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)”

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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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

Earth who are listening via live streaming 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?

Yeah, the school is in Louisville, Kentucky, as you mentioned. It's the kind of flagship seminary of the

Southern Baptist Convention. Founded in 1859, it was in Greenville, South Carolina, for a good number of years, and then moved to Kentucky during the late 20th century, or probably around the 1970s through the 1960s through the 1990s.

It drifted very far from where it was founded. The abstract of principles, though, the confessional faith is still in place.

And with the election of Dr. Albert Mohler in the early 1990s, he was used by God to bring it back to its confessional foundation.

And God has blessed the school richly through his ministry and the gathering of a tremendous faculty.

Our student body is now over 5 ,000, 2 ,000 in the MDiv program alone.

So we've really known God's blessing, and do pray that your listeners would continue to remember us in prayer, that we would be faithful to the

Gospel. Amen. And the website is sbts .edu. S -B for Southern Baptist, T -S for Theological Seminary dot edu.

S -B -T -S dot 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, dies in 430.

He's an African brother. The North Africa, that period of history was part of the

Roman Empire. And in many ways, Augustine is one of the great gifts of the early Church to the

Church today. Everybody who has been raised in a Western evangelical context, whatever your denominational background, you're an

Augustinian to some degree. He's that influential. He wrote about 130 books.

We have about 125 of them. Some of them like the one we're going to talk about today, The City of God, consists of 12 individual, sorry, 20, 22 individual books and massive influence in areas like soteriology, the doctrine of salvation, his book on the

Trinity, all the way down to various minor issues in which he's had an enormous influence.

Now, would the Eastern Orthodox agree with your assessment that they are Augustinian? No, they would not.

They would not. Eastern Orthodox, if they've not been raised in the United States, they wouldn't be Augustinian.

But anybody who's been raised in the West, even if they're Eastern Orthodox, has been to some degree influenced by Augustine, just enormously influential.

And the Eastern Orthodox Church is now beginning to recognize that in the late 20th century and early 21st century.

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 was never an issue during the... The debates that really kind of came to a head were around the middle of the 11th century, 1054 to be exact.

And the issues that were debated, in which Augustine figured prominently, was his view of the Trinity. And so they...

Oh, where the Spirit proceeds from the Father and Son? Yes. They dispute the fact that the

Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. And Augustine, I think, is right to emphasize that because he recognizes that the

Holy Spirit in the New Testament is a Christ -centered Spirit. And the creedal statement in which that statement appears is the

Nicene Creed, and it didn't make anything in the article that deals with the

Holy Spirit. It didn't make a connection between the Spirit and Christ. And Augustine, I think, rightly does that.

So that's the area. That's the key area. Now, obviously, they would disagree with Augustine on his understanding of human nature and conversion, but that wasn't an issue in dispute during the 11th century.

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 apropos text for our day. The book deals with the collapse of the

Roman Empire in many ways. It took its rise from the iconic event of the sack of Rome in August of 410 by a group of Germanic barbarians known as the

Visigoths. And although that was only a three -day event, it was horrifying from an iconic standpoint.

It was a key event which prompted Augustine to think about how we understand

God's work in history. And he is not only responding, he has to respond to a variety of groups of people, some of them pagan who were critical of the

Church, some of them though Christians who misunderstood the way in which

God's kingdom is going forward and identified the kingdom of God with what was then the

Christian Roman Empire because the Roman Empire had embraced Christianity as a legal religion under Constantine about a hundred years prior.

And then during the reign of Theodosius I in the early 380s had declared

Christianity the only legal religion. And there were some who felt that if the

Roman Empire fell, the Christian Roman Empire fell, that that would be the end of God's activity in history and the end would come and Christ would return.

And Augustine has to respond to this and we'll see that thinking produced a number of reactions on the part of Christians.

And Augustine is really dealing with how do you live as a church in the collapse of a culture?

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, quote, 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 1st 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?

Yeah, it really is a very helpful tract for our time in which we see the collapse of so much that we love and hold dear.

And only God knows whether or not this is the end of Western civilization,

Western culture, which has been so strongly shaped by the gospel and the church, whether there are centuries to come before the

Lord returns or whether the Lord is returning soon. But in the midst of that, Augustine had to face the same in the collapse of his culture and his world.

By the time that he dies in 430, there is another Germanic barbarian group at the city gates of his city,

Hippo Regius in North Africa, called the Vandals, and who would take the city after his death.

And the book then, it really speaks to how should we live in this sort of world?

And I think for that reason it's iconic. I had taught the book probably for about 15 years before 2001, and when 9 -11 took place, one of the first things

I remembered in my thinking about how do you deal with this was Augustine's book, and it took on a new significance for me in my teaching about the early church.

Now, the original title, was it not The City of God Against the Pagans? Correct.

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, 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 .irontrapandzioneradio

.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.?

Well, before his conversion, his whole worldview would have been really that of paganism.

