September 15, 2021 Show with Dr. Tony Costa on “Early Christian Creeds & Hymns”

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

Carlyle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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

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

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions, and now here's your host,

Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity who are living on the planet

Earth, listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 15th day of September 2021, and I'm always thrilled to have a returning guest on my program by the name of Dr.

Tony Costa, who has become a very dear friend of mine, one of my favorite guests on this program, one of my favorite speakers at conferences that I personally arrange, and he has been also a speaker at the

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastors Luncheon in the past, and has participated in a debate that I arranged with Roman Catholic apologist

Robert St. Genes a few years ago. He is professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary, and today we are going to be addressing his new book,

Early Christian Creeds and Hymns, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

Tony Costa. Well, it's always a pleasure to be with you, Chris, and thank you for having me on.

It's a joy, brother, and why don't you tell our listeners something about Toronto Baptist Seminary. Yeah, Toronto Baptist Seminary is a

Reformed Baptist seminary that began in the 1930s by the late

Dr. T .T. Shields, who was the pastor of Jarvis Street Baptist Church, also in Toronto, and it is a seminary that is dedicated to the doctrines of grace, and we train men and women for ministry.

We train men and women for the mission field, and we also train men for the ministry, for the pastorate, and also we equip both men and women who want to go into doctoral studies and pursue

PhDs and PhDs as well. And that website, if you want more information, is tbs .edu,

tbs for Toronto Baptist Seminary dot edu. Well, I must say that this book that you have written is basically something that one might not expect you to write about.

Not that you would necessarily have ignorance or lack of knowledge in any way, shape, or form on early

Christian creeds and hymns, but it seems to be somewhat of a different subject that people who are familiar with the name

Dr. Tony Costa, they immediately think of apologetics, they immediately think of your debates with Muslims and Roman Catholics and others.

They usually are thinking about things that tend to be more controversial, your refutations of Marxism, and your warnings to the body of Christ about how

Marxism is not only seeping into the secular realm of politics and other realms that have great importance in the lives of those living both in Canada and the

United States, but also how it is negatively affecting the

Church, perhaps through ignorance and naivete on the part of those who are allowing this heinous and satanic ideology to enter in somehow through the back door of the

Church. So, to hear that you have written a book about early Christian creeds and hymns is somewhat fascinating, and in fact, am

I mistaken to say, if my memory serves me right, wasn't this the theme of your doctoral dissertation?

No, my doctoral dissertation, Chris, was actually on the worship of the risen

Jesus in the Pauline Letters, so it was something completely different.

This work on early Christian creeds and hymns is something that I've been wanting to do for quite a while, and it is rooted in apologetics, because what

I do in this book is I look at the creeds that are found within the

New Testament text itself, and the hymns. A lot of folks are not aware of the fact that the

New Testament text itself contains creeds that are embedded in the text, and also hymns that are embedded.

There are certain grammatical features that indicate that we're dealing with creedal or hymnic material, and the reason why

I wrote this book, Chris, was for apologetic purposes, because what I do with these creeds and hymns is

I demonstrate that from the earliest period, the Church has always believed that Jesus died on the cross, that he was buried, that he was raised the third day.

That is part of one of the earliest creeds in the New Testament. We find it in 1 Corinthians 15, 3 -4, and there's also creeds in there that affirm the deity of Christ, Jesus as Lord, for example.

In my book, I go into great detail about how the word Lord there is used as the substitute for the divine name

Yahweh in the Old Testament, which is applied to Jesus in the New. And so what I demonstrate here is that these fundamental doctrines like the deity of Christ, his vicarious death on the cross, his resurrection, these go right back to the earliest strata of Christianity.

And so this serves as a polemic against, for example, Islam that claims the

Bible's been corrupted, or claims that the earliest Christians did not, in fact, believe that Jesus died on the cross, and so forth.

This book demonstrates that that claim is absolutely false. And also, the deity of Christ is a powerful polemic against not just Islam, but cults that deny the deity of the

Lord Jesus Christ, and also rabbinic Judaism that is to be distinguished from biblical

Judaism. So the book does serve an apologetic purpose, and it also calls us back to our roots, and it also calls us back to why we believe what we believe.

And so what I do in this book, essentially, Chris, is I provide an exegetical theological study where I demonstrate that the earliest

Christians confessed what they believed in what we would call creeds. And they would also sing those creeds.

So creeds, in a sense, basically, they're hymn -like, because when we sing, we are also affirming our beliefs.

So hymns have creed -like characteristics, and so they both dovetail with each other.

So that's the main reason why I wrote it. It's not so much a church history book.

I do mention the Nicene Creed, the Apostles' Creed, but I focus primarily on the

New Testament, and I also dip back into the Old Testament as the forerunner of New Testament creeds.

Well, I'm going to give our listeners our email address right away, if they have questions. And our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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

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

And we do have a question already from RJ in White Plains, New York, and he asks, what is the difference between a creed and a confession of faith?

That's a very interesting question, and I have heard, I don't know if this fits your definition,

Tony, but I have heard from some scholars and historians that there is no difference, and then

I've heard from others that a creed is intended to be more brief, so that more of those who profess to believe in Christ, a greater number can unite around it, because of the fact that it will contain main points on certain issues and not go into too much detail exhaustively.

For instance, I don't even think that the Gospel is contained in the Apostles' Creed, but the nature of Christ and so on, and the

Trinity are discussed or professed, declared in that creed.

And yet, on the other end of the spectrum, I have heard that the intention of a confession of faith throughout history has typically been to be more detailed in order to set a certain group of Christians apart from the rest, like the

Westminster Confession of Faith, or the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith, or the

Savoy Declaration, or the Three Forms of Unity, or the 39 Articles of Religion, although that latter one is a very brief document comparatively.

