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

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister

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George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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

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

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, 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.

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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.

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Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon,

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

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Earth who are listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arntzen, 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

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Cinco de Mayo special on Iron Sharpens Iron. Today I am delighted to have a returning guest to our program,

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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

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God -honoring and intellectually defensible worldview that can survive and thrive in the face of sophisticated attacks of unbelief.

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He's also the author of The Infinite Merit of Christ, The Glory of Christ's Obedience in the

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Theology of Jonathan Edwards. Today we are going to be discussing a new book, or should

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I say a different book, that we already began addressing the last time

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Craig was a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron. We are delving back into his book,

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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.

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

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And in studio with me is my co -host, the Reverend Buzz Taylor. Hello once again. Good to hear you again.

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Good to hear you, Buzz. And before we go into part two of God the

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Reason, I want to hear something more about Pilgrim's 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 Pilgrim's Rock.

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So if you could define or explain Pilgrim's Rock. Well, Pilgrim's Rock was developed to develop curriculum primarily for homeschoolers, but we found that a lot of non -homeschoolers and parents, as well as teenagers, like the curriculum.

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It's curriculum designed to teach a presuppositional or covenantal apologetic or approach to worldview that's based largely on Van Till and Jonathan Edwards and with some

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Schaeffer 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.

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So it's very, very theological. It's designed to pull truth out of scripture and primarily out of the infinite excellence of God's perfections.

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And so we have a weekly blog that we send out that has articles that I write on worldview, on the infinite excellence of God, theological topics that are a little more challenging that you might get in a general sort of a blog, hopefully, is our desire, but written in a way that's very, very accessible.

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And so we teach this at churches, I teach it at colleges, and we do it online.

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We have webinars online three or four times a week. So if you go to pilgrimdrug .com, the webinars are free and they're on topics like the myth of neutral science or worldview made simple, these sorts of things, or why the

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

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They're free and there's interaction, it's live, so it's a lot of fun as well as being edifying, we hope.

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Great. And for those of you listening who want to do further exploration on Pilgrim's Rock, you could go to pilgrimsrock .com,

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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,

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The Infinite Merit of Christ, The Glory of Christ's Obedience in the Theology of Jonathan Edwards. Well that was my

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PhD dissertation at Westminster many years ago and we sort of cleaned it up and it was published originally by Reformed Academic Press and it is a topic that is so needed today and so important and as one of my colleagues who used to be one of the fellows at the

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Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale put it this way, he said that Edwards is at his absolute best on this topic.

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So I was amazed that the topic was out there for the taking for the dissertation and it really does, it does explain justification in a way that eliminates the possibility,

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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

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God is infinitely excellent, He deserves all love, honor, and obedience always. He created us in dependence upon Him, owing

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Him all love, honor, and obedience and that unchanging rule of righteousness undergirds the

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Gospel from beginning to end. It never changed, never goes away, and what Edwards does is he shows how

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Christ alone can meet that standard and how He has met that standard and in meeting that standard how

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He also earned for us, on our behalf, infinite merit. And so not only has

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God's justice been removed as an impediment to our salvation, God's justice now requires that the believer united to Christ through faith be given an infinite reward.

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And so it's a marvelous, marvelous truth of Scripture that Edwards does a marvelous job expositing and hopefully,

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I have about 800 quotes in there, 800 footnotes, so hopefully I let Edwards do the talking and get out of the way in the process, but I highly 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 seems to be in the discussions on the web, again, due to a couple books that have recently come out, but it's always been an issue.

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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?

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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?

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Well, not something I wanted to get into too much today, but I'll just say that on the more

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Reformed side and the more evangelical side, the latest series by Crossway on the

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Solas, there's a book by Thomas Schreiner where 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.

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We are justified at a point in time when we trust Christ as Savior, and yet passages that speak of future justification, for instance

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Romans 2, he does seem to not be as clear as he should be with respect to the fact that there is a contingent aspect or element of justification that remains future that's based upon our perseverance and our works.

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Now, what I would say, and what I believe Edwards makes a good effort at and does a great job at, is that indeed there is a future justification, but it's really a justification of God's righteousness and God's judgment.

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So when you read Romans 2, 5, where it says, you know, it talks about the day of judgment as being the day of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God.

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In other words, God will show, He will use works as an evidence of our justification, as a justification of God's ultimate judgment to man and to angels, but it's not a justification that awaits that judgment.

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Our justification is at the point of faith. We're united to Christ at the point of faith. As united to Christ, anything and everything

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He did on our behalf to satisfy God's righteous requirements, to satisfy

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God's justice, is immediately imputed to our account, and that includes His perfect obedience, as well as His perfect sacrifice on the cross on our behalf to pay the penalty of sin.

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So the requirements of God's law, perfect perfection, sinlessness, as well as the negative aspects of the law, which is the penalty of death for sin, were completely satisfied by Christ and become completely ours, the righteousness of Christ becomes ours at the point of faith.

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So the idea of a future justification based on works is no more than God justifying

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His judgment that works, as it says at the end of the chapter there in Romans 2, that it's about circumcision of the heart.

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He will show 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 in self -righteousness, works done for whatever other reason apart from faith and trust in Christ, and those works will be judged accordingly as an evidence of the reality of whether or not that person was indeed born again.

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So there's some nuance there that I think really needs to come out, I don't think is always addressed very well.

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Now if you think of people like N .T. Wright and the new perspective on Paul, well, his agenda being the idea of reconciling

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Roman Catholicism with Protestantism or the Roman Catholic view of justification with our view of justification, well,

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Edwards handily deals with that. It's not a new perspective on Paul, it's an old error, it's nothing new at all, but when you start off the way

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Edwards does and the way classic Reformed thinking does, that God requires on a legal basis, perfect love and honor to him, thou shalt love the

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Lord thy 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 than by what

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Christ did in his life and in his sacrifice on the cross, and there's no room for any ideas that faith is meritorious or that we add in some way to our justification through works or that justification remains future.

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It's all absolutely, utterly, and totally completed by Christ, can only be completed by Christ, and is imputed to us by virtue of our union with Christ by faith.

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So 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 in a bond of love through faith, all that is his, like a husband and a wife getting married, all that is his becomes ours, as all that was ours became his when he hung on the cross on our behalf and in our place.

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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 can schedule another interview with you.

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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.

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This is God the Reason, How Infinite Excellence Gives Unbreakable Faith. First, we have

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John Frame, the J .D. Trimble Professor of Systematic Theology and Philosophy at Reform Theological Seminary, I guess he left

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Westminster West, that's where he used to be, if I'm not mistaken, but he says,

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Craig Beal's God the Reason is a very thorough presuppositional apologetic arguing

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God's existence and his necessity for all reasoning, thinking, meaning, and therefore living.

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The book is a conscious, orderly defense of the biblical worldview. Its arguments are clear and cogent.

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I hope it gains many readers, Christian and non -Christian alike. And then we have

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Dr. Joel R. Beekie, President of Puritan Reform Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan, who's been a guest on this program many times.

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He says, This thought -provoking work shows the emptiness of atheism from an angle not often taken.

