July 24, 2017 Show with Mika Edmondson on “Martin Luther King, Jr.: An Open & Honest Evaluation of His Life, Legacy & Theology”

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Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown

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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 at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is

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Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 24th day of July, 2017, and it is my honor and privilege to have on the program for the very first time ever on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

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Micah Edmondson. He has earned his Ph .D. in systematic theology at Calvin Theological Seminary, and he's the author of The Power of Unearned Suffering, The Roots and Implications of Martin Luther King Jr.'s

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Theodicy. He is also pastor of New City Fellowship Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and today we are going to be addressing

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Martin Luther King Jr., an open and honest evaluation of his life, legacy, and theology, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time to Iron Sharpens Iron, Dr.

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Micah Edmondson. Thank you so much, Chris. I really appreciate the opportunity. It's my honor and my privilege to be able to participate, and I hope that the conversation will serve the listeners well and bring honor and glory to the

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Lord. Amen. And in studio with me is my co -host, the Rev. Buzz Taylor. And hello once again.

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Good to be here. And if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question today, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. Please give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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USA, and please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter that you are asking about.

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And again, it's chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Well, Dr. Micah, as I typically do when

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I interview people, especially for the very first time, I like to have them give a summary of their own testimony of salvation, about how and what kind of religious atmosphere, if any, you were raised in, what providential circumstances the

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Sovereign Lord brought about in your life that drew you to himself and saved you, and then how you came to be a pastor in the

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Orthodox Presbyterian Church denomination. All right. Thank you so much, brother.

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Well, I like to begin by simply saying, hey, I'm a great case, brother, and as we all are.

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I am definitely a great case, and I was saved by grace through faith in the

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Lord Jesus Christ, and because of his righteousness and merit alone do I have any standing before the

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Lord. I was raised, I was born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee, actually,

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East Nashville, and we were members of the Mount Gilead Missionary Baptist Church down in Nashville, and we were, growing up,

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I really was, you know, we were kind of those kind of Mother's Day, Easter, Christmas -type folks that made an occasional appearance at church.

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I thank the Lord for those opportunities that I had to engage the community of faith, but I was, at that time,

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I was a Christian in name only, and it was not until my junior year of college.

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I went off to Hampton University, which is a historically black college in Virginia, and I was actually a physics major, and I was studying applied physics with a track toward getting my

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BS in applied physics, when a physics colleague, who happened to be a

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Pentecostal brother and minister in his church and drummer in his church, invited me out to a revival, and I kind of had enough sort of religious sense, even kind of, you know, there's a very strong sense of civil religion within the

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African -American community, and I had enough sort of just civil religion and religious sense to say, you know, yes,

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I'm not going to refuse this invitation to go to church, even though, at that time, I was not living for the

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Lord. My life was completely consumed with my own ambition and myself, and I certainly was not denying myself in any way to follow

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Christ, but at that time, I said, well, look, sure, I'll come after this revival and do my religious duty, and it'll be that.

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Well, I had no idea that the Lord, that I would have an encounter with the

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Lord at that revival, and I was there, and, you know, it was an amazing service, actually.

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Not the kind of service that we might have, you know, I'm a Presbyterian now, and it's not necessarily the kind of the denomination or kind of situation that we might have in our church today, but the gospel was preached, and the

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Lord was at work through the preaching of the gospel, and I realized in that service that Christ had been crucified and risen to save sinners like me, and that if I would bow before Him in faith and in repentance, that He would save me, and I did, man.

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I threw myself upon the mercy of Christ, and the whole trajectory of my life changed from that night, and that's not just,

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I don't believe in Christian perfection, at least not on this side of glory, and so I still had major issues, you know, but the trajectory was changed, you know, and my striving was changed, and although I had a lot of selfishness in my life, and I still do have a lot of selfishness in my life, it was a struggle now against sin, and I was battling against the flesh and seeking to follow the

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Lord, so that's where the Lord found me and how

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He saved me. Amen. Well, how did you discover and embrace the doctrines of Reformed theology?

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Oh boy, so it's interesting, you know, it's amazing because although I did not grow up in an environment that was self -consciously

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Reformed, if you hang around that Bible long enough, right, and you actually look at it hard enough, because Reformed theology is really biblical theology, and if you look at it long enough and read it enough and dig around it enough, you'd be surprised at the truth that the

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Lord will reveal to you, and that you will proclaim, even if you don't self -consciously think of yourself as Reformed.

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And so when I came to faith, I still had some things that were sort of sewed into my understanding from my days back at Mount Gilead, and so I kind of already had a sense of the perseverance of the saints, you know, and I actually just assumed when the

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Lord saved me, I assumed everybody had, you know, believed that if the

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Lord saves you, He will keep you, you know, because that was the kind of Jesus that I was serving, a keeper, you know, and I knew

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I had a deep awareness of my own sin, and I knew that if this thing was ever going to work out, it was not going to be by my own strength and by my own faithfulness to Christ, but by His faithfulness to me.

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And so I kind of had that already in my background, and so, you know, but I still had not really sort of explicitly encountered

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Reformed theology. I had it, so I ended up sort of flash forward a little bit.

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I ended up later on going off to seminary. I embraced the call of ministry after I graduated from Hampton with my degree in physics.

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I went off to study astronomy at the University of Rochester, and it was there,

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I was in a doctoral program for astronomy, and it was there that I actually began to deeply wrestle with the call of ministry, and I actually ended up leaving the program, the doctoral program, at the

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University of Rochester, much to the chagrin of my agnostic advisor, who told me that I was going off to study fairy tales, and made me take a leave of absence, and said, surely you will be back, you know?

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So you know, that was back in 2002, so that's been 15 years ago, you know?

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And I still have not come back, you know? So I ended up going off into seminary, and when

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I went to seminary, I ended up going into what we might call liberal seminary.

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So I went into Rochester Divinity School, which is in Rochester, New York.

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Ended up starting Divinity School there, because that was very close to the University of Rochester, and then my wife and I, we wanted to be closer to home.

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We were newly married. We actually, we were married a week after graduation. We moved to Rochester.

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I shifted to go to Crosier. When I went to Crosier, my wife, at me, during that time, had finished up her degree.

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She did a degree in marriage and family therapy, a master's degree there at the University of Rochester. So we wanted to have children, and that kind of thing, and so we decided we wanted to be closer to home.

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Transferred down to Vanderbilt Divinity School, and when I got to Vanderbilt, I had this at Colgate, but especially when

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I got to Vanderbilt, I really, I was confronted with, I mean, you talk about liberalism, it was hardcore, man, and it was like, you know, they, you couldn't assume anything.

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You know, they were there to undermine. If you had the shred of orthodoxy, you know, some folks that were trying to take it away from you, you know, and what

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I needed at that time was I needed a, um, I needed a biblical and intellectually robust articulation of the faith that helped me to navigate these thorny questions and these thorny issues, you know.

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It was interesting because, um, so I was there, and it was my, it was like my, maybe my first year there, my second semester at at, uh, at Vandy, and I was in a,

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I was in the parking lot of a grocery store, and I was listening to the radio, and there was a show called

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Renewing Your Mind by a guy named R .C. Sproul, and, uh, I have, you know, this,

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I know this is a common story for a lot of African American reform folks. They are, you know, somehow in their story,

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R .C. Sproul's name almost always comes up, and I was just happy to be sitting in his car, and, man, he had, he had a, um, he had a, uh, a show on heresies, on ancient heresies, and he was talking about these different heresies that had, uh, that had, you know, uh, uh, risen, uh, in the, in the, in the life of the early church, and, um, and he was talking about it with the same depth and sophistication that I had heard in my early church history class at Vanderbilt, and I'm like, who is this guy?

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He's just, he's giving out this stuff on the radio, you know, I'm paying good money for this, and this guy's giving it out on the radio, and not just that, he not only was he doing it bad, but he was pointing it to the, he also had a very, uh, rich engagement with the

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Gospel, and how the Gospel answered these, uh, issues, and how the

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Gospel was the tool by which, was the power by which the Lord preserved this church by His Spirit through His Gospel, and it was, and so I was astounded, and I wrote to the show,

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I said, hey, I don't know what kind of Christian this guy is, I don't know what tradition he's from, but I got to get more of this stuff, and I found out, you know, that he's

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Reformed and Presbyterian, and so from that point on, um, I was hooked.