But it's to show the distinction of whoever happens to hold to that confession, like the

Presbyterians, or the Congregationalists, or the Reformed Baptists, or the Anglicans. Does what

I said hold water with you, or do you have your own definitions?

Well, I think what you pointed out there, I think, is correct, but I think we need to differentiate between the first -century

Church and the developments that took place over the centuries in Christianity.

So, for example, the London Baptist Confession of Faith, well, there's a first and a second.

Most Reformed Baptists followed the second. And, of course, the

Westminster Confession of Faith, the Augsburg Confession, and so forth, the Belgic Confession. All of these confessions developed over Church history, over the period of Church history, and they were basically meant to articulate where these various denominations stood on various doctrines.

But the New Testament, you don't really have that distinction. In the

New Testament text itself, which is the focus of my study, in the New Testament text, creeds and confessions are interchangeable.

So, here's an example, Chris. In Romans 10 .9, it says, "...if you shall confess with your mouth..."

The word confess is a Greek word homologale, which means to say the same thing. "...if

you shall confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord..."

Now, that word that, of course, in English, in the Greek text, it's called the hapi conjunction.

The hapi is basically a little three -letter conjunction in Greek that tells you to treat it as a quotation mark, that what it's going to be following is a quotation.

So, "...if you shall confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord..." That's one of the early creeds.

It's a very short creed. It's only made of two words in the Greek text. In English, of course, we have the

Jesus is Lord three words. So, right there in Romans 10 .9,

Paul merges confession and creed together. And then, of course, in verse 13, he says, "...whosoever

shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved." So, in the New Testament, it's very clear that the word confession and to confess is used interchangeably with creeds.

So, as I said, later on in church history, these confessions become more elaborate.

They become fuller. They go into issues like baptism.

They go into issues of church administration and so forth. But in the early Christian period, the early church period, the

New Testament period, the apostolic period, you don't have these elaborate confessions that you see later on.

And even the creeds, if you look at the Apostles' Creed or the Nicene Creed, they're much larger than the creeds you find in the

New Testament. So, the largest creed we have in the New Testament, Chris, is considered to be 1

Corinthians 15, 2 to 4. Some would even take it into a few following verses after verse 4.

In terms of hymns, the largest hymn segment in the New Testament is believed to be

John 1, verses 1 to 18, the prologue. So, confession and creed, the distinctions that you hear a lot of theologians and church historians make today, can be applied to later developments in church history.

But insofar as the New Testament goes, you'd be very hard -pressed to find a clear distinction between a confession and a creed.

Those words go hand -in -hand, because usually, when early Christians were baptized, what they would do is they would confess the creed.

They would say, Jesus Christ is Lord, and they would claim that He is

Son of God, and so forth. So, at the early church period,

Chris, we don't see that fine distinction that we see later in church history. Now, I want to clarify something that I said earlier about the

Apostles' Creed not containing the Gospel. It does, of course, contain the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, but how the benefits of that apply to the sinner are not contained, or is not contained in there, and therefore you have

Roman Catholics and Reformed Evangelical Protestants embracing this same creed, and yet they have a different Gospel.

Right. Right. And so, the creeds are something like New York Christianity.

They give you the bones of the fundamentals, but they don't go into the finer details of, for example, salvation by grace alone, on the basis of Christ alone, and so forth and so on.

They don't go into those areas, and so the creeds are basically touch points on the fundamentals, and that is why, as you rightly said, folks in the

Eastern Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic Church, the Protestant Church, you know, Anglican churches, and so forth, they can recite the

Apostles' Creed in their worship, and still disagree amongst each other on issues pertaining to the

Gospel and salvation. Now, when you have titled your book

Early Christian Creeds, what do you mean by early? How far back are we going here?

Yeah. We're talking 1st century. We're talking New Testament. We're talking the period of when the scriptures were still being written, and so we're looking at the creeds and hymns that are found in the

New Testament text itself. And why don't you open up some of those for us?

Yeah. So, to begin with, what I do in my book, Chris, is I define the word creed. The word creed, of course, comes from the

Latin word credo, which means, I believe, and that is why all the creeds, the

Apostles, Mycenaean Creed, and so forth, that is why, and even the Atonation Creed, that is why these creeds always begin with the words,

I believe. I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, and so forth, and so on. What I do in my book,

Chris, is I begin by first discussing the Old Testament, because the practice of uttering creeds and singing hymns comes out of the

Old Testament text. The Old Testament is very clear in Deuteronomy 6 -4 that the great confession of Israel is the

Shema. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and that you are to love the

Lord with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and so forth. So, the Old Testament Shema focuses on the uniqueness of God, of Yahweh, that He is the

God of Israel, and that He is the only one. He is one. Of course, the word one there is a composite unity.

It is the word Ehad in Hebrew, which denotes plurality within unity, and so that prefigures the triune nature of God.

And what I also do is I move forward from the passage in Deuteronomy 6 -4, and I also mention another interesting creed that appears in Deuteronomy 26, 5 -9, where the

Israelites, when they came to offer up their sacrifices to the

Lord, they were to make a creed which would recite the wanderings of their forefather

Jacob, and then how they went into Egypt, and the nation became a mighty nation, and then

God delivered them with a mighty hand, and so forth, and redeemed them with signs and wonders.

And so, these creeds in the Old Testament were theocentric. They're focused on God, and they remind the people of Israel that God is not just their

God, the one God, but He is also their Redeemer. He is their Savior. And in terms of hymns,

I address various hymns in the Old Testament, like the hymn or song of Miriam in Exodus 15, when the

Lord brought the people out of Egypt through the Red Sea. You have that famous hymn that is sung there.

I also address a number of hymns that have been attested in the Dead Sea Scrolls, as well, where the

Jews in Qumran would have various hymns sung during Sabbath, and during various festivals during the year.