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Without indulging in technical terminology or obscure philosophical arguments,

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Craig Beal starts with the attributes of God revealed in Scripture, builds a rational worldview upon them, and demonstrates convincingly that without such a

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God, life makes no sense at all. And Peter Lilback, President of Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, who's a guest on Iron Sharpens Iron, he says,

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Craig Beal's God the Reason is a remarkable work. It presents theology proper, the knowledge of God, in all of its transcendent importance and breadth.

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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

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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.

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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.

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Craig Beal. Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com. chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

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Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the

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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.

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Well this is a huge issue in the history of apologetics, and of course it's a huge issue in the history of theology.

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Blind faith, which is typically called atheism, has no real objective assurance for the person exercising blind faith.

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There's no rational objective proof possible. There's no evidence logically or intuitively understood.

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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?

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You know, that's exactly right. In fact, when they use the sort of faith versus reason and science dichotomy, it's absolutely false.

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Of course, everybody operates according to faith and everybody has an ultimate object of authority in which they've placed their faith.

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The believer has placed their faith in the authority of our Creator and our

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Redeemer. The unbeliever has placed their faith in their own personal opinion and their own personal perspective and interpretation of reality.

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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.

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Then, of course, there's the middle ground, which is sort of a semi -blind faith or a semi -fideism. So there's no evidence or the evidence isn't obvious in fideism and blind faith.

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It's an uncertain conclusion. There's no certain truth. And it's intellectually indefensible.

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It relies upon subjective experience. And so it's really an unjustified faith.

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And in the case of blind faith, unbelief is entirely justified. Now, it may seemingly, at least in terms of its adherence, you know, exempt them from rational critique, but it really makes unbelief entirely justified.

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And it has no basis for its own validity.

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Now, neo -orthodoxy is sometimes seen as a cure to liberalism, you know, the

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Bardian sort of perspective, and they are sort of a religious existentialism that is rooted in blind faith.

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So it's really existentialism with a lot of religious terminology. But really,

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God is wholly other, and your faith experience or your crisis moment as you interact with Scripture, Scriptures and the objective, historical, true

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Word of God, whether we accept it or not, it becomes the Word of God as you have this sort of experience.

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But really, it is rooted in blind faith and fideism as well. Now, let me ask you a question about neo -orthodoxy.

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In fact, perhaps we could have a whole program on that someday, or even at least half a program.

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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,

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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.

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And he was executed by the Nazis, as you know, when even at a point during the war when it was unnecessary for the

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Nazis to do so, 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?

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Should we claim them as our brethren or not? Well, it's an interesting question.

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And I know with the introduction to the recent most popular Bonhoeffer book, that Tim Keller writes the foreword to that book and mentions that Bonhoeffer is sort of the cure between easy believism on the right side and, you know, what you would call legalism on the other side, and that somehow

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Bonhoeffer splits the difference or is the cure to either error.

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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 because neo -orthodoxy is, as Francis Schaeffer so ably pointed out and as many others have pointed out,

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Van Til, of course, being one, that neo -orthodoxy is really existentialism with religious terminology.

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And so the terminology used by neo -orthodox theologians, it has the connotation and the warm feeling that is generated by the terms justification, resurrection, incarnation, these sorts of things, but they don't mean what they mean to the evangelical believer.

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They generate the warm response, but on an objective level of meaning, they don't mean what we mean.

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So neo -orthodoxy really doesn't believe that there is an ultimate need for somebody to come in a personal exercise of faith in Christ as our legal substitute, as standing in our place, as fulfilling the legal requirements of God's justice, that we might be saved by the imputed righteousness of Christ.

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They don't believe that. That's why when people argue over whether or not Karl Barth was a universalist, and you can argue about the technical meaning of the term universalist as to whether it means that people were lost and everybody's saved, or people were never lost in the first place,

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I mean, there's all these sort of arguments that go back and forth. But in the end, it's hard to find a neo -orthodoxy where anybody's actually ultimately judged or condemned for sin, because they deny the legal basis for it, and they deny the legal necessity of Christ satisfying

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God's justice on our behalf to satisfy that requirement that we might be delivered from that condemnation.

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So I have a hard time, in fact, if you read The Infinite Merit of Christ, we deal with,

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Edwards deals with this issue, even though he predated neo -orthodoxy, he nails the issue that really it's hard to see how somebody embracing neo -orthodoxy can actually be called a saint in Christ, delivered from the condemnation of their sin by the substitutionary, real, in -history work of Christ on the cross.

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Yeah, that's when it becomes dangerous to not distinguish between somebody who could be a hero for many reasons, and a

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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.

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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 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 without dignity and respect and a lower rank of life than whites.

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But as much as you can pour accolades justly or rightfully upon Dr.

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Martin Luther King, Jr., the man, according to his own doctoral dissertation, was really not a biblical

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Christian. He was not a Christian the way the New Testament would define a Christian, because he denied the main tenets of what

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Christians believe. He denied even the deity of Christ itself. He denied the substitutionary atonement of Christ.

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He denied the bodily resurrection of Christ. And you could go on and on.

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So obviously, and I know that at a recent Reformed conference

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I had, there were people there, or at least one individual, mocking

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Christians who police Dr.

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King's theology, and that disturbed me because I'm saying to myself, well, the

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Apostle Paul invited people to police his own theology. Why shouldn't we police anyone else's theology who happens to be a great, widely embraced hero or great prominent figure in history?

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Am I off base here? I think 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 what

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God has chosen to reveal to us that people have lived and died for over the centuries, that indeed

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Paul anathematizes people for not, and that's God through Paul anathematizing people who get the gospel wrong.

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And when people's eternal destiny is at stake, I mean, this is a serious issue, and to sort of dismiss it as if, oh, these people are policing, when you have people denying the very heart and soul of the faith,

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I mean, where does discernment and judgment come in? Do we really believe that these are real issues with eternal consequences when we talk like that?

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And with respect to Bonhoeffer, you know, what he did during World War II was absolutely admirable.

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He's a hero in that respect and should be lauded as one in that respect.

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But to point to him as some sort of theological solution to,

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I don't even like the term easy believism. I don't think it's specific enough and it doesn't convey a right message.

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But between that and legalism, it's just an absolute error. And I see him as a kind of Trojan horse that if people, you know, everybody gets on board with, you know,

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer, then what's next? Everybody gets on board with Karl Barth, you know, religious terminology without religious reality and objective truth, and what have we done?

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So fortunately, most 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.

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And so it may not be as detrimental as it could be. But it is problematic that some people who should know better would advocate it as some sort of solution to a theological problem and neo -orthodoxy is not a solution to theological problems that confront the church.

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And Reverend Buzz Taylor has a question or comment. You said you shy away from terms like easy believism.

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That kind of caught me by surprise. What kind of terminology would you use to describe things, to describe easy believism, shall

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I say? Well, I mean, this goes back, obviously, all the way back to the between Hodge and St.

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Hodge and MacArthur and all the others, all that discussion. Easy believism, what does that mean?

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I mean, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed and 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.

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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?

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And what is the issue with respect to justification and new life? Well, justification, that makes it clear, and I quote him extensively in Infinite Merit on this issue, we're justified solely and completely by what he did.