He had been raised in a kind of half -Christian home. It was a divided home. His mother was a believer, a very strong believer.

His father was not, until his deathbed, where Augustine tells us that his father received

Christ on his deathbed, which was in 372. But up until his conversion in 386,

Augustine really, for the first 30 years of his life, lived as a pagan. Obviously, with twinges of conscience and conviction, but it's not until his conversion that he begins to be useful, in that sense, to God.

And so he knew the world. He knew that world very, very well. It's hunger, it's thirst, it's love, it's follies, it's ambitions, it's pride, it's lust, etc.

Now, 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, it's obviously polytheistic. So it's not like, it's unlike our secular atheism.

Atheism is virtually unknown in the ancient world, so it's polytheistic.

It claimed to be tolerant. The Romans basically didn't outlaw any religion but Christianity, and on occasion one or two others, but they're kind of exceptions to the rule.

So it's a culture that claims to be tolerant, claims that there are many ways to God, deeply polytheistic.

The Roman army, it was a brutal military dictatorship, the

Roman world. Democracy was not part of that world at all.

It was very much a man's world, so in Roman thinking, a man could have, this is pagan thinking, a man could have various extramarital affairs, and that wasn't a problem.

It was a problem if a woman did it. So you have a significant degree of sexual immorality.

They didn't have anything like homosexual marriage. Even the Greeks who believed in homosexuality as legitimate sexual expression frowned upon homosexual marriage.

They regarded that as a perversion, which is interesting because they did allow for homosexuality. I think ours is probably the first culture in the history of the world,

I could be wrong, that has allowed for and placed into law homosexual marriage in various cases in various countries.

It was a world in which child exposure was common. If you wanted unwanted children, there was abortion, but it was usually dangerous to the health of the mother.

A vast divide between wealthy, there were about two percent of the Roman Empire that were stupendously wealthy.

Between 80 to 90 percent of the Roman Empire were poor. Very small middle class.

The middle class in any culture is vital for democracy. So even if there had been thinking about having a democracy, it would have been difficult to enact it because you didn't have much of a middle class, maybe 8 to 18 percent.

Augustine's born, he's definitely born into lower middle class. His father was a bureaucrat in civil service in North Africa, but he has enough funds to get his son educated.

And eventually Augustine will end up being definitely among the upper middle class, earning a very, very lucrative salary as a professor of rhetoric in the

University of Milan. I'm using terminology there, professor of rhetoric, a university that would be similar to us.

Those sort of situations obviously have their own differences, but that's essentially what he was doing, earning a very, very lucrative salary.

A world in which, very similar to ours, you've got ambition for power, for fame and prestige, those are what dominated

Augustine's life, and sex. The certain areas of what we think of the

Roman world, like the gladiatorial fight, most of those have come to an end.

They had been banned by the Roman Emperor Constantine about a hundred years earlier, although in some of the Roman provinces they still continued.

So it was a violent world. The pagans that Augustine is writing against the

City of God, and that really dominates the first ten books of the City of God, he's seeking to show that the false gods of the pagans' worship are of no value or use to preserving the empire.

And because the pagans were claiming that once the empire had become Christian, it's not surprising that gods, in anger, allowed the

Rome to be sacked by these vandals, by the Visigoths rather. And Augustine's brief then, in the first part of the book, is to show that this isn't the case at all.

...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. First, in terms of eschatology. He lays out very, very clearly here an amillennial eschatology, which essentially, down to the time of the

Puritans, is the eschatology of the Western Church. Amillennialism is the dominant view in the

Middle Ages, by and large, except for one or two people like Joachim of Fiore.

All of the Reformers are amillennial, and that because of Augustine. And it's only with the

Puritans that you start to get that challenged with either a postmillennial view, or in a certain few cases, kind of a premillennial view, which would be going back to some of the early

Christian writers like Tertullian and Irenaeus. So that's very significant.

Augustine also elaborates in this his understanding of heaven and the city of God and the vision of God, and that is a vision of love, and that heaven is ruled by love, and the air that we breathe there will be one of humility.

Those sorts of conceptions dominated Christian thinking well down to the modern day.

In many ways, as he lays out the history of the city of God in the second half of the book, he also fleshes out a political theology, and that is, how should rulers in a governing society govern?

And the emphasis is that they need to be men. He's not thinking here, obviously, of women, but we could include women.

They need to be men who love their subjects. 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 reason to become a politician, but to go into politics, one has to have a love for the society in which you are, and a desire to benefit that society.

He really lays this out very, very clearly, and all through the Middle Ages, even despite the political theology of a man named

Machiavelli, who kind of has a very cynical, pragmatic view of how power operates in a political culture,

Augustine's view is really very, very significant, and provided many rulers, even if they fell short of the ideal, with an understanding of how they should govern.

And it's only been since the Enlightenment, probably since the 1700s, that Augustine's influence in this regard has been discarded.