And what I do is I establish that the early Christian community, which was a Jewish Messianic community before they went out into the

Gentile territories, the early Jewish followers of Jesus, again, were familiar with these creeds in the

Old Testament. They were familiar with these hymns in the Old Testament. And so, it's no surprise that in the

New Testament letters, Paul talks about offering singing hymns to the

Lord and spiritual songs. Paul takes that wonderful Shema in Deuteronomy 6 -4, and in 1

Corinthians 8 -6, what Paul does is he revamps that Shema, so that he says, for unto us there is one

God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we of him, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him.

And what Paul beautifully does there, Chris, is he takes the Shema, but he takes it from the Septuagint, the

Greek translation of the Old Testament. And what Paul does is he takes the words God and Lord, Phaos and Kurios, he applies the word

Phaos to the Father, and he applies the word Kurios to the Son, and thereby what he does is

Paul takes these words, and what he does is he Christifies the

Shema. What I'm trying to say here is that Paul includes Christ within the

Divine Identity. And this is something that scholars like Richard Balcombe, in his book

God Crucified, and Larry Hurtado, the late Larry Hurtado, wrote in his various books on High Christology.

What Paul is essentially doing is he's including Jesus into the Divine Identity of God. And what he is saying is the

Shema to us is that there's one God, the Father, there's one Lord, Jesus Christ.

And so what he does there is Paul places Jesus Christ at the highest pinnacle in the

Divine Identity of God himself. And so we know, Chris, as a matter of fact, that the earliest

Christians were not Unitarian. They didn't believe that God was just a Unitarian solitary person within the

Godhead. They understood that there were three persons in the Godhead, and this was believed and confessed from the earliest days of Christianity.

And so what that demonstrates to us is that you and I Chris, and believers in the

Lord Jesus Christ today, we have connections, we have a continuity with this first century

Church. And of course, our Roman Catholic friends, Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, will say we have a continuity to the succession of bishops, the apostolic succession to the bishops and so forth.

But what we maintain is we have a continuity with them on the basis of Scripture and Biblical teaching.

So what they believed way back in the first century when the apostles were alive and writing is what we believe today about God and the

Lord Jesus Christ and so forth. And so we're not some weird group that just came about in 1517 with the

Reformation or we just happened to emerge out of English Baptist confessions, but that as the body of Christ, we are organically connected to these first century believers who believe the same thing that we today defend and proclaim.

And in fact, we're going to be going to our first break right now. So if you want to pick up where we left off when we return, if anybody again has any questions of your own that you'd like to ask, our email address is chrizarnsen at gmail .com,

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

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Don't go away.

We'll be right back with Tony Kassa. Hello, dear ones.

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If you just tuned us in, we are having a fascinating discussion with my dear brother in Christ and friend,

Dr. Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics in Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary. We are discussing early

Christian creeds and hymns. And if you have a question, send it to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Before I go to any listener question, I want to ask you something about the shema that you were addressing before the break.

Anybody who has had any ongoing familiarity, exposure, or friendship with either

Orthodox Jewish people or with Messianic Jews, Christians who are

Jews, they have no doubt heard the shema recited.

And in fact, even just in the worship of Orthodox believing

Christians, I don't mean Eastern Orthodox here, but biblically sound Christians, that will come up as well, obviously.

But one might be jolted back a bit when they hear our mutual friend,

Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, declare or cite the shema, because unlike the way it is normally read or proclaimed using

Adonai, he uses the name of Yahweh.

And I've even heard people say to me, you know, I just heard Dr. White misquote the shema.

He said Yahweh. But Dr. White believes that's the way that the original

Jews of the Old Covenant would have said that. And it was only when the rabbinic tradition later developed, focusing on Talmudic laws and so forth, that the

Jews, out of fear of taking the Lord's name in vain, no longer use the name Yahweh. Am I making sense here?

Am I in the right base here? And what is your response to that? Yeah, the name

Yahweh does appear in the shema in Deuteronomy 6 -4. If you were to look at it in its original

Hebrew, the name Yahweh appears there twice, so that it's shema

Yahweh, Yahweh Adonai Eloheinu, Yahweh Echad. So what

Jews later did was they included the word

Adonai, as you rightly put it, to avoid uttering the divine name.

The Jews, due to rabbinic influence, took Leviticus 24 -16 very seriously, which says, whoever blasphemes the name of Yahweh shall surely be put to death.

In the Septuagint, it interestingly says, whoever names the name of the Lord shall be put to death.

So the idea that Jews began to avoid using the name and substituted it with Adonai, there seems to be good evidence,

Chris, that that was already happening already in the time of Jesus. And the reason we know that is because in the

Greek Septuagint, they avoided using the name, and they translated it kouios, which is the

Greek word for the Lord. And there are some theories as to why that happened.

Some think it happened during the Babylonian captivity, when the Jews were in captivity. They would not utter the name of God so that the

Babylonians and their antagonists would not assume it. And so, already in the book of Daniel, you will notice that in the

Aramaic parts of Daniel, Daniel does not use the divine name. He refers to the

Lord as Marah. Marah, where we get the word maranatha.

Marah means the Lord in Aramaic. And it seems that after the

Babylonian captivity, the Jewish leaders became very sensitive about uttering the divine name publicly for fear that it might be profaned by the

Gentiles. And so, when Dr. White recites it as Yahweh, he's absolutely correct.

However, if you're talking with an Orthodox Jew, an Orthodox Jew would probably be horrified to hear you utter that name because one of the things that the

Mishnah says is, the Mishnah says, whoever, those who do not have a place in the world to come, are those who recite or say the name.

And so, if I'm dealing with an Orthodox Jew and I'm sharing the gospel with them, just for the sake of accommodation, as Paul says,

I become all things to all men, to the Jews I become as a Jew. When I'm sharing the gospel with a

Jewish person, and I know they are very devoutly Orthodox or they're part of the

Hasidic movement, I will say, Shema Yisrael Adonai, or another word they use is

Hashem. Hashem means the name. But if it's a

Reformed Jew, most Reformed Jews are not overly sensitive to the utterance of the divine name.

