Dr. Carl Trueman's Inaugural Address at the Center for Classical Theology

Well, greetings. Welcome to The Dividing Line. We have a lot to cover today. It's a stormy day here in Phoenix.

I guess this is when we schedule winter in for two weeks, because next week we are looking at, and I'm hearing myself for some reason,

I'm not sure where that is, and we next,

I think by Monday, it's supposed to be 77 for a high here in Phoenix. I just thought

I'd mention that to those of you who are still shivering and freezing, wherever you're shivering and freezing at.

It's going to be nice here for a while. Anyway, last week sometime

I encountered a video. I have not been able to obtain videos from the founders thing on confessionalism yet.

I've only seen clips eventually. It's like G3 does too.

You have to wait for a couple months before stuff is actually available. Eventually we'll get around to it.

We had seen, advertised, announced that Credo and Matthew Barrett and the classical theology guys, by the way, everybody involved in these conversations believes in and promotes classical theology.

This is all a matter of emphasis, depth, and source.

What are you going to emphasize? How far are you going to go? What is the source from which you're going to derive these things?

These are what all the issues are about. But classical theology is just simply, that's a term that as far as I understand, was coined by open theists in opposition to the historical emphasis upon the immutability of God, God's unchanging nature, all the discussions of the various omnis and ims and so on and so forth, which of course open theists deny these things.

They deny that God has, for example, exhaustive knowledge of all future events.

They would limit God's knowledge to, and I don't even know how they do this to be honest with you, at least consistently, they limit

God's knowledge of future events to what he himself is going to do. But if he interacts with man, how would he even know that?

That would require knowing what men had done to require him to do the things that he does.

I've always found open theism to be rather incoherent one way or the other. But anyway, the debates that have been going on are all about points within the same realm.

We all affirm that classical theology is valid.

Obviously, I can't reach it from where I am right now, but just a couple weeks ago, we had

Jeffrey Johnson on. The real dispute, honestly, is biblicism, the relationship of scripture and tradition, the concept of the great tradition, people promoting stuff like Christian Platonism, and concerns that many of us have that we are literally hearing people saying that you need to have

Aristotle's metaphysics to have the highest form of the doctrine of the Trinity, which I will never accept.

If the doctrine of the Trinity is, in fact, revelation, first of all, if it's not revelation, we shouldn't believe it, no matter what's developed over time.

If God has not revealed himself to exist in this fashion and therefore to be worshipped in this way, then we shouldn't believe it.

To literally hear people saying that the highest form of the expression of the doctrine of the is to be found in the embracing of Thomas's metaphysics, which is really a

Christianized version of Aristotelian metaphysics, is deeply troubling and should be deeply troubling to all of us.

The classical theology resourcement movement, the way it's being advertised by people like Barrett and others, we've just thrown it all out.

Everybody in the 20th century is a bunch of dolts. We are riding in to save the day and to get us back on track because we lost our way.

It's like everyone became open theists or something. I'm just sort of like, no, we didn't.

Certainly, I have criticized folks like William Lane Craig for a long time for his neo -Apollinarianism and minimalistic

Trinitarian theology. I've debated open theists.

John Sanders is one of the leading voices in that movement. We debated Reform Theological Seminary many, many years ago.

He's still not happy about that, but that's another issue. Well, in fact, you have to go to the archives now since Justin Barley has moved on, but the unbelievable webcast, the archives are still up.

You'll be able to find, I think it may have been the last time I was on. Now, think about it.

We reprised the debate with John Sanders, and he was significantly more aggressive than he had been originally.

Part of the reason for that was he lost his job over that first debate.

At least, I think it was that one. We did two debates over a couple days. One was on inclusivism, and then the other was on open theism.

It was probably the open theism debate that led to that. Anyway, we've been doing this for a long time.

Jeffrey Johnson, of course, in his new book talks about a biblical classical theology versus a philosophical classical theology.

I think there is great merit in that. For me, it all comes back to what is the source?

What are you deriving this from? What is driving this? If we're going to continue to believe in semper referenda, does that make any sense in your system?

It seems to me that I see Protestants undercutting their own foundation by embracing views of tradition in formulation of statements about the doctrine of God proper that they reject in regards to the doctrine of the church, soteriology, everything else.

To be a Protestant is to have to subject the tradition that came out of the medieval period, even in the early church, to a biblical examination.

