgiven, but they were in the covenant because they were Jews.
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And that's not true.
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The new covenant, we, you get into the covenant by faith.
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And if you're, if you have faith, then you are forgiven and you have the Holy spirit.
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Uh, and then finally, uh, that the church is the eschatological Israel, that everything that Israel pictured and portrayed again, Israel was a shadow as well.
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And now that the light is shining on the substance, that's Christ and all who are in Christ.
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We are the, the ultimate fulfillment of everything, uh, that was promised to Israel.
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And that was a pictured in Israel and all of that.
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So as I discuss this with people, um, in contradistinction to those other groups, covenant and dispensational, uh, I think you hit it well earlier.
16:53
It really comes down to an understanding of the major theme of scripture and how do we relate the old Testament and the new Testament? It's so much a, a discussion of where there's continuity and where there's discontinuity and, and everybody, you know, comes with that a little differently, but the three systems you're describing are really three different ways of answering that question.
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And so the way that I like to illustrate it is, and this is a little simplistic, so I hope my covenant and dispensational brothers will forgive me, but it just an analogy covenant theology.
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They love the illustration of acorn to Oak tree.
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They use it all the time that the covenant of grace, as they call it, uh, began in the garden of Eden as an acorn that, uh, when, when God promised the seat of the woman would crush the head of the serpent in Genesis three, that that is the, uh, did I say Galatians a minute ago, uh, Genesis three, um, uh, that, uh, that that is the first statement of this covenant of grace that is going to be unpacked through the entire scripture and that all of the other covenants like Noahic and Davidic and Abrahamic, all of them, including the Mosaic covenant, that they are not really distinct covenants as much as they are different administrations and outworkings of this one covenant of grace, which reaches full flower.
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It becomes the Oak tree in the new covenant, but as it's a very, uh, progressive, uh, unified covenant, this covenant of grace, and as John Riesinger says, they flatten out the relationship between the old and the new.
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So the people of God, there's one people of God in this view.
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And so the Israel and the church are the same, and there are a few external differences, but essentially and fundamentally, they're the same.
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The covenant's the same.
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The law is the same.
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Again, that's, that's the 10 commandments, uh, carries over from the old into the new because they see it as this one continuous flow, uh, acorn to Oak tree, uh, baptism take is the new covenant administration of which circumcision was the old covenant sign.
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And so they, they gave circumcision to babies in the old covenant.
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Therefore we should baptize babies in the new covenant, because again, it's just part of this unfolding one covenant of grace idea.
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Uh, and it's a lot of, a lot of continuity, the real stress and continuity, uh, dispensationalists in my view are more like looking at the old and the new as apples and oranges.
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Uh, there's just almost no, no relationship at all.
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Now, now that's old school dispensationalism.
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I want to be fair to progressive dispensationalists.
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They see much more continuity than the original folks did, uh, but they still see a pretty sharp distinction between the old covenant and new covenant, you know, Israel and the church.
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They're not the same.
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They're they're distinct.
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Uh, the law that's old covenant.
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We have a new covenant law, all those things.
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Some, some of which, uh, we would agree with the illustration that I like to use for new covenant theology is caterpillar to butterfly.
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Uh, and the idea is when you look at a caterpillar and you look at the butterfly, what you see is great discontinuity.
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You know, you would never look at the butterfly and think, Oh, I bet that used to be a caterpillar, but the DNA, the heart of it, what, what the caterpillar was always designed to be was to have this metamorphosis to be transformed into this, this thing that can fly.
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And so there's, there is a, a, a connection, but when you look at the caterpillar, you see the promise that someday that thing is going to be transformed into something that can fly.
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And then the change happens and it does become this, what appears to be a new creature, but it's not entirely new.
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So as we look back at the old Testament now and everything in the old Testament, we see there, it was all foreshadowing, picturing, pointing to the metamorphosis to fly in the new covenant.
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If you can go with me in the analogy.
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So that in a nutshell is how I would distinguish the groups.
21:02
Great.
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Wonderful.
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Now, were you always, uh, a new covenant person? Were you brought up in this or did you learn this in seminary or is this, is this a conclusion you came to like me, like in seminary, I went to a dispensational seminary.
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I went to Jacksonville Baptist theological seminary, which, which I was told in eschatology class, if you don't believe in the rapture, I hope you get left behind.
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So you'll see that we're right.
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It was that.
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And I know it was said in jest, but it was very, they held to one very specific view eschatology and it was the dispensational premillennial view.
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So on your side, how did you come to this? Um, yeah, so I'm a hodgepodge.
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Um, I grew up in the non-instrumental church of Christ.
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My dad was an elder and, uh, and I don't know how much you know about the church of Christ.
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Well, our church, our church used to be part of the disciples of Christ movement, which is the liberal wing of the restoration movement.
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So I'm a little bit more familiar than most with the, uh, with the, uh, restoration movement, the Barton stone Campbell.
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Uh, yeah, yeah.
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All those guys.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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So you heretics had, uh, had, uh, music, right? Yeah.
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You guys wouldn't play any instruments and we would play anything.
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You could roll in and plug up.
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That's right.
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And the old church of Christ joke is when the last trumpet sounds, no church of Christ, people will respond because certainly God never used it.
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Yeah.
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So I grew up in that, but my dad was not a very good church of Christ elder because though we didn't have instruments in the church, uh, he did not see it as a tool of the devil.
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And I was a music major, ironically, no problem there.
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And my, my family was all very musical.
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So, uh, but we just didn't have instruments in the church, which, okay, that's fine.
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As far as a preference goes, if that's what you choose, then that's all fine.
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But believe me, we had some hardcore folks that, uh, uh, thought I probably was close to jumping off the ship, uh, of Christianity because I played the guitar and stuff.
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Um, so I grew up in that.
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And the one thing my dad taught me all my whole life is, um, never, ever take the word of man for anything.
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What does the word of God say? Amen.
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Um, and that was, that was great.
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I appreciate that.
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Now he was not a, uh, he, he wasn't, he was a very simple man.
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Uh, he, I came along late in life.
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My dad was a world war two vet.
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He was born in 1922.