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I was like, I could get my hands on anybody that's dead or living that's

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Reformed Presbyterian, I'm eating it up. Yeah, so Spurgeon, you know,

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I mean, you all appeared, man, and so I just got my hands on anything, and so that was the sort of, that was sort of my entryway into, uh,

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Reformed theology, so self -conscious, so in a self -conscious way. Well, I'm glad that you threw in one

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Reformed Baptist, Charles Spurgeon, in the, in your essays. Hey, you can't, the

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Prince of Preachers, brother, you can't, you can't, uh. Accidents will happen. Yeah, my

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Presbyterian co -host says foolish things so often that I have to keep his mic down. He had me all along through there.

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That's all right, man, that's all right. But even he, even he knows that he loves

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Charles Spurgeon privately, anyway. That's right, man, I mean, I just, uh, and I should say this, there's one other thing, um, so eventually, so when

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I graduated from Vanderbilt, I went to serve a church in Nashville, actually the church I grew up in, the

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Mount Gilead Missionary Baptist Church, they had called a pastor a few years earlier who was a

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Calvinistic Baptist, and he had a connection with a group of black Calvinistic Baptists in the southeast known as the

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Sovereign Grace Brethren, and there's a guy named Elder D .J. Ward. Yes, I saw

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D .J. Ward preach on several occasions at the Bunyan Conference in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

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Oh, man, what a preacher! Yeah, if I ever, I mean, you know, when people come up to me and they say, oh, you know, we enjoyed that stuff,

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I say, no, no, no, no, no, you didn't hear Elder Ward preach. And that brother could preach it, and so, but, you know, the thing that I loved about that expression of Reformed theology was that it would be led with grace.

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I learned Reformed theology as a grace theology, as a comfort and hope theology, as a theology of biblical exposition, and so that sort of set, so that kind of, that helped to determine my sort of approach to it.

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I always knew it as a grace theology. And so, you know, so that kind of, you know, again, that sort of set the trajectory for me.

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I ended up, you know, serving at Mount Gilead for a few years. My wife finished, she was actually, at that time, had entered a doctoral program for counseling, counseling psychology, and when she needed to finish that program through doing an internship, and that caused us to move from Nashville to Louisville, Kentucky, and then we stayed there for about a year.

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Then from Louisville, Kentucky, my wife finished up her degree, and I wanted to pursue a doctorate in systematic theology, and I came to Cowan.

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So that's kind of how we got here to Grand Rapids, and how I got to Cowan. Now, were you trying to really, really, really stand out by becoming ordained in the

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Orthodox Presbyterian Church? Oh yeah, you long -lived mason, right?

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Well, the thing was was that when we got here, when we got to Grand Rapids, Michigan, I was a

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Calvinistic Baptist, and I had gotten connected with, you know, some other

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Reform Baptist circles here in Grand Rapids, and it was my intention to take the riches of this wonderful Reform tradition back into Black Baptist circles, because, you know,

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I just, I had a burden that if the folks that grew up like I grew up could hear the gospel, could hear the gospel articulated in this way, right, in a language that they could kind of understand and get with, they would love this stuff.

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I mean, they would just love it, and I thought, man, so that was my burden when

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I got here, and that's what I attempted to do when I got here, in fact.

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And I actually, I candidated at a church here in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and got rejected.

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The folks told me, no, we don't want you, and it was a humbling experience, and there was a whole bunch of other resumes that I sent out that nobody, that just went off into the ether and never came back, and I don't know what happened to them, you know, they just, the folks just never gave me a call back.

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And so I was kind of in limbo, like, where am I going to go, what am I going to do?

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But it was around that time that I was taking a class by a guy named Richard Muller, and he's a historical theologian.

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This brother is, like, the expert on the 16th century. He wrote a volume, a series of books called

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Post -Reformation Reform Dogmatics, and they are just a wealth of knowledge, and I took a class from him on covenant theology, and that kind of sort of was the beginning of the end of my

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Baptist day. And I ended up taking that class, and kind of, and then

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I read a dissertation by a guy named Brandon Jones, actually a Baptist by the name of Brandon Jones, who wrote a dissertation on Baptist sacramental theology, where he actually goes through and unfolds theologies of baptism amongst

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Calvinistic Baptists, and does a wonderful job. But the thing about Brandon is Brandon kind of pokes the holes in a lot of people.

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He did a great job of sort of poking holes in their theology, but then I wasn't, you know,

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I kind of, when I read through it, I thought, man, I got all the holes poked into this thing, and then

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I didn't quite get them all plugged back in. So I was left out with some issues that got unresolved for me.

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Now, Brandon offers a wonderful, his own version of the theology of baptism, and Brandon is, you know, just a solid brother.

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He's got, I think, a book on the subject as well that's very helpful. But that book, that dissertation, before it was a book, the dissertation really helped me to begin to navigate these issues.

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And I went back in, and I began to look at what the Westminster Confession of Faith actually had to say about baptism, and what

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Presbyterians had to say about baptism, and I had a pastor, a local church pastor, by the name of Dale Van Dyke, who pastors

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Harvest Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and Pastor Dale began to, in a very kind of unassuming type way, challenge me on my theology of baptism, and began to ask me certain questions that I just couldn't answer.

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And so that kind of, you know, that kind of provoked me to do some more investigation, and much to my surprise,

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I ended, and I totally, when I say much to my surprise, I mean, I had no intention on ever becoming a Presbyterian.

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That was the last thing on my mind, and I thought, no, I'm not, you know, but much to my surprise, having looked at the confessions and looked at the scriptures,

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I was convinced of covenant baptism, of infant baptism, and paedo -baptism, and so I ended up on the

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Presbyterian side of things, and I think Pastor Dale was shocked, too, because he's like, look, nobody ever changes. He told me that going in, and I said, you know, we're going to have these conversations, and you're going to go back, and I'm going to go back, but nobody ever really changes this thing, you know, and much to my surprise,

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I thought, hey man, I think I'm convinced of paedo -baptism. He said, what? He was like, what? He was like, oh, shut up!

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Well, here I was worried about talking about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and now I find out I should have been worried about baptism discussions.

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That's quite all right. I love my Reformed Baptist beliefs, but I am very charitable and inviting others on that disagree with me.

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Yeah, I am, too. A lot of my mentors are

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Baptist brothers. Kevin Smith is, I love this brother.

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He was my pastor. He's really, in many ways, still my pastor. He was my pastor in Louisville, Kentucky, and we were in Louisville, Kentucky in 2008, and for the nine years since we have left, he has continued to pastor me.

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He has continued to be a wonderful mentor, and a big part of the reason I'm a pastor today is because of Kevin L.

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Smith. So I have great love for my Baptist brothers and sisters. We have a number of Baptists within our congregation at New City Fellowship, and at New City, we're like, look, we don't want to make it harder to join

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New City than it is to join the kingdom of God. So if you're in the kingdom, if you're following the Lord and love Jesus and believe in God, come on, you know.

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So yeah. And in fact, one thing

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I'd like to, in retort to my co -host, Reverend Buzz's disparaging remark about Charles Spurgeon, one of my dearest friends since the late 1980s,

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Pastor Bill Shishko of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Franklin Square, who is now retired from pastoral ministry and is a domestic missionary with Reformation Metro New York.

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But anyway, he, around the dinner table with his wife and children, and I was there,

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I was invited to spend the weekend there not long ago when I was visiting New York, my homeland, and every night his,

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Pastor Bill, along with his wife and children, after the meal is finished at the table, they have a

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Charles Spurgeon devotional, and they specifically call him

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Pastor Spurgeon. And so this is just to heap the salt into your now gaping wounds.

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I have morning and evening, does that count? I got a morning and evening app on my phone right now.

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I drew the line before that. And Kevin Smith, I want to urge everybody to look up a sermon that he gave, a really powerful sermon on election day at the

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Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and I'm assuming that if you just googled

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Kevin Smith sermon at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary on election day, you would come up with that, unless you know of a more direct link,

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Dr. Micah, but that was a really powerful message that he gave. And I remember during one of our private discussions, he was the individual who gave you the book

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Glory Road, and as I mentioned to you in my old show in New York, I interviewed each and every one of those authors for the book

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Glory Road. And I'm assuming he was the one that was a member of D .J.