And it would be interesting to ask the question, when you're voting for an individual of whatever level of government, is the person

I'm voting for genuinely concerned about the well -being of the citizens over which he will now be appointed as a ruler?

And that's Augustine's great emphasis, that just as the city of God is shaped by love, so all political cultures need to be shaped by love.

Go ahead, I'm sorry. And then the other thing I think that comes out of that is his argument, and this is very typical

Augustine, that societies are ultimately shaped by love.

Love for something. And it's either love for God, or love for sin.

Yeah. And that clearly comes out today, when we see the polar opposite ideologies clash in our culture, 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 aspect of the first part of the book.

The book is divided into two main sections. The first part is what we call Books 1 -10, and in that he really tried to show that the pagan claim that Christianity is responsible for the fall of the

Empire is completely misplaced. And as you said, very rightly, that has some very, very contemporary echoes and reverberations, because one of the themes that you find in certain public intellectuals and media types is that Christianity is to blame for the situation we're in.

So there is an influential article written in the early 1960s, I believe it was, that argued that the ecological crisis, and they were talking then about ecological crisis, not using climate warming, global warming, but still talking about the ecological crisis, is the fault of Christianity because of its adherence to the

Dominion, the creation mandate. Right. Genesis 1. And so that's just one example of numerous attempts to kind of blame

Christianity for the flaws and faults of our culture. 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

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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. Whether or not Two -Kingdom theology is an accurate depiction of how the

Scriptures view the relationship of church and state, definitely Augustine sees two kingdoms, which he describes as two cities.

The one, the City of God, doesn't align perfectly with any nation -state, any political entity.

It runs through the heart of a variety of political entities, particularly so since the rise of the

Church in the age after the Pentecost and so on.

So yeah, this would definitely align with the kind of an idea that there are two kingdoms, and that Christians living since the time of Christ belong as citizens to two kingdoms.

They're citizens of whatever political nation they find themselves in, or political entity, and they're also citizens of the

Kingdom of God. 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 degree to which, to what degree does the

Scriptures lay out as a political agenda? Do the

Scriptures, in terms of law, particularly, obviously, the laws of the

Old Testament that deal with the nation of Israel, is there an expectation within the

New Testament that a political entity that's seeking to live, in which there are a majority of people seeking to live godly lives, that they are to endorse all of the

Old Testament legislation? Or are they to use the Old Testament legislation that was meant for Israel as a theocratic nation that that should be implemented in a political entity since the time of Christ?

And obviously there are nuances, there's more than simply those two positions in terms of how we understand the relationship of Church and State, but within the

Reformed camp, those two have become pretty sharpened in the last probably hundred years or so.

To what degree does the New Testament, and particularly the Old Testament, give us a blueprint for how to run a society?

Or is it the case that we've got two separate kingdoms? 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 you have varying degrees of that in 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.

The rejection of involvement in the political realm is not frequently found within a

Reformed context. You, generally speaking, in Reformed thinking have the idea either of a two kingdoms view or the idea of Christ the shaper of culture if you want to use that kind of paradigm that Richard Niebuhr came up with of different ways of viewing

Christ in relationship to the culture or Christianity in relationship to the culture. And so the Reformed view, generally speaking, doesn't adopt the kind of Anabaptist, Amish view, which is

Christ against culture. So that the culture and the political realm are really almost satanic vehicles, and we should have nothing to do with them.

Reformed thinking has generally not taken that perspective. Go ahead,

I'm sorry. The idea that Christians shouldn't be involved in politics at all is generally not being debated heavily within Reformed circles.

But within the larger Christian world, yes, there are definitely those who feel that we should simply turn our backs on politics and not be involved at all.

What I was referring to as far as within Reformed 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.

That's really where I was coming from. You do have those differences within the

Reformed camp, and I guess when I was thinking of Christians who are outside the Reformed context who want nothing to do with politics, not even voting.

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.

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Saturday 9 p .m. Eastern Time. Going back to what we were originally discussing before the break, the charge that Christianity is the fall, or at the root of the blame for the fall of society and culture which has been going on for millennia even when we had 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, in the late 3rd century you have a pagan philosopher named

Porphyry who publishes a series of books against Christianity in which he blames

Christianity for what's known as the crisis of the 3rd century which is the fact that between roughly 220 and 284 there were roughly 40

Roman emperors 38 of whom died violently either on the battlefield or assassinated most of whom reigned for a maximum of a couple of years and it looked like the empire was falling apart there and his books were deeply influential in the mindset of a lot of people at the time particularly people in power that Christianity was responsible for the weakness of the

Roman Empire and it actually issued a large scale persecution that persecution was ended by Constantine and from Constantine onwards in the

Western Roman Empire there is no officially pagan emperor except for one,

Julian the Apostate from 361 to 363 so Christians are in control and the pagans response to that obviously is that from their world view it was the gods the pagan gods who had given the

Romans the burden of ruling in the Mediterranean basin etc. and all the lands adjacent to it and that if the gods were not worshipped then calamity would befall the empire and so when the empire does begin to experience a breakup in the west roughly from the 370s onwards it's not surprising that they revert to this old kind of charge that Christianity is to blame.