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Um, in fact, that, uh, that weekend that I was driving home when I, uh, helped you prepare for your Sabbath debate, we were driving home from his funeral.
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And, uh, so in addition to passing the time, it was also good for me to get my mind off of something else.
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Cause we just had the heaviness of the funeral.
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And I love my dad.
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He was a good man.
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Um, and, uh, but he was not, he was never, he was never an educated man.
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He was very simple, uh, grew up in the hills of Missouri.
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Uh, you know, I've got hillbilly in my, uh, my background kind of thing.
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And, uh, so he was a diligent student of the word, but not educated.
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So he didn't understand.
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He didn't, he never knew terms.
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He didn't learn Calvinism, Arminianism.
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He didn't learn any of those things.
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He just, what does the Bible say now? He did come to, uh, what I would say was some pretty significant errors in his view of interpreting the scripture, uh, very strongly Arminian, even though he didn't know what that term means.
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Um, and, and Arminian to the degree of, of semi Pelagian, if not worse in some ways.
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Now I believe, cause he, as I grew in my understanding, I challenged him pretty hard on some things because I could begin to be concerned for his soul.
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Not because you have to be a Calvinist.
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I know, I know I'm talking to a Calvinist here.
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Uh, and I am as well, depending on how you define Calvinism.
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My concern was not to convert him to a Calvinist, but to make sure that he believed the gospel, because as you know, very well, then the churches of Christ, disciples of Christ, Christian churches can be baptismal regenerationists.
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They can be very legalistic.
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And I began to realize, oh, you know, it's my dad trusting in his good works to get, you know, to be saved.
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And so we had some great conversations and I was convinced, uh, long before he died that no, he believed the true gospel.
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He's just, wasn't a theologically astute man.
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So anyway, so I grew up in that and in college for about five minutes, uh, I was a dispensationalist.
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I had some friends that were kind of caught up in dispensationalism.
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And at first it sounded great and exciting.
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You know, they're reading the paper and they're reading, uh, the scripture and putting these prophecies together.
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And I'm thinking, oh, the end is upon us.
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The rapture is happening any day.
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This makes sense.
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I never heard this before, but it didn't take too long for me to realize, ah, this just doesn't make sense.
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And I graduated high school in 1988.
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Well, that was when how Lindsay had predicted the end of the world, right? Yeah.
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48 reasons, 88 reasons the world went into 1988.
25:47
Yeah, exactly.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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So I'm ready for it.
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Well, it didn't happen.
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And then he wrote his, his reprisal the next like, oh, I was off by a year because of this.
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Like, you know, it didn't have, but then either.
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So it didn't take me too long to realize I can't go here.
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This is just not where I'm at.
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Well, about that time, I really, uh, became acquainted with guys like R.C.
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Sproul and some of the best of the best of reformed thinkers and teachers, and I'm a very logically consistent minded guy.
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So that attracted me big time.
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So I was all over it.
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And I, uh, when the Lord called me to ministry, I immediately enrolled in covenant theological seminary in St.
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Louis, my hometown.
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And, uh, my first class I signed up for was covenant theology.
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I told my wife, I said, you know, we got to have babies so we can baptize I am sure we're Presbyterian.
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We just need to be told why we're Presbyterian.
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But I was, I was fully convinced because I loved what I was hearing from these folks.
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And, uh, and so about halfway through that, that course on covenant theology, they kept talking about this covenant of grace, which it all made perfect rational sense to me like this.
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Yes, I, this, this makes sense.
26:50
And like I said, I'm going to baptize my babies when we have them, but halfway through the semester, I raised my hand, said, prof, where this covenant of grace, you keep talking about, where is it in the Bible? And I was not asking as a skeptic, I was already convinced I just somehow I'd missed it.
27:05
And, uh, I was the most willing convert they'd ever had.
27:08
And there was this long pause to my question.
27:10
And he said, well, my heart sunk like what this thing that drives everything you've been talking about, you, you don't have a verse for me.
27:19
It's you know, my dad's words ringing in my head.
27:21
Don't ever take the word of man.
27:22
What does the word of God say? And so I went home that day and told my wife, well, we can't be Presbyterians can't be baptized.
27:28
The scripture.
27:31
Um, so as I began to work backward from that, I thought, okay, everything they've been telling me so far in seminary hinges on this covenant of grace.
27:41
If that's not a biblical truth, then what else are they teaching that is not there? And that's when I began to question what they were saying about the trifold, uh, tripartite division of the law and all of that.
27:53
So I'm wrestling through all that and rejecting much of it, but I liked a lot of it too.
27:58
And the reform theology, uh, in other ways became very, uh, very, uh, meaningful to me.
28:03
I learned Greek at that time and reading Romans in the Greek is what made me a very unwilling convert to God's sovereign election.
28:13
Cause again, I'd been taught the opposite all my life, but I'm reading this in the original.
28:16
And I thought, uh, there is no way now that I see it.
28:20
And I don't have my English background.
28:24
I don't have what I was taught.
28:25
This means in English, but I'm having to wrestle with what the Greek says.
28:28
And this says I was predestined before the foundation of the world.
28:32
Oh, and I didn't like it at all, but I had to submit to the word there.
28:36
And, you know, eventually I began to see the glory of it and the beauty of it, but at first I didn't like it.
28:41
So anyway, fast forward, I'm, I'm called to a church in Colorado to, to be on staff and the pastoral staff there.
28:47
And, uh, I had rejected most of, uh, traditional reformed covenant theology at that point in terms of the ecclesiology and the law and that kind of stuff.
29:00
And then the senior pastor of that church, they had had John Riesinger out for a conference a couple of years prior to my getting there.
29:07
And he handed me a couple of recent years books.
29:09
And I just read it said, this is what my dad believed.
29:11
This is what this is.
29:12
This is where I'm at.
29:13
And so there was just like, I'm home and let's, let's go.
29:17
Nice.
29:17
Nice.
29:18
Okay.
29:18
So, so Riesinger was helpful to you as well then.
29:21
Very much.
29:22
Very much.
29:22
Good deal.
29:24
Recently, I read a book by a friend of mine.
29:28
Well, he was a contributor, uh, Richard Lucas.
29:30
Are you familiar with him? Oh, somewhat.