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Ward's church that introduced you to D .J. Ward's preaching? Well, see, okay, so the guy that actually introduced me to Elder Ward was a guy named

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Roger Glass, who was the pastor at Mount Gilead at the time. Now, I met, it's interesting because the way it worked out was that I got to know

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Elder Ward in the last years of his life, and so I actually met

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Pastor Kevin Smith at Elder Ward's funeral. Wow. We traveled to Mount Gilead, we all got in a bus, and we traveled to Lexington, Kentucky, to the

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Main Street Baptist Church in Lexington, Kentucky, where he served, and it was there that I met

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Pastor Smith. And we, you know, and immediately we just kind of, you know, we knew each other, kind of, we sort of met each other, and, you know, it was a very emotional time.

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I mean, Elder Ward was such a, just such a powerful, prolific, amazing pastor that, you know, we didn't do a whole, it wasn't a lot of small talk going on at that funeral, you know, but we got a chance to meet each other, and when

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Christina and I, my wife and I, we moved to Louisville, we knew that we wanted to look up Pastor Smith, and he was pastoring the

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Watson Memorial Baptist Church at the time, and we attended that service and never looked back.

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I mean, we went there the first Sunday in Louisville, we went to the Watson Memorial Baptist Church, and we, after we heard

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Pastor Smith preach, and after we had just got, you know, got to experience the great love of that beautiful church, we knew we wanted, we knew we didn't have to go anywhere else.

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We were home, and so that began a great relationship, and as I said,

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Pastor Smith has pastored me from far and mentored me ever since.

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You know, he's just an amazing, I've learned so much about pastoral ministry, about preaching, about just being a disciple from Pastor Smith, so anybody that, you know, anybody,

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I mean, anything, any sermon you get from him, certainly the election sermon, there's another I think that's really popular called,

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Wimps Need Not Apply, where he, at the Southern Seminary, because he taught history and homiletics for a time at Southern Seminary, anybody that wants to look up those sermons, man, you're going to be blessed, and anything from Elder Ward, there's a lot of things, there's been kind of a resurgence of interest in Elder D .J.

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Ward, because there's some things that, together for the gospel, I think, this major conference, they featured some clips from some of his sermons, and people were like, who is this guy?

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This is, I mean, this is amazing, and then at that time, you know, Elder Ward had died, you know, before that, but they were, that became this huge resurgence of interest in his sermons, and in his life, and so you can look up Elder D .J.

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Ward and find, you know, any number of sermons, and anyone that you get is going to be powerful.

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And speaking of powerful sermons, how do our listeners, other than just looking up your name on YouTube, how do our listeners get a hold of your phenomenal series on Galatians?

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I've only heard one of the messages, and that was phenomenal, so I'm assuming the rest of it's phenomenal, but that was really a powerful sermon that you preached in that series on Galatians.

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How can our listeners most easily listen to those? Oh, thank you so much, brother,

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I really appreciate that. So if you look up, you go on YouTube, and you look up New City Fellowship Grand Rapids, there's a

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YouTube page that has most of the Galatians series, but our website has all of the

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Galatians series. I've preached through, since being, so I've been a pastor of New City for three years.

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We started out as a church plant. We recently became particularized, which is huge, this big old

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Presbyterian word, it just means now we're an organized church, and we, and the denomination recognizes us as an organized church rather than a church plant.

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So, but I've been pastoring New City for about three years, and during that time I've preached through Ezra, I've preached through Mark, and I've preached through Galatians, and I'm preaching through Genesis right now.

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So those are the sermon series that you can find, newcitygr .org. Great, well we're going to go to our first break right now.

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If you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Dr. Micah Edmondson, our email address is chrizarnsen at gmail .com,

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c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, city and state and country of residence if you live outside the

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USA, and please only remain anonymous if it's about a personal and private matter. And when we return, we will begin our journey into how

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Dr. Edmondson began to research the life of Dr.

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Martin Luther King Jr., and what drove him to his decision to write his doctoral dissertation on Dr.

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King. And we'll be taking your questions, we already have a number of people waiting to have your questions asked and answered, but please be patient as we allow the next segment to be dominated by Dr.

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Edmondson explaining his study of the life of Dr.

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King and his doctoral dissertation on that subject, and specifically the theodicy involved in Dr.

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King's life. The theodicy, when we use that term, we're speaking of the defending the goodness of God in the midst of a world filled with suffering and sin and evil.

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And so therefore you're going to be hearing about how Dr. Edmondson is applying that issue to the life of Dr.

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Martin Luther King Jr., and we are going to try to be as open and honest in both the pros and the cons in this issue.

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Too often when there are heroes involved in a discussion, they are either idolized or vilified, and we're going to try our best to let the facts speak for themselves.

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And we look forward to hearing from you and your questions for Dr. Edmondson at some point after we return from these messages from our sponsors.

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Hi, I'm Pastor Bill Shishko. Tune into a visit to the pastor's study every

35:46

Saturday from 12 noon to 1 p .m. eastern time on WLIE radio, www .wlie540am

35:57

.com. We bring biblically faithful pastoral ministry to you and we invite you to visit the pastor's study by calling in with your questions.

36:05

Our time will be lively, useful, and I assure you, never dull. Join us this Saturday at 12 noon eastern time for a visit to the pastor's study because everyone needs a pastor.

36:16

Welcome back. That is the very pastor that we were discussing earlier with Dr. Micah Edmondson and my co -host

36:23

Reverend Buzz Taylor, Pastor Bill Shishko, formerly the pastor of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Franklin Square, Long Island, New York, and now domestic missionary for Reformation Metro New York, a ministry of the

36:37

Orthodox Presbyterian denomination. Today, if you've just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours with about 90 minutes to go is

36:45

Dr. Micah Edmondson, who earned his Ph .D. in systematic theology at Calvin Theological Seminary.

36:51

He's the author of The Power of Unearned Suffering, the Roots and Implications of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s

36:57

Theodicy, and that is Dr. Micah Edmondson's doctoral dissertation in print, and he is a pastor at New City Fellowship Orthodox Presbyterian Church of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

37:13

Our topic of discussion today is Martin Luther King Jr., an open and honest evaluation of his life, legacy, and theology, and if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

37:24

I wanted to pick up now, Dr. Edmondson, on your interest in Dr.

37:31

Martin Luther King Jr. that was so strong that it led you to want to write your dissertation on the subject of his life, specifically about the theodicy involving his life, and it's a no -brainer that a young African -American man would be interested in Dr.

37:50

King. In fact, I would say that in the 21st century, regardless of one's race, folks across the board are interested in some level in Dr.

38:01

Martin Luther King Jr., and in fact, he is revered as a hero, an

38:07

American hero, by many across the spectrum of not only race and ethnicity, but even political perspectives.

38:16

You have, in this day and age, conservatives often quoting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

38:23

Sometimes it's because they are involved in the pro -life movement, and they bring up Dr. King when he made statements that reveal his belief in the sanctity of life, even before birth and so on, but what was it that really captured your mind and led you forward to a deeper investigation?

38:43

Thank you for asking, brother. Well, actually, believe it or not, it was not my intention to do a dissertation on Dr.

38:50

King, believe it or not. While in the doctoral program at Calvin, it was my intention to do a dissertation on a guy named

39:05

James Cone. I don't know how much you all may know about Cone, but he's considered to be kind of the father of black liberation theology.

39:13

How do you spell the last name? Cone, C -O -N -E,

39:19

James Cone. And so, you know, he wrote a book in 1969 called

39:26

Black Theology and Black Power, and it was really a theological articulation of the Black Power movement, and it was my intention to write a dissertation on Cone's theology of the atonement.

39:40

And so I was going to do that dissertation, and I began to do some research, and I began to reach out, and I actually reached out to James Cone, and he actually responded, and I told him what

39:57

I was planning on doing, and he said, hey, thank you for your interest. I'm glad that you would like to do a dissertation on this, but actually, you may want to finish, you may want to wait till I finish my book on this, because I'm actually writing a book on this very topic.

40:12

And I said, oh, wow. And so he released the book, a book called

40:17

The Cross and the Lynching Tree, and I got the book, I read the book, and the book deals very heavily, as the title may suggest, with lynching and with the

40:32

American, that history of lynching, and as an

40:37

African -American man, you know, I mean, this is a deeply painful history for anybody, but especially as an

40:49

African -American man, you know, to read through these accounts of lynching, and Cone is doing a theology that is seeking to talk about the cross as an ancient form of lynching, and to connect these two things together, modern lynching and the cross of Christ.