So, all that to say that, yeah, Dr. White is absolutely right. That's what it says in the original

Hebrew. But in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, it was translated

Hokudeos, the Lord. Now, there are some Greek fragments,

Chris, of the Greek Old Testament that was written by a couple of Hellenistic Jews, Greek -speaking

Jews. So, we've got a couple of them. We've got a guy by the name of Theodosian. We've got another guy by the name of Aquila, and then another guy by the name of Symechus.

And in their translations of the Greek Old Testament, some of them did try to pronounce the divine name in Greek letters, and others tried to depict the divine name by placing it in the

Greek text. So, there are some examples of some Greek manuscripts that try to place the divine name in there, but the overwhelming copies of the

Septuagint show us that the trend was more to avoid pronouncing the name.

And that is why today in our English Bibles, you will notice that the divine name is usually translated

Lord with a capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D. The Roman Christian Bible tried to bring back the divine name,

Yahweh. The Roman Catholic translation, the Jerusalem Bible, uses Yahweh throughout. And of course, the

American Standard Version of 1901 uses Jehovah throughout the Old Testament.

And just out of curiosity, since there is debate and controversy over the

Septuagint, especially between Roman Catholics and Evangelical Protestants, it seems that the earliest copies of the

Septuagint that we are aware of contain the apocryphal books, or as the

Roman Catholics prefer to call it, the deuterocanonical books. But how far did these copies go back?

Because I have been told that they contain those books because they don't go back far enough.

Yeah, that's a common misunderstanding, Chris. The copy of the

Septuagint that we have, we have it in Codex Paniaticus, which is 325

AD. But we know that the earlier copies of the

Septuagint, in fact, did not have the apocrypha. Roger T.

Beckwith, in his book, The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church, goes into great detail on this.

He's a scholar of the canon, and I think Michael Kruger has written on this as well.

But the main proof we have, Chris, that the Septuagint originally did not have the apocrypha, is that if we look at Philo of Alexandria, he's this first -century

Jew who's contemporaneous with Paul, an author in Alexandria, Egypt.

He quotes, he uses the Septuagint, he quotes from the Greek translation, and Philo never once, never once quotes from an apocryphal book.

None of the books of the apocrypha are ever quoted by Philo. And so the canon of the

Greek Old Testament that Philo of Alexandria had and knew matches the

Torah, the law, the prophets, and the writings that we have in our Bibles. And so the fact that Philo never once quotes from any of the books of the apocrypha,

Beckwith argues, is a sure -proof argument that Philo did not have the apocrypha in the

Greek translation of his Old Testament, and that these books were later added through the course of Christian history.

There were some Church Fathers, like Augustine and others, who believed that they were part of the

Christian canon, but isn't it interesting that those Fathers of the Church who were learned in Hebrew, like Jerome and Origen and the leader of Sardis, it is interesting that those

Fathers who were familiar with Hebrew, all of them rejected the because they knew it was not in the

Hebrew canon. And those who accepted it were not specialists in the text. Augustine did not know

Hebrew. He did not know Greek. Very little Greek. Augustine was more of a philosopher, but he was not a linguist, as was

Jerome and others. So a good case can actually be made, Chris, that the Septuagint of the time of Jesus did not have the apocryphal books.

They were added later. And Codex Sinaiticus is a Christian codex. If anyone wants to view or listen to a really great debate that I orchestrated a number of years ago between Dr.

James R. White, the mutual friend of Dr. Tony Costa and mine, Dr. White and Roman Catholic apologist

Gary Machuta on the Apocrypha, or the Deutero -Canonical Books. I go to AOMIN .org,

AOMIN .org, which is the website of Alpha Omega Ministries. And if you type in a search engine,

Machuta, M -I -C -H -U -T -A, you will find that debate.

Or you could go to YouTube and type in James White versus Gary Machuta. I believe it's the only debate that they had with each other.

In fact, perhaps Dr. Costa has also debated on this. I don't know. Have you also debated on the

Apocrypha? Not on the Apocrypha, but it is on the horizon. I do have a couple of Roman Catholic apologists that want to debate me on some various topics.

So that might be one of them that we will debate on. Great. And we have one of our loyal, faithful listeners and financial supporters of Iron Shepherd's Iron Radio has sent in a question.

Grady from Asheboro, North Carolina. Greetings, brothers. When I think of hymns in the

Holy Scriptures, I always think of the Psalms. How many other hymns are there in the

Bible, and how many did Dr. Costa write about? Yeah, good question.

The Psalms are definitely the hymn book of God's people in the Old Testament, and we still use them today.

In fact, some of the old Reformed churches only use the

Psalms in their worship, and some of them will not use any of the hymns, even the classical hymns that we use in our churches.

They believe that only the Psalms are meant for the worship of God in terms of singing.

And Calvin himself wrote in his Institute that the hymns were given to the people of God to use for worship in the gathering of the church and so forth.

What I do in my book is I deal with Christian hymns, and so I'm focused primarily on the

New Testament. So some of the hymns that I cover, I deal with 1

Corinthians 14 -26, where the Apostle Paul addresses the issues of hymns and spiritual songs and so forth.

In my 11th chapter, I deal with hymns that were sung both to the Lord Jesus Christ and God the

Father. So the early Christians didn't just sing hymns to God the Father, but they also sang hymns to the risen

Christ, which again, as I said earlier, reinforces the deity. Now here's some of the main hymns that we have in the

New Testament. The most famous of them is the Carmen Christi, and Carmen Christi is simply the

Latin word for the hymn of Christ, the song of Christ, and that's found in Philippians 2, 6 -11.