29:33
Yeah.
29:33
Yeah.
29:33
A great guy.
29:34
He's here in town.
29:35
He and I were able to, we spoke together at a, there's this, uh, a mutual friend of ours has a skeptics night at his church where skeptics can come answer questions.
29:44
And, uh, I'm one of the ones that he allows to come and answer questions.
29:49
And Richard was there too.
29:50
And we had a wonderful conversation and he was very gracious and gave me a copy of the book, progressive covenantalism, because when I started telling him that I, I found myself more in the new covenant camp, he said, well, I want you to read this book.
30:03
Um, and he said, because he feels like in his opinion, and I really want to hear your thoughts on this.
30:09
And I hope he, I hope he listens to this because I do respect him a lot.
30:13
And like I said, we're friends.
30:14
And, uh, so I hope he'll take a chance to listen to this, to this podcast, but, uh, he said he felt like new covenant theology was really not viable long-term and that progressive covenantalism was going to, or has already sort of taken its place.
30:30
Uh, and, and his, his argument was that the new covenant theology, and I hope I'm, I hope I'm saying this correctly.
30:36
So, so Richard, if you I'm not being fair, you can, uh, you can tell me later, but I, the way that he said was it, there wasn't enough foundational and scholarly material about NCT to drive it as a system.
30:51
And, and, and you, you've got Wellam and Gentry with their kingdom through covenant, which does mention at least in the first edition that they saw themselves as a stream of new covenant theology, but now they've sort of, they've, they've sort of abandoned that, uh, that term and they're using the term progressive covenantalism.
31:10
So, so do you see any distinctions between the two and if so, are they, are they meaningful? Yeah, that's a, that's a great question.
31:19
And those of us, uh, who talk about these things a lot, we, uh, we have to, we're, we're entertaining that question.
31:27
I'm, I was on a panel last year that we were trying to get Dr.
31:30
Wellam and Dr.
31:31
Gentry to join us.
31:32
And we were very close actually is more than that.
31:34
And COVID kind of messed that up, but we were hoping to have this, this round table discussion about these things to answer that very question.
31:42
Um, because it does matter.
31:44
Yeah.
31:44
You know, I tell guys, we are such a small pond in the theological world that if PC and NCT can stay together, we have much greater potential to have an impact in the broader church than if we split up because we take one little puddle in the whole stream of a theology.
32:06
And now we divide into two little drops, which is, it's, it's hard to see how that's going to have an impact.
32:10
Um, one of the questions that has to be answered to answer your question is, is there really a, uh, a devastating difference between PC and NCT? And I personally don't think that there is, but some of those guys do.
32:28
And as I've probed around and tried to figure out why, why does Dr.
32:32
Willem feel the need to, uh, to go down a different path in terms of label and that kind of thing.
32:38
Uh, you know, he was personally discipled by John Riesinger.
32:40
I mean, they were close friends and he was a close disciple and you're right.
32:44
He, he used the label NCT in that first edition and he still uses it in public pretty regularly.
32:51
I was talking to someone this morning who, uh, who knows Dr.
32:54
Willem well, and he said, yeah, just, he uses NCT almost more than he uses the term peace, progressive covenantalism when he's out talking.
33:02
So, uh, here's where it could, in my opinion, could get to a place where we must divide.
33:08
Uh, you know, they, Willem and Gentry make a big deal that the, the backbone of scripture is covenant.
33:17
Uh, I disagree.
33:19
Uh, the backbone of scripture is Christ and, and yes, covenant is important, but they do sound a little bit like covenant theologians in that they, they start from this premise of covenant is the backbone of scripture.
33:35
And then they see a progression of God's revelation through the covenants.
33:41
Now in, in one sense, I do too, because the Bible does, there's clearly a distinct, uh, a, uh, emphasis in Galatians three, for instance, that Christ is the fulfillment of the promises to Abraham.
33:53
He spells that out explicitly.
33:55
Uh, we know that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Davidic covenant and the promises that David's going to reign.
34:01
That's Jesus.
34:02
He's he is David.
34:04
Um, it gets a little harder for me when you look at the Noahic covenant.
34:08
I see how the Noahic covenant preserved the seed.
34:12
If God had destroyed every human being, then there's no way to fulfill his plan for the universe, for the world.
34:18
So he, he, he couldn't destroy the whole world.
34:21
So in that sense, the covenant with Noah prepares for Christ, but the new Testament doesn't draw further implications than that.
34:30
Uh, and then, and then the mosaic covenant, we are told very clearly it was temporary.
34:35
It was, it was a, it was a guardian, a pedagogue to keep Israel in check, to reveal the need of a savior and all that.
34:44
So there's relationship.
34:45
Yes.
34:46
But it's typological more so than progressive in the way that I believe Wellman Gentry speak of it.
34:52
Now, so far what I've read, I can get along with what they're saying, because I don't think if Steve and I were talking right now, uh, I don't think he would disagree with most of what I'm saying.
35:05
I think it would be a little bit, maybe different matter of emphasis, which I can get along with that.
35:10
And I would think he could too.
35:11
Um, so I don't know that that has to divide us.
35:14
Another thing that could divide us is the PC folks tend to want to say that the law, the old covenant by edits in its nature was gracious.
35:32
And that I can't get on board with.
35:35
I believe the purpose for which God gave the old covenant was a gracious purpose.
35:40
It was to point to the full atonement that would be, you know, gotten by Christ, but the terms of the covenant, when you read Deuteronomy 28, do that.
35:50
And you're just a casual reading sometime and read the curses there.
35:53
It'll, it'll make the hair of the back of your neck.
35:55
Stand up.
35:56
God said to Israel, if you break my law, just as I delighted to make you thrive, I will delight to make you perish.
36:06
You disobey I will unashamedly kill you.
36:11
I will destroy you.
36:12
You'll have all the plagues of Egypt brought back upon you and you'll have boils and your indiscreet women will eat their young and be considered selfish because they won't share their young with other starving women.
36:24
I mean, these are, these are the terms of the covenant with Israel.
36:28
How in the world can you say that's gracious? Paul calls it a ministry of condemnation, a ministry of death.
36:35
That's not gracious.