Tertullian once said if the crops fail, they blame the Christians and floods, they blame the

Christians and societies tend to want to have scapegoats and the

Roman world is no exception and given the fact that it was a violent world Christianity became a target of violence up until it's toleration and then it's legalized being made a legal religion but the pagans still respond and so Augustine feels it incumbent upon him to take the first 10 books and goes through he goes through responding to that, showing that hey, ok, so you claim the pagan gods were watching over the empire he gives numerous examples of battles lost invasions that took place in the years prior to the fall of Rome in 410, in which if the gods were supposedly protecting the empire well they sure didn't do a good job of it in fact he points out that when the

Visigoths sacked the city of Rome because they were Aryans, like Jehovah's Witnesses in terms of their view of Christ they did not destroy any of the churches or attack them and so he said, you know this is really ironic because many of you pagans, the only reason you're still living to criticize us is because you scuttled for all your worth into our churches and were able to save your skin because the

Visigoths wouldn't attack anybody in the churches and so now you're turning around and saying you know, we've angered the gods, well the gods weren't doing any favors, they didn't protect you but our churches did

Well we have to go to our midway break right now this is a longer than normal break because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

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We'll also use this time by writing down questions for Dr. Michael A .G. Haykin on St.

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Our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com

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Gary Kimbrough, pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Laurel, Mississippi. God tells us in James 1 -27 that pure and undefiled religion is a visit to fatherless and widows in their affliction.

In the providence of God, three years ago, I discovered a poor, small church outside Lusaka, Zambia, in a township called

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What was I to do? Could I just say, God bless you, and walk away? The situation of the children set heavily upon me.

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Please send your gift of any amount to Bethlehem Baptist Church, 838 Reed Road, Laurel, Mississippi, 39443.

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Bethlehem Baptist Church, 838 Reed Road, Laurel, Mississippi, 39443.

Or bbclaurel .com. Thank you. One sure way all

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Call Lindbrook Baptist at 516 -599 -9402. That's 516 -599 -9402.

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Haken, we just have a few exciting upcoming events that we want you to know about. Our friends at Grace Bible Fellowship Church in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, are having a conference that features a friend of my guest,

Dr. Michael Haken. Dustin Benj is the speaker at this conference on the theme,

The Bible's Continued Relevance, Authority, and Sufficiency. And that is Saturday, October 5th.

And Sunday, October 6th. And, by the way,

Dustin Benj is going to be my guest here on Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio on October 1st.

That's a Tuesday, October 1st. And he's going to be speaking on a different subject, The Angelology of Jonathan Edwards, which is the thesis of his doctoral dissertation.

And if you want to get more information on this conference, the

Reformation Conference 2019, at the Grace Bible Fellowship Church of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, just go to their website to get all the details that you need.

GraceBFC .com Once again, that's

Saturday and Sunday, October 5th and 6th in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. We have also an event that I'm excited about that's coming up before you know it.

Seems like it's far away, but it will be here before you know it. That is the Foundations Conference in New York City.

That's December 19th and 20th, which is a Thursday and Friday. And there is no better place, in my opinion, to be spending the

Christmas season than in Manhattan. So I'm looking forward to my return to my old stomping grounds, December 19th and 20th, for the

Foundations Conference, which is a conference of sermon audio. This is a conference only for men in ministry leadership, so keep that in mind.

The speakers include Dr. Stephen J. Lawson, Paul Washer, Jeff Thomas, Rev. Armin Tomasian, Richard Colwell Jr.,

and Andrew Quigley. If you would like to join me there in New York City, December 19th and 20th, at the

Foundations Conference, go to thefoundationsconference .com thefoundationsconference .com

Then in January, I'm packing up my bags again, and I'm heading down south this time to Atlanta, Georgia, more specifically

College Park, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, to the Georgia International Convention Center, where they are hosting the

G3 Conference, the G3 Conference standing for Gospel, Grace, and Glory. This January, the theme is

Worship Matters, and they have always a phenomenal and very long list of speakers, the longest list of speakers,

I think, that I've ever encountered at any conference. Once again, we have Stephen J. Lawson on the roster.

We have Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries. We have Phil Johnson, the

Executive Director of John McArthur's Media Ministry. Grace to you. We have Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Radio.

We have Derek Thomas, world -renowned Presbyterian writer and speaker and pastor and preacher.

Dr. Tom Askell, who is the Executive Director of Founders Ministries, the

Calvinistic ministry within the Southern Baptist Convention. Dr. Stephen J. Nichols, the

President of Reformation Bible College, the college founded by the late R .C. Sproul and Ligonier Ministries. Dr.

