May 5, 2017 Show with Dr. Craig Biehl on “God the Reason: How Infinite Excellence Gives Unbreakable Faith (Part 2)”

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 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 whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. Now here's our host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania,.

Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this fifth day of May 2017, and no, we are not doing a Cinco de Mayo special on Iron Sharpens Iron.

Today I am delighted to have a returning guest to our program, Dr. Craig Beal. He is founder of Pilgrims Rock, a ministry which develops courses and other material to boost the believer's joy, comfort, and faith in Christ and Scripture and to nurture in believers and their children a God-honoring and intellectually defensible worldview that can survive and thrive in the face of sophisticated attacks of unbelief.

He's also the author of The Infinite Merit of Christ, The Glory of Christ's Obedience in the Theology of Jonathan Edwards. Today we are going to be discussing a new book, or should I say a different book, that we already began addressing the last time Craig was a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron.

We are delving back into his book, God, the Reason, How Infinite Excellence Gives Unbreakable Faith, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Craig Beal.

Chris, great to be back with you, and it's my honor and privilege to be with you.

And in studio with me is my co-host, the Rev. Buzz Taylor.

Hello once again, good to hear you again.

Good to hear you, Buzz.

And before we go into part two of God, the Reason, I want to hear something more about Pilgrims Rock because we have been discovering new listeners to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio every single week, sometimes on a daily basis, and therefore there may be many people who did not hear your previous interviews and do not know anything about Pilgrims Rock.

So if you could define or explain Pilgrims Rock.

But we found that a lot of non-homeschooling was designed to teach a presuppositional or covenantal or approach to worldview. Van Till and Jonathan Edwards and with some Schaefer thrown in and some C .S. Lewis thrown in, in order to build people up in the faith and to increase their understanding of the infinite excellence of God.

So it's very, very theological. It's designed to, and primarily out of the infinite excellence of God's perfections. And so we have a weekly blog that we send out that has God theological topics. That you might get in a general sort of a blog, hopefully is our desire, but written at a way that's very, very accessible.

And so we teach this at churches. I teach it at colleges and we do it online. We have webinars online three or four times a week. So if you go to pilgrimsrock .com, the webinars are free and they're on topics like the myth of neutral science or worldview made simple.

These sorts of things are why the Christian worldview is supported by everything in the universe, that sort of thing. So that's what we're up to. Welcome anybody to go to the site and sign up for the blogs or hopefully sign up for the webinars.

They're free and there's interaction. It's live. Great. And for those of you listening who want to do further exploration.

On Pilgrims Rock, you could go to pilgrimsrock .com. Can't get any easier than that. Pilgrimsrock .com. Tell us also something about this other book that we have not yet addressed that I definitely want to invite you back to address, The Infinite Merit of Christ, The Glory of Christ's Obedience in the Theology of Jonathan Edwards.

Well, that was at Westminster many years ago and it was published by originally by Reformed Academic Press. And it is a topic that is so neat and so important. And as one of my colleagues who used to be one of the fellows at the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale, put it this way.

He said that Edwards is at his absolute best on this topic. I was amazed that the topic was out there for the taking for the dissertation. And it really does education in a way that eliminates the possibility, I think, of errant use of justification.

So it roots justification on the infinite excellence of God, on His unchanging rule of righteousness, which is basically God is infinitely excellent. He deserves our love, honor, and obedience always.

He created us in dependence upon Him. And that unchanging rule of righteousness, beginning to end, never changed, never goes away standard. And in meeting that standard, an impediment to our believer united to Christ, infinite reward, marvelous, does a marvelous job and get out of the way.

I recommend the book to anybody who's thinking about justification and their salvation in Christ and who's troubled by any of the sort of errant views that are running around today, including the idea that our justification is contingent upon our works and that justification remains future, which the books that have recently come out, but it's always been an issue.

And so.

Now these books that are coming out, challenging forensic justification, that it's something that is yet in our future. Who are writing these books? Are these people who are professing to be reformed?

Or I understand that Roman Catholics might write books like that,.

But who's writing these books? I didn't do too much today, but I'll just say that he, he's not, he's very evangelical in his approach, but he does have a tendency to speak in language that sounds ambiguous with respect to justification being future.

We are justified at a point in time when we're, when we trust Christ as savior and yet passages that speak of future justification, for instance, Romans two should be with respect to the fact that there is a contingent aspect or element of justification that remains future.