41:11

You know, so I read that, but I just remember getting through the book, and I remember after I read the very last page of that book, just sitting there and sort of staring off into space for the next 20 to 30 minutes, you know, just unable to even,

41:27

I just, it was such a painful subject, such a hard subject.

41:34

I just, I just had to sort of, I was just almost in shock. I just kind of, I thought, you know, I just, so I was not, so I immediately realized

41:42

I'm not going to be able to do a dissertation on this topic. I'm just not going to be able to do it. So I went back to my advisor, a guy by the name of Ronald Feenstra, and I answered,

41:50

Dr. Feenstra, I can't do, I thought I was going to do a dissertation on this. The subject matter is too hard for me.

41:58

It's just too emotionally painful for me to sit with for an entire dissertation. Is there anything else that you would suggest?

42:06

And he looked at me, he said, how about something on Dr. King? And when he said that, I thought, okay, you know, here's a guy with some monument on the

42:17

National Mall, what is there, what could there possibly be left or right about his life, you know?

42:23

I mean, you know, I mean, it's just like, what hasn't been talked about, you know, I mean, everything's been talked about Dr. King. I mean, what, what, what, is there any, is there any area that has, you know, not been uncovered yet about this guy, you know?

42:37

And so, and I began to go and look, you know, and much to my surprise, there was a whole lot of stuff that nobody's talked about in terms of Dr.

42:47

King's life, because most people treat Dr. King as just a, you know, a historical figure, an activist, an ethicist.

42:55

Very few people were treating him as theologian, right? And so, as I looked at him, so my degree is in systematic theology, and so I looked at him to do a dissertation in systematic theology, and as I looked at engaged

43:08

King as theologian, there was a huge, just, area of his theology that nobody treated.

43:15

And I found his theodicy, and his theodicy, his approach to the problem of evil and suffering, and how suffering can be engaged to the glory of God, that, that theme was really at the heart of what he was doing in the civil rights movement, and nobody had written a, nobody had done a book -length study on it.

43:35

In fact, nobody had even done a, really, a full chapter on it. Only, there had been a, there had been a single article written by a guy named

43:43

Rufus Burrow, Jr., and he wrote a great article on that, but nobody had ever done a, you know, a major work on it.

43:52

So I thought, this is it. I've got something I can do, and then, so I devoted myself to that topic, and, you know, and so yeah, so I wrote my dissertation on King's theodicy.

44:05

And one of the things that's interesting about this is that, I'm assuming by this time, you are already, for lack of a better term, a conservative

44:15

Christian theologically. I have a close friend, now retired from ministry, but he is an evangelical within a very liberal denomination, the

44:26

United Methodist Church, and when I would use terms like conservative and liberal, he would say, Chris, you're not using appropriate terms when it comes to religion.

44:35

You should say it's either biblical or heretical. Don't use the words conservative and liberal.

44:41

Those are political terms. Now, I'm not sure I agree with my friend Dr. Dick Williamson on that, but for lack of a better term, you are, at this point, are you not a theological conservative, or what most would view as a theological conservative, and yet you chose a figure from history not necessarily known for theological conservatism?

45:04

Right, so yeah, so at this point, so I think of myself as a Bible -believing

45:09

Presbyterian, is that right? I'm an Orthodox Presbyterian Church in the first year, that's a mouthful, but the

45:16

Orthodox is there for a reason, so I think of myself as Orthodox. At least I hope I am.

45:21

I am. I'm trying to be. But yeah, that's right.

45:28

I mean, certainly, so as I went into engaging

45:34

Dr. King, I really didn't know much about him. I knew, certainly I enjoy the benefits of his labors within the civil rights movement as an

45:45

African -American. I think any African -American living today can owe a great debt of gratitude to Dr.

45:52

King and to his labors within the movement, but I really didn't know much about him theologically other than knowing that he had some liberal leanings, you know?

46:03

I didn't know much more than that, and so as I began to dig in, right,

46:09

I was actually really surprised at a number of misconceptions that I had about King, right?

46:19

So one of the misconceptions I had about King was that I had decontextualized

46:27

King, you know? So a lot of times when people look at Dr. King, they look at him as if he sort of fell from the sky fully formed, right?

46:36

You're right, like, you know, he's just this guy, you know? They look at King, you know, and in 1965 or 66 or whatever, they just feel like this is, you know, he just fell out of the sky like this.

46:47

He fell out of the sky believing in nonviolence and this, that, and the other, and that's not the case at all. His views came about through a process.

46:59

First of all, his theodicy is the expression of a 300 -year redemptive suffering theodical tradition within the black church and within the black community.

47:12

This is the belief that sustained the

47:18

African -American community and church through 250 years of slavery. I mean, you got to think about what kind of faith can get people, can sustain people in beneath the southern sun and in cotton fields and having had, you know, their members of their family sold off, having seen members of the community sexually assaulted, whipped, beaten, tortured.

47:46

I mean, and yet these people are able to continue with hope. And you think, what kind of faith must these people have?

47:54

Well, it's a faith that recognizes that God is able to bring good out of evil circumstances, that God is able to use even our sufferings for the glory of God.

48:08

And that's not to say that suffering in and of itself is a good, okay, but that God can give us the grace to engage it for our good and that God can bring about good through the circumstance.

48:23

And the paradigmatic revelation of that is the cross of Jesus Christ himself, right?

48:31

So it's at the cross that we get it revealed to us that God is able to bring good out of an evil circumstance, right?

48:39

And it's at the cross that God opens our eyes to see how we're called to engage our suffering to the glory of God, right?

48:49

And that's exactly what

48:54

Peter says to the Christians in Asia Minor in 1

49:00

Peter chapter 2, right? I mean, that's exactly what he lays out, right?

49:05

He says, for to this you have been called because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you might follow in his steps, right?

49:16

And that word example is actually, the

49:23

Greek word is hupogrammon, which actually means a writing copy. It's the kind of thing that people in the ancient world would use, sort of like dot -to -dot, when people would use, when they, you know, if you have small children, they have to, the way they learn to make their letters is that they trace over a dot -to -dot that gives you the, and it teaches you, for those who don't know how to write, it teaches you how to write, how to form your letters by going over the pattern.

49:51

And so what Peter is saying is that when Christ suffered and died, he actually suffered and died, leaving us a pattern to follow.

49:59

This is the way to engage suffering to the glory of God. And so the

50:05

African -American community had been gripped by that truth, and King himself, right, inherited this redemptive, this crucifixion -centric, redemptive suffering theodicy through cultural influences and through church influences.

50:24

So you can think of the spirituals, right, the spirituals are deeply theological.

50:32

The spirituals are an expression of hope in the midst of suffering, right?

50:39

Spirituals like, did my Lord deliver Daniel, right? Did my Lord deliver Daniel? Did my Lord deliver Daniel? Did my Lord deliver

50:44

Daniel? And why not every man, right? And so here you have these, the community of enslaved

50:53

African -Americans here wrestling with the contradictions of life and saying, hey, God delivered

50:58

Daniel. God delivered Daniel. God was able to do it. Why not every man, right?

51:04

So God can deliver me too, right? They're wrestling with the contradictions of life. They're wrestling with theodical questions.

51:12

And so, you know, other ones like there's a balm in Gilead to heal the synthetic soul.

51:17

There's a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. Those kinds of, that kind of musical, theodical tradition, and the prayer tradition within the

51:27

Black Church community, and the preaching tradition within the Black Church community, all are rich with theodical themes, and not just that, redemptive suffering themes.

51:38

And that has been the majority report within the community, and King inherited this legacy.

51:45

And so when he articulates a strategy to engage the communal sufferings of the

51:53

Black community, you see that it's non -violent direct action, right?

51:58

That we're not going to engage our suffering with violence, because when we look at what

52:04

Christ did in the Garden of Gethsemane, and what Christ did at the tree, is that when he was reviled, he didn't revile in return, right?

52:12

So we're not going to be violent. There were people within African -American communities, the

52:18

Black Power Movement, the Nation of Islam, Black militants that were responding with Black suffering through violence.

52:25

And but King realized that that's not the way, that's not the way that Christ has revealed to us. Neither was the way acquiescent.

52:33

Because if you look in the Garden of Gethsemane, there were folks, you know, think about Peter, right? Peter responded with violence, but then there's another group of folks that just got up and ran.