36:36
Now, again, the ultimate purpose was gracious, but the, the, the, the nature of the covenant itself was not.
36:42
So if they're going to keep going down that path and argue for a gracious nature of the covenant, then at some point we might have to part ways.
36:51
And the third big, big potential distinction, they make a big deal of a garden covenant, a covenant with Adam in the garden.
36:59
Now they haven't defined it very well.
37:02
They haven't articulated what the stipulations are or were.
37:06
Uh, they're not like the covenant theologians in spelling out a covenant of works and all of that.
37:11
They just insist there was a covenant because of their backbone idea that the whole thing has to be covenant driven.
37:16
And they don't think that Romans five, where Adam is the representative of all mankind, they don't think that can be the case without a covenant with Adam.
37:30
And I would argue, no, you don't have to have a covenant.
37:34
He is a federal representative head, whether or not there's an actual covenant there.
37:38
So those are some areas that we would have some differences, but I'm not sure any of them at this point requires separation.
37:46
Yeah, it's interesting.
37:47
You mentioned the covenant, the garden covenants.
37:49
Uh, I think that they refer to it as the creation covenant.
37:53
And, uh, I believe that there is some writing coming out about that from what I have heard that there's going to be more of a, uh, an explicit explanation of what exactly that is, because I agree with you at this point.
38:09
I'm a little confused as well.
38:10
I feel like I have a good grasp around what covenant theology means by covenant of works.
38:15
Adam has a probationary period whereby he, as long as he keeps himself from the tree of knowledge for a certain period of time can essentially earn his way to the tree of life.
38:24
I think that's the basic understanding of the, of the covenant of works as it is expressed in covenant theology.
38:30
You agree with that on a basis? Yeah.
38:33
So how they would distinguish the creation covenant from the covenant works is, is a little confusing to me.
38:40
And when I teach the covenants of scripture, uh, because I, right now I'm teaching old Testament in our Academy.
38:47
And I always start with the Noahic covenant is the first named covenant.
38:50
And then I go back and I say, you know, there's a debate whether or not there was a covenant without them and how that covenant works itself out.
38:57
But the first named covenant of course, is the between God and man is the, is the Noahic covenant.
39:02
Yeah.
39:03
I do the same thing.
39:04
And you know, Hosea six, seven, I say it is possible.
39:07
It is certainly possible that, that Hosea there is referring to a covenant with Adam.
39:13
The word itself is there.
39:15
Adam could be the man.
39:17
Adam could be mankind could be the region nearby called Adam.
39:21
Any of those are possible.
39:22
But what we don't know then is what are the terms of that covenant? What are the ramifications of that covenant? Why did God do it? We don't know any of that.
39:30
And so, okay, fine.
39:31
You want to believe there's a covenant there.
39:33
I won't debate that with you because there's nothing to debate.
39:37
We can't, we can't go to text and wrestle with it, but be very careful about the implications you draw from it.
39:43
Um, one of the things I would say, one other thing I would say is the, uh, the PC guys also want to distance themselves from some in the NCT camp who truly are antinomian.
39:55
Uh, there has been this, uh, the strand that, uh, I think for a while they called themselves the fourth stream or I know something, something they had Facebook pages and that kind of thing.
40:04
And they were very much, I got an email from one of them years ago.
40:07
I did a series called glory, the new covenant, which is basically a, a deeper dive into new covenant theology than Blake's book.
40:13
It's a video series.
40:15
If anybody wants to check it out, it's it's free on our YouTube page or our cross to crown.org.
40:19
And, um, as I was walking through that, I was talking about the law of Christ and some things I said earlier, you know, we, these are not suggestions.
40:26
We, we need to obey the law of Christ.
40:28
And I got an email from one of these guys saying, it sounds like you're saying that we are actually under obligation to obey commands.
40:34
Uh, no Christ is the, the law.
40:39
And I wrote back and said, what do you mean? Christ is the law.
40:41
He's a person law is not a person, but I re I began to realize, okay, there are some folks using this label, new covenant theology who truly are saying any talk of law or commandments is, is legalism.
40:55
And so I think these PC guys want to distance themselves.
40:58
Well, I do too.
41:00
Yeah.
41:00
I'm not antinomian and I don't want to be part of that group, but again, I was, I would appeal to my PC brothers.
41:07
Let's see if we can get together and find common terms, because again, we're going to have much bigger impact.
41:11
I think if we stay together, uh, than if we divide, um, but who knows? Well, I hope, I hope that that is, is received.
41:20
Well, I, like I said, I, I, I find myself, uh, very encouraged by you and what you're saying.
41:26
And I do find myself in agreement with a lot of it.
41:29
And as I said, our elders, we've discussed through so many of these things and, um, and we sort of vacillate in the terms we use between new covenant theology and progressive covenant.
41:39
And, and, and part of the reason is, is just because when we're discussing a particular aspect, we might say that, well, this person, Wellam, Gentry, whoever, and, and address them and say, and they, they would represent the progressive covenant position.
41:52
But in a sense, it's sort of, uh, it's almost the same.
41:58
So the other thing I wanted to ask you about, and, uh, I, I certainly don't want to take too much of your time today.
42:04
I know that both of us are, are pastors and it is Wednesday.
42:07
So I don't know if you have a midweek service, but I have a service later, later tonight.
42:12
And, um, so I, I'm going to, I'm going to ask you these questions and, and maybe it might be that we could touch a little on it.
42:19
And if you wanted to come back in the future and go a little deeper, we could, but here, here's, here's a concern on a little different area.
42:27
I have a lot of friends that are second London confession, reform Baptist that would hold 1689.
42:33
I mean, I literally have a friend who has 1689 tattooed on his, on his four fingers, 1689.
42:40
Uh, so I've got some really serious guys and a lot of them have a very, very uncharitable opinion of new covenant theology.
42:49
In fact, the first time I, I mentioned being more new covenant in a, in a meeting, one of the guys said, Oh, well, you're just really wrong.
42:56
Aren't you? I mean, that was his response.
42:58
It wasn't even a, uh, it wasn't, uh, Oh, that's it was, it was, Oh, well, you're just really wrong.