Otherwise, you're not going to be a Protestant. You're not. You're going to have to change your views.

The basis for our examination is always Scripture. Dr. Carl Truman was the opening speaker, the inaugural speaker at this conference.

James Dolezal, Matthew Barrett, and the fellow from TGC, names escaping me at the moment, were the speakers at this particular get -together.

I listened. There are just so many things that Carl Truman said that are insightful, useful.

One of the things that is truly disturbing about this resourcement movement is it seems that those who are promoting it either don't listen to their critics or they just automatically block their critics, like Matthew Barrett has blocked me.

As a result, it seems like they start believing stuff that just isn't true.

Craig Carter lied about me and said I had said this, that, and the other thing, which I never had.

Everybody knew it, but he doesn't seem overly concerned about that kind of stuff. What concerns me is

Dr. Truman and I had a number of enjoyable encounters in the past.

We had spoken together with Phil Johnson in the

Northeast, up in New England. And he and I had stayed in contact for quite some time.

We were both cycling fans, and so we would text one another about what was going on, the

Tour de France, and stuff like that. Then I started hearing about a year and a half, two years ago, this

Neo -Sassanian stuff. It did seem like Dr.

Truman was referring to me, and so I wrote to him. I had a number of email addresses, including a

Gmail address. When I didn't hear back, because I was just basically asking, are you talking about me?

Because I'd like to talk about this. Are you talking about me? The phone number had changed, so I did try calling.

Then I just went online and found his email address. It's not difficult to find at Grove City College.

I went online, got that, sent the emails. He won't respond to me. Now, I would like to hope that, well, everything you wrote went into spam or whatever, and I suppose it's possible.

You can still hope for things like that. But there does seem to be, and I've speculated, because Dr.

Truman, in this lecture, talks about his coming out of where he used to be.

He connects it to writing a book on John Owen and Owen's use of Thomas Aquinas.

It's almost like, for these guys, it's all around the same time period, 2016. It's almost like a conversion.

It very much reminds me of how a lot of Calvinists speak about becoming Calvinists, or former

Calvinists about becoming non -Calvinists. But it's a little strange when you think about it.

I pray God's best for him, even if he won't talk to me. He still has great, great insights.

I wanted to play with some of those great insights first, before we look at the stuff that I wanted to interact with.

Again, you'll notice how we're doing this. I'll be playing what he says. The other side talks about what they heard someone saying about some unknown internet apologist guy, and you don't get meaningful interaction coming from that side.

But that's how we do it, and that way you can make decisions for yourself.

I think that's the important way to do it. The only thing I'll play from Barrett's introduction, and I will be playing this a little bit faster, 1 .2.

It's not fast enough to cause any problems, but it helps us get through the program a little faster. 1 .2 is his reference to the great tradition, just so that we have it in the court record, shall we say, as to what the conference is all about, and what this emphasis upon classical theology is all about.

So, hoping we had real problems a couple months ago when

I used this program last. Fired it up today, and it worked just fine. But that was before we started the program.

My experience is, once it's live on the air, things change.

So I'm going to click this button here and just really hope for the best. It exists to contemplate

God and all things in relation to God by listening, and here's the key part, by listening with humility to God's word, along with the wisdom of the great tradition.

The purpose really is to create a renewed vision for theology today in the spirit of faith -seeking understanding.

So there you have humbly listening the word of God and the wisdom of the great tradition.

Well, as someone who has taught church history for a very long time,

I've never used the phrase the great tradition. But I will remind you once again of,

I believe it was Dr. Calhoun was his name, I need to look that back up again, it's been many years, but he used to teach at Covenant Seminary, taught church history, and he would finish each class session with either a positive or a negative prayer, depending upon basically what the essence of what they had studied was.

Sometimes you have to say things in church history that are not positive at all, and then sometimes very positive things we can learn from.

That's the essence of church history. And so can we glean wisdom from those who have come before us?

Yes. But I also think that one of the greatest sources of wisdom that we can come up with in looking at church history is looking back and seeing where, in a subtle way, people have gotten off a biblical track, maybe for reasons that we can literally say, yeah, at that point in time, given the pressures that were upon them, we can understand why they would have seen things this way.

And now that we don't have the same pressures, we can correct that.

But here's what happens. You start off, and let's say it was during a period of persecution, and as a result, there are people who suffer, become martyrs, and their writings, because they were a martyr, now are elevated in their authority.