52:43

They were acquiescent, they were, you know, there's one brother that just, I call him the naked runner, he was the guy that ran and left his garment behind, you know?

52:51

Yeah, Joseph. That's right, he ran off and left his garment! Well no, in the

52:57

Garden of Gethsemane, John Mark ran off and left his garment behind when the mob came to arrest

53:03

Christ. And so you had Peter responding with violence, you had John Mark responding with acquiescence, but Jesus showed the third way, right?

53:12

Jesus does not respond with acquiescence, and he does not respond with violence, he responds with agapic action, with non -violent direct action, right?

53:20

Engaging his suffering to the glory of God, entrusting himself to him who judges justly.

53:26

So King recognized this, he recognized that Christ has given us, he's revealed to us a way to engage our suffering, and what he did was said he simply appropriated that publicly.

53:40

He said, well, how can the church begin to engage its social suffering in this way, and witness to the glory of Christ through engaging suffering in this way?

53:53

So I think a lot of people, when they look at King and they look at the Civil Rights Movement, they have no idea how this is really rooted in a long tradition, and a cross -centered tradition.

54:04

Yeah, in fact, we're going to pick up right where you left off when we return from our midway break, which is a longer break than normal, so we can accommodate

54:12

Grace Life Radio 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, who requires a 12 -minute gap between our two segments.

54:21

So anybody else who would like to join us on the air, we still have a list of several people waiting to have their questions asked and answered, and we will get to each and every one of you that time allows us to, and we thank you for waiting this long, but we will eventually get to as many as possible.

54:40

And don't go away, if you'd like to join us, by the way, and get on that line in case we have time, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. But don't go away, God willing, we're going to be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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that's liyfc .org paul wrote to the church at galatia for am i now seeking the approval of man or of god or am i trying to please man if i were still trying to please man i would not be a servant of christ hi i'm mark lucans pastor of providence baptist church we are reformed baptist church and we hold to the london baptist confession of faith of 1689 we are in nofolk massachusetts we strive to reflect paul's mindset to be much more concerned with how god views what we say and what we do than how men view these things that's not the best recipe for popularity but since that wasn't the apostles priority it must not be ours either we believe by god's grace that we are called to demonstrate love and compassion to our fellow man and to be vessels of christ's mercy to a lost and hurting community around us and to build up the body of christ in truth and love if you live near norfolk massachusetts or plan to visit our area please come and join us for worship and fellowship you can call us at 508 -528 -5750 that's 508 -528 -5750 or go to our website to email us listen to past sermons worship songs or watch our tv program entitled resting in grace you can find us at providence baptist church ma .org

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that's providence baptist church ma .org or even on sermon audio .com providence baptist church is delighted to sponsor iron sharpens iron radio chef exclusive catering is in south central pennsylvania chef exclusives goal is to provide a dining experience that is sure to please any palate chef danian white of chef exclusive is a graduate of the renowned johnson and wales university with a degree in culinary arts and applied science chef exclusive caterings event center is newly designed with elegance and style and is available for small office gatherings bridal showers engagement parties and rehearsal dinners critics and guests alike acknowledge chef exclusives commitment to exceeding even the highest expectations i know of their quality firsthand since chef exclusive catered by most recent iron sharpens iron radio pastor's luncheon for details call 717 -388 -3000 that's 717 -388 -3000 or visit chef exclusive .com

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eastern time on wlie radio 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 our time will be lively useful and i assure you never dull join us this saturday at 12 noon eastern time for a visit to the pastor's study because everyone needs a pastor welcome back this is chris sarnes and for those of you who just tuned us in our guest today for the full two hours with a little less than an hour to go is dr micah edmundson who earned his phd in systematic theology at calvin theological seminary and he's the author of the power of unearned suffering the roots and implications of martin luther king jr's theodicy he's also a pastor at new city fellowship orthodox presbyterian church of grand rapids michigan we have been discussing and will continue to discuss martin luther king jr an open honest evaluation of his life legacy and theology before i return to our discussion i have some important announcements to make regarding events that our sponsors are having the fellowship conference new england is being held august 3rd through the 5th in reverend buzz taylor's old stomping grounds maine and this specifically will be at the deering center community church of portland maine and the speakers include pastor don curran who is the eastern european coordinator with heart cry missionary society the organization founded by paul washer my dear friend pastor mac tomlinson who is an author and also the pastor of providence chapel in denton texas pastor jesse barrington who is the pastor of grace life church in dallas texas the sister church of grace life church in lake city florida whose radio station airs iron sharpens iron radio every day in a pre -recorded form and pastor nate pickowitz who is not only the pastor of harvest bible church in gilminton ironworks new hampshire but he's also the author of reviving new england and why we're protestant if you'd like to register for this conference go to fellowship conference newengland .com

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fellowship conference newengland .com and then our friends at the alliance of confessing evangelicals are going to be holding their quakertown conference on reform theology november 17th through the 18th god willing in quakertown pennsylvania at the grace bible fellowship church of quakertown the speakers include kent hughes peter jones tom nettles dennis cahill and scott oliphant and the theme is for still our ancient foe a line from martin luther's classic hymn a mighty fortress and of course our ancient foe being satan if you would like to register for this conference go to alliancenet .org

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alliancenet .org click on events and then click on quakertown conference on reform theology and god willing i will have a an exhibitor's booth for iron sharpens iron radio there and then coming up in january from the 17th through the 20th the g3 conference returns to atlanta georgia the theme is knowing god a biblical understanding of discipleship on the 17th it is exclusively a spanish -speaking edition of the g3 conference and then from the 18th through the 20th is the english -speaking conference and the speakers include stephen lawson vody balkan phil johnson keith getty hb charles jr tim challis josh bice james white tom askell anthony metheny michael kruger david miller paul trip todd friel derek thomas and martha peace if you'd like to register for the g3 conference go to g3 conference dot com g3 conference dot com when registering for any of these events or even if you're just contacting the organizations running them to find out more information please let all of them know that you heard about the events on iron sharpens iron radio and last but not least comes that very unpleasant task that i have is to grub money from you the advertisers of iron sharpens iron radio who have keep who have kept my program afloat sacrificially and very generously by advertising on the program they urged me and have continued to urge me to make public appeals to you the listener to donate whenever possible to iron sharpens iron radio and also to advertise with us if you have a business a corporation a professional practice a church or a parachurch ministry or a special event that you want to promote as long as whatever it is you're advertising is compatible with the theological makeup of iron sharpens iron radio the website is iron sharpens iron radio dot com click on support you'll receive or you will see a mailing address where you can make a check made payable to iron sharpens iron radio for any amount and mail it to that address that you see when you click support and if you want to advertise uh just send me an email to chris arnson at gmail .com