It's based upon our perseverance and our works. Now, what I would say, and what I believe is a great job at is that, that indeed there is a future justification, but it's really a justification of God's righteousness and God's judgment.

So when you read Romans two five, where it says, you know, it talks about the day of judgment as being the day of the relation of the righteous judgment of God. You will use wordification as a justification of God's ultimate judgment to man and to angels.

A judgment, it's not a justification that awaits that judgment or justification is at the point of faith. We're united to Christ at the point of faith as united to Christ, anything and everything to satisfy God's righteous requirements, to satisfy God's justice is immediately imputed to perfect obedience, perfect sacrifice, sacrifice on the cross on our behalf to pay the penalty of sin.

So the requirements of God's law, perfect perfection, the negative aspects are completely ours. The right. So the idea of a future justification based on works is no judgment chapter there in Romans two, that it's about circumcision of the heart.

He will show that, that religious people who have works behind those works is either faith in Christ union with Christ and the imputation of Christ's righteousness. And therefore the response of faith or works that are done to be judged accordingly as an evidence of the reality of whether or not that person was indeed born again.

So there's some nuance there that I think really needs to come out. I don't think it's always addressed very well. Now, if you think of people like N .T. Wright and the new perspective on Paulism with Protestantism or the Roman Catholic view of justification with our view of justification, well, Edwards handily deals with that.

It's not a new perspective on Paul. It's an old error. It's a, it's nothing new at all. Thinking does that to him. Now she'll love the Lord, that God with all thy heart, mind, soul, and strength. And the only possibility of that being met is by somebody who's perfect from the womb to the tomb.

Then you have no other way of being justified before God. And by what Christ did in his life and in his sacrifice on the cross ideas that faith is meritorious or, or that we, to our justification through works future included by Christ and is imputed to us by virtue of our union with Christ by faith.

So faith, faith is not meritorious. Faith is that which unites us to Christ. And as Edwards would say is union with Christ and therefore united to Christ and the bond of love through faith, the husband and a wife getting married, all that is his becomes ours.

As all of that was ours became his when he hung on the cross on our, on our behalf and in our place. Well, we will.

Definitely, as I said, have to have you back to address that book. And if you could, after the show is over, hold on so we could schedule another interview with you. Okay, fine. And this book that we are addressing today, God, the reason I want to read some commendations that this book has received from some very prominent individuals.

This is God, the reason how infinite excellence gives unbreakable faith. First, we have John frame, the DD, the JD Trimble professor of systematic theology and philosophy at reform theological seminary, I guess he, he left Westminster West.

That's where he used to believe, if I'm not mistaken. But he says, Craig Beals, God, the reason is a very thorough presuppositional apologetic, arguing God's existence and his necessity for all reasoning, thinking, meaning, and therefore living.

The book is a conscious orderly defense of the biblical worldview. Its arguments are clear and cogent. I hope it gains many readers, Christian and non Christian alike. And then we have a Dr. Joel R. Beaky, president of Puritan reform theological seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan, who's been a guest on this program many times.

He says this thought provoking work shows the emptiness of atheism from an angle not often taken without indulging in technical terminology, or obscure philosophical arguments. Craig Beals starts with the attributes of God revealed in scripture, builds a rational worldview upon them, and demonstrates convincingly that without such a God, life makes no sense at all.

And Peter Lilback, president of Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, who's been a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron. He says Craig Beals, God, the reason is a remarkable work. It presents theology proper, the knowledge of God in all of its transcendent importance and breadth.

It does so in a way that is accessible, clear, and spiritually invigorating. If you are thirsting for a deeper and more personal knowledge of the Lord of the universe, drink deeply of this study. The divine perfection celebrated here will bless your life, stir your reason, and ground your faith on an unmovable foundation.

Very impressive commendations for this book. And I am going to give you our email address if you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Dr. Craig Beal. Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA. And today I'd like us to start the discussion by having you give us a comparison or contrast between blind faith versus justified faith.

And of course it's a huge issue for the person exercising blind faith. There's no rational objective proof possible. There's no evidence logically. That's the way that most.

Non-believers caricature Christians, or actually people of all religions basically, or most of them anyway. That's the way we get caricatured, isn't it, most often? You know, that's exactly.

Right. In fact, when they use the sort of science, of course, everybody operates according to faith and everybody has an ultimate object of authority in which they've placed their faith. The believer has placed their faith in the authority of our Creator and our Redeemer, the interpretation of reality.