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We can never meet the standard of perfect righteousness. We can never satisfy God's justice. Not even one iota.

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And in fact, the best works that we have are filthy rags before God that aren't being considered by Christ.

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So we're justified by faith alone, bare faith alone, but if it's true faith, if it's embracing

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Christ as Savior for who He is, as God, as Lord, as sufficient Savior, with empty hands, with nothing of our own that we bring, and it's true faith as far as God can see, then we will have new life and the

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Spirit of God will dwell within us, not as an inert, inactive principle, but as the living

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God, the third person of the Trinity, and He will produce a changed life and will produce fruit.

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We measure that fruit, He's given the time, etc., etc., that's a whole other issue, but there must of necessity be fruit.

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So if you're justified, you have new life, and that's why our works can be judged in some sense, in effect, as they're an evidence of the reality of the truth that we were united to Christ in faith, by which we are justified by the imputed righteousness of Christ.

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But to say the word easy believism and then sort of say, well, you know, it requires more, it requires this, that, and the other, and adding something to the faith doesn't, isn't nuanced enough to explain the difference 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.

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They contribute to a future justification zero, absolutely not at all, they're there as an evidence that God can use to justify

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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 in satisfying

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God's justice. And faith, victorious, unites us to Him where that merit is credited to us.

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So easy believism, what does that mean? I don't know what that means. I know what people are trying to say by that, you say, well,

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I believed three years ago and I'm still running a brothel, you know what I mean?

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There's something not congruent with your testimony and your life, there's no evidence that your justification really happened, that you were truly united to Christ, that your faith is real.

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Now those are real issues, is it true faith, false faith, historical faith, et cetera, et cetera, but the term easy believism doesn't get to the nuance of what the issue 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 in terms of adding something to the gospel.

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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,

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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.

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I mean, I think that the easy way which people think they can just on a whim say, oh, sure, yeah,

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I believe in Jesus, but if it means I'm not going to hell, yeah, sure, I'm in on that one, you could put me down on your church roster if you want, that sounds good to me, and there's really no heartfelt brokenness before the

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Lord, I guess that's maybe a long way of just saying what is conjured up in my mind when

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I hear easy believism. Yeah, and that's an excellent point, and it's a great question, and I'm glad Buzz brought this up, but that's the nature of faith, so I think when you start breaking it down as to whether faith is mere intellectual assent apart from a true embracing of the infinite excellence of God, you know,

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Edwards does a great job of this, saying that, you know, nobody can truly have exercised faith if they're not embracing

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God for who He is and who God is as to His beauty as His holiness, and so somebody coming to God merely as sort of a fire escape or a ticket out of hell without a true embracing of God out of a love for His infinite excellence, primarily

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His holiness by which they understand their own sin, their need of a Savior, and he exegetes out how a proper sight and understanding of the holiness of God changes our view of everything, including our understanding that we're under God's condemnation because we are so miserably unholy.

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So those are all issues that are very, very important, and of course counting 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?

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I just think, I just think easy believism, just as a term, can convey a whole lot of different things to a whole lot of different people, i .e.,

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that the person over here who's trying to fight against legalism and the justification is 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 aren't, you know, they would believe what

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I just said about justification by grace through faith alone who would use the term, but the term itself doesn't help clarify the debate.

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It just, it just helps muddy things up, so I think there needs to be, and if you want, and you know, you're familiar with that debate over the last 20, 30 years, how, 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.

36:21

Yeah, there even seems to be a debate historically between Cornelius Van Til and, oh boy, who's the other presuppositionalist flew out of my head, very famous,

36:34

Clark, Gordon Clark, about the mental assent issue, but anyway, we have to go to a break right now, 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,

36:51

chrisarnson at gmail .com, don't go away, we'll be right back after these messages, God willing. Have you been blessed by Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio?

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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

42:43

Dr. Craig Beal, founder of Pilgrims Rock, and we are discussing his book, God the

42:49

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

42:56

ChrisArnsen at gmail .com. ChrisArnsen at gmail .com. And not to belabor the neo -orthodoxy issue, isn't it interesting though, that did not this whole movement begin with Barth and others in a response to liberalism and dead orthodoxy, people whose faith was only on paper or by name, but they weren't really living it out?

43:24

Well, it is, on the surface, it is considered by some to be a corrective to dead orthodoxy or liberalism or, you know, the idea that Christ was no more than an idealized man, and scripture is not the word of God, and...

43:45

They went by the confessing church in many cases, right? In many cases, yes.

43:52

And what the real issue, unfortunately, it's interesting, and this is not always brought out,

43:58

I talk about this a little bit in God the Reason, is that both religious liberalism and neo -orthodoxy, which is religious existentialism, both really come at the issue from the same presuppositions.

44:13

And in the end, Barth really didn't see himself, he saw himself seeing Schleiermacher again someday in eternity.

44:21

But that aside, they both end up in the same place, denying the necessity of the substitutionary legal atonement of Christ.

44:31

They both end up in the same place, denying the necessity of personal faith to be united to Christ and be forgiven for sin, and to transfer from being under God's wrath and condemnation to being saved from God's wrath and condemnation.

44:46

They both end up in the same place with respect to scripture, that scripture isn't the objective, real, historically accurate, true word of God.

44:55

You have to use all these adjectives to make sure, because they're always using our terminology, even though they don't mean the same thing, so you have to qualify everything you say.

45:05

But religious liberalism and neo -orthodoxy end up in the same place.

45:11

Now, for neo -orthodoxy, Christ and God is the Holy Other, but neither one of them see

45:20

Jesus as the historical, God -man, Savior who satisfied

45:26

God's justice on our behalf, faith in Him saves. So they're operating on the same assumptions, and those assumptions are that human opinion, human speculation can determine ultimate truths or can explain and interpret ultimate reality and truths about God without taking scripture for what scripture clearly reveals to be true.

45:51

So they end up in the same place, despite the fact that neo -orthodoxy claimed to be a solution or a corrective of religious liberalism or liberal

46:04

Christianity. Now, do you have anything to add to your contrast between blind faith versus justified faith before we move on to rationalism versus empiricism?

46:17

Yeah, if I could, that blind faith really leaves the person without any real objective assurance, all assurance is purely subjective, whereas justified faith, which is

46:28

Christian faith, is we can have a complete objective assurance. Now, our assurance can vacillate because there is a subjective aspect of assurance.

46:37

How do we know that the promises of God apply to us? In other words, how do we know that our faith is genuine, that we're truly united to Christ, and that we are the object of God's love and forgiveness?

46:50

But there is complete objective assurance, the work of the Spirit of God and the Word of God gives us the basis of that assurance in true justified faith.

47:00

Now, whereas blind faith has no rational, objective proof possible, justified faith or Christian faith has complete rational and objective proof.

47:10

Everything in the universe supports our faith and our worldview. Now, whereas blind faith has no evidence that's logically or intuitively understood,

47:21

Christian justified faith, the evidence is intuitively and logically understood, and by the way, it's intuitively and immediately understood.

47:29

The person who views a sunset, the birth of a baby, the intricacy of anything and everything in life, those things scream the glory, the genius, the goodness, the power of God.