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chris arnson at gmail .com and put advertising in the subject line and i have to say i've been very blessed by the answer to prayer because for the last four or five days every day i'm getting somebody emailing me questions about advertising with us so i'm very delighted about that and for those of you who have contributed financially to iron sharpens iron radio i thank you from the bottom of my heart and i know that some of you are even regularly now donating to us and always remember never ever ever siphon money out of your regular giving to your local church where you are a member and if you're not a member of a local believing church you better correct that very quickly but if you are a member of a church and you're giving to that church regularly please never siphon money out of that giving and never take food off of your family's dinner table if you're struggling to make ends meet providing for your church and providing for your family are two commands of god providing for iron sharpens iron radio is not a command of god but if you are blessed above and beyond your ability to fulfill your obligations in providing for your church and home please consider iron sharpens iron radio if the show blesses you if it's a part of your regular habit of life if it has benefited you in any way then a donation of any amount would be greatly appreciated we are now back to our discussion with dr with dr micah edmondson on martin luther king jr and open and honest evaluation of his life legacy and theology before we go to any of our listener questions uh dr edmondson uh do you have any additional things to say about dr king's approach to the theodicy uh before we have perhaps some questions asked in a more critical fashion about his theology well yeah you know actually i was going to just um sort of get into some of that uh because i i was assuming that um you know because this is you know it's a critical engagement of king and so you know uh as some people say i've had told me hey you know you you eat the meat and spit out the bones you know there there are there are some there are some issues you know some major issues um that we contend with uh as as we um as we grapple with the life and legacies and and oftentimes sometimes even the theologies of our of of heroes and of fallen people you know so with king it's it's no different um king um uh one of the misconceptions that i had about king though was that he was thoroughgoing liberal that he was this is what i sort of came into his thinking you know king is a thoroughgoing liberal and he uh i thought to myself okay he goes to crozier divinity school in boston university and he becomes liberal and that's just it you know and i didn't realize that uh king's um sort of theological journey was more complicated than that and in fact it was much more like a cycle than just a straight shot you know he he um he grew up in uh going to ebony the baptist church in atlanta georgia uh under uh the pastor of his father uh martin king uh senior uh daddy king and daddy king was um uh what you know uh you know i think you mentioned conservative earlier daddy king was conservative bible believing bible preaching right down the line pastor yeah i saw a i saw a film about dr martin luther king jr i believe it was a film made for television and james earl jones played daddy king and he came across like a real strict fundamentalist type of baptist preacher that's right in fact uh in fact that's in fact that's those are the that's the term that king jr would use about his father uh when he uh when he went off to uh to morehouse college right so king so at 15 years old king goes off to morehouse college and actually is having a crisis of faith he almost repudiated the faith almost left the faith at morehouse college um and uh deeply ashamed of the um what he called the fundamentalistic religion of his father and of their church and uh and when he got to morehouse uh for the first couple of years he was um he was really uh moving towards skepticism until he um encountered a man by the name of george kelsey who uh who had a intro to the bible class uh at morehouse college and uh and kelsey um kelsey was applying of the bible um and the truths of scripture to the black social situation now this is one of the big issues for king uh king was wondering does the bible have anything to say to the sufferings of african -americans and when kelsey began to show that uh in a way that was more intellectually satisfying for king and that is when king began to sort of imbibe liberalism okay um but he imbibed it uh critically because uh george kelsey imbibed it critically right so this is a critical engagement with liberalism there were some things there were some aspects of liberalism that african -americans in the segregated south could not countenance namely um the the low view of sin right so if you're an african -american in the segregated south you have a very hard time with a low view of sin you know because because you will come face to face with the with the with with some of the worst of human depravity when you uh you know when you when you're getting uh reports of lynching in your uh community right um you know that uh human nature is not basically good that there is something deeply flawed with human nature um uh uh with falling human that is the state that you know post fall i'm not talking about uh us and our creation right since the fall right total depravity um total depravity that's exactly right so sin touches every area of the human existence and it runs to our very core and so king um king king recognized king could not you know sort of the you know just his black experiences that his experience of african -american segregated south uh sort of sort of thrust that upon him you know he couldn't deny that but that was a part of liberalism that he that he rejected its low view of sin another part of liberalism that he rejected was its low view of the power of god because if you are if you're an african -american in the segregated south in the 50s and the 60s or you know the actually the 30s and the 40s and the 50s uh in the 60s you know that you need a god that is omnipotent and able to deliver you from the sufferings all around you you know and so you so you so anyone that comes along with the theology that that that proposes a god that's anything less than able uh is going to be deeply problematic and so um so when king uh was uh was uh presented with uh various theologies um like theistic finitism the theistic finitism of a guy named edgar sheffield brightman um was would have been deeply attractive to king because king was uh brightman was someone who uh helped to pioneer a philosophy called personalism and this was a philosophy that deeply valued human personality and personality in general it thought of personality as the fundamental reality of the universe and and then it gave philosophical categories to affirm um the dignity of personhood okay and so this was very attractive to king because king was looking for resources to affirm the full humanity of african -americans and the dignity of african -americans and so the philosophy of personalism was one that he deeply gravitated to and so edgar sheffield brightman was like the personalist of the day so he wanted to study with brightman but then when he when he was confronted with brightman's view of of god as being uh finite and unable to uh bring about the full realization of god's will right uh brightman had a view that that although god was uh omnipotent that god was not quite omnipotent that there was something within god himself that keeps god from fully realizing uh his will like like open theism okay yes so open theism is is might be described as a kind of theistic finitism but it but what it does is it actually uh lays the constraint on god's knowledge right so god doesn't know everything god you know that open theism will populate that god is learning as god goes that kind of thing right so this is a constraint on god power god god uh is it wants to do good but he's just not able to pull it off because there's something within the god god's own nature that keeps him from fulfilling it and so king thought that this actually set up a dualism within god himself and as an african -american in the segregated south and and dealing with a whole lot of suffering king says no i cannot countenance the idea that god is not able to deliver us god must be able to deliver us god must be able to make a way out of no way right this and that's a that's a uh a black church idiom that deals with the uh that actually affirms the biblical belief in the god that is able to to save his people right um and so um so that's a part of that's also part of liberalism that king rejected um now uh so but but there are parts of liberalism that king did imbibe okay and uh and this has to be clearly that i mean it has to be just asserted right i mean i mean i'm not i'm not denying it at all i'm not saying that the picture is one of complete orthodoxy and there's no problematic elements here i mean there are some things uh about king where he uh he denied things like the virgin birth at times when he was a young boy he denied the uh the resurrection from the dead okay and um and so he was uh as much a liberal in his young young young days as you know abraham kuiper was in his young young young days right so uh uh i'm not trying to drag kuiper into this but you know i know i know kuiper was actually led to christ uh to a saving relationship uh with christ as a preacher he was already a pastor that's right this brother was this brother was as lost as lost to be in seminary and he came to faith as a pastor right so so so king so king uh had some very problematic views in seminary but it was during his days in the civil rights movement okay uh actually so he takes a pastor at at uh dexter avenue baptist church in montgomery alabama um the uh montgomery bus boycott begins in uh 1955 and only in just a few months into the bus boycott um on um you know everyone's sort of a thought that just you know initially the uh the the folks involved in the boycott in montgomery the the they thought this was going to last a day okay we're going to boycott for a day and the folks are going to see the error of their ways this thing's going to be over but no a day turned into weeks weeks turned into months okay and um and king began to receive death threats uh upwards to 40 death threats a day he uh he received uh all kinds of um various forms of intimidation and here he is as a young pastor uh 27 years old newly married uh a young daughter a couple of just a few months old and on january 27 1956 he received a call uh in the middle of the night his wife was corretta was already asleep and he received a call um that threatened his life another call that threatened his life and normally he was able to kind of shrug this kind of thing off but for some reason this particular call that was threatening to bomb his house in three days if he didn't leave town and to kill his family some kind of way some for some reason this thing got to him i mean this particular call this howard whatever it was it just got to him and he couldn't get back to sleep and he tells us he told this story throughout his life about this this kitchen bitch so he went to his kitchen and he gets he gets a cup of coffee and he's trying to he's thinking that the coffee is going to help him through the night and he's going to be able to get back to sleeping but he just could not shake this off he was afraid he was weak and he was ready to quit he was ready to give up the movement now keep in mind this is just two months into the bus boycott okay this is i mean he just i mean he's 27 years old he's already about to give up the whole deal you know and then uh and he tells it and he tells the story this he tells he tells the story this i think this is interesting is this this reflects on the trajectory the cycle that i told you about and this is what he says i'm just gonna i'm just gonna read a little bit of it it's just a just a few just a just a paragraph here but i think it's worth quoting i don't want to get his words wrong he says then i got up and went back to the kitchen and started warming some coffee thinking about thinking that coffee would give me a little relief and he says then i started thinking about many things and then he says he says i pulled back on the theology and philosophy that i had just studied in the university he's talking about his liberal theology that he is studying universities trying to give