And so they see our faith as blind faith and fideism when the actual truth is, our faith is justified faith, which is the furthest thing from fideism possible. Then, of course, there's a middle ground, which is sort of a semi-blind faith or a semi-fideism.

It's an uncertain conclusion. There's no certain truth. And it's intellectually indefensible. It relies upon subjective experience. And so it's really, in the case of blind faith, unbelief is entirely justified, seemingly, at least in terms of its adherence, you know, exempt them from rational critique, but it really is blind faith.

So it's really existential terminology. But really, God is wholly other and your crisis moment as you interact with scripture, scriptures and the objective Word of God, whether we accept it or not, it becomes the Word of God as you have this sort of experience, but really fideism as well.

Now, let me ask you a question about Neo-Orthodoxy.

In fact, perhaps we could have a whole program on that someday or even at least half a program. Is there enough biblical orthodoxy within Neo-Orthodoxy where we can embrace these adherents to Neo-Orthodoxy as our brothers in Christ?

Like, for instance, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who is a great hero of the Christian faith to many, who, whatever you might say about his theology, he was certainly a courageous man willing to risk and then eventually give his life for his beliefs.

And he was executed by the Nazis, as you know, when even at a point during the war, when it was unnecessary for the Nazis to do so, they, it's almost like they did it out of an act of spite or vengeance to him.

But what do you make of these folks that embrace Neo-Orthodoxy?

Should we claim them as our brethren or not? Interesting question. And I know that the introduction to the recent most popular Bonhoeffer book, Bonhoeffer's Believism on the Right Side and Evangelism on the Other Side.

Is that the one by Eric Metaxas? Yes. Okay. Yes. And I'm not sure what he means by that because Neo-Orthodoxy is not a cure for either one of those things. He pointed out, and as many others have pointed out, Van Til, of course, his terminology.

And so the terminology used by Neo-Orthodox theologians, meditation in the warm, but they don't mean what they mean to the evangelical believer. They, they, they, they generate the war to come in a person condemned for slander that we might be delivered from that condemnation.

So I have a hard time. In fact, when you start of Christ. Yeah. That's when it becomes dangerous to.

Not distinguish between somebody who could be a hero for many reasons and a Christian hero. Right. And I know that I'm probably going to get into trouble for saying this, but I think the same could be said of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

He was certainly, I think, an American hero. He was a man that risked his life and eventually was murdered for standing up for a very just cause that the, the treatment of blacks and other people of other races with dignity, respect, and to be treated like human beings where this nation and other places in the world had, and still do treat people of other races like animals.

And at the very least with, without dignity and respect and in a lower rank of, of life than, than whites. But as much as you can pour accolades justly or rightfully upon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the man, according to his own doctoral dissertation was really not a biblical Christian.

He was not a Christian the way the new Testament would define a Christian because he denied the main tenets of what Christians believe. He denied even the deity of Christ itself. He denied the, the substitutionary atonement of Christ.

He denied the bodily resurrection of Christ. And you could go on and on. So, you know, obviously, and I know that the, at a recent Reformed conference I had, there were people there, or at least one individual, mocking uh, Christians who police Dr. King's theology.

And that disturbed me because I'm saying to myself, well, the Apostle Paul invited people to police his own theology. Why shouldn't we police anyone else's theology who happens to be a great, uh, widely embraced hero or great, a prominent figure in history?

Am I off base here?

It's frightening when people use that type of language about policing orthodoxy when what that seems to be saying is truth doesn't matter and what you believe doesn't matter and, and what God has chosen to reveal to us, lived and died for people for not, and that's God through Paul and athematizing people who get the gospel wrong.

And when, and when people's eternal destiny is at stake, I mean, this is a serious issue. And to sort of dismiss it as if all these people are policing, when you have people denying the very heart and soul of the faith, judgment and judgment come in all consequences when we talk like that.

And, and with respect to Bonhoeffer, you know, what he did, a hero in that respect, and should be lauded as one in that respect. But to, to point to him as some sort of theological specific enough, and it doesn't convey a right message.

Legalism is just an, you know, everybody gets on board with, you know, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, then what's next? You know, religious terminology without religious reality and objective, objective truth, what have we done?