It becomes almost unquestionable to question what they said.

What was a speculative idea that sounded good at the time, due to what was going on, becomes established as part of the tradition that can no longer be questioned.

And no matter what you do, that results in the elevation of a particular individual's understanding to the level of Scripture itself.

And that, obviously, is where some of the real problems are.

I mean, I've used as the example the fact that we know that Augustine is deeply influenced by Neoplatonism.

Neoplatonism is not derived from Scripture. It is a metaphysical construct that would not be recognized by the prophets of old.

Isaiah wouldn't recognize these things. And yet, it has become elevated and established.

And for me, and I think for anyone just reasoning along,

Semper Reformanda is a recognition that what we've been given in Scripture is unchanging.

It's objective revelation from God. And as worldviews change and metaphysical paradigms become popular and then unpopular, and of course, when you're talking about Greek metaphysics, their understanding of the world was just simply wrong in many, many ways.

Things aren't just made up of earth and fire and water and so on and so forth. And so, we have to keep all those things in mind in being able to recognize when tradition has taken a role that it should not have.

There's something, I think, to think about along those lines. Still hearing myself. I'm not sure why. It's like the thing over here is really loud for some reason.

I don't know why. Okay, so let me play a couple of things that I agree with Dr.

Truman about that are perfectly valid and necessary to think about and good insights and things like that before we look at any of the negative stuff.

The first pathology, I think, is that we tend to be an anti -historical culture. There are various reasons for that.

I actually think America is particularly prone to being anti -historical, partly because, and this sounds like a condescending comment of an

Englishman about America, partly because you don't have a lot of history. And anybody who goes to Europe, you know,

I've spent months and months in London over the years. I've missed that place. I really, really do, though seeing what's going on there, not quite as much as I would have in the past.

That's very true. And being on a new continent, of course, was important in saving the world from the

Nazis and things like that. But being on a new continent, there isn't a lot of history.

Our oldest buildings, our oldest monuments are childishly young in comparison to the

United Kingdom or France or Russia or whatever. And as a result, there is a deep anti -historical strain.

And I'm not sure of all the sources for it. And obviously, as one who's been teaching church history for decades now,

I try to counteract that as best as possible. I try to tell people that church history is one of the few ways that we can take a mirror to ourselves, because Christians are

Christians. And yes, we can be in different contexts and stuff, but we're seeing the building of Christ's kingdom.

We're seeing the work of the Spirit of God. And there are many ways that we can...

In many ways, it's the only way that we can see ourselves. When we look at ourselves in our current context, we're just too close to see.

But church history gives us an opportunity to have some distance and to see the parallels and maybe to see ourselves in a more useful fashion.

But yeah, in the United States, it is something to have to overcome to try to get people outside the church or within the church to consider history and to see our place in that history.

That is a real truth. And what is critical theory? In some ways, it is a very anti -historical kind of phenomenon, because what it does is it debunks the great historical narratives.

Those great historical narratives which gave unity to the people of this nation, that's one of the crimes of what's happening right now.

The regime in Washington is seeking to destroy the nation by promoting and allowing an invasion.

If you know anything about immigration policy of 30 -40 years ago, then you know

I'm definitely coming down with something again. It's wonderful. I just got over it and only have two weeks before I leave again and working on something again.

Anyway, you know that some of the requirements, most

American citizens who have their citizenship by birth could not pass the citizenship tests that people would have to go through.

One of the reasons that they had to read these things was to recognize there needs to be a common narrative.

We need to be going the same direction. We need to have at least something of a common goal.

And up until the last 25 years, we did. So by encouraging the invasion of the

United States, millions of people under the current regime, and kudos to Governor Abbott, Texas has the biggest border.

I hope they stand up and tell the federal government to go take a hike.

Something tells me that that'll eventually collapse too, but I don't know that it's going to make any difference because New Mexico doesn't have a governor that's going to do anything.

Arizona doesn't even have, I think, a legitimate governor at all that's going to do anything. And then

California. So the invasion will continue even if it doesn't come through Texas. And it's just astonishing.

I will not live to see the history of all this written, but hopefully my great -grandchildren will read about it and see the astonishing corruption that that existed and allowed this to happen.

Anyway, anyway, sorry, I sort of got off the topic there a little bit. But I think his comment stands as true for the general culture in which we live, and that is that there is an impatience with traditional liturgies.