43:04
And, uh, recently that was, that was several years ago and I have thick skin, so it didn't bother me too much, but I, I was recently with a group of pastors who said one of them, who was a lay elder in his church, he, I had mentioned new covenant theology had mentioned specifically, uh, I think we were talking about Wellman Gentry's book or something.
43:28
And he said, he said, well, the only reason anyone keeps that position is because I don't want to keep the Sabbath.
43:35
That, that was his statement.
43:38
And, and, and I, I tell you, it raised the, it raised my, the, the, my cackles a little, because I, I, I really wanted to just, uh, fire off a, a, an uncharitable response.
43:49
But I felt like as, as the word tells us, we don't return evil for evil.
43:53
And I felt like that was an uncharitable way to describe the new covenant position.
43:59
So if, if you were going to, if you were going to respond to that sweeping and oversimplified accusation in a gracious and godly way, uh, what would you say to someone who said, well, the only reason you, the only reason you believe this is you don't want to keep the Sabbath.
44:16
Well, my initial response would be very much like yours.
44:20
I'm sure.
44:21
Uh, my first thought was, uh, wow, you, you have the gift of mind reading, do you, you can, uh, you can read everybody's mind and you know what our motives are.
44:28
Um, well, I would say similarly to how we began, uh, my heart's desire is to know the word of God and do a hold to the word of God, uh, and, and not the writings of men, not the teachings of men.
44:43
Uh, I'm, I'm not one of these folks that says we can't learn anything from the past, uh, or that I'm against books.
44:50
I've written some books.
44:50
We, we, we certainly have learned.
44:52
I've learned a ton from lots and lots of people.
44:55
Um, but you know, one of the, one of the fascinating things about reformed theology is the, one of the hallmarks of reformation was solo scriptura.
45:07
And yet I can't tell you how many debates I've had with, uh, reformed guys who quote the confessions and get tattoos on their fingers on the confession.
45:18
But when I say, well, where's the scripture teach this, they have nowhere to go other than, uh, inferences drawn from their system of theology.
45:28
So I would say to our brother there, uh, well, that's not my motive.
45:33
Uh, if I'm convinced the Lord wants me to keep the Sabbath, I will absolutely keep the Sabbath, but the burden of proof is on you because we have Colossians two.
45:45
Don't let anyone judge you regarding Sabbath.
45:47
We have Romans 14, one man's regards a day.
45:50
Another man doesn't.
45:50
And I think the most persuasive teaching in the new Testament on this is acts 15.
45:55
The very question they were wrestling with was our Gentiles required to keep a law of Moses.
46:00
And the answer was an emphatic, no.
46:03
And of the four things that they said, we do want the Gentiles to do.
46:07
None of them were quotes, the 10 commandments, and none of them were the Sabbath.
46:11
So the definitive statement by the apostles and the elders of Jerusalem was.
46:17
We are not under the old covenant law, including the 10 commandments, including the Sabbath.
46:23
So if you're going to argue that we are the burden of proof is on you to establish that anything from the old covenant law is part of the, uh, the church's, uh, law now the law of Christ.
46:37
And so I would put it back on him and say, show me, and I don't want to see your confession.
46:42
I want to see your exegesis.
46:45
Show me where the scripture says that we are bound by any of these things in the old covenant law.
46:51
Uh, and you know, again, it's just a, it's a, it is an uncharitable statement to say that's the only reason, uh, I do all kinds of things.
46:59
I don't want to do because I'm convinced the Lord Jesus Christ wants me to.
47:04
I don't always want to love my wife.
47:05
I don't always want to discipline in my children, but Jesus says do it.
47:11
So yes, sir, I will.
47:12
I will do it.
47:13
So that that'd be my initial response.
47:15
Amen.
47:16
Now our church last year, and you may agree with this or not, and you're welcome to share an opinion.
47:23
I'm not going to, uh, as I said, thick skin, so I'm good.
47:27
Uh, but our church did decide to adopt a confession and we chose to adopt the 1646 London confession and, uh, part and parcel of the reason was because we felt like it was more in keeping with our positions on specifically how we understand the new covenant and lo and behold, we, we, we, we taught through it.
47:51
We, we actually have all the videos online.
47:53
If anybody wants to go, any listener wants to go myself and my fellow elder, Andy Montoro taught every, every point of the confession.
48:01
I gave a history of the confession and all these things prior to, and, uh, lo and behold, not just a little while later, James Renahan has produced a book where he is arguing that the 1646 confession is the same theologically and covenantally as the 1689 and that they're there, that the distinctions are, um, that, that any of us have made.
48:24
And he specifically points out Gary Long.
48:25
I don't know if you're familiar with Gary Long and his, and his, and his on that issue, his writings.
48:31
And he really in the appendix, I've got the book already.
48:34
I got the digital copy and I was able to read through not all of it, but, but the parts that, that I was most concerned about.
48:40
And in, in his, in his appendix, he, he really goes after Long.
48:45
And I thought in my thinking, and maybe I'm wrong on this, I was like, you know, Gary Long's not really the, the, the, the guy now I would be addressing.
48:54
It seems like that sort of, uh, but anyway, my question to you is would you see the 1646 and the 1689 as having a, uh, any, any theological distinctions that, that are meaningful, or would you agree with Renahan that it's the same theology just in two different ways? Um, there's a lot of similarity, clearly the wording is very similar, but the 1689 certainly upholds the, uh, the deck log in particular of the Sabbath in a way that the 1646 doesn't in the 1644, which is, uh, obviously the, the precursor to the 46 doesn't either.
49:35
Um, so yeah, that's the covenant of works, uh, is spelled out in the 89 in a way that is not in the 1646 and, and then the deck log and the Sabbath, uh, the 1689 is basically the Baptist version of Westminster.
49:51
Yeah.
49:52
And, uh, the 1646, in my opinion is less theologically minded in terms of systematic theology and much more, uh, what we would now call biblical theology and Christ focused and, and word centered, um, especially on that.
50:11
So the covenant of works and the, uh, the law there, they are, that's where the difference is.
50:17
And it's a huge difference.
50:18
I couldn't adopt the 1689, but I could the 1646 or the 44.
50:23
And that's where we felt.