People that read Bonhoeffer don't know that and don't know those issues. And they hear his religious terminology and they don't know necessarily what's behind it. And so it may not be as detrimental as it could be.

You should know better with theological problem and neo-orthodoxy is not a solution. And Reverend Buzz Taylor has a.

Question or comment. You said you shy away from terms like easy believism. That kind of caught me here by surprise. What would, what kind of terminology would you use to describe things?

To describe easy believism, shall I say? Well, I mean, we're, this, this, this goes back obviously all the way back to the, between Hodge and St. Hodge and MacArthur and all the others. Easy believism, what does that mean?

You have faith the size of a mustard seed, you're saved. If you're united to Christ through faith, if you're in your last breath and you hold on to Christ like the thief on the cross and you hold on to Christ, you're saved.

Now that's it. Now the issue is when you're saved, when you're united to Christ, are you at the same time given new life? And what is the issue with respect to justification and new life? Well, him extensively in Infinite Merit on this issue, we're justified solely and completely by what he did.

We can never meet the standard of perfect righteousness. We can never satisfy God's justice. Not even one iota in effect. So we're justified by faith alone, bare faith alone. But if it's true faith, if it's embracing Christ as Savior for who he is, as God, as Lord, as sufficient Savior, with empty hands, of nothing of our own that we bring, but as the living God, the third person of the Trinity, and he will produce a changed life and change, and if you're justified, you have new life.

And that's why our works can be judged in some sense in the sense that between new life and justification, and then you end up having this sort of foggy discussion as to how our works contribute to a future justification.

They contribute to a future justification zero. Absolutely not at all. They're there as an evidence that God can use to justify his righteous judgment, but they don't contribute anything, because the only thing that contributes to our salvation is the perfect, complete righteousness of Christ and satisfying God's justice.

And faith, victorious, unites us to him where that merit is credited to us. So easy believism, what does that mean? I don't know what that means. I don't know what people are trying to say by that. You say, well, I believed three years ago and I'm still running a brothel, you know?

There's something not congruent with your testimony and your life. Your justification really happened, that you were truly united to Christ, that your faith is real. Now those are real issues. Is it true faith all you really is?

And it can lead to all sorts of error, and it can lead to a 20-year debate that shouldn't be a debate at all.

When I hear that term, I just think of those that think that a person who is dead in their own sins can on a whim respond to an altar call or any kind of invitation and believe just because they think it's going to benefit them in some way.

For instance, even benefit them by going to heaven when they die, irregardless of whether they repent. And I immediately think of, of course, Luke chapter 14, 26 -33. If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you desiring to build a tower does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete. Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, this man began to build and was not able to finish.

Or what king going out to encounter another king in war will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with 10 ,000 to meet him who comes against him with 20 ,000. And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.

So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. I mean, I think that the easy way which people think they can just on a whim say, oh, sure, yeah, I believe in Jesus.

But if it means I'm not going to hell, yeah, sure, I'm in on that one. You can put me down on your church roster if you want. That sounds good to me. And there's really no heartfelt brokenness before the Lord.

I guess that's maybe a long way of just saying what is.

Conjured up in my mind when I hear easy believism? Yeah, and a great question. And I'm glad Buzz brought this up. So I think, I think when you start breaking it down as to whether faith is mere intellectual ascent apart from a true embracing of the, you know, the infinite excellence of God, you know, Edwards does a great job of this saying that, you know, nobody can truly have exercised faith if they're not embracing God for who he is and who God is as to his beauty as coming to God merely as infinite excellence, primarily his holiness, by which they understand their own sin, their need of a savior, which eats out holiness of God, that's condemnation because we are so miserably unholy.

So those are all issues and the cost and, you know, true faith involves repentance. You can't have one without the other. That's all true, too. And what is the nature of repentance and its relationship to faith?

I just think, I just think easy believism just as a term that fight against legalism and the justifications by grace through faith alone is trying to say, you can't add anything to faith. And then somebody over here is saying, well, that's easy believism.

And most people said about justification by grace through faith alone, who would use the term, but the term itself doesn't help clarify the debate. It just helps muddy things up. So I think there needs to be, and if you want, and you know, you've been, you're familiar with that debate over the last 20, 30 years.

Yes. Oh, you know, if people had just defined their terms at the outset and, you know, been a little more clear in their footnotes and qualifying their statements, we might not have had a debate. And with certain people, of course, with the people who believe mental assent is sufficient, well, there's always going.