So that section there, that beautiful section where Paul talks about Christ being in the form of God, and how he took on the form of a servant, and became a human being, and how he suffered, and then he was highly exalted, and every knee will bow, every tongue will confess

Christ is Lord. That is a beautiful hymn. It is the, let's just say, the second longest hymn we have in the

New Testament. Another one is the, what I call, the Great Confession. So in 1

Timothy 3, 16, we have another hymn there where Paul says, great is the confession of our faith.

He was manifest in the flesh, he was seen of angels, and so forth, and taken up into glory. So 1

Timothy 3, 16 is another hymn. Another hymn I mentioned in my book is what

I call the Wake Up Hymn. It's found in Ephesians 5, 14, where in that passage there, the

Apostle Paul says in that beautiful hymn, that it says, wake up,

O sleeper, awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.

So this was probably an evangelistic hymn, where the sinner was called upon to wake up from your slumber in sin, so that Christ's light might shine upon you.

I also deal with the, what I call the Hymn of the Suffering Messiah in 1 Peter 2, 22 -24.

It talks about how Christ there bore our sins in his own body, and by his stripes we have been healed.

Another hymn I address as well is Hebrews 1, 2 -4. The longest hymn that we have in the

New Testament is the Prologue of John, found in John 1, 1 -18. And what

I do in my book is I end with what I call the grand finale hymn, which is Colossians 1, 15 -20.

Now you're probably wondering, how do we know these are hymns? Because, I mean, after all, we don't have the music notes to any of these hymns in the

New Testament. Well, the way we can tell that these are hymns is, there are certain grammatical features that indicate to the reader that what we're coming across is hymnic material.

And so, I don't have to go into great detail about what these indicators are, but most hymns tend to have grammar that is very different from the rest of the letter or the gospel.

And they also contain what's called the relative pronoun, words like who. In Greek, it's the word hos.

And so, you'll notice in some of these hymns, like Philippians 2 -6, who being in the form of God, thought of not to be equal with God.

First Timothy 3 -16, who was made, he who was manifest in the flesh.

Hebrews 1 -2 and 3, who being the image of his, the brightness of his image, the light, the imprint of his nature, and so forth and so on.

So there are certain indicators, grammatical indicators, and these are very obvious in the

Greek text. In fact, we have to go to our midway break so you can pick up where you left off there.

We ask of your patience, the midway break is longer than the other breaks, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show because the

FCC requires Grace Life to localize geographically this program to Lake City, Florida, and so therefore, while they air their local announcements, we air our globally heard commercials.

Please use this time wisely, write down as much of the information as you possibly can provided by our advertisers, so that you can more frequently and successfully patronize our advertisers, or at the very least, please thank them for sponsoring

Iron Trump and Zion Radio. And send in your questions to Dr. Tony Costa at chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away, we'll be right back after these messages. I'm James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries, my friend

Chris Arnson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and I are headed down to Atlanta, Georgia once again for the

G3 Conference. This year's G3 will be held Thursday, September 30th, through Saturday, October 2nd, on the theme,

Christ is supreme over all. I'll be joined by over 20 other speakers and musicians to lead in the worship of God through preaching, teaching, and singing, including

John MacArthur, Phil Johnson, Conrad M. Bayway, Daryl Bernard Harrison, and Virgil Walker.

For details, visit g3conference .com, that's g3conference .com. Chris Arnson and I hope to see you

September 30th through October 2nd at G321. This is James White reminding you that Christ is supreme over all.

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Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio when making a purchase. Before I return to my guest today,

Dr. Tony Costa who is Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary and our discussion on early

Christian creeds and hymns, I just have some important announcements to make. First of all, if you are a man in ministry leadership, whether you are a pastor or an elder, those are the same office by the way, or a deacon or a parachurch leader, whatever leadership position you hold as a man in the body of Christ, I invite you to the next

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio free pastor's luncheon on Monday, September 27th, 11am to 2pm at the

Bonjorno Conference Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Our speaker this time around is a man

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That is no sinful flattery. It is no hyperbole. Dr. Conrad Mbewe, pastor of Kabwata Baptist Church of Lusaka, Zambia, Africa and founding chancellor of the

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I urge you to please register and come to Carlisle, Pennsylvania on Monday, September 27th, 11am to 2pm at the

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My late wife, Julie, my precious late wife, launched these pastor's luncheons with me in the 1990s.

And she made it very clear to me that she never wanted anything sold on the premises.

She never wanted any ulterior motive or hidden agenda. This was entirely to be a time of rest, relaxation, refreshment, invigorating time to the pastors because they very rarely are treated to anything that does not have some form of ulterior motive.

So I am keeping that rule of my precious late wife even after her going to glory.

And I continue to conduct these luncheons in her memory. So if you'd like to attend no matter where you live, if you can get to Carlisle, Pennsylvania on Monday, September 27th, 11am to 2pm at the

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and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the question to Dr. Tony Costa on early

Christian creeds and hymns. That's chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and country of residence. And Dr.

Costa, I had to interrupt you during the beginning of the midway break, if you want to pick up where you left off there.

Yeah, Chris, I was just pointing out that we can detect these hymns in the text of the

New Testament. I outlined that in my book, pages 114 -115. I provide five points there where we are able to tell by the grammar in the context of the passage whenever a hymn is present.

You know, one of the signs is a context dislocation, which basically says that the flow of the letter in the case of an epistle is interrupted by other material that is brought in that is different from what, let's say,

Paul was talking about. Another way to detect it is you find the use of phrases like, thus it says, or confessedly, or words like pronouns that are used in reference to Christ, who being in the form of God, Philippians 2 .6.

So, all that to say that we're never told that, well, this is a hymn coming up here.

We can detect that by looking at the grammar in the text. And this seems to be pretty much universally recognized by Greek grammarians, that these are indicators of hymnic material in the

New Testament, which demonstrates to us that the people of God have historically worshipped with the use of song.