So he was talking about an Anglican, and there is an impatience with traditional liturgies.

I think that's very true. I think it's very clear that many people in the church have the feeling that if it was done this way in the past, we need to do it differently now.

We need to separate ourselves from those who came before us. And in fact, I'm seeing a lot of this in many of these young men, some of the young Christian nationalists who have decided that they're just going to blame everything on every generation that came before them.

And so there's nothing they can learn from anyone older than them. And so it's go for the novel and the new.

Ironically, many of them end up going for the old, thinking that it's novel and new. It's a little bit strange.

But there is an idea out there, and I think

Dr. Truman's right about that. What religious freedom does is it tilts power towards the congregants.

Now, he talked a lot about this. He expanded on it, and it was a very interesting portion of a relatively brief lecture.

I think this is 55 minutes, and I included Barrett's introduction, so it may have only been 50 minutes long.

And he does make the point, now what you're going to do with it and how you roll with it is more up to you.

But he does make the point that while you can believe the same things that were believed, say, in the year 1400, you don't believe them for the same reasons.

Now, of course, part of that was if you believed them in 1400 and you dared to question those things, you might find yourself tied to a stake and burned.

There were a lot of executions over the years along those lines that we don't really want to look back on and go, oh, that was great.

We missed that. I hope we don't miss that. But that does impact things.

That does impact how you believe, why you believe, and things like that.

And as he goes on to talk about it, it influences the ecclesiology and church discipline and stuff like that.

In a society where there are a variety of denominations and churches, the tilt is against ecclesiastical authority.

Right. And then he illustrates that in this way. The third function, reclaiming the sinner, generally doesn't work.

Why? Because the sinner can leave your church and go down the road to another church. Right. First time

I ever heard anyone do anything or say anything to address this reality was at PRBC, when in guarding the table we would ask if someone was under discipline from another church.

And given the PRBC, we asked people to talk to the elders before they partook.

At Apologia, we just make it part of the instructions before the supper. We'd say, you do not have to be a member of our church to partake.

You need to be a baptized believer in Jesus Christ. And if you are under discipline from a like -minded

New Testament church, please not use our table to get around that discipline. But that's just...

even that, let's just be honest, in the vast majority of evangelical churches, no concept of a guarded table, the importance of the supper, that kind of stuff just isn't there.

So yes, that religious freedom does do all of those types of things.

There is something toward the end here, real quick. And that's what makes the incarnation that much more magnificent.

It makes it both more mysterious, but also more magnificent. The more like man your

God is, the less wonderful the incarnation is likely to appear. Now, the reason

I mentioned that, it was at the end of a prayer from a mystical woman from the 1300s or something.

But the reason I mentioned that is our modern

CCM music, God is My Boyfriend, Girlfriend type music, does most definitely,

I think, diminish... and the whole...

look, I think we still have it. We still have that rack of cassette tapes.

And I think the first one, number 401 or whatever it was, was

The Attributes of God. And so I remember that was recorded on Camelback.

We had that second room, and we would have little get -togethers, conferences type things.

I remember the night that I did that, going over what would be clearly identified as classical theology.

And so I fully get how important it is for Christians to be in awe of their

God. Now, I believe the only way that awe will have transformative effect is if it is based upon submission to the truth of God as revealed in Scripture.

Scripture is the shepherd speaking, and if our awe of God is actually based upon our having accomplished some kind of specific philosophical feat,

I've thought through all this, and I've put this together with that, and now I've come to this that nobody else in my pew at church will ever be able to do.

I don't think that that's lasting. I don't think that's transformative. I think when we see

God as he's revealed himself in Scripture, that is lasting, and that is transformative.

I think that's extremely important. So with that,

I started with the positive stuff, but before we move to the negative stuff, this is interrupting everything, and I apologize for that.

But by the way, Rich is playing with cameras. I just want you to know if I end up looking off someplace else, it's because Rich is playing with cameras, and we actually have three in here now, and so just so you know, there's

Martin Luther down there. He wants to look in on stuff.

Anyway, it's a good place to briefly pause. There's at least twice since we started in my...

Now, I have my Twitter feed to where every two and a half minutes it refreshes, and there's a little baby that I'm sure at least some of you have seen in your feeds as well.

Little Gus received a heart transplant. It wouldn't start beating.