50:23
And I, and see, I know men who have in their churches adopted the 1689 with asterisks next to certain portions.
50:32
So I know one specifically I'm thinking about won't name his name, but their church, uh, says we, we hold the 1689.
50:38
But if you look at the website, it says these portions, we do not hold to, and it's the Sabbath and it's the, the Pope is antichrist.
50:46
And these, these specific portions that they would say they disagree with now, uh, does your church, uh, have a, uh, hold to a historic confession or are you, do you guys have your own statement of faith that you've written or, uh, so I'm not actually a pastoring anymore.
51:00
Uh, I'm sorry, but the church I was part of, we, uh, we did not, uh, hold to a confession and, uh, you know, I, I mixed feelings on that.
51:09
Um, on one hand, confessions can be great to give us something to rally around and to, to hold to, but on the other hand, there's always that danger.
51:18
And what I was describing earlier, you know, I could see someone like you being very faithful to say, this is just a tool that helps us to organize around and we uphold these things, but you just gotta be very careful.
51:29
And you know, whoever comes after you in church leadership, it's so easy then to make this, the wording in this confession, uh, the hill we're going to die on.
51:37
And, and I don't, I don't like that at all, but, um, uh, so I'm not anti-confessional in that sense.
51:43
Um, but, uh, there's, there's danger on the other hand, there's danger.
51:46
If you don't have anything that says this is, you know, a statement of faith is not really any different than a confession, uh, if you weren't at right.
51:52
So, um, you know, one of the things that comes to mind in that whole discussion is I wonder since 1689 is largely received by all reformed groups and the covenant guys, they understand the is different as far as baptism, but it's acceptable to the Westminster guys, uh, because of the law, because the Sabbath and the covenant of works and the 1646 is not acceptable to the covenant guys.
52:21
And I can't help, but wonder if that is some of the attractiveness.
52:25
I mean, as you describe it, it sounds kind of silly almost that say, we're going to receive the 1689, put these asterisks in there when they could just go to the 1646 and say, yeah, we're all there.
52:37
Well, I wonder if it's just not a matter of, we want to be more palatable to the broader accepted communities.
52:44
I don't know, but to me, I think, no, that's it.
52:47
That's, and that's an interesting point.
52:48
And I think there could be some truth to that.
52:51
When I tell people we hold that we hold the 1646, they say, what? It's like, yeah, what's that? And, and part of our motivation, I'll be quite honest.
53:00
Yeah.
53:00
When the elders came together is, is one, we did, we did feel like it was a confession that expressed a consistency with our beliefs, but it also helped to, to connect us with the, with the broader historical Baptist community.
53:15
Cause our church had never been Baptist.
53:16
Our church had always been non-denominational.
53:20
You know, like I said, we came out of the disciples of Christ, then we became non-denominational, then we became reformed, but still non-denominational reform.
53:27
And we wanted to be able to be connected to the historical Baptist movement.
53:33
Cause we do believe in Baptist distinctives in regard to particularly how we understand entrance into the new covenant, signs of baptism, things like that.
53:44
And so we had it, we had a motivation, but it was, but as you said, our, our, our constitution says very specifically, we, we hold to this as a guide, but not absolute adherence because that's, because our, our, our ultimate and final fidelity is to God's word.
54:02
All right.
54:04
Last thing, and then we'll begin to draw to a close.
54:08
I, I, before the program I had mentioned to you, we had talked about the subject of natural law and positive law, because you mentioned the tripartite distinction.
54:18
And I agree with you that I, I, I do not find the tripartite distinction in scripture.
54:25
And that's one of the reasons why I have a hard time affirming it.
54:28
And I don't affirm it.
54:29
I think it could be a tool to describe the different ways of, of, of, of God's old Testament, old covenant.
54:37
If you were trying to break things out and say, what is this and what is this? But I don't think that it's helpful when you, when somebody asks you, well, if, if homosexuality is wrong, but not eating a bacon cheeseburger is wrong, why is it? And you say, well, it's a tripartite distinction of the law.
54:53
I think that's the, that's one, it's very unsatisfying.
54:57
And two, it's altogether, I think, unhelpful.
55:00
But let me, let me ask you, just push back a little bit on that.
55:03
You say it could be a tool.
55:05
What would you use that tool for? Well, if let's just say, I was trying to describe to younger people, I teach a lot of younger people and I was saying, we, we're, we have these laws that seem really peculiar in the old Testament, such as the, the priest washing himself or sacrificing animals or all these things.
55:26
And I might say these ceremonies are, are, are pointing forward to something greater.
55:32
And, and so in that sense, I would sort of separate out the ceremony as, as, or, or the, or the feasts and say these things, which don't seem to have any component that is that, that in itself would, would be a law that would be for the betterment of brother to brother, like not murdering obviously is what we, and I don't, again, I don't want to use the term moral law, but you understand in that distinction, if I were trying to say, if, if, if, if somebody came up to me and say, I know why it's wrong to murder, but why did God tell them to sacrifice a lamb? And I would say, well, that's a ceremony that pointed to Christ.
56:09
And so in that sense, the, the, I would, I wouldn't be making a hard distinction, but I would say this, this does describe certain laws in a certain way.
56:17
And then if I'm talking about the subject of theonomy, because you mentioned earlier that the civil laws no longer apply, well, the theonomist would say they do.
56:26
So I have to then go back and I have to say, well, what the theonomist is saying is that these civil laws still apply and should be applied in any government because God's law is greater than man's law.
56:36
So, so it's, it's really for me, just helping them to see how, I guess, how other people see the law.
56:42
And, and, and, and that's what I mean by that.
56:45
Yeah.
56:45
Fair enough.
56:46
I, I hear a lot of our new covenant guys making the statement you originally made.
56:51
I think it'd be a helpful distinction, helpful tool.
56:53
And I think we're giving away the story when we do that.
56:55
Okay.
56:57
Certainly to say, this is what other folks believe.
56:59
Absolutely.
57:00
You need to use their terms and explain it.
57:02
But I just, I think we give way too much ground when we, when we say, yeah, we can divide the law up into these categories.
57:10
Well, sure.
57:11
I can pick all kinds of categories and start, you know, dividing the law up.