Kosti Hinn, or should I say Kosti Hinn? I don't think he's achieved his doctorate yet. But Kosti Hinn, who is the nephew of the notorious heretic and charlatan

Benny Hinn. And Kosti doesn't mind me saying that because he says just as much, if not more, in refutation of his own uncle when he is especially outside of his own pulpit, speaking at conferences and writing.

Kosti has renounced the word of faith heresies of his youth and is now a Reformed Baptist pastor and cessationist, who was in California and just recently took a call to Arizona to be on the pastoral team of a church there, and many more.

And, as you may have heard, John MacArthur himself is on the lineup at the G3 Conference.

If it was just John MacArthur all by himself, I would make the trip to Atlanta to hear him and see him preach.

He is one of my greatest heroes of modern times. And if you want to join me there, go to G3Conference .com.

G3Conference .com And you will have all the information that you need to register. And I strongly urge you to register for an exhibitor's booth if you have a business or parachurch ministry because they have over 5 ,000 people that attend this conference every year.

And with John MacArthur on the lineup, I think they're going to have over 6 ,000 people. So register, not only to attend, but if it applies to you, an exhibitor's booth before they run out of room at G3Conference .com

G3Conference .com I hope your exhibitor's booth is near mine for the Iron Sherp and Zion Radio table that I will have as I have for the last three years.

This will be my fourth G3 Conference. I hope to see you there. Last but not least, if you love Iron Sherp and Zion Radio and you don't want it to disappear from the airwaves, please go to IronSherpandZionRadio .com

Click support, then click, click to donate now. You can donate instantly with a credit or debit card.

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We barely are squeaking through September. Please help us if you can. Please never siphon money away from your regular giving to your local church where you're a member to help us and never put your family in financial jeopardy to help us.

Never do those two things. Those are two commands of God to support your family and your church.

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As long as whatever it is you're promoting is compatible with what we believe, we will help you launch an ad campaign. You don't have to believe identically with me, but you need to be promoting something that's compatible with what we believe.

ChrisArneson at gmail .com and put advertising in the subject line. If you are not a member of a local

Bible -believing church and you're not even looking for one, you're living in rebellion against God. I can help you find a church no matter where you live in the world,

God willing, because I have lists of biblically faithful churches globally and if none of the churches on my list are close enough to you, those pastors that are reasonably close may know of a church in your backyard or know of a church where you are vacationing.

I've helped many people in our audience find churches where they have joined or have visited on vacation or have recommended to their own family and loved ones.

So send me an email to ChrisArneson at gmail .com and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address for a question for Dr.

Michael A .G. Haken on Augustine's City of God. ChrisArneson at gmail .com

ChrisArneson at gmail .com B .B. in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania wants to know,

Is the City of God difficult to read? I have never picked up a book that is of that level of antiquity that I could comfortably read or even understand with ease.

Can you give me some assistance perhaps even in finding a version or edition that is in modern -day and easy -to -read

English? Yes, it's a difficult book if you simply begin at Book 1, at Chapter 1, and begin,

I hope, to plow through it that way. I do have a reading guide of about 12 to 15 vital sections that you need to read that would give you the grasp of the whole thing.

Oh, great. So I'd be happy to, mhaken at spts .edu,

m -h -a -y -k -i -n at spts .edu if you email me.

There is a version that is put out by Penguin Books, paperback, that is a modern translation.

So it's not the translation that's difficult, it's just the amount of things that he's talking about that demand a degree of knowledge of Roman history and culture.

And so the sections that I identify as vital are ones that don't really go into that in enormous detail, but would enable you nonetheless to have a good grasp of the book.

Well, guess what, BB? You've won a free copy of the Hendrickson Publishers Edition, compliments of Hendrickson Publishers, and also compliments of CVBBS .com.

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Sorry, folks, I got distracted for a moment because I thought a new question was coming in, but it was something totally irrelevant to our discussion today.

By the way, if anybody else would like to join us with a question of their own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

chrisarnson at gmail dot com. We have Ronald in eastern

Suffolk County, Long Island, who wants to know, can you describe those specific things that you're aware of that the pagan culture had innate to it that aided in the collapse of the

Roman Empire? Well, as I mentioned earlier, the

Christians actually were running the Empire when the Empire fell. And, I mean, obviously there had been a degree of sexual immorality, there had been the idolatry, there had been the encouragement of euthanasia, there had been infanticide, there had been the killing of human beings for sport, etc.

But all of that had changed with the reign of Constantine.

And by the time that he died in 337, he became emperor in 306, the

Empire has radically changed in terms of many of the core principles. And so 100 years on is when the

Empire begins to collapse, and so the Christians were actually running the Empire. And so often one of the arguments that I've heard is that the parallel between our society now and Rome assumes that the pagans were running the show and they weren't.

But the Christians were running the show. And the collapse of the Roman Empire, I think, is not so much moral issues, but military issues.