There was only a certain amount of time that they could keep him going without that, and then it started beating, but it wasn't really beating properly, and there's been stuff today, and just a lot of us are praying for little

Gus, and so there's been some developments today. We just want to continue praying for little

Gus. I don't know if putting little Gus in the search thing will bring anything up, but we definitely want to pray little guy, and that the

Lord would be merciful to him. So we move to the negative stuff, to the things where not necessarily negative, but where I need to have some kind of interaction with what

Dr. Truman said. One of them is the appropriate emphasis upon Scripture alone as an authority, and I think that's a good thing, the emphasis upon Scripture alone.

The way it has often played out, however, is not so much in a way that the

Reformers would have understood, but combined with the anti -historical mentality of our culture, it has become iconoclastic.

One could make the case that the Reformers had, I would say, a hermeneutic of trust relative to church tradition.

The church tradition had authority until it was proved to be wrong. I think the modern evangelical mentality has tended to be church tradition only has authority once it has been proved right.

That is a difference in the imagination. It's a difference in the culture. It may not appear different on the page, but it represents a very, very different cultural pathology.

Now, I'm not sure the term cultural pathology is overuseful, but the issue is, when you say proved right, by what standard?

By what standard? What is going to cause, what's going to make, give us this proof?

And we can spend a lot of time in it. I could direct you to Institutes of Christian Religion by John Calvin, Book 4,

Chapter 9. There's a whole chapter in regards to relationship to councils and creeds.

But, and I'm considering, once again, in defense of Reformed biblicism, especially because I didn't mark any of it out, but Dr.

Truman talks about having met Heiko Obermann once and things like that.

I had the opportunity to sit in Dr. Obermann's home during a doctoral seminar after I graduated from Fuller, and the subject was

Calvin's response to Satellito, which is one of the most important documents in Reformation history.

And so I had that opportunity. Anyway, Calvin, like I said, we may do the whole chapter, but here's an important segment that I think is directly relevant to what is being discussed here.

So again, Book 4, Chapter 9, Section 8, Paragraph 8 or Paragraphs 8, 4 .9

.8. What then? You ask, will the councils have no determining authority?

Yes, indeed, for I am not arguing here either that all councils are to be condemned, or the acts of all to be rescinded, and, as the saying goes, to be canceled at one stroke.

But, you will say, you degrade everything, so that every man has the right to accept or reject what the councils decide.

Not at all. But whenever a decree of any council is brought forward, it should like men, first of all, diligently to ponder at what time

I should, excuse me, I misread that. I should like men, first of all, diligently to ponder at what time it was held.

Now just hold on just one second. How many people even know?

Calvin knew. He could expect that ministers in his day would know and would have at least some semblance of information, and in reality, we have an overabundance of background information available to us today, if we know where to look and if we care to try.

But everybody who's ever taken church history from me knows. For example, what year was the

Council of Nicaea? I'm looking at you.

He's using the fact that he's doing stuff as an excuse to avoid...

Everybody who's ever taken church history from me knows on the final examination, one of the questions will be, what year was the

Council of Nicaea? And so all you've got to do is just get that number memorized, and you can't fail completely.

That's the important part. And it's 325. 325 AD. Okay, how about the

Council of Constantinople? That's when people start going, and I've used Constantinople as an example because that wacky new age chick whose name, whichever brain cell has been assigned storing her name, it's clearly close to the end of its useful life.

Out on a limb, what was, remember? Shirley MacLaine.

The brain cell that stores the name Shirley MacLaine in my brain has a bad sector.

I mean, if it was a hard drive, there's a bad sector there. And most people don't even know what a hard drive is anymore.

But yeah, I do remember.

I remember who that guy was. He wrote Out on a Broken Limb. Anyway, Shirley MacLaine would run around telling people that the

Bible used to teach reincarnation, but they took it out of the Council of Constantinople. Everybody at the

Council of Constantinople would be pretty shocked by that. But anyway, 381. And of course, 325, 381, you know, 56 years.

What happened during those 56 years? A lot happened during those 56 years. Most of that time period was the period of the

Arian Resurgency where the Arians took over the church and its Athanasius Contramundum, Athanasius against the world, and he's kicked out of his church five times for refusing to compromise, and he's defending the

Nicene symbol primarily by scriptural argumentation,

I would point out to you if you've read Athanasius. So there's the context, and the context of Constantinople is reaffirming

Nicaea, clarifying, expanding, and as I'm not sure if I marked this,

I'm pretty sure I did, but as we'll see from Dr. Truman, there's been a major development in Christology and in Trinitarian theology between 325 and 381.