57:15
But the only reason anybody would choose these three is because going back to Aquinas, he, he and others had done that.
57:22
And, and the answer to the question, why did God say don't wear mixed threads? Is, he tells us why he's testing them at the very beginning of the given of the covenant.
57:33
He says, I'm going to test my people to see if they will obey me.
57:37
It has nothing to do with mixed threads and potatoes next to your corn and even pork.
57:41
It's will these people obey me or not? And of course it didn't, didn't expose their sin and their need of a savior.
57:47
So anyway, I was, I was pushed back on that because I just think, no, I appreciate it.
57:50
I don't give away any ground that we don't need to give away.
57:53
Amen.
57:54
Amen.
57:55
Anyway, you had a broader question.
57:57
Well, the other question is, is recently I saw a video with Dr.
58:01
Sam Waldron that he made the distinction, not between moral, ceremonial, and civil law, but he made the distinction between what he calls natural law and positive law and the way he defined that.
58:13
And I, and, and for, if it, I hope nobody comes in the comments and say I'm being uncharitable, but the way I believe he defined that, and it was a short video on YouTube.
58:20
He said that natural law is that which is inherent or instinctive within man.
58:26
So the, the idea that we shouldn't murder the idea that we shouldn't steal the idea that we shouldn't cheat our neighbor or, or, or commit adultery.
58:34
These are inherent moral categories, whereas positive B and he, you, he actually said like a plus sign, think like a plus sign is anything added to that.
58:44
So for instance, what you just said with the, with the, the law of shellfish or the law of mixed fibers or any of these things, that those things are not things that people would instinctively or inherently or naturally know.
58:55
And therefore they have to be added to.
58:57
And he said, that's how we understand the, the law of the old Testament is not in a threefold division, even though he would still say the threefold division is useful.
59:07
He would say, it's really a distinction between natural and positive law.
59:11
And what we need to understand is the positive laws of the old Testament have been abrogated, but the, in the natural law hasn't, and they would include the 10 commandments as natural law, including the Sabbath, because they would say all of those are in the heart of man, man knows not to murder man knows not to steal.
59:28
And man knows not to keep a Sabbath.
59:31
I'm sorry to keep the Sabbath season.
59:33
So, so thoughts on that.
59:37
I would go partway with him, but then as you finished it, if you're representing him accurately, then I don't know if I would go partway with him at all because where he's going with that is a conclusion I wouldn't want to come to.
59:52
And that's a conclusion that the 10 commandments represent that natural law.
59:56
Correct.
59:57
The scripture never says the 10 commandments are applied or binding on anybody outside of Israel.
01:00:04
It just doesn't say that.
01:00:06
And nowhere is it called the eternal moral law of God or the eternal standard of righteousness, or even a reflection of the character of God.
01:00:13
The scripture just does not say any of that anywhere.
01:00:16
Those are all theological deductions drawn from systematic theologians.
01:00:21
So we have to wrestle with what the scripture says.
01:00:25
So Paul says in Romans 2 that the work of the law is accomplished in Gentiles.
01:00:36
He's very specific.
01:00:37
He does not say the law.
01:00:39
He says the work of the law, which begs the question, what was the work of the law? Well, contrary to our reformed brothers, the three uses of the law they describe are not in the Bible either.
01:00:51
The, the work of the law, the Bible describes is it reveals sin and it increases sin.
01:00:59
Romans three and Romans five, God gave the law to Israel to reveal their disobedience and to make them sin more, not to sanctify them, but to make them send more Ephesians five or Romans five 20.
01:01:13
Um, so the work of the law is that it's to reveal sin and to make people send more so that they'll understand their need of a savior.
01:01:24
So the conscience Paul says, does that in Gentiles, the conscience convicts the Gentile that he is sinning.
01:01:35
So, and he says, so no one will have an excuse.
01:01:37
So when, when any Gentile who's never heard of anything from the Bible stands before God at judgment, he cannot say, I didn't know any better.
01:01:46
I would have obeyed you if I'd only known what I shouldn't have been doing.
01:01:50
And no, God's going to say here, I'm going to play back the tape.
01:01:52
Here's the recording of your conscience.
01:01:55
And the conscience told you this was wrong.
01:01:58
So if that's true, and I believe I'm just articulating what's, what's revealed there in Romans two, then we have to ask the question, what is the conscience telling us is wrong.
01:02:09
That guy who's never heard anywhere from the Bible.
01:02:13
And yet he has a guilty conscience.
01:02:14
What does he think he's guilty of? So it seems to me, and this is where I'm saying, I'm now drawing an inference that I cannot establish this with a hundred percent truth from the scripture, a hundred percent evidence.
01:02:25
It just, it makes sense to me, but I, you know, I wouldn't die in this hell, but it makes most sense to me in light of that, that there are some things that are inherently understood by man, that these things are wrong.
01:02:40
And the conscience will use those things to say, you shouldn't have been doing this.
01:02:46
Now, where we get into trouble is when we start identifying what all those things are.
01:02:51
Um, I would, I would concur murder.
01:02:54
It seems universally accepted in, in almost every civilization murder is wrong.
01:02:59
Um, cheating, all those things you mentioned, but I would not then go so far as to say that the Sabbath and that kind of thing.
01:03:05
Here's, here's one other, um, uh, passage that I would bring into this discussion.
01:03:10
In Leviticus 18 and Leviticus 20, I believe I have those chapters, right? We have two lists of sexual sins that are almost identical to a couple of chapters apart.
01:03:21
And this is where they both mentioned homosexuality and, and all kinds of sexual perversions.
01:03:27
One of those chapters is laying out God's expectations of Israel, the law.
01:03:33
Yeah.
01:03:34
The other chapter is saying, this is why I spewed the Canaanites out of their land or why I'm going to, you guys are going to go in there.
01:03:43
Do not practice what they practiced.
01:03:46
This is why I'm going to spew them out of the land.
01:03:48
Now think that through that is, that is very telling.
01:03:52
God is saying I'm holding the Canaanites guilty of sexual sin of homosexual perversion, that kind of thing.
01:04:01
They had no written law that we know of from God.
01:04:04
That's right.