47:40

We see that intuitively, and Edwards, in The Affections, he talks about how somebody knows the beauty of a rose or the beauty or the taste of honey and can know the truthfulness of Scripture intuitively and obviously because they can see the marks of divinity immediately.

47:57

They're clear, they're obvious. They're only not seen by virtue of willful blindness and the denying of the obvious, or as Romans 1 .18

48:04

says, a suppression of the truth and unrighteousness. So the evidence is completely obvious for a

48:10

Christian faith, and for theism they claim it's not obvious, but of course it is.

48:16

And one other thing I'd like to say about this, the difference between blind faith and Christian justified faith is, for blind faith unbelief is justified, whereas for the

48:29

Christian true faith, unbelief is without excuse because everything in the universe declares

48:34

God's existence, God's glory, God's attributes, 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 we're only arguing for a probability, and if I could just throw in a hypothetical percentage, you know, if we, 60 % probability, 80%, well then you're leaving 40 or 20%, and this is all hypothetical, as justified unbelief, or as justified lack of assurance.

49:10

And if we can only show, or somebody doesn't have enough evidence for the existence of God, because His existence is only probable, and they need to have the arguments of apologetics and other evidences brought to their mind through an apologist or a

49:28

Bible believer, well then, until they're faced with those arguments, their unbelief is justified, at least insofar as they don't have enough evidence.

49:38

But 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 inexcusable.

49:48

And the last thing I want to say on this head is, God's justice, or God's just judgment of unbelief is based upon the fact that sin is contrary to the obvious.

50:01

So, you know, atheism, I mean, how can God, you know, condemn anybody if there's not enough evidence for his existence?

50:09

Well, he couldn't. So, those are some of the issues that are raised with respect to the difference between those two, and of course there's a middle ground where some apologists land, where they're arguing for the probability of God, and, you know, you have a little bit of the blind faith and a little bit of the unjustified faith, and depending upon how good your arguments are and how well you convince somebody, you either have more feudism or less feudism that's required to truly trust in God.

50:36

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 the

50:50

Apostle Thomas does not believe that the risen

50:56

Christ is who he says he is, and in verse 29, Jesus said to him, because you have seen me, you have believed, 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 blind.

51:13

How do you respond to that? Well, it's not as if, that statement comes within a context, and the context is

51:22

Christ's three and a half year ministry, where he raised the dead, healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, and legs to the lame, and hearing to the deaf, and everything else.

51:31

So he's, Christ has, you know, the Old Testament predicting his ministry and everything else, and as he was on the road to Emmaus, you know, basically chiding them for not knowing better that the

51:44

Old Testament has taught these things. Well, the fact that somebody didn't see

51:49

Jesus as you and I and everybody subsequent to that time period in history have not seen him personally, physically, you know, in historical, standing in our living room, it's not to say that we are believing something that's not objectively knowable and true or obvious.

52:10

So it's rather a leap, it's reading into the statement a worldview rather than taking the statement in the overall redemptive historical context in which the statement is found, which is there's, the apostles were drowning in evidence of his divinity throughout his ministry and in scripture, and his resurrection was a nice little added bonus that they could see him personally, even though there may be others who only see or know of his resurrection through the testimony of the apostles and the testimony of the self -authenticating obvious word of God, which is scripture.

52:49

So I guess more could be said, but it's basically they're reading something into the passage that's not to be derived from the passage in the context, the narrow and the greater context in which the passage is found.

53:04

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 chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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If you live outside of the good old USA and we're going to be right back.

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God willing with more of Dr. Craig Beal and God the reason how infinite excellence gives unbreakable faith.

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Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God?

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio listeners can help keep my show on the air is to support my advertisers. I know you all use batteries every day, so I'm urging you all from now on to exclusively use

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Pastor's Study every Saturday from 12 noon to 1 p .m. Eastern Time on WLIE Radio.

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www .wlie540am .com

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We bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you, and we invite you to visit the Pastor's Study by calling in with your questions.

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Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull. Join us this Saturday at 12 noon

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Iron Sharpens Iron exhibitors booth at the Faithful Shepherd Pastors Retreat in Harvey Cedars, New Jersey.

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The theme is going to be the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, and speakers include

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alliancenet .org, click on events, and then click on the Faithful Shepherd. And that's

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May 15th through the 17th, coming up very shortly in Harvey Cedars, New Jersey, at the

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I hope you, who are leaders in ministry, will attend the U .S. Ministers Conference being sponsored by the

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click on events, and then click on U .S. Ministers Conference. And then we have the

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Foundations Conference being held by Sermon Audio, June 22nd through June 23rd, in New York City.

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Speakers at this conference that I am attending include Dr. Stephen J. Lawson, Dr.

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and that's going to be held, as I said, June 22nd through the 23rd in the

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Fellowship Conference New England is being held August 3rd through the 5th at the

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Deering Center Community Church in Portland, Maine. This is a

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Sovereign Grace Conference featuring such speakers as Pastor Don Curran with HeartCry Ministry Society, the ministry of Paul Washer.

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We have Pastor Mac Tomlinson, who's been a guest on this program many times, Pastor Jesse Barrington, who

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I just had the privilege of interviewing very recently of Grace Life Church in Dallas, Texas, and Pastor Nate Pickowitz, who's going to be my guest on June 27th for the first time.

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He's the pastor of Harvest Bible Church in Ironworks, New Hampshire. And this is a conference that's unusual because there is no major theme to it.

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Each pastor is going to be preaching what he believes the Lord is burdening his heart to preach.

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All men are firm believers in the doctrines of sovereign grace, and I hope that you can attend that conference.

01:08:04

If you attend any of these events, please let those who are running it or running them know that you heard about these events through Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:08:13

I would really appreciate that very much. And also I want to remind you that the guest that we had on yesterday,

01:08:25

Ryan McGraw, who is a prolific writer and a really gifted speaker and also on the faculty at the

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Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Taylor's, South Carolina. He is going to be preaching both at the morning and evening service this

01:08:42

Sunday at Providence Presbyterian Church, which is an Orthodox Presbyterian congregation, on 4600

01:08:50

Lake Brandt Road. That's Lake Brandt, B -R -A -N -D -T

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Road in Greensboro, North Carolina. For more details, you can call Providence Presbyterian Church at 336 -553 -9991.

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That's 336 -553 -9991. Or go to their website, providencegso .org.

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That's providencegso .org.

01:09:24

And please let the pastor and everyone else there know that you heard about their speaking engagement with Ryan McGraw from Chris Arnzen and Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

01:09:36

And we have a question from a listener in Slovenia for you.

01:09:43

We have Joe in Slovenia who says, Dear Brother Chris, Thanks so much for having

01:09:52

Dr. Craig Beal back on your show. As an approach to apologetics, does

01:09:57

God the reason address the concept of Christian hedonism? I'm specifically thinking of the fact that all humans are on a quest for joy and fulfillment, yet it is historically well documented that non -theists in general and non -Christians particularly, overall lack any significant and lasting level of attainment in this area.

01:10:20

How does man's chief end to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever? That's something that a lot of our

01:10:26

Reformed brethren seem to forget from the Westminster Shorter Catechism. Let's see,

01:10:33

I'll repeat that question. How does man's chief end to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever relate to how infinite excellence gives unbreakable faith

01:10:42

Thank you for serving the edification needs of the body of Christ. Excellent questions. And of course there is a well -known book written by John Piper on Christian hedonism.