philosophical and theological reasons for the existence and the reality of sin and evil but the answer didn't quite come there he says then i got to the point where i couldn't take it any longer i was weak and something said to me you can't you can't call on daddy now he's up in atlanta 175 miles away you can't even call on mama now you've got to call on that something and that person that your daddy used to tell you about that power that can make a way out of no way and he says and i bowed down over that cup of coffee i never will forget it oh yes and i prayed a prayer he said and i prayed out loud that night okay and then it was after that that he gained renewed strength to actually face um the challenges that came to him and he would oftentimes refer to that kitchen the so -called kitchen vision um to um talk about how he he made he continued on in the movie but i want you to notice with remember what i said i want you to notice what he meant when he said that he said i pulled back on theology and philosophy that i had just studied universities trying to give philosophical theological reasons for the existence and reality of sin and evil but the answers didn't quite come there okay so what king is saying is i'm not saying that he's repudiating everything he got in the seminary uh and everything he got sort of coming through and his liberalism but i want you to notice the step when he got to morehouse he sort of steps away from the theology that he got growing up and it's his bible we might call his conservative theology and and that kind of of uh sort of uh system of belief that was inherited him that he inherited from his father and in his church and he began to imbibe liberalism critically but he began to imbibe it uh now when he gets into this situation in 1956 and he's at his lowest moment and then he's got to draw on some resources uh and he's got to lean on something and he says i could not lean on this liberalism it didn't it didn't sustain me it would not give me the answers i needed and then he says he called on the god that his father taught him about and that's the god that is omnipotent right that's the god that is omniscient that's the god that makes the way i thought and that's the god whose son is jesus christ a crucified and risen from the dead that's the god you know so this is it so he's trying so he what he does he actually he makes a trip he makes a shift okay so um and here's the thing this is after king uh had really done much of his kind of theological writings um he's kind of um you know his you know so he wrote a bunch of stuff in seminary and and after he left seminary what we get from king is sermons we get speeches we get uh you know newspaper articles things that um don't necessarily articulate and expound all the finer points of his theology okay um what we know is that he eventually goes back to ebenezer baptist church and serves alongside his father that conservative bible preaching pastor at ebenezer as an assistant pastor at ebenezer over christian education in 1960 he goes back to ebenezer and he's older and he says when he gets back there he says i want to teach the people about our faith they need to understand um the the the system of doctrine of our faith and his commitment is actually to teach them about our faith now see here's the thing i don't know everything he taught in those sunday school classes as he went back to ebenezer baptist church but i'm strongly suspected if he was serving alongside daddy king he wasn't teaching him that to deny the virgin birth and jesus didn't raise from the dead right now so yeah well you know um yeah go ahead i was just going to say that uh you know you're you're enlightening me to some things that i didn't know before uh let me tell you where i have been uh predominantly uh in my life as a christian after becoming born again and becoming more understanding of biblical theology and so on uh the when i read an autobiography of religious development which is something that king wrote among his other papers that is archived at stanford university he denied more than virgin birth he even denied the deity of christ completely and he denied the bodily resurrection he denied the substitutionary atonement uh of christ uh and what i came to uh conclude at that time was that a christian should view king as an american hero because he bravely did fight for the equal rights of all humans regardless of race uh and risked his own life to do so because he knew he was definitely under the threat of death and then eventually that came to fruition he was murdered uh and in spite of any flaws in his life the man should be revered as an american hero by people of all religions if you're american patriots but i always had a problem after discovering the theology that he wrote about uh having a christian view him as a christian hero uh just as i would not want christians to view uh thomas jefferson as a christian hero or benjamin franklin as a christian hero or you can think of countless other uh american heroes that you would learn about in elementary school and high school uh that were heroes but not christian heroes in order to preserve the purity of the gospel and and not venture into misleading young and old into thinking that those types of theological beliefs are ever tolerable or acceptable within the christian faith i i became i became very concerned about people uh identifying him as a christian hero and one that should be imitated even in matters of of faith and practice uh obviously uh in regard to uh the confines of christianity and the responsibilities of a disciple of christ now how would you if if at all respond uh negatively to what i just said okay so um i would say this um so the autobiography religious development is a paper that king writes at crozier uh divinity school uh he writes for george washington davis where he basically goes back and talks about the sort of the roots of his um his intellectual and theological development okay and um and at that time now in that paper uh now he doesn't do everything that you just mentioned in that paper but if you look at the if you do if you look at volume one of the king paper um there are various places in which you can find king doing things like um like uh arguing against um penal substitutionary atonement or vicarious substitutionary atonement uh you can find him doing things like that uh within in various papers not just in that one you know it's not they're not it's not all in that one paper but throughout various papers you can see him doing making you know moves like that so um so i would say this i would say you know i'm i you know i look at king very much like sort of like what i mentioned with abraham kuyper you know and i brought kuyper up for a reason because i i brought him i brought him up because i think you know um people are able to sort of look at his legacy and say yes this is a this is a statesman okay um but there's people that draw down on him theologically okay and they don't necessarily say that because in his early life he held views and uh and and and expound views that are flat out uh heretical that later on in his life okay he's you know that you sort of throw his entire life away and so there's nothing we can learn from kuyper um we shouldn't get anything from this guy because when he was at seminary he said this you know so i kind of you know i look at king as someone who um in that you know sort of in that kit with what that what that kind of what that kitchen vision does for me is it says to and and to hear king say things like and i try to draw down on this stuff i got from my liberal seminaries and then i ended up going back to the person that my father told me about that tells me that that that in his core in his and in his good you know sort of when i when it all when you peel back the onion okay what you get is someone who is uh expressing the faith of the black church tradition all right um and and that is a very conservative theological tradition um and the and the person that uh king's daddy told him about was the person that was preached in fundamentalistic churches right so um now if the question is you know if the issue becomes okay what is king in heaven or not you know what you didn't ask me that but that's sometimes that's sort of the well you know and that's i i would say um the the question of king's um place on those doctrines later in his life is unanswered because king didn't do he didn't do the same kinds of writings later in his life that he did early in his life but what we can tell what we can tell is that he did make a shift right and that he functioned within us within a setting that was deeply conservative theologically and that he taught sunday school in that setting okay and so i just i would say that um you know so king so in that sense i would say well what we could get we we gotta we we can i believe uh sort of looking at his life sort of charitably you know and and sort of looking at what he seems to say um in terms of uh his sort of liberal background um you know he seems to again he's it's not you know what he said in in at carter seminary that wasn't the final say in his life always you know um with uh and so and it just lets you just go to show you that you know when you when you really shook the tree and he really got down to the roots of who he was he he was a a black baptist preacher that came out of the black baptist tradition and is expressing the faith of the black baptist tradition um and you know it functioned within that within that um that setting you know so you know i think the most we can say is that it's on that his particular views on those particular points of doctrine is undetermined you know we can't we don't know for sure you know i i just i don't know you know um as a king as a person has read a lot of king stuff and early in his life and later on in his life you know you look at his life and he said certain things in seminary uh but then he sort of repudiates those things in some ways and sort of makes a shift um and then he functions in a certain in a setting that would have never tolerated those views um you know and i and honestly man i i thought you know and this is no excuse for king but it just it just gives you it just gives you a a clear view into sort of what his mindset was at seminary there's some things that he said at seminary that i know he didn't believe like at at at sometimes there's sometimes that he talks about um theistic finitism and he he kind of agrees with edgar sheffield brighton when he gets in brighton's class he's all well you know he said this like theistic finitism stuff this seems to make sense you know i i think this is a this is a i think this is acceptable but then after that he says no this is not acceptable we cannot you know this is not a acceptable view of god you know so um you know so you know you think okay here's a guy that's in brighton's class and maybe he's saying what he feels like the professor wants to hear i don't know you know but i know that the the question of king's theology is a lot more complicated than people oftentimes uh want to admit or accept you know so now the question so if we now if it comes down to can we learn anything from king i think we can i don't have any you know no no doubt there's no doubt in my mind that we can learn a whole lot from king in terms especially in terms of his uh of his of his practice right of his um you know if if if if the litmus test if part of the litmus test of christian orthodoxy right and and whether or not we love the lord is whether we love people made in his image then king is a great example okay you know i mean because when the scripture talks and gives us the litmus test that says okay how did we know we love the lord who we haven't seen what is by whether or not we love our neighbor who we can see i mean how do you know the the scripture oftentimes uses the second table of the law what we might call sort of the ethical uh expressions of the law uh as a way to judge our commitment to the first table right so so uh you know so the epistemological part of the law whether or not we actually love the lord and whether or not so um so so you know that that being said i mean king i think was real strong orthopraxis okay and um you know a right practice you know and that doesn't that doesn't mean that you know you get into heaven by right practice right we give it we get in heaven by amen uh so and i know that anybody listening who would take uh a completely militant view against what you're saying you better throw away all the books written by christians about teddy