And so, the subtitle of my book is what the earliest Christians believed in word and song.

And so, creeds are basically statements of belief.

I believe Jesus is the Son of God. I believe that He is the Lord, and so forth. And songs are basically belief put to music.

Well, you're confessing in your songs what it is you believe about the

Lord Jesus Christ, and about God, and the Holy Spirit, and salvation, and so forth. We have a question from Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania.

Susan Margaret asks, I don't know how familiar you are with the

Reformed Christians that practice exclusive psalmody, where they only sing in their worship services the

God -breathed psalms of the Old Testament. I was wondering if you are aware of how they defend the exclusion of the hymns that are in the

New Testament in their worship, since they are also God -breathed. Right.

I think that much of that comes from Calvin, John Calvin.

John Calvin wrote in his Institute that God has given His people the psalms to be used in the worship of the

Church. And so, they have basically taken the view that psalms is the hymnbook of God's people.

And I know a couple of these folks, these Reformed folks, most of them are Paedo -Baptists, and one of them was telling me, why do you guys sing

Amazing Grace by John Newton, and why do you sing Blessed Assurance, when we have

God -breathed hymns in Scripture, and we should only sing them from the psalms?

And so, I just pressed them a little further and said, well, do you sing them in Hebrew? And they said, well, no.

I said, well, then you're not really singing them in the original language in which they were inspired in. So, the point here is that there's nothing in the

New Testament to suggest that the psalms are the only hymns that we should sing.

There's nothing wrong with singing the hymns, but it's very clear from Ephesians 5 .19

and Colossians 3 .16 and 1 Corinthians 14 .26 that there were other hymns that Christians would sing.

And those hymns are not taken from the Old Testament, like the hymn in Ephesians 5 .14,

a Waco sleeper and the light of Christ will shine on you. That is not from the Book of Psalms.

And so, I think that the onus is on them to show us that only the psalter is the only source of hymnody or music that the people of God should sing.

And so, the onus is on them, and I just don't see it as supported by the New Testament.

Yes, this is an area of disagreement that brothers in Christ can have without getting mean -spirited about it.

I mean, I have some very dear friends whose friendship I've enjoyed for decades, like Dr.

Joel Beeke and Kent Butterfield, the husband of Rosaria Butterfield, and others who believe in exclusive psalmody.

I just happen to disagree with them on that. And one of the reasons, another reason,

I think, is that when they sing the English versions of the psalms, the wording has been changed so it rhymes properly.

And also, although, obviously, the psalms are indeed worshiping

Christ even though they were written prior to His Incarnation, the name of Jesus is not in the psalms.

So, if you are exclusively using the psalms in your worship service, you cannot sing praises to Jesus by name.

So, that's another reason why I find problems with that. And I know

I had another one in my head that kind of flew away, but again, this is not something that we should be attacking our brethren who believe this, especially if they have an ironic spirit about it and are not overly sectarian about it.

Yeah, yeah. I think the only psalmody I would accept, Chris, is if you could sing it like the choir at Westminster Abbey, then

I'll accept it, but if you can't, forget about it. Thank you,

Susan Margaret. Excellent, excellent question. Well, what are the main reasons, or I should say the main elements, of New Testament hymns that are inspired to draw the worshiper to the attention of certain characteristics and aspects of our

Lord and Savior Jesus Christ? What would be some of those different primary things that we find in regard to song in the

New Testament that are the focal point? Yeah, they're all crystal -centric.

So, what do I mean by that is that in the Old Testament, the Shema is theocentric, in the sense that it's focused on Yahweh, on God Himself, and of course the

New Testament is crystal -centric in light of the Incarnation, God becoming flesh in the person of Jesus.

And so, if you look at a hymn like Philippians 2, 6 -11, where Paul says, look, let this mind be in you, that was also in Christ Jesus.

And he talks about how Christ was truly God from all eternity. He's in the form of God.

He did not count robbery to be equal with God, but He emptied Himself, took on the form of a servant, and He became obedient until death, even death on the cross.

Wherefore God has highly exalted Him and given Him the name that is above every name, that every tongue, even

He will bow, that which is in heaven, earth, under the earth, every tongue will confess that He is Lord to the glory of God the

Father. What does that show us? It talks about Christ's eternal deity. It talks about how the Son voluntarily, willingly, volitionally emptied

Himself. He was not forced to empty Himself. This is something He chose to do. He became incarnate.

He became man. And as a man, He obeyed the Father in all things. He became obedient even to the point of death.

And then the result of that obedience to the Father is that the Father highly exalted Him. In fact,

Paul says the word he uses means hyper -exalted. He hyper -exalted the Son to the pinnacle of the universe and has enthroned

Him. And it ends with this cosmic adoration of all things in the heavens, the earth, under the earth.

Every knee is going to bow to the Lord Jesus Christ. Every tongue is going to confess and make allegiance that Jesus Christ is

Lord. And so what does that tell us? It tells us that our Lord was

God of God. He was truly man of man. It shows us that He condescended in His incarnation to the lowest point.

He took on our sins, took on our infirmities. As a result of His obedience to the Father, He has been exalted to the pinnacle of the cosmos.

And that all will one day, all, whether you're talking about Satan, whether you're talking about the demonic powers, everything in all creation is going to bow the knee to Christ one day.

And so what that does is it gives us hope to the future that Christ will win the war. Christ will receive the adoration of the cosmos.

Everyone will be subject under His feet. And so that is a powerful Christological hymn.

We can think of 1 Timothy 3 .16, where in that hymn, we read about He who was manifest, and He was seen of angels, and He was preached unto the nations, and He was taken up in glory.

That says something again about the Lord Jesus Christ and His incarnation and then His exaltation.