And I think the military solution to the problem of the fall of the

Roman Empire is probably the best one. Augustine obviously had to deal with this. Why would God allow a

Christian -run political entity to collapse?

And that's why he distinguishes between the city of God, which cannot know collapse, and will be built and will persevere forever, as opposed to any political entity.

Even if there are Christians in significant political positions in that entity, that does not remove them from the travail of this world, which is deterioration, collapse, and so on.

But the kingdom of which he was thrilled to be a part, and which he encouraged all of his compatriots to be a part, will no doubt collapse, because that's the city of God.

We have Susan Margaret of Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, who asks,

I know that there are earthly reasons, such as the one you mentioned, regarding an inadequate military, that bring down a culture into ruin.

But do you believe that the sins and moral evil of any given society could bring it to ruin, not necessarily for a comprehensible earthly reason, but because of the wrath of God himself bringing down such a culture?

Yes, I think so. I mean, I don't think that's the best explanation for the fall of the

Roman Empire, but I think that you do find that in the Proverbs, that righteousness exalts a nation, and blessed is that people who have

God -fearing rulers. And that to have rulers who are not

God -fearing men, and to exalt unrighteousness, and to claim it is righteousness, and to exalt sin instead of what is right and just and good, inevitably is going to bring about the collapse of a culture.

So Augustine is not saying that it doesn't matter how one lives as a politician.

He's very concerned about righteousness being exhibited at the political level.

But he is saying that even having godly rulers does not mean that the society will not experience setbacks and even collapse.

Well, guess what, Susan and Margaret, in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, you have also won a free copy of Hendrickson Publishers' edition of The City of God by St.

Augustine, and we want to thank our friends again at Hendrickson Publishers for their generosity, and in particular

Meg Rusick, who made this possible, who is involved in the publicity department there.

Thank you so much, Meg, for expediting this offer that we have for our listeners.

Make sure you give us your full mailing address in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, so that CVBBS .com, who will be shipping it out to you, can get it in your hands.

We have Bobby in Hartsdale, New York, who wants to know,

I have often heard that sodomy being rampant in a culture is often historically the reason for its collapse, no doubt from the very hand of God, but also from making it an easier target from invading enemies.

Is this something that is a realistic idea, in your opinion, from history?

Yes. You obviously have the situation of Sodom and Gomorrah, the overthrow of those cities on the plain, the plain near what is now the

Dead Sea. But again, it's not an issue... I mean, you presumably had maybe sodomitical relationships going on within the so -called

Christian Roman Empire, but her rulers were not engaged in that, didn't support that, condemned that by law, and so there had been a turnaround from that sort of world.

It would be very apropos for... And in fact, there are Christian authors in the 3rd century, when it looked like the empire would collapse, who accused the empire of...

Because of its toleration of these sins, then God's judgment would be leveled on the empire. Cyprian, in his letters to Dionysus, cites sodomy as an example here.

But that's not what's going on in the 5th century with Augustine. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, were you saying that it was only same -gender, same -sex marriage that would be illegal, or was it even just the practice of it, of homosexuality, that was illegal in that day?

No, I mean, the same -sex marriage, neither the Greeks nor the Romans indulged in that.

I mean, both Greeks and Romans were conscious that to build a stable society, you needed heterosexual marriage, and that was the only basis upon which you could have legitimate heirs.

I mean, what they didn't have was the sort of technology that we have today, where people can get pregnant without marriage, etc.,

etc. I mean, obviously people got pregnant without marriage there, yeah. But you know what

I mean. Right. The sort of technological in vitro fertilization, they don't have any of that.

And so same -sex marriage is not a part of the Greek and Roman world. Same -sex relations are very much a part of the

Greek world, and they infected the Roman world with that, but they don't approve of same -sex marriage.

Now, when you get the institution of the Christian Roman Empire, same -sex marriage is condemned.

Same -sex relationships are condemned, sorry. Okay, but was the concept even thought of as a possibility for people to have same -sex marriages back then?

No, no. The only one that I have heard of, although I have heard some

Christian authors and so on claim that there were marriage ceremonies going on for homosexuals in the ancient world,

I don't know if that is... No. Okay. If they're claiming that, then I think

I know that world very well, and I don't know of any illustrations of that. There is claims, and I don't know the truth of these, that there were same -sex marriages in the

Middle Ages, and that there were services that were designed for such.

Okay. Yeah, and by the way, I wasn't referring to liberals defending that. I was just saying that I've heard some saying that that sin and that false understanding of marriage even existed long ago.

But will you just confirm that at least in the Middle Ages it occurred? In the

Middle Ages, it appears it may have occurred. There is a historian who himself was gay,

John Boswell, who argued that there were same -sex marriages endorsed or allowed by the

Church in the Middle Ages. I don't know. I have not looked into that. But that sort of thing in the ancient world is not the case.