01:10:52

But if you could respond to Joe in Slovenia. Thank you for the question,

01:10:58

Joe. I would refer you to Infinite Merit because Edwards deals with that in space.

01:11:08

It's central to Edwards and that's where, of course, Piper got it. And so the idea that we get our chief joy from the infinite excellence of God, His beauty, that permeates that book because that's central to what

01:11:28

God is doing in His overall ultimate purpose and plan is to glorify, to display

01:11:34

His infinite excellence through communicating His excellence to the

01:11:42

Bride of Christ in and through them. And part of that is their happiness and their joy as Christ delights in the beauty of the

01:11:52

Father so the redeemed delight in the beauty of Christ and the

01:11:59

Father and of the Trinity as in a whole. So I would definitely go there.

01:12:06

And God, the reason, yes, because it is, it's not as much as in Infinite Merit, but we do deal with that because indeed the heart and soul of the believer's joy in Christ is first and foremost based upon their love of the infinite excellence of God.

01:12:23

And as an aside, I really don't like that term, Christian hedonism. I think maybe as a marketing sort of thing it might have worked at the time.

01:12:33

Yeah, I think that was obviously the intention. But it's not a very good, because it seems to,

01:12:41

I mean, you can't, obviously we can't, Edwards makes this point, he says you have to deny yourself to deny the fact that we desire our own happiness, to deny being created by God and who we are as people in His image, but at the same time, hedonism is probably not the best way to put it.

01:13:01

But our delight in God's infinite excellence, yes, we deal with that because indeed that's the whole point of the book.

01:13:07

It's more focused on the sort of worldview aspect of justifying faith and showing how a worldview apart from starting with in the beginning

01:13:18

God reduces to absurdity. But there is a thread that weaves through it that our joy and delight is in God for who

01:13:26

He is. And even if it's not explicitly stated, the sort of exposition of the infinite excellence of God in His attributes pushes people that way anyway, even if we don't exposit the nature of the believer's first love, per se.

01:13:47

Yes, well, thank you very much, Joe, in Slovenia. Sorry we can't give you a book because we gave all the copies of God the

01:13:54

Reason away the last time Dr. Beale was on the program. So we don't have any left for you, but we thank you for your question, and we hope that you keep listening and spreading the word about Iron Sharpens Iron Radio in Slovenia and beyond.

01:14:10

And the next theme that I wanted to now merge into for our discussion today is the themes that we mentioned a little bit earlier, rationalism versus empiricism.

01:14:29

If you could define those two things for us, Dr. Beale. Sure, sure. It's an interesting discussion.

01:14:36

Before I define them, just to say that there's sort of an ongoing debate within Western philosophical thought between empiricism and rationalism.

01:14:44

They go back and forth. You study the history of it. And so beginning with empiricism, empiricism is basically you begin with what we perceive by our senses.

01:14:59

So empiricists believe that knowledge is founded on the experience of our senses. So we observe, we interpret empirical data, and we utilize inductive reasoning to draw conclusions.

01:15:11

So empiricists employ what we call the scientific method. So they work from the particular to the general.

01:15:18

So step one would be observation, they perceive. Step two would be induction, they interpret the data, make generalizations.

01:15:26

And step three would be conclusion, where they make quote, true, unquote statements about God, man, reality, truth, knowledge, authority, and ethics.

01:15:36

Now, rationalism, by contrast, they believe that knowledge is founded on reason and self -evident truths, or what they call propositions.

01:15:47

So they identify what they believe to be self -evident truths and draw conclusions by deducing what necessarily follows logically from these self -evident truths.

01:15:58

So they work from the general to the particular. So step one for rationalism is they identify these self -evident truths.

01:16:06

Step two would be deduction instead of induction. So they deduce what necessarily follows from these quote, self -evident truths, unquote.

01:16:16

And then step three is they draw conclusions or make true statements about God, man, reality, and knowledge, authority, and ethics based upon what they have deducted from these self -evident truths.

01:16:31

So both of these approaches are valid, and both of them are worthwhile when they're self -consciously used as part of God's created world.

01:16:42

When we start with in the beginning God, then of course empiricism and rationalism are valid, of course.

01:16:49

You have to define what a self -evident truth is, and if you start with Scripture and what God has revealed as a truth, whether it's evident to us or not, then of course rationalism is objectively legitimate and viable.

01:17:05

So the issue really isn't rationalism versus empiricism from our perspective. The issue is do you do empiricism, do you do science, or do you do rationalism and deductive reasoning starting with in the beginning

01:17:19

God as the creator and sustainer of all things, as the source of knowledge and truth, as the one upon whom we depend for a proper explanation of all of reality?

01:17:30

If you begin there, both approaches are fine. If you don't begin there, neither approach is fine.

01:17:37

So it's not really an issue of empiricism versus rationalism. It should be an issue of both or neither, depending upon your starting point.

01:17:50

Now, not neither, meaning that if you start with, if you utilize empiricism or rationalism without starting with God, you end up with a series of problems.

01:18:00

So that's the definition. You want me to go into the problems of each? Oh yeah, definitely.

01:18:06

Okay, so if you start, I'll just call one atheistic empiricism, atheistic rationalism.

01:18:13

In other words, they're done without consideration of God as the creator and sustainer and the source of all knowledge and truth.

01:18:21

So first, empiricists don't agree on their interpretations of reality.

01:18:27

So if we don't have an ultimate standard, if we don't have the one who created all things and designed all things and explains all things as the one to whom we can go as the ultimate standard, then you have, you're reduced to different empiricists differing with each other based upon their own perspective, their own opinions.

01:18:48

And so, and they're all equally inadequate. They're all equally limited as to ultimate issues and the ultimate explanation in the source and the reason for the reality they examine.

01:19:02

So, you know, they don't know. I keep using this. I used it last time on the program. I use it in the book, but empiricists, they don't know what's in their neighbor's garage without looking inside it.

01:19:12

They've never been beyond three or four dimensions. They've never been to the other side of the universe. They only know what they can see and examine, but they can't know the reasons and they can't know where it came from ultimately.

01:19:24

There's a whole slew of things they can't possibly know. So, you know, they would have to have knowledge of everything in the universe and beyond to adequately answer ultimate questions regarding God, mankind, and the universe, knowledge, truth, authority, ethics, how we should live.

01:19:40

So apart from God's explanation of himself and his universe, all the empiricists' interpretations are reduced to observations about the way things are, but they can have no ultimate explanation as to why they are and where they came from.

01:19:57

And so secondly, nobody interprets data neutrally. Everybody has a background.

01:20:04

Everybody has an agenda. Everybody has experience, life experience, and ultimately everybody has either a love or a disdain for the creator and sustainer of everything.

01:20:15

So empiricists are all going to disagree based upon the lens through which they view the data.

01:20:24

So you can't get, unless you have an outside standard by which all empiricists can appeal, then you're left with the same problem as you have with anybody trying to explain the universe apart from God.