And of course, in John 1 .1 -18, my goodness, you have this powerful statement of, in the beginning was the

Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And it talks about how all things came into existence through Him.

He is the light of the world, and so forth. And then I end my book with the hymn in Colossians 1, where everything is wrapped up, where in Colossians 1 .15

-20, it ends by saying that in Christ, God is going to reconcile all things.

That's not universalism. It's talking about the cosmos, the order of the cosmos will be united under Him.

And of course, this points forward to that glorious new heaven and new worth that is coming.

We're in God's righteousness. And so a lot of these hymns are triumphal hymns.

They speak of Christ's victory over death and the grave, over sin and over Satan. And I think right now,

Chris, more than ever, we need to keep our eyes focused on that, that Christ is the victor,

Christ will win the war, and that despite all the turmoil and tribulation we see in our world today, the good news is that we win in the end, and Christ will indeed be

King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Amen. And by the way, I just thought of the other reason why

I do not believe in exclusive psalmody. If the preaching of the

Word of God and the listening to the Word of God preached are acts of worship in the corporate gathering of the saints, then to be consistent, you would never use your own words as a preacher.

You would just read from the Scriptures, finish reading, and sit down. Right. Can you imagine,

Chris, you're sitting there in the last, you know, the reading from Psalm 137, and it ends with the words, Blessed is he who shall dash your little ones against the stones.

Okay, off you go, God bless you. We have to go to our final break right now.

It's going to be a lot more brief than any of the breaks, so if you do have a question, send it in now to chrisarnson at gmail .com,

chrisarnson at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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

And by the way, I do want to quickly give my thanks to Grace Church at Franklin in Franklin, Tennessee.

Before I forget, what reminded me to thank them is some of you have asked where the photograph of Dr.

Tony Costa and I that I used to promote today's interview came from.

I don't know if you saw the photograph, Tony, but that was in the Fellowship Hall of Grace Church at Franklin when we were both in attendance.

You were a speaker at the John Bunyan Conference a couple of years ago, and I was in attendance, and also

I moderated the question and answer session with the audience, and I wanted to thank

Pastor Bill Sasser and the Dear Saints at Grace Church at Franklin for the wonderful gift, financial gift, that they just sent in recently that also was a godsend to rescue

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio from the brink of extinction. Pastor Bill and the

Dear Saints at Grace Church at Franklin have been such an extraordinary blessing to this program, and even though they know that I have my disagreements with them, and in fact even with you, over the differences between the confessionally

Reformed Baptists who are Covenantal and the New Covenant Calvinistic Baptists, they still, knowing of this disagreement, are extraordinarily generous to me and this program, and I can't even come up with the words to adequately thank

Pastor Bill and those dear brethren for their ongoing support, and I hope that you folks are listening, and I want to just again thank you from the very depths of my heart.

Isn't it true, Tony, that sometimes we take things, even though they may be important things,

I'm not trying to trivialize any kind of differences that brothers in Christ may have, but sometimes they become so overblown in their importance and are used as weapons against each other.

It's very sad, isn't it? It is very sad, yeah. These are issues that we can, you know, discuss.

We can agree to disagree agreeably, but fundamentally we are saved by grace alone in the Lord Jesus Christ alone.

Amen. Well, we have to go to our final break right now, and send us that email to chrisorrenson at gmail .com

if you have a question for Dr. Costa. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages. Hi, I'm Phil Johnson, host and executive director of Grace to You, the media ministry of John MacArthur.

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We're back with Dr. Tony Costa, Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary and we have been discussing his latest book

Early Christian Creeds and Hymns and our email address is chrisonsen at gmail .com

chrisonsen at gmail .com. If you have a question for Dr. Costa, please always give us your first name, city and state and country of residence.

And Dr. Costa, before we even go on with a further discussion on the

Early Christian Creeds and Hymns, I want to make sure that you announce to our listeners the details about your online courses.

Yes, I have an online course coming up starting Sunday, September the 26th and this is an online course that is open for anyone.

It is not for seminary students per se. It doesn't involve any coursework of any kind.

It runs for eight consecutive Sunday evenings from Sunday, September 26th till Sunday, November the 21st from 630 p .m.

Eastern Standard Time till 930 p .m. Eastern Standard Time. And we've run a number of these courses now, at least for about two years, and we have students from literally every continent on the planet that joins us on Zoom.

So, you can learn from the comfort of your own home and once again, you don't have to be a seminary student to learn this.

The title of the course is No King But Christ and we're going to be addressing various issues like the

World Economic Forum, the whole issue related to this whole vaccine passport that here in Canada we are facing right now.

There are people losing their jobs, my jobs on the line as well at the University of Toronto because they're trying to force vaccines on us.

The course is going to address these various issues. It's going to address the kingdoms of this world and rebellion against the divine king.

We're going to talk about the value of human life from a biblical perspective. So, this course is geared to help people navigate these troubled waters that we are going to be facing in the months ahead and also to give them hope and an opportunity to network with other believers.

So, the wonderful thing about this course, Chris, is we literally have students from all over the world and they join in, they learn, they engage, they interact.

The course is only $99 Canadian dollars. So, it's a deal for our American friends because of the conversion rate between the

US dollar and Canadian dollar and they get the handout to get

PowerPoints handed to them. All our lectures are recorded so students who live outside the

Eastern Standard Time Zone can always access it later. So, that begins

Sunday, September 26th. If they're interested, they can contact me at torontoapologetics at gmail .com.

That's torontoapologetics at gmail .com. Thanks, Chris. Great. My pleasure.

Let's see here. We have a question from Joseph in South Central Pennsylvania.

He says, sorry if you've already said this, I'm tuning in late, but I was wondering how long the longest

New Testament hymn is and I am wondering if those practice exclusive psalmody don't use

New Testament hymns because they're too short to incorporate as an actual song in worship service.