I mean, even among the Greeks, I don't know any Greek author who's a pagan, who's critical of same -sex relationships.

If a man continued in a same -sex relationship into his 40s and 50s, he was regarded really as weird, and let alone same -sex marriages.

There's no illustration of same -sex marriages in the ancient world that I'm aware of.

Yeah, and in certain Islamic cultures, like in Afghanistan, I have heard that they turn a blind eye to homosexual relationships amongst the unmarried young men, but not when they get older and get married.

I'm not saying that they think it's not a sin, but they seem to tolerate it, at least in Afghanistan, I've heard from experts on Islam.

The one marriage that I have heard of that seems to have come from credible sources in the ancient world between a man and a boy was when

Nero had kidnapped a young man, had his armies kidnap this young man that resembled his late wife, and had that young man, as best as they could in the ancient world, somehow surgically altered, if not probably just castrated or something, and he married that man.

Have you ever heard that story of Nero? No. I mean, there are accounts that Nero was bisexual, as were a number of these

Roman emperors. But as I said, I'm pretty solidly convinced that there is no such thing as actual homosexual marriage in the ancient world.

There might be ongoing relationships, but they were never formalized in the culture as marriages.

We have, let's see here, C .J. in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who wants to know what, in your opinion, was

Augustine's greatest ammunition in setting forth the idea that a

Christian ideology in a culture is the best ideology to preserve it rather than bring it to ruin.

Well, his argument from the whole basis of love as a way of a glue of society, he very clearly showed that Roman imperial policy, prior to the advent of Christianity, had been one of domination, in which the

Roman armies had gone out to subjugate and brutalize populations, killing, enslaving, destroying cities.

And that this would only embitter and encourage hatred among their subjects.

And so his argument was that Christianity, even though no

Christian state is the actual kingdom of God, nonetheless, a Christian society, in which you have rulers who are seeking the best for their subjects, inevitably a society that is going to flourish because of this relationship of love between subject and ruler.

Now, he's not talking about democracy here, of course. He wouldn't be democratic in his understanding.

But he is talking about rulers serving their subjects by love and subjects being obedient out of love and out of respect for God to their rulers.

And it's really a tremendous vision. And as I said, it has enormous implications for the medieval world.

A lot of medieval rulers used portions of the City of God as a manual for how to do politics.

Machiavelli comes up with a very, very different view, which probably fits our world much better, the kind of cynicism, power -hungry kind of world in which we often find ourselves.

But there was a different model. Whether or not the medieval rulers ever fully realized it, nonetheless, you've got this model all through the

Middle Ages, which is Augustinian. And it shapes people like Calvin and his political theology, which is enormously important, especially for the

United States. And so indirectly, Augustine has a role in shaping the politics and thinking of the founders of the

American Republic, who are deeply indebted to a whole political tradition that goes back through the

Puritans, through the Huguenots, the French Huguenots, through Scottish reformers like John Knox to Calvin, who in turn is deeply indebted to people like Augustine.

Yes, I've heard the case for Calvin being very indirectly, of course, responsible for the

American Republic that we enjoy, at least for now. Yeah, I think you could say this, that if Calvin had not lived and engaged in his ministry in Geneva, you wouldn't have the

American Republic. If you did, it would be very different. And that's why

Augustine, as I said, is important, because one of the key influences on Calvin politically is

Augustine. The interesting thing, I haven't done as much study as I should in recent years of Calvin's political thinking.

It would be interesting to know if Augustine is the dominant influence. He may well be. We have

Christopher from Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who asks, can you compare and contrast the love that Augustine speaks of, that is the major and key element of preserving a society, with the love that is claimed by those in our day who hate

Christianity and hate the Scriptures, who claim love as well?

There obviously is a difference. Yeah, I mean, the difference is the one, in the case of Augustine, I mean, true love is love, first of all, and foremostly, for God, and for the true and living

God. And we don't know what, I mean, Augustine would have believed that passage from 1

John 3, where we have no idea what love is, but we see the love of God expressed in the propitiatory death of our

Lord Jesus Christ. And that becomes the benchmark for how to love, this self -sacrificial loving of another.

And any modern -day media, political individual who talks about love as a kind of glue of culture, is really, whether they know it or not, drawing from Christian thought.

Yes, the enemies of Christ very often borrow where they find things comfortable to assimilate into their worldview.

They borrow from the Bible, even if unconsciously, all the time. Yep. Even, for example, one of the things that is most diametrically opposed to Biblical Christianity in the 20th century was

Communism and Marxism. But even the Marxist idea of a proletarian state in which all would be equal, that kind of eschatological goal of history, well, that's just simply a secular version of our commitment that there is, at the end of history, a paradisiacal state in which love will be dominant and we shall all find our due place before God.