01:20:38

You have seven billion opinions, or you have as many opinions and interpretations as you have empiricists.

01:20:44

Hence the term presuppositional apologetics, because we have to approach our fellow mankind with the notion that they do have presuppositions.

01:20:58

Absolutely, and that's the way they interpret everything, and they're going to interpret every one of our arguments according to those assumptions.

01:21:04

And what we need to do is show whether or not those presuppositions or those assumptions about reality, about God, man, reality, knowledge, truth, authority, and ethics are warranted or justified or reasonable, supportable or not.

01:21:19

And what presuppositional apologetics does is it shows that they're founded on blind faith. And so the last problem with empiricism is that you can't, or the second -to -last problem is you can't come up with the rule of empiricism by empiricism itself.

01:21:37

That's a typical problem with unbelief. So it's a self -defeating internal contradiction.

01:21:43

So where do you get the rule that data should be interpreted and verified by the empirical method by the empirical method?

01:21:50

You don't. The empirical method doesn't tell you that. You have to bring that to the empirical method. And lastly, as I stated earlier, apart from an ultimate authority, empiricism leads to the opinions of all the empiricists, which ultimately leads to skepticism.

01:22:10

I mean, you have no ultimate authority to which you can appeal. And those problems are the same kind of problems you get with rationalism.

01:22:18

Rationalism has similar problems in that what authority does rationalists appeal to justify their self -evident truth?

01:22:27

Because everybody differs as to what constitutes a self -evident truth.

01:22:33

I mean, your self -evident truth might not be mine or somebody else's. So where do you go to adjudicate such a thing?

01:22:39

Well, if you don't have an ultimate standard, God who made truth, the source of all truth, then you're stuck again with the opinions of rationalists.

01:22:51

And how do you validate or confirm the deductions from those? You know, you may or may not have the right self -evident truth to begin with, and then how do you know the deductions from those quote -unquote self -evident truths are correct?

01:23:04

And that's another big problem. Who's to adjudicate that? If you don't have an ultimate standard saying, well, that deduction is proper and correct when people don't agree as to whether or not it's a proper deduction from the self -evident truth.

01:23:19

So that's a real problem. And rationalism also, like empiricism, leads to a loss of truth because all interpreters ultimately become speculators.

01:23:31

You know, with my opinion and your opinion and everybody else's opinion as good as anybody else's because no rationalist knows what's in their neighbor's garage without looking inside.

01:23:40

They're limited. So the debate between rationalists and empiricists throughout the history of Western philosophical thought, it's not always been on the right level according to the right issues if they're starting without God in the beginning.

01:23:58

So you have an atheistic rationalist arguing against an atheistic empiricist as to who's right and who's wrong, and they both end up with the same problems if they don't both start with God.

01:24:12

So that's the basic issue, and I deal with that in an appendix in the book.

01:24:20

But it's just helpful to understand it. And when you're dealing with science and you're dealing with the scientific method and people drawing conclusions, inductive conclusions from the data they're observing, well, these problems are there if the scientist does not have an ultimate authority to which they can appeal to adjudicate whether or not they're interpreting the data correctly.

01:24:45

That's why somebody can look at a sea sponge and say, well, we came from a sea sponge because there's a little bit of DNA in a sea sponge that's similar to ours, and they draw these wild conclusions, and that's a true statement, by the way.

01:24:57

I saw that on a... I saw that at the SOVA program. There was PhD saying the missing link that we all go back to the sea sponge.

01:25:07

And, I mean, who... How can they validate that? It's silly.

01:25:13

But, again, you're left with just a bunch of people guessing based upon drawing correlations and causation from correlation or whatever they're doing.

01:25:22

They're drawing... They're making guesses, leaps of blind faith to explain things because they refuse to start with the fact that they're created by God and He's the source and standard of truth and reality, and He's the explainer of it all.

01:25:39

Yeah, it's interesting how humans who seem to worship the creation rather than creator, rather than the creator, they won't even allow any of God's creation to have their own unique beauty and dignity without having some kind of intrinsic attachment to us.

01:25:59

You know what I'm saying? They can't even admire animals that have unique gifts and beauty and intelligence without saying, oh, we must be related to them because they're demonstrating some kind of unexplainable intelligence.

01:26:13

You know, it's interesting how they can be both worshiping the creation and having such pride in humans as they do.

01:26:21

But we're going to be going to our last break right now. And if you'd like to join us, now is the time to email us at chrisarnson at gmail dot com chrisarnson at gmail dot com

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Mosaic law, and in his harshness, in his judgments, and the requirements of a mediator, a substitute, and a sacrifice of the

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Old Testament, to the same God who sent Christ to be that mediator, that sacrifice, and that substitute for us.

01:36:21

So I guess if you want to deal with an unbeliever on that level, you need to go to the purpose and the point of the

01:36:30

Old Testament, the Levitical sacrifices, the Levitical system of sacrifice, and the prefiguring, the foreshadowing of, and the speaking of the coming

01:36:42

Messiah, and how Christ is the fulfillment of that, and how the necessity of a

01:36:48

Redeemer permeates from beginning to end, and how the New Testament is really the fulfillment of the

01:36:57

Old Testament promises, the satisfaction of the foreshadowing in terms of the reality of what

01:37:04

Christ accomplished in His person and work. And so it's a big, big, huge question, but I would probably answer it with respect to the history of redemption in Christ as its ultimate fulfillment and satisfaction of God's justice as its strictness and its harshness is revealed in the

01:37:26

Old Testament, just as a quick sort of answer to a very, very profound question.

01:37:31

And since he was specifically speaking of this somehow being a contradiction to the immutability of God, just as a parent, wouldn't you say just as a parent treats his own children in different ways at different periods of their life or lives?

01:37:50

For instance, you have a certain stage of life where the children are not even allowed outside of the home without the parent holding them, or at least holding their hand, and then you have another stage much later on where they are independent children living on their own and having their own jobs and providing for themselves and making decisions independently of their parents' rules because they're no longer under their household.

01:38:18

So if people can recognize that, they should be able to recognize that the same

01:38:25

God who never changes treated His children and treated

01:38:30

His creation in different ways without changing His nature. Does that make sense?

01:38:37

Yeah, that makes great sense, and I would, you know, normally when unbelievers point to the difference of the

01:38:43

Old and the New Testament, it's sort of the harsh God of the Old and the loving God of the New, well, but to put it in their terminology, the loving

01:38:52

God of the New came down and became a man to satisfy the harsh requirements and to take upon Himself the harsh judgment and condemnation of, to use their terminology, the

01:39:05

Old Testament God so that He might satisfy His justice on our behalf, that we might have the infinite happiness of being related to Him for all of eternity.

01:39:18

And so I would just start off with Genesis 3 and the sort of Proto -Evangelium where you have the first promises of grace in the

01:39:25

Gospel and show that thread throughout and that God is not any different in the

01:39:31

Old and the New at all. It's just that Christ came to satisfy and maintain that strict justice of God, but do it in a way or do it in order to have mercy and love to a fallen people.