I'll leave that to where, when he says that, we'll expand on it. The point is, you then get to Chalcedon 70 years later, and the historical and political context,

I didn't didn't bring them in here, but I have four or five books just in my library simply on the historical background information on Chalcedon, and that's because there's a lot of politics involved.

Politics within the church, politics outside the church, and what

Calvin's saying is, well, ponder at what time it was held.

What was going on at that time? What were the issues? And if those are not the issues we're facing today, then what if we detect in the language of a symbol, of a creedal statement from a council, language that had a specific application at that time, but would be misleading now, because things have changed and there's a different approach being taken.

What do you do in that situation? So he says,

I should like men first of all diligently to ponder at what time it was held, on what issue.

So if the issue is over here, is it appropriate to take that language and apply it over here at another time in history?

And that has happened many times. That's happened many, many times. Is that valid?

On what issue, and with what intention? With what intention?

What sort of men were present? Oh, yeah.

So when the monks are beating the snot out of each other at Ephesus, you know, when one side brings more monks to the battle than the other side, and that influences the result.

You think that's relevant? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think that's relevant. I think that's important. And when we look at the Council of Trent, now we don't see,

Protestants don't see the Council of Trent as having any kind of ecumenical authority, but one thing's for sure.

When you look at it, I'd like to know. I mean,

April of 1546, Council of Trent is when

Rome gives its first dogmatic definition of the canon.

First time, 1546. Who made those decisions? We know that one of the draft resolutions at the

Council of Trent used the partum, partum language.

Revelation is found partly in the oral and partly in the written. That's not what's in the final.

Who did that? Who said partum, partum? Who objected? Don't know.

Be nice to know. Be useful to know. But for most councils, we don't have any earthly idea.

Don't you think that might be important? What sort of men were present?

Then to examine by the standard of scripture what it dealt with.

This is John Calvin. This is John Calvin.

To examine by the standard of scripture what it dealt with, and to do this in such a way that the definition of the council may have its weight and be like a provisional judgment, yet not hinder the examination which

I have mentioned. Now, Calvin thought all this through. You know he thought all this through.

You know that as a young man, when he first wrote the

Institutes, now this is from the 1559 Latin, but over 20 years earlier when he had first written it, he had to be thinking these things through.

My concern is we haven't thought these things through for a long time.

My hope and my prayer is that our current set of controversies will force everybody to think through these things the way that Calvin did.

Because notice what he says. And to do this, that is to examine the conciliar statement by scripture so that the definition of the council may have its weight, so if it's not a biblical conclusion, it shouldn't have weight, and be like a provisional judgment, yet not hinder the examination which

I have mentioned. So in other words, all that stuff, what were they talking about? Who was there? What prompted all this?

Because you see, when you think about it, if you elevate these conciliar statements to the point of being the lens through which you now examine scripture, and we've seen people,

Rome does it every day. Rome does it every day. That's a past tense.

They started doing that a long, long time ago, and all the Marian dogmas and everything else are dependent upon that relationship of tradition over scripture.

But when you see self -professing Protestants do this, that's when

I go, hey, everybody wake up. Look what's happening here. Come on, think, think. And what

Calvin is saying is, however we look at that council, it cannot, its statements cannot hinder the examination which

I've previously mentioned. We need to always be able to look at these things and always be able to, you know, if we are saying this is an, this creedal statement,

Nicaea, is absolutely necessary to hold to, then what should be the most important demonstration of that for us?

It's biblical nature. It's biblical nature.

It is an accurate statement, not of something new, but of something old, that which is revealed in scripture.

And that's what this is all about. That's what I've been banging the drum about, and being willing to be bad -mouthed and canceled by all sorts of folks that I used to hang around with all the time, because we've got to go there.

And notice what he says. Next, next section of section eight.

Would that all kept that moderation, which Augustine enjoins in the third book against Maximinus, when he wishes to silence in a few words this heretic, he was an

Arian, contending over the decrees of councils, he says, quote, now you've heard me,

I've quoted this in numerous different translations over the years, but here's what Calvin gives, I ought not to throw up against you, the council of Nicaea, nor you against me, the council of Ariminum, as prejudging the matter.