And so what you've got there is a drawing. Marxism is impossible to formulate in any society except for one in which

Christianity had been the dominant. It's all world. And so these men and women who reject

Christianity and talk about love are drawing upon a vocabulary and the whole idea of human dignity, human value, that's all

Christian. It's all Judeo -Christian. It's all rooted and grounded in the idea that men and women are, every human being is in the image of God.

And Augustine's vision, then, is very, very, I think it's very significant in our day, in which you can maintain human value, human dignity, and be a

Christian, which the enemies of the gospel are arguing, no, no, that they're, you know, the popularity of this book by the

Canadian author Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale, which is such a travesty of what

Christianity really is. Many are kind of saying, yeah, that's why, if we allow

Christianity to rule a culture, that's where we'll end up. And you need to read

Augustine and you'll see, no, no, there's something very, very different here. Now, this is a professing

Christian author, this woman, The Handmaid's, who wrote the book? Oh, no, Margaret Atwood is very much against the gospel, very much anti -Christian, but she's written a book in which she, it's supposed to be a sci -fi book in which

Christians have taken over the culture of America and they've instituted this horrific patriarchal culture that owes more to Islam than it does to Christianity and it's become very, very popular as a kind of a, liberals are using this as a kind of a fear tactic that if we allow

Christians to have any sort of influential voice in our culture, this is where we'll end up. Does this have something to do,

I can't remember the title of the TV series because I've never seen it. Yep. Oh, with the women look like nuns, they're dressed like in traditional nun habits, or very similar?

I've not watched the TV series either, but that is exactly it, yep. Oh, okay. Well, we have to go to our final break right now.

It's going to be a lot more brief than the last one. If you have a question, please submit it quickly because we're rapidly running out of time.

It's chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com. And as always, give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the

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

Don't go away, God willing, we'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors. Iron Sharpens Iron welcomes

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Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And we are so thrilled that Pastor Andrew Smith is going to be joining us monthly with highlights from history that involve

Christianity and he's actually going to have two coming up in October that I'm looking forward to.

By the way, I want to just remind you quickly keep praying for my dear friend Joe Jackiewicz, the founder of First Love Radio, First Love Publications and First Love Missions.

First Love Radio livestreams Iron Sharpens Iron Radio every day and as many of you know who listen to the show regularly, Pastor Joe was diagnosed with a very deadly and aggressive form of leukemia but much to the praise and honor and glory of Jesus Christ he amazed the doctors by going home two weeks early when they discontinued his chemo and radiation because of the fact that they believe he is in remission and I just want to thank all of you who have prayed for Pastor Jackiewicz and his family.

Please continue to pray that this remission remains, that he is completely healed, that he has many years ahead of him to bless the body of Christ through serving

God and serving his fellow man. And we also want to remind you to pray for the family of my other dear friend of many years,

Richard Bennett. Richard Bennett, well known to many of you as a former Roman Catholic priest who discovered and embraced the doctrines of Sovereign Grace, became a

Reformed Baptist evangelist, has written a number of books, including those published by Banner of Truth and others, and founder of Berean Beacon Ministries.

He went home to be with the Lord just about three days ago and he was about 80 years old, so was not a shock, especially since he was in poor health.

I dearly miss him already and I just ask you to pray for the surviving family of Richard Bennett, especially his wife,

Lynn, who is in four -stage cancer, battling four -stage cancer right now. But now we have a final few moments to wrap up what we've been discussing today.

Dr. Haykin, if you could just, for about two minutes, summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners in regard to the

City of God by Augustine. Yes, I think it would be this, that God's people are a pilgrim people.

And this is a great theme that Augustine emphasizes as he comes to the end of this book, that there is no resting place in this world as we know it, even the best of situations in this world, given its fallenness ultimately and its ultimate redemption, when

Christ returns, we are a pilgrim people and we find the meaning of our existence in the

City of God, which lies in the future. And while we are, and Augustine emphasizes this, we are to exercise the duties of citizenship in the context in which we find ourselves, and he emphasizes his love for the

Roman world. But this is not our ultimate place of meaning, our ultimate home, but it's that City of God which gives us meaning, strength, encouragement to press on day after day.

Thank you so much, Dr. Haykin, and I want to remind our listeners that if you want to find out more about the

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, go to sbts .edu. And you had given us your email address for anybody interested, and I believe it was a study guide for the

City of God? That's a one -page study guide for the City of God. And what's your email address again?

mhaykin, so m -h -a -y -k -i -n at sbts .edu. m, as in Michael, haykin, h -a -y -k -i -n at s -b -t -s dot edu.

Also want to remind our listeners that if you want to find out more about the Hendrickson Publishers Edition of the

City of God by St. Augustine, go to Hendrickson .com. Hendrickson .com, you can also order that edition and others at cvbbs .com,

cvbbs .com. Don't forget about the discount, 5 % discount off the already heavily discounted prices at cvbbs .com

by entering the coupon code HAYKIN5, that's capital H, lowercase a -y -k -i -n 5.

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