01:39:49

And you can see, you know, prefigured in the Old Testament all over the place this deep abiding love of God for His people, for Israel and for the weak and for the, you know, to those who tremble at His Word and etc.,

01:40:02

etc. So there's plenty to have there, but in Christ you have the strict justice of God meeting the beautiful grace and mercy of God to a fallen people and that theme is throughout the

01:40:18

Old and the New Testament and God didn't change one iota. He's just operating and bringing it, there's a progression from the

01:40:26

Old to the New of this, you know, the successive revelation of what God is doing to bring

01:40:32

His people back to Himself culminating in, you know, the person and ministry of Christ and then the explanation of it all in the

01:40:39

New Testament. Now you even have a chapter in your book, God Does Not Change, in which you explore the essential message and method of defending

01:40:48

Christianity not changing because cultures change and that seems to be something that is negatively affecting

01:40:56

Christendom across the denominational lines and even some of our professedly

01:41:03

Reformed brethren seem to think that the message needs to somehow change because of culture changing.

01:41:10

If you could respond to that. Yeah, well, that is a sort of misunderstanding of contextualization in terms of, you know, when in Rome, eliminating barriers that are unnecessary, that are not fundamental to the gospel.

01:41:27

Well, sure, that's all well and good, but the essence of unbelief is the same in any age, the requirement for eternal life is the same in any age,

01:41:35

Christ is the only way of salvation in any age or culture, and the truth, validity, and relevance of Scripture remain the same in any age or culture.

01:41:44

So, and if the true solution is the same and that anything we do, as Paul says in 1

01:41:52

Corinthians 117, he doesn't want to do things or say things or act in a manner that somehow reduces the effectiveness of the gospel or makes it void or without effect or without power.

01:42:05

Well, we don't want to do the same thing when the unbelief, the requirement for eternal life,

01:42:11

Christ is the only way, the truth, validity, and relevance of Scripture as the very words of God who knows everything, and He knows about our culture, and He transcends it, and His perfect wisdom is unchanged, and His wisdom of reaching a culture and reaching a people hasn't changed.

01:42:25

So, why would we want to dilute the medicine with our supposed wisdom when God's wisdom is supreme,

01:42:31

God's wisdom is perfect, He knows everything, He knew about our culture before the earth and the universe were even created.

01:42:39

So, it's a shame, and one of the places where it's most egregious,

01:42:45

I think, is where we're responding to postmodernism and its disdain for authority by somehow downplaying the authority of God, Christ, and the

01:42:54

Scriptures, when that's the very problem that needs to be addressed and the very solution to their problem, and to address that problem by diluting the medicine or denying the very thing that they don't like, or denying the very solution to their problem.

01:43:12

We should double down. I mean, double down and say, no, this is what you're doing, and your view of denying authority results in skepticism, relativism, results in a loss of truth, results in despair, results in you trusting your own opinion for your eternal destiny.

01:43:29

We need to hit that straight on, and in love and in grace, and say, this is where it leads, rather than somehow accommodating that in our method and methods.

01:43:40

It's horrible that we're doing such a thing. But anyways, God doesn't change. Problems don't change.

01:43:47

The solution doesn't change. And certainly, God's wisdom and genius in how to address the solution, and everything he's gone, everything he has done at infinite cost to himself to address the problem, why would we go anywhere else?

01:44:02

Yeah, one of the ways that I think this distortion of changing methodology to accommodate changing cultures is most evident in this day and age, excuse me, it's most evident in this day and age in Christendom, even among professing reformed

01:44:24

Christians, is the attitude toward homosexuality. It's really troubling me, to be perfectly honest, more and more, how even professedly reformed

01:44:35

Christians are starting to treat homosexuals as if they are a unique and special category of humans, and even capitulating to the liberal understanding of homosexuals as even being no different than a separate ethnic or national or racial group of people.

01:45:02

And they have a different approach to the understanding of repentance and their evangelism to these individuals involved in the sin.

01:45:15

Whereas we have Paul, the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 6 saying,

01:45:23

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived.

01:45:29

Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

01:45:42

Some were, or should I say such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the

01:45:52

Lord Jesus Christ and the Spirit of God. This sin is put in the same category of seriousness as adulterers and thieves and drunkards and swindlers and so on.

01:46:09

And yet none of those other categories would be defending some special privilege or some special tolerance because of some kind of a genetic makeup that they were born with.

01:46:25

Now, I believe that since we are born totally depraved or even conceived totally depraved, that people can be born with proclivities towards all kinds of sins.

01:46:37

But do you think that it seems as if the homosexuals who are coming to Christ, many of them,

01:46:44

I'm not saying all of them or anything like that, but I'm saying that there seems to be a view of their activity or their proclivity,

01:46:53

I should say, that they are victims of having this proclivity. And although they are going to make every effort to be chaste and follow

01:47:03

Christ, they are waving a white flag and basically identifying themselves as Christian homosexuals.

01:47:09

Now, this is something that is foreign from both the scriptures and history, isn't it?

01:47:15

It is. And it's problematic when you get your theology from a culture. And when the women's issue was all the rage 30 years ago, people said, if you give on this, then you're going to give on homosexuality in a generation or two.

01:47:31

And you hate to be right about this sort of thing, but that's exactly what happens. So what happens is, wherever the culture trains its guns at us is where we end up capitulating.

01:47:45

You say, well, we'll affirm all the other things, but where there's this pressure put, we just we sort of give there.

01:47:51

But there's a quote in Schaeffer, I think it's the guy who was there where he quotes, he attributes the quote to Luther.

01:47:57

He says, if we give at the area where the unbelievers train their guns, then we're basically denying the whole gospel.

01:48:06

Because basically, wherever they put the most pressure, that's where we give. Well, then wherever they're going to put their pressure next, we'll give there as well, because we've already set the principle that we give at the point where the culture exerts its pressure and the sins of the church.

01:48:24

It is problematic. I've read places where people who should know better, people who studied

01:48:29

Edwards and understand the nature of sin are now saying that, you know, proclivity isn't the sin, it's only when it's acted upon.

01:48:37

And where in the history of Reformed thought have we denied, have we separated the motivation and the inclination from the sin itself?

01:48:46

Jesus himself said that they were the same, that they were equally sinful. Absolutely. And our works are justified by virtue of the motive or the inclination behind the works.

01:48:59

The work itself is either virtuous, acceptable to God, or unacceptable to God, based upon the inclination that's behind the work.

01:49:07

And this sort of thing, you hate to say it, but it just sounds no more than a fear of man, and it's tough.

01:49:13

Nobody wants to be hated, nobody wants to have the people picketing in front of their house or their church, calling them names.

01:49:20

But they're really not doing homosexuals any favor by capitulating here. They're not helping people deal with their sin and to have a right relationship with their creator when they start compromising this way.

01:49:35

It really becomes a kind of selfish thing, and not really helping the people who need to help the most by telling them the truth.

01:49:43

Telling them in love, telling them with care and concern, but telling them the truth nonetheless.

01:49:49

And you said it very, very well. We're all born with original sin, and however that manifests itself, and however that original sin is exacerbated by our familial relationships or our difficulties or whether we've been assaulted and these other sorts of things, these are all part of the depravity of the culture that exacerbates the depravity in which we are born, with which we are born.

01:50:12

But that doesn't justify redefining all of reality and all of what

01:50:19

Scripture, all of what God teaches us is true upon whom we depend for truth and a real understanding of our wicked hearts, apart from whom we can't understand our wicked hearts,

01:50:28

Jeremiah 17 .9, to this kind of supposed enlightenment in dealing with these sort of things.

01:50:36

No, love them, and love them by telling them the truth and listening to them and coming alongside them.

01:50:43

I have people who do this full -time, I know some good friends of mine, and they're not being helped by this sort of capitulation of people who should know better, and they're going to end up hanging in the wind as all the major well -known theologians run for the hills, and the people who want to maintain

01:51:00

God's authority and truth undiluted are going to end up taking all the arrows.

01:51:06

It's a sad thing to watch. But anyway, that's just my two minutes. Yeah, well wouldn't you say that it is very much like claiming to be a victim of God, just like Paul the

01:51:21

Apostle predicted people would react who reject

01:51:28

God's sovereignty in election, and therefore also His sovereignty in reprobation, where Paul predicted that people would say, well how can

01:51:40

God find fault with me, because He's the one that made me this way, and who can resist

01:51:46

His will? It's this victimization game, and it seems that homosexuals or people who are involved in homosexual activity,

01:51:56

I don't even think we should really use the term homosexuals, it's people involved sinfully and wickedly in homosexual activity, they are basically saying, even if they don't use these words, they're saying that they're victims of the nature they were born with, and therefore we have to cut them some slack if they don't fully repent of this inclination of theirs.

01:52:23

Now obviously I'm not saying that anybody on this earth is going to achieve perfection, and I'm not, you know, no one's going to achieve perfection in any other sexual sin or perversion or sin in general, but at the same time, people aren't to, if they are repentant believers washed in the blood of the

01:52:46

Lamb, they are not to go on for the rest of their lives calling themselves adulterers, are they? Or fornicators, or thieves, or idolaters, are they?

01:52:56

Is that making sense? Absolutely, absolutely, and if they want to deal with their sin, the first step is to take responsibility for it, and if they're going to abrogate their responsibility for it and throw it on to God, well, sounds to me a little bit like Genesis 3 where everybody's blaming everybody else for their own sin.

01:53:15

We can't do it. You know, you said it, you said it well, I don't know if there's much

01:53:21

I can add to that, but the bottom line is where do we get our description of what is true and what is false?

01:53:27

It's from God's authority and His Word, and we start defining things apart from His Word, and we're ending up in the area of unbelief where our own opinions and our own speculation somehow trumps the ultimate authority of God's Word, the one who knows every heart perfectly and the one who explains reality perfectly, and I haven't seen any new groundbreaking exegesis of Scripture to justify any of this stuff.

01:53:58

It all seems to come from the pressure of the culture. Yeah, and as I've said yesterday,

01:54:03

I believe it was, or at least very recently on the program, I have always been taught, ever since becoming a born -again

01:54:11

Christian in the mid -1980s, that if you believe something that no one in 2 ,000 years of Christendom has ever believed, then it is false.

01:54:23

I've heard that over and over again, and I see great wisdom in that, especially since the

01:54:29

Scriptures themselves are identified as the faith once and for all delivered to all the saints, and so these new things, these new approaches to evangelizing a specific group of people, and in this case those involved in homosexual activity, if it's new, isn't it wrong?

01:54:53

Well, it's great wisdom if 2 ,000 years of the Spirit of God working through the people of God, interpreting the

01:55:00

Word of God, have yet to have come up with something like that, and lo and behold, the culture defines something a certain way, and lo and behold, the church starts defining it the way the culture does.

01:55:12

To put it, to understate it, it's rather suspect. Now, I'd like you to summarize what you most want our listeners to have etched in their hearts and minds regarding God the reason before we leave the program today.

01:55:27

Well, you know, as Macbeth put it, you know, apart from God, we're part of a, what, a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury, right, and so we're a brief candle on the way to dusty death, and really, the dividing line between despair and happiness forever really begins with, in the beginning,

01:55:49

God, and if your starting point is the God who created us, the God who went the infinite extent to redeem us, taking infinite wrath on His own self,

01:55:58

His own soul, Christ, God the Son, doing that on our behalf, if your starting point isn't there, you're left with being an accident of time and chance, with no point and purpose, borrowing point and purpose from the

01:56:11

Christian worldview, even as you deny it, to, it, if I could leave anybody with anything,

01:56:18

God's infinite excellence is so glorious that it thrills the soul, and He's made,

01:56:23

He's made amends to the evil that's in the world to such an extent we can have infinite happiness and eternity forever, and life is short, it is so short.

01:56:36

Eternity is long, and we need to start being rational instead of irrational and ignoring the thing that is the ultimate reality, which is to where we are all going, and that is, we're going to face our

01:56:48

Creator, and He's infinitely excellent, He's displayed in the person and work of Christ.

01:56:55

Come to Him, don't deny the obvious, because sin, the sin of unbelief is denying the obvious, and all of our machinations and all of our rationalizations for trying to legitimize our unbelief are not going to hold any water before God, and certainly no condemnation of His character is going to hold any water when you can point to Christ and say,

01:57:17

He suffered infinite wrath on His own soul that you might be delivered from all the muck and the sin of your own life and the condemnation of eternity, and yet you still thought best to treat

01:57:30

Him with contempt. God will not be mocked, but He's infinitely excellent at the same time, and people need to come to Him.

01:57:36

So if I could leave, a lot of things I could leave with the audience, hopefully that says something that's of value.

01:57:45

Well, I want our listeners to make sure that they have the website address for your ministry, it's pilgrimsrock .com,

01:57:54

pilgrimsrock .com, and the book that we have been discussing is

01:57:59

God, the Reason, How Infinite Excellence Gives Unbreakable Faith. That's where you can get the book.

01:58:06

You can also always remember that you can order 99 .999

01:58:12

% of all the books we address on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. You can get them through Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, the sponsor of this broadcast,

01:58:22

CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for BibleBookService .com, CV, BBS .com.

01:58:29

If they don't already have a book in stock, they can order it for you. And I want you to remember that coming up next week, we have the

01:58:42

Faithful Shepherd Conference for a little bit more than a week in Harvey Cedars, New Jersey, that the

01:58:48

Reverend Buzz Taylor, my co -host, and I will be attending, God willing, in Manning, an exhibitor's booth. We hope that as many of you can join us as possible,

01:58:57

May 15th through the 17th, featuring Carl Truman, Todd Pruitt, John Nielsen, and Amy Bird.

01:59:03

Go to AllianceNet .org for more information. AllianceNet .org. Click on Events, and then click on the

01:59:12

Faithful Shepherd Pastors Retreat, May 15th through the 17th.

01:59:17

I want to thank everyone who listened today. I want to thank my friend and co -host, the

01:59:22

Reverend Buzz Taylor, for being on the program. And of course, Dr. Beal, I want to thank you for being our guest today.

01:59:28

I hope that you can hang on the phone after we go off the air so I can schedule you for an interview on the infinite merit of Christ.

01:59:37

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

01:59:49

Savior than you are a sinner. God bless you, and please keep praying for Iron Sherpins Iron Radio.