For I am not subject to the authority of the second, nor you to that of the first.

Let matter contend with matter, cause with cause, reason with reason, by scriptural authorities, not those peculiar to either one, but those common to both.

So here, Augustine is seeking to correct Maximinus the

Arian, and he says, I can't quote Nicaea to you, and you can't quote

Ariminum to me. Let's go to scripture. Let's go to what is common to both. Which means what?

Which means Augustine believes that what Nicaea said is, and its fundamental truth content is because it accurately represents scripture.

That's why Nicaea II, the second Nicene council, long afterwards, 8th century, long after Nicaea, that's where you have veneration of icons and so on and so forth.

When you read the proceedings of that council, and at least it's reflective,

I'm not going to get through much of this today, it's reflective of how much the church has changed.

That we have almost nothing about the proceedings of the council of Nicaea. Almost everything we get from that, we get from Eusebius, we get from Athanasius, it's in passing, it's in letters, stuff like that.

They didn't think it was important enough to be recording all this stuff. By the time you get to second Nicaea, we've got sermons and all sorts of stuff that's being delivered.

The exegetical content of the argumentation for the veneration of icons is laughable.

It is laughable. It is Gail Riplinger -ish.

It's that bad. It's that bad. And so Calvin and the rest of us are being consistent to not grant authority to Nicaea 2.

But the Orthodox are going to look at us, the Roman Catholics are going to look at us and go, you're being inconsistent.

You grant authority to Nicaea 1, but not to Nicaea 2. Why? And we better know why.

And we better have a meaningful response as to why. And the why is what

Nicaea teaches about the relationship, the father and the son, primarily.

That's what it's about. We're not talking about the canons and decrees. Even there, we have to reject the canons and decrees of the ecclesiology that's unbiblical.

So we're already being biblicalists when we accept the

Nicene symbol, the creed, but not the canons and decrees, which the folks at Nicaea would not have looked upon in a positive way.

But what we're saying is the content of the creedal statement of Nicaea is binding and has dogmatic authority because of the depth and accuracy of its representation of biblical revelation.

It all comes back, if it's going to be binding on the Christian conscience, it all has to come back to that.

It has to come back to what God has said. That is what it must be.

And that's what Calvin is saying. Now, if you recall what

I just said about the biblical foundation of creedal statements, neo -Sassanianism, then

Calvin was a neo -Sassanian? I'm reading him directly.

I'm not giving you some scholar over here who thinks this and some scholar. I'm reading Calvin directly. His words are understandable.

What Augustine said to Maxwell and the Arian was also understandable. And maybe that's what scares people about us, is that we just go to the people, the pastors, and the people in the pews and go, here, here's what's really happening.

Here's what's really being said. So yeah, there you go.

We'll get to a little bit more here, but we will definitely need to be continuing this in the future.

I think also because evangelicalism has tended to have a deep suspicion of what

I would call speculative language as well. Probably as I use the language of speculative, some of you will immediately have reacted negatively to that language.

That's a sign of the culture I'm talking about. When you read the patristic fathers, when you read the medievals, when you read the reformers and see what they're actually doing and saying, there is a lot of what we might now call speculative language involved in what they do.

I think we live in a world where abstractions, speculative abstractions, are typically regarded with suspicion.

And in that kind of a world, in that kind of a world, the creeds and especially the confessions,

I think, will come under serious pressure. I have to ask what he means by speculative.

Now, I have serious problems with speculative theology.

What do I identify as speculative theology? Speculative theology is where you go beyond what scripture addresses.

Calvin likewise had problems with speculative theology. Illustration I've given,

I think it's perfectly valid. I haven't had anyone demonstrate any problems with it. But the headlights on your vehicle only go so far forward.

And if you've ever stopped your vehicle on a very, very dark highway, no road lights, nothing like that, and you may have even the brights on, and then you walk in front of your vehicle.

You get out there and it doesn't take you all that long until you're starting to get a little bit concerned about what your footing is going to be.

It's difficult to see. Things are getting darker and darker. Shadows getting longer and longer.

You still might be able to find something out there, but the lights only go so far.

And scripture functions in that way for us. So there are what we would call first order truths, where scripture says this, and scripture says that, and therefore when you put those two together, this must be this here.

This is the conclusion of that. And you can do that for a number of different issues.