01:04:04
But they are held guilty for their sexual perversion.
01:04:09
So Israel gets it laid out.
01:04:11
Don't do this.
01:04:12
Don't do this.
01:04:12
Don't you can't sleep with your mom and your grandma and your aunt and uncle and all that.
01:04:15
But the Canaanites are doing all this.
01:04:17
And God says I'm spewing them out of the land because of it.
01:04:19
So I draw from that and it gets an inference, but it seems to me like that would be part of what our brother here would call natural law.
01:04:27
They should know better.
01:04:30
Now, whether they should know better or not, God's still holding them guilty.
01:04:32
That is clear in the text.
01:04:34
They're guilty of that.
01:04:35
So I would go far enough to say, I think there are some things that God has placed in our hearts that our conscience can weigh in on and say, you know, this is unpleasing to God.
01:04:46
And that's going to be your judgment on judgment day, even if you've never had positive law that you are breaking.
01:04:52
But then just go in and draw from that, that the 10 commandments and the Sabbath is part of it.
01:04:56
That just goes way beyond.
01:04:58
Because again, in that passage, there's no indication.
01:05:01
The Canaanites were keeping the Sabbath and it's not listed.
01:05:03
He doesn't say, and they didn't keep the Sabbath.
01:05:05
So I'm spewing them out of the land.
01:05:07
Nothing like that.
01:05:08
Yeah, absolutely.
01:05:09
And I remember there was a church nearby who had Dr.
01:05:15
Waldron in to give a series of lectures.
01:05:20
And one of the lectures he gave was on the Sabbath and they invited me specifically because they knew I disagreed.
01:05:26
And I went and sat in and I took notes and he was very sweet and very gracious, even though he knew I disagreed as well.
01:05:33
But in that he brought up the natural and positive law.
01:05:37
And one of the arguments just to be more clear on their side was that there are Sabbath commands, which would qualify as positive, but that the Sabbath itself, the nature of one in seven, the nature of rest and work and that relation, that cyclical relationship between rest and work, that's what is natural law.
01:05:58
But the positive commands such as not collecting wood or something like that, that those are essentially abrogated.
01:06:08
But what holds is that there's to be one in seven, there's to be a cyclical relationship between rest and work.
01:06:15
And like I said, I just want to be fair to what they're saying.
01:06:17
They wouldn't say that all of the requirements of the Sabbath hold, they would just simply say the principle of the Sabbath is part of natural law.
01:06:25
I would disagree.
01:06:26
And I would say that's pure assumption.
01:06:28
Nowhere does God say that.
01:06:31
In fact, the passage they go to as a foundation for that is probably Genesis two, and there it is not one in seven.
01:06:36
It is emphatic, the seventh day, he sanctified, he blessed the seventh day.
01:06:44
And that's what I say to our reformed brothers.
01:06:45
How in the world do you switch that to the first day without any positive law, any statement of scripture that says God has now changed this? So yeah, I don't want to keep beating this drum, but for any of your listeners who have not explored the difference between biblical theology and systematic theology, I encourage them.
01:07:07
Biblical theology looks at the Bible as the story of Jesus.
01:07:10
Systematic theology looks at the Bible as these systems of doctrines.
01:07:14
And that's where we create these theological grids and filters.
01:07:18
And now we bring those to the text and the text has to fit this grid.
01:07:23
We've already decided, just case in point, the doctrine of the immutability of God.
01:07:29
God can't change his mind.
01:07:31
He doesn't change his mind.
01:07:32
He won't change his mind.
01:07:34
And where the Bible says that, three verses later it says, and God changed his mind.
01:07:39
Well, if your starting conclusion is God doesn't change his mind, then you basically have to say, I know it says this, but that's not what it means.
01:07:47
And you just basically ignore it.
01:07:49
But if you look at it as a story, getting to Jesus, you say, okay, did God know he's going to change his mind? Yeah, he's omniscient, but the whole thing is laid out to teach us something in that particular context, not an abstractism of whether or not God can change his mind.
01:08:08
He's omniscient.
01:08:10
He's determined everything from the beginning to the end.
01:08:14
No, he's not changing his mind the way you and I do.
01:08:16
We change our mind because we're corrected.
01:08:18
He didn't change his mind because he's corrected, but it's a story.
01:08:21
And we could just rob God of his personality and the intent leading to Christ.
01:08:26
If we impose this theological grit, I just threw that out.
01:08:29
And now we're just going to think I denying God's.
01:08:34
I hope people are listening though, to what you're saying, because if certainly you're not denying God's sovereignty or immutability or any of those things, every hair on your head is named and numbered.
01:08:43
And yes, he's sovereign over, but there is, and we don't have time to get to it today.
01:08:48
And maybe you'll be gracious to come back to talk about it.
01:08:51
There is huge conversations going on right now in the reformed community about how we understand things like simplicity and impassibility.
01:08:58
And it almost flattens God to a point of almost deism is my fear that we're getting to the point where God has no ability to interact with his creatures.
01:09:09
And like you said, it doesn't seem to be coming from scripture, but rather it seems to be coming from a different place entirely for sure.
01:09:21
Well, Doug, I know that I have really enjoyed today.
01:09:24
I think our listeners are going to be just over the moon because you've been such a great guest and I'm so thankful and I'm thankful for our friendship.
01:09:33
I'm thankful for you speaking into my life and being a friend and someone I can reach out to.
01:09:39
And I do hope that you one day soon will come back and I, cause I have a thousand more questions, but can't do that today.
01:09:46
So thank you for being here.
01:09:48
Well, it was a pleasure to be here and I'm happy to come back anytime.
01:09:50
Amen.
01:09:51
And listener, I want to thank you again for being with us today and sitting with us through this conversation on new covenant theology.
01:09:58
And if you have any questions, I'd like to encourage you to email me at calvinistpodcastatgmail.com.
01:10:04
And I would be happy to either answer those questions or pass those questions on to Doug.
01:10:09
I'm sure he would be open to interacting or possibly again, coming back on the program and doing a follow-up.
01:10:16
So thank you again for listening to conversations with a Calvinist.
01:10:19
My name is Keith Foskey and I've been your Calvinist.
01:10:22
May God bless you.