No, they don't incorporate any of those hymns that we recognize in the New Testament because, once again, the source of this tradition goes back to John Calvin.

I think he was asking specifically about the brevity of them or the length. Oh, I see.

Of the New Testament hymns? Yes, whereas many of the psalms are very long and obviously can be more easily turned into songs of worship.

Yeah, I mean, is he asking whether the New Testament hymns can be turned into songs of worship?

Is that the question? He also asked what was the longest hymn in the New Testament. Oh, I see.

The longest hymn is John 1, 1 to 18, also known as the Prologue of John.

And as far as the other hymns, can they standing on their own be used for New Testament worship without having extra biblical wording added to them?

Yeah, I mean, they can be used in worship. I'm not familiar with any hymns today that we use that are taken from them, but they certainly can be used in Christian worship.

Those who hold to the psalms as the only source, of course, won't do that because, again, they're basing this on the tradition that Calvin passed down.

And Calvin's reasoning, of course, was that they are God -breathed. Correct.

And as I mentioned already, if you want to be consistent with that, far be it from me to criticize

John Calvin or disagree with him, but if you're going to be consistent about that, a preacher shouldn't preach or a pastor shouldn't preach.

You should just read the Bible and then say thank you and good night or good afternoon.

That's right. That's right. In fact, he shouldn't even say that. I think that's... No, no, not based on Scripture.

Before we run out of time, I want you to have three or four minutes of uninterrupted time to basically summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners regarding our discussion today.

Yeah, I just want our listeners to appreciate the fact that the

Bible possesses many articles, many creeds, and many hymns that affirm what it is that we as believers of the

Lord Jesus Christ must unite on. These are the essentials, so the creeds and the hymns of the

Bible bring this back to the Lord Jesus Christ, to His supremacy, to His great work of redemption,

His incarnation, His passion, His suffering, His vicarious death on the cross for sinners,

His burial, His resurrection, His exaltation, His session at the right hand of the

Father, enthroned as King forever, and also the fact that He is our only

Sovereign, that we have no king but Christ, that He is the one that we ought to obey in all matters of faith and conscience, that Christ should have the supremacy in all things, not just over our lives, but over our marriages if we're married.

Christ should have the supremacy over our employment. Christ should have the supremacy over our church.

Christ should have the supremacy over our devotion. And as Charles Spurgeon once said many, many years ago in his pastor's school as he was training young men for the ministry, a young man came to him and presented a sermon that he was going to preach on the following Lord's Day, and Spurgeon looked over the sermon and noticed there was nothing said about the

Lord Jesus Christ, and he said, a sermon that does not contain anything on the

Lord Jesus Christ and His supremacy is not and can never be a true sermon.

And so I just want to leave our listeners with the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ deserves our utmost surrender,

He's our King, there is no king but Him, and that we must keep

Him as supreme over all things. And we must also recognize that He reserves the sovereign right to receive the glory that is due to His name from His church, and He reserves the sovereign right to receive and He will receive the adoration and He will receive the glory of the nation in the end of time.

You refer to Colossians chapter 1 verses 15 through 20 as the grand finale hymn, if you could explain.

Yes, yes, well Paul begins that passage by saying that Christ is the image of the invisible

God, firstborn of all creation, indicating that He is the heir, the heir of all creation, and to Him and by Him all things are made visible and invisible,

He's before all things, He's the head of His church, and He is the firstborn from among the dead.

And then Paul goes on to say in verses 19 to 20 that it pleased the

Father that in Him all fullness should dwell, and also that through the blood of His cross

God has entered into peace with us through justification, that through Christ God has entered and made peace with sinners, and then it says that in Christ God will unite all things under Him, that is to say the cosmos themselves will be brought under the authority and the subjection of Christ, and so that hymn points forward to the fact that one day this broken cosmos, this cosmos that has been suffering the aftereffects of the fall, the whole creation,

Paul says in Romans 8 is groaning with pangs, it awaits the manifestation of the sons of God.

In other words, it awaits the restoration of all things, and so Christ is not just the one through whom

God made the universe, He's the one through whom God saves sinners, and He's also the one through whom God will once again restore all things in the universe, and they will all be made subject to our

King Jesus Christ. Amen. Well, I want to remind you folks of the website for Toronto Baptist Seminary, tbs .edu,

tbs .edu. If you want to purchase the book that we have been discussing today that has been published by H &E

Publishing, H &E Publishing, go to our sponsors,

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service at cvbbs .com, cvbbs .com,

and ask them for early Christian creeds and hymns published by H &E

Publishers and written by Dr. Tony Costa, C -O -S -T -A, and please mention to cvbbs .com

that you heard about this book from Chris Arnson and Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and also,

Dr. Costa, please repeat your email address if anybody is interested in enrolling in your online course.

Yes, the email address again is torontoapologetics, all one word, at gmail .com.

That's torontoapologetics at gmail .com, and if you email us, tell us you're interested in taking the course, we'll get you all set up and registered and ready to go.

Great, and folks, don't forget, if you are a man in ministry leadership, whether in the church or in a para -church ministry, please try to come to the next

Iron Sharpens Iron Radio Pastor's Luncheon. It's absolutely free of charge, Monday, September 27th, 11 a .m.

to 2 p .m. at the Bongiorno Conference Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, featuring

Dr. Conrad Mbewe, pastor of Kabwata Baptist Church of Lusaka, Zambia, Africa, and founding chancellor of African Christian University, and Vodie Baucom's pastor.

This is going to be an extraordinary event, and it's absolutely free of charge, Monday, September 27th, 11 a .m.

to 2 p .m. at the Bongiorno Conference Center in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, absolutely free of charge.

Send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com, and put Pastor's Luncheon in the subject line.

I want to thank you, Dr. Costa, for doing such an extraordinary job today on a fascinating topic.

I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write, and I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater