September 26, 2019 Show with Dr. Michael Haykin on “Augustine’s ‘The City of God’ (& Why a 5th-Century Book Has Timeless Value For Christ’s Church)”

Augustine and *The City of God* as a Timeless Christian Classic

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Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 26th day of September 2019.

And I have on the program today one of my favorite guests of all time to interview, and that is the illustrious Dr. Michael A .G. Haken, Professor of Church History and Biblical Spirituality and Director of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

Today we are going to be addressing the theme, Augustine's The City of God and Why a Fifth Century Book Has Timeless Value for Christ's Church. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Michael A .G. Haken.

Great to be with you, Chris. Thank you.

And as always, for the sake of our listeners who are new, perhaps they're new believers, they're unfamiliar with you, and they're unfamiliar with the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, why don't you tell us something about that fine seminary?

Amen.

And the website is sbts .edu, S-B for Southern Baptist, T-S for Theological Seminary, S-B-T-S .edu. And I interviewed Dr. Mohler once on this program, and if you could send my greetings to him and tell him that I want him back on the program again at some point in the near future, God willing.

And I was just before the show started watching a new documentary that Dr. Mohler has participated in, Puritan, All of Life to the Glory of God. He is one of the 20 featured speakers on this documentary, and it's extraordinary.

I highly recommend the Media Gratia documentary, Puritan, All of Life to the Glory of God. So you folks listening can look that up later on. Today we are addressing Augustine's The City of God and why a 5th century book has timeless value for Christ's Church.

Before we do that, I know that sometimes this may appear to be redundant for you because of your scholarly and historian background to remind our listeners who Augustine was, but as I said, we do have very often new believers listening, and even non-Christians, even Muslims and so on listening.

So for the sake of our audience who is unfamiliar with Augustine, if you could please give us a little background in a summary form on who Augustine was.

Yeah, Augustine was born in 354 AD in a western individual.

Augustine, Pelagianism, and the Roots of *The City of God*

Now would the Eastern Orthodox agree with your assessment that they are Augustinian?

No, they would not. Eastern Orthodox, if they've not been raised in the United States, raised in the West, are to some degree influenced by them.

Now I don't know if the Eastern Orthodox would actually openly identify as Pelagian, but is some of the reason that Augustine so much opposed Pelagius and his understanding of the innocence of the human race, even at the moment of conception, and so on?

Well, that's where it prominently was.

Oh, where the spirit proceeds from the father and son?

I think it's right to emphasize that because...

Okay, well, this classic work, The City of God, why is it that that was, in fact, you chose the topic for today? What was so compelling about, or what is so compelling about this book that you wanted to focus on it for a two-hour interview?

And it's obviously something very important in your heart and mind, and a very important addition to the resources God has blessed us with to bless your faith. So why don't you tell us a little bit about the background of this book and why it is so important to you?

Yeah, I think the book is a very...

Now, would that be one of the primary reasons that it's timeless? Because as much as we in the 21st century look around us and see the horror of evil triumphing, it seems, the infanticide rampant globally with the celebration of abortion, late-term abortion, allowing babies to die that have accidentally been born, quote-unquote accidentally, been born during an abortion attempt, letting them die in a shoebox or something, the marriage of men to men and women to women, the celebration of that abomination by clergy globally.

Even though we see this in the 21st century and we cringe, and many in our ranks because of that expect Christ to return within our lifetime, these things obviously, although not the same things, but the horror of the triumph of evil has been something that the church has witnessed for centuries going all the way back to the first century.

People forget that Nero had Christians burning his torches to light his way in his palace and so on. But is this reason, as you just confirmed, the reason that how we as a church are to respond to the evil surrounding us, that's why this book is timeless.

Now the original title, Was It Not the City of God Against the Pagans? And I think that the fuller title is more descriptive and should be brought back into more common use. It's typically abbreviated The City of God.

Now, Augustine himself, before his conversion, as you, and by the way I want to make sure that our listeners know that if you want to hear a two-hour interview that Dr. Haken and I conducted not long ago on the life and legacy of St. Augustine, if you go to www .irontrapandzionradio .com and go to the archive of Past Programs Podcast, it says, or Past Shows Podcast, if you click on that, you can type in H-A-Y-K-I-N into the search engine and you will be directed to the link where you can hear the entire interview.

But you go into the fact that Augustine was not always in his youth a Christian, was quite rebellious and so on. Before his conversion to Christianity, how did he get along with the pagan society around him and interact with them, etc.?

Can you describe some of the ideology, theology, mindset of those pagans that were in the culture.

From which Augustine came so we can get an idea on how that may mirror today, and as you were even saying, how 9 -11, when that horror occurred, the greatest loss of life on American soil at the hands of a foreign enemy in our history, why that book immediately became even more important to you.

What was that culture like, that enemy pagan culture, enemy to the cross of Christ, that is?

Yeah, so it's not like, it's unlike our...

The Enduring Influence of Augustine on Western Christendom

Now how much of an impact has this book had on Christendom within the last nearly 2000 years? He was a 5th century writer, born in the 4th. I mean, obviously we have much more recent, and it was still centuries ago, but we have much more recent works like The Pilgrim's Progress that have had a phenomenal impact on Christendom ever since John Bunyan wrote that in prison a number of centuries ago.

But where would this book stand in comparison to the impact that it's had on Christendom?

It's had an enormous impact in many ways.

And subjects meaning the people that live in the areas where they reign.

Yeah, and he argues that the hunger and desire for power is not a fitting to have a love for and a desire to benefit, even despite the political theology of a man named Machiavelli. It would be interesting to ask genuinely...

Go ahead, I'm sorry.

And then the other thing I think that comes out of that is...

Yeah, and that clearly comes out today when we see the polar opposite ideologies clash in our culture. We see, and of course I'm not saying that everyone on one side is necessarily a child of God who has their priorities in an appropriate level, and that everybody who necessarily is on what might be called a liberal side is totally dismissive of God and the scriptures.

Although, I think that there is an extreme on the left that has become monstrous and frighteningly satanic and astonishingly evil. But it's kind of interesting how this is a reoccurring theme in the 21st century.

Wasn't one of the primary purposes of Augustine in The City of God against the pagans to set out a proof that Christianity was not to blame for the fall of Rome and a refutation of that idea and that paganism itself had within it the key elements that brought about its own destruction, which is what we hear today from many leftist totalitarians.

They blame Christianity and biblical morality other than those things that they borrow unconsciously from the scriptures themselves. They blame us, really, for everything that's horrible in this nation and perhaps this world that is bringing us to the brink of collapse.

We could even think of the global warming alarmist scenario where they view those who are the evangelical Christian right as the primary evil voice in this world trying to minimize the severity of this so-called threat that they imagine.

But anyway, I'm speaking on too long here. If you could respond to that.

Yeah, that is a key divided into two main sections that you find in...

Right. Yes, and by the way, there is a documentary that you can watch and listen to that came out in 1979, hosted by Leonard Nimoy, the actor that played Mr. Spock in Star Trek, where it demonstrates the scientific consensus of the 70s that we were facing at that time, global destruction because of a fastly approaching Ice Age.

But I want to continue on that thread about Augustine's refutation of Christianity being at fault for the fall of the Roman Empire. When we return, we have to go to our first break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

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That's Solid-Ground-Books .com. We are now back with our guest, Dr. Michael A .G. Haken, and he is discussing a classic work of Christian literature that is Timeless, The City of God by St. Augustine.

If you have a question, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com chrisarnson at gmail dot com and please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the USA.

Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter. And we have John in Bangor, Maine, who has a question. He said, Is this work of Augustine at the root of Two Kingdom theology?

I have heard people, even within the Reformed faith, who disagree strongly with their own Calvinistic brethren over whether or not Two Kingdom theology is biblically sound, and if you could, if it wouldn't be too much trouble, give a very brief description of this.

Am I right on this assumption that this is the basis for Two Kingdom theology, the book you are discussing today?

Yes, yeah, that is an accurate after Pentecost, since the time of Christ, the Two Kingdoms.

Now, my listener, our listener, insinuated, and I know this to be true, because I actually, several years ago, had a debate between two Reformed Christians on this subject, one who was a proponent or is a proponent of Two Kingdom theology, and one who is an opponent.

Can you give us a little bit of an idea of what the conflict is about that, that even Reformed people would disagree with each other on it?

Well, the conflict obviously has to do to the degree, what that was meant for is with the New Testament.

Now, I know of brethren who may be doctrinally nearly identical, who disagree as to how, when, and if the Church as a corporate entity should ever be involved in politics. And the only professing Christians I am aware of that are even against individual Christians as citizens being involved, like the Amish, some of the Mennonites, and varying degrees of that, and Seventh-day Adventism and other places.

But is this also a part of this conflict where you have some Christians who believe, although a Christian either has a liberty or even a duty to be in some fashion involved politically, even if it just means their vote, where you have, on the other spectrum, Christians saying that the Church is neglecting its duty to be salt and light in the world by not being more involved politically as a corporate entity.

Am I anywhere in the right realm there?

Those are also issues that are bound up with this. They're not...

Well, I know two... Go ahead, I'm sorry.

The idea that a Christian should... Generally not...

What I was referring to as far as within Reform circles is I can think of two of my modern-day heroes, one who is still with us and one who is in Heaven, who disagreed sharply on this but were both thoroughgoing Calvinists or are thoroughgoing Calvinists.

You have Dr. John MacArthur, for instance, who does not believe the Church as a corporate entity should be involved politically and that pastors should not be involved in rallying support for specific political candidates while at the same time thinking it very appropriate for Christian individuals to be involved.

And on the other hand, you have the late Greg Bonson. He's been in Heaven so long, I don't know if the term late would be appropriate grammatically, but he would be more when he was with us in favor of the Church as a corporate entity being more strongly involved as a voice for politics.

So that's really where I was coming from.

Yeah, so I guess when I was thinking...

Right, yeah, that's an extreme view, obviously. By the way, John in Bangor, Maine, thanks to our friends at Hendrickson Publishers, you have won a free copy of The City of God, their edition of it, their 900-page edition of it that retails for $18 .95.

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And that is only good, that offer is only good through this Saturday, 9 p .m. Eastern Time. Going back to what we were originally discussing before the break, the charge that Christianity is at the root of the blame for the fall of society and culture, which has been going on for millennia, even when it is believed that Nero is the one who had ordered the burning of Rome so that the Christians would be blamed, can you go into a little bit more detail about that concept of that being a perpetual thing from not only Nero's day, but Augustine's day, into the current day?

Yeah, and that if the gods were to begin to accept the Tertullian type of rites, tend to want the violent world Christianity became in the years prior. In fact, he points out, because many of you pagans, the only reason you attack anybody in the churches.

Wow.

And so...

Well, we have to get to our midway break right now. This is a longer than normal break because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break because they air their own public service announcements during this break to localize Iron Trip and Zion to Lake City, Florida, a requirement of the FCC, and we, at the same time, air our globally heard commercials.

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I can't stress that strongly enough. So please try to patronize our advertisers as much as you can. Also use this time by writing down questions for Dr. Michael A .G. Haykin on St. Augustine, on specifically his work The City of God Against the Pagans, and any other questions that you may have theologically for him because he is a brilliant theologian and historian.

Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back with Dr. Michael A .G. Haykin after these messages from our sponsors.

Got to tell you, for my money, Chris Arnzen's radio program is just the best.

Iron.

Criticizing.

Iron.

I think that's what it's called. This is Todd Friel of Wretched Radio and TV with Phil Johnson of Grace to You inviting everybody to come to the G3 conference which has almost instantly become one of the best conferences in the country.

And it is. It's a great conference. I love it. And Chris Arnzen was there last year. He's been there I think every year. It's great to see him there. You and I actually did some recordings in the lobby at that place.

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So it should be a cavalcade of great preachers.

And me.

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James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries and the Dividing Line webcast here. Although God has brought me all over the globe for many years to teach, preach and debate at numerous venues some of my very fondest memories are from those precious times of fellowship with Pastor Rich Jensen and the brethren at Hope Reform Baptist Church now located at their new beautiful facilities in Corham, Long Island, New York.

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