To be a debate with that. Yeah, there even seems to be a debate historically between Cornelius Van Till and, oh boy, who's the other presuppositionalist flew out of my head, very famous Clark, Gordon Clark, about the mental assent issue.

But anyway, we have to go to a break right now. Okay. And if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question for Craig Beal, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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Next day shipping available. All products protected by 30-day guarantees and six-month warranties. Call 866 -403 -3768 that's 866 -403 -3768 or go to batterydepot .com that's batterydepot .com. Welcome back this is Chris Arns and if you just tuned us in our guest today for the full two hours with about an hour and a half to go or so is Dr. Craig Beal founder of Pilgrim's Rock and we are discussing his book God the Reason How Infinite Excellence Gives Unbreakable Faith.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com chrisarnson at gmail .com and not to belabor the neo-orthodoxy issue isn't it interesting though that did not this whole movement begin with Bart and others in a response to uh liberalism and dead orthodoxy people whose faith was only on.

Paper or or by name but they weren't really living it out well considered by some idealized man. And scripture is not the word of god. And and they went by the confessing church in many cases right. And then.

And what. The real issue. Unfortunately it's interesting and this is not always brought out. I talk about this a little bit in god the reason existentialism. Both really come at the issue from the sucker again someday in eternity.

That aside they both end up in the same place. Denying the necessity of the substitutionary legal atonement of christ place denying the necessity of personal faith to be united to christ or from being under god's wrath and condemnation to being saved from god's wrath and condemnation.

They both end up in the same place. These adjectives even though they don't mean this religious liberalism and neo-orthodoxy end up in the same place holy other either one of them on our behalf. They're operating on the same assumptions.

And assumptions are that human opinion human speculation determine explain and interpret ultimate reality and truths about god. So they end up in the same place despite the fact that neo-orthodoxy claimed to be now.

Do you have anything to add to your contrast between blind.

Faith versus justified faith before we move on to rationalism versus empiricism. Yeah if i could.

That that blind faith really real objective assurance all assurance of assurance now objective aspect of assurance how do we know that the promises of god of plot of assurance the work of the spirit of god and the word of god gives us the basis of that assurance in true justified faith.

Now whereas blind faith has no rational object complete rational and objective proof everything in the universe birth of a baby the intricacy of anything and everything in life in the affections. He talks about how somebody knows the beauty of a rose or the beauty or the taste and can know the 118 says a suppression of the truth and unrighteousness.

So so the evidence is completely obvious for a they claim it's not obvious. But of course thing i'd like to say about this can justify for blind faith unbelief is just for the christian true faith unbelief is without excuse because everything in the universe attributes as we've as i've mentioned before so you know to the extent that we as believers or as apologists are arguing for the probability of god insofar as that is you know if we 60 probability 80 well then you're leaving 40 or 20 percent.

This is all hypothetical unbelief. Five lack of assurance. And if we can only show or somebody doesn't have enough evidence since it's only probable and they need to have the arguments of apologetics and other evidence is brought until they're faced with those arguments their their unbelief is what scripture tells us is there's nobody on the planet that doesn't have evidence everybody's drowning in evidence and therefore it's willful.

And the last thing i want to god's justice or god's just judgment of unbelief is based upon the fact that to the obvious right. So you know fideism i mean how can god you know condemn anybody if there's not enough evidence for his existence.

Well he couldn't. So that's back to the difference between of god and whether the justified how well you convince somebody you either have more fideism or less fideism. That's.

Required. Now how do you respond to those who say that faith cannot be faith unless it is blind. And they will refer you to that classic account in john 20 where uh the uh the apostle thomas does not believe that the risen christ is who he says he is.

And in verse 29 jesus said to him because you have seen me you have believed blessed is blessed are they who did not see and yet believed. And they will use that as an argument that faith is only faith when it is.

How do you respond to that. Oh so he's him for not knowing better subsequent to that time period it's not objective or obvious it's rather a leap of divinity throughout his ministry and in scripture even though there may be others who only see or know of his indicating obvious word of god which is could be said but it's based not to be derived from the passage in the context the narrow and the greater context in which the passage is found.

And we have to go to our midway break right now.

If you'd like to join us on the air our email address is chris arnzen 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 and your country of residence if you live outside of the good old usa and we're going to be right back god willing with more of dr craig beale.

And god. The reason how infinite excellence gives unbreakable.

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