So when scripture identifies Jesus, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

We can properly go, hey, wait a minute, Lord of glory, that's language of deity.

And you can't crucify deity. So the crucifixion is being applied to the physical incarnation, but we have one person who's the

Lord of glory, but he's also crucified. Well, that's the hypostatic union. That's the big argument into the fourth century and beyond, even to today in some ways, of the relationship between the divine and human

Christ. Does scripture teach there is divine and human Christ? Yes. So how do we understand that?

And we can go so far. We can say, well, Eutychianism didn't do it because that mixes

God and man together and you end up with a demigod. That's not going to do it. And Nestorianism, as later centuries at least would understand it, that can't do it because then

Jesus isn't truly incarnate. And Apollinarianism doesn't do it because he's no longer truly man.

But we're still looking at first order truths. We're putting them together on a second level and maybe a third.

Maybe that's about as far as we can go. Here's the problem. People don't want to stop there. People don't want to stop there.

Calvin, I'm sure in his quieter moments, speculated 10 stops down the road.

But he was the wise one to say, where scripture stops speaking, we need to stop speaking.

He saw that if you want to stay on solid ground, then you need to recognize that God has only given us the ability to address certain questions.

There are people in this world that will ask questions until the cows come home. They will never be satisfied with any limitation from God.

They never will. I know, I can see the faces of the many people I've met over the years that will never be satisfied.

But the problem is, you go down that road, there's no stopping. There just isn't any stopping.

Speculative theology is a dangerous area, because once you get out there at the very end of those headlights, there can be rabbit holes and all sorts of stuff.

You fall down and break your ankles and everything else out there, because you don't have light anymore.

You may be tempted, then, to replace the light coming from scripture with the light coming from someplace else.

And the results will not be good for the church, for the people of Christ, and you will end up teaching things that the apostles never dreamed of.

Here's a test, and we'll pick up at this point. I'll find some way of marking where we are.

But here's a test. I am not saying, and this could come up in some language, because he actually used an appropriate distinction.

I am not saying that there is no room for development in the expression of divine truth.

Divine truth is intended to be communicated to all people at all times, and hence is communicable.

That's different than the development of doctrine of Newman, Newman's development theory, where you can have the bodily assumption of Mary defined, which was plainly, inarguably unknown, not only to the apostles, but to the early church.

It's just complete novelty. And so, to define something like that, or to define papal infallibility, or the immaculate conception, these require development, not of something that pre -existed.

This is a new revelation. Let's just be honest. That's what it involves. Rome says no, but it's just obvious.

So, the question I think should always be asked is, not, did the apostles teach it in this language?

No. But would they recognize their teaching if they were to encounter this?

I believe the apostles would recognize the hypostatic union if they were to encounter it, and hear it explained, and how it was derived from the pages of scripture, from their very words.

The question is, where do you draw that line? How far do you go?

How many definitions based upon Plato or Aristotle?

How far can you go before the apostles are going to go, what are you talking about? I have no idea where you're going with this.

That's not what I was trying to communicate there. I never said anything about this. Where's that line?

And are we even allowed to ask? Are we even allowed to ask without being canceled, or blocked, or called a neo -Sassanian, or something like that?

Those are the questions we're asking. So, I'm going to mark a block here with some color

I didn't use. There we go. And that'll tell me where we get started. That's actually rather useful.

The question is, will this program work on Thursday?

Yeah, yeah. See, the last time I tried to use this program, it's a wonderful program.

Audio Notetaker is what it's called. No matter what we tried, resetting computers, we did everything, and it would only play the sound through the speakers of the laptop.

It wouldn't send it to the HDMI, which is what's feeding all the camera that I'm on right now.

I think it's the cam. No, this goes through that camera I'm on right now. Okay, this is going a different direction.

So, there are a lot of wires around here. And we could not figure out, and I've just not used the program since then.

The program has not updated. We fire everything up today. Worked fine. I don't know.

And that's how I say, we'll see on Thursday. It may, may not work.

I don't know. Well, all I know is right now, I feel fine, but my throat doesn't.

I almost feel like, well, let's get it done now, so we're not gonna be doing it on the trip. But I just had that three -week lung stuff.

This must be something else, I guess. So, I may sound like my long -distant cousin

Barry White on the next program. I don't know. We'll find out. But thanks for listening to the program today.