roosevelt and any other figures that you love that there's no basis to believe that they were uh biblically orthodox christians and that christians do learn from the lives of uh figures from history uh notable figures from history that lay it left us an example and a lesson to learn or many lessons to learn even if they weren't necessarily born -again believers that's right so so yeah so again you know i don't i mean i you know at the end of the day i mean now i'll speak as a minister from orthodox presbyterian church at the end of the day you know our book of church order actually prevents us from putting people in heaven or not right like if you do a funeral that's just i think the church order says you cannot put someone you know you can't uh pronounce on whether or not this person is well i think god removed that power from us uh from the beginning that that is exactly no i'm simply saying you know uh exactly right i that's right that's exactly right uh uh the lord alone reserves that right um christ alone knows whether or not king uh had true saving faith um and so but but the but i think it's i think i think though we can learn a lot you know again we take the meat spit out the bones i think we can learn a lot from the life and legacy of king uh we can learn what not to do we can learn some things that that could challenge us in terms of what we can do um and in any figure that's fallen any figure other than christ is that way right that's part of the thing right and even those that for whatever reason they had to oppose king uh is known perhaps only to them and it might even been racist issues but even those folks uh owe a debt to him because of his stand for peaceful protest because their lives may have been prevented from being snuffed out or or at least greatly injured or or what have you or the lives of their loved ones because as you said earlier there were other groups uh such as the nation of islam and the black panthers and others that were calling for violence uh yeah that that no no question about it but i want you to read but we got to recognize though that king's uh uh stand for non -violence and for uh his stand for the equal dignity and worth not only of african americans but also of poor people and of everybody was actually uh was actually uh it was a it was a it was a it was a orthopraxy that actually reflected on doctrine okay because you see what you know uh so what is the what is the underlying belief system that supports that supported segregation right unless it was it was ethno -nationalism and and superiority it was ethnic superiority right the belief system they're saying is okay you black people get to the back of the bus right you cannot drink at the same water fountains as us you must you can't go to the same schools as us this is a belief system that that supported the ontological inferiority of african americans and that is fundamentally pagan yes okay that that belief system is fundamentally which is why the apostle paul had to rebuke peter uh and publicly because he was guilty of the same kind of racism this was a racism against gentiles uh being a jewish person himself but i did exactly and no but notice what he said though what paul said when he rebuked it he said what you were doing is out of step with the gospel right made it into a gospel issue because what peter was doing was a form of legalism it it asserted that his ethnic jewish ethnic cultural identity was a currency of acceptance that is that if people if these gentiles uh if they want to be accepted by god then they have to come into our cultural um milieu and if they have to assimilate to our cultural trappings they have to take on circumcision they have to they have to they have to take on our dietary code they have to be like us in order to get close to god and and so that is a form of legalism and that is that is that undermines the gospel because the gospel says that christ alone is the currency of our our acceptance before god that's the fundamental uh at in the church of galatia it's the same thing you see in the table of nations in genesis chapter 10 right because because the table nations lays out the um the nations that the origin of the nations are spread out throughout the world after the flood right and it asserts that all the nations were spread out from this one man noah and his three sons and that was a revolutionary revelation at the time that the lord gave it and even today because every other nation around the nation of israel every other nation in the ancient mesopotamian world believed that their nation was founded first their myth said that their nation was founded first so that they had ontological superiority to over everyone else and so ontological the belief in ethnic superiority is not just unkind or rude or uh it's actually pagan right so what king is doing is he's actually confronting a form of paganism in the culture okay so so he's not just doing something oh this is a positive benefit sort of socially for people if you if you think that's all that was going on you're actually missing the deeper picture here right and confronting yeah go ahead and i just want to say i want to try to get to some of our listener questions before we run out of time no that's quite all right uh we have a listener who's a reformed baptist in nigeria uh lagos or lagos nigeria and i'm sorry if i'm mispronouncing your name osanachi but it's either i'm guessing osanachi or no osanaki uh he says uh dear chris i saw today's topic and decided i'd listen live so that i can send in a question because i've been often troubled by the way some christians regard martin luther king jr here's my questions should men be revered no matter how momentous they are if they err in vital and fundamental areas of god's word that's one of two questions osanachi has that's a good question well it depends on what you mean by right um i mean honestly um if the question is should we uh should we honor the legacy of king or should we respect him as someone who uh made a positive contribution to our society and even to the way in which we think theologically i think yes i think you'd be i think you'd be hard -pressed to say this guy has nothing to say socially and this guy has nothing to say theologically i think i've attempted to show even through his theodicy his redemptive suffering theodicy and how it was a uh a public um appropriation of the theology of the cross how actually that's a positive thing that the church could actually get today and use today and use then right to engage suffering so we can certainly we can certainly gain things uh theologically and uh and certainly socially in terms of uh you know looking at the life of king that doesn't necessarily mean that we have to take him whole that you know uh but uh but there's certainly things you know tremendous things that we can learn from it and osanachi's second question is i hear things like black theology by americans of african heritage as an african living in a multiple multi -tribal society this bothers me a great deal could your guests please shed light on why this is the case even among those of a reformed persuasion okay so uh so black liberation theology was a um it was a kind of it was it was a again it was a theological expression of the black power movement that came about in 1969 okay but here's the thing what was um what what cone was doing was he was actually filling a vacuum okay because uh because because many american theologians okay and in the history of theology in america have oftentimes um found ways to resist engaging the issue of black suffering theologically okay and so the sad thing is is it took the liberals to do this right because it took the liberals to actually offer uh a theology that speaks to the issues the daily issues of black suffering okay and um you know i just want you to think about it think about the kind of theology that could comfortably exist with slavery and jim crow and lynching and segregation and and and and that see that that's the kind that that is a theology that uh and and i'll just speak for the reform tradition here the reform the the tradition that was handed down uh from the reformers was not a tradition that could comfortably exist with those things it was a tradition that actually if it had been um if it had been applied it was handed down would have radically challenged those institutions right so that um so that and you can there's a resource um there's a resource called the baptism of early virginia and which a scholar named rebecca gets talked about how southern planters um uh re -engineered the doctrine of christian baptism these were anglican they re -engineered the doctrine of christian baptism in order to accommodate the the racial caste system in america because they were so threatened by the tradition that was handed to them same thing to happen in the southern present -day churches right so the the doctrine of spirituality of the church um uh was engineered right thornwell and dad they engineered this thing because um there was the obvious question of what does our theology have to say to this institution of slavery so they had to actually go in so if you know you don't have to change something unless you perceive a threat you know so um so the so i you know um uh so black black theology if you want to talk about black theology it's just theology you know that's applied to the black social situation okay um and um you know i mean that that can be done well and it can be done poorly and i'm assuming that i'm assuming i have a feeling i'm getting a gut reaction or gut instinct i should say that osanachi is thinking that by using terms like that we are saying there are different gospels for different people that are uh involve their skin color uh you know i may be wrong on that but i i seem to since he seemed to be so very dismayed by this concept okay right right right well well you know i would just say um you know uh uh black liberation theology right i i think that black liberation theology takes up great great questions and offers very poor answers okay and i think that that that orthodox theologians that love the lord love the bible i would love you know we need we need more uh theologians african -american and otherwise to apply the resources from the reform tradition and from the scriptures to the issues of black suffering today and i think we'd be surprised at what we would get if we would do that so and if if if uh so you know but by black theology we mean just the resources from a reform traditional biblical orthodoxy applied to uh the issues of black suffering i think we need a whole lot of that i think we need more of that right um um but uh so yeah years ago uh right after the book came out i think i might have been uh a year or so after the book came out but i interviewed anthony bradley and the old iron sharpens iron on his uh critique of black liberation theology are you familiar with anthony bradley's work on that i put out you know i'm not okay so i'm not i i don't i i'm not familiar with his work i'm familiar with bradley i'm not familiar with his work on that uh i know the book is out there i haven't i hadn't read it thankfully i hadn't read the book yet but uh but yeah yeah i know uh the greatest critique of cone's work came from his brother actually uh cecil cone wrote a book right after james cone wrote his book in 1969 cecil cone writes a book in 1971 called crisis identity crisis of african -american black theology okay and cecil cone basically says to his brother james cone your your black theology is not black enough right the reason he says it is he's like because cone is drawing on west cone is drawing on on european theological resources right so he's drawn on carl bart he's and and and and uh an anglo -american he's drawn on bart he's drawn on niebuhr he's drawn on all these sources and what cecil cone is saying is hey you're not drawn on the resources from your own uh uh you know sort of church tradition you know and um and and if he had his theology would have been much more rooted in the bible because the black church is a very bible -centered tradition you know this is why this is one of the reasons why king you know sort of you know because he was like man this is so you know he called it sort of fundamentalistic i mean it's very rooted in the tradition so um so yeah anyway by the way i want to let it's it's interesting as the time has elapsed three of our listeners who sent in questions all of their questions are answered by you already uh we have daniel in san jose california thank you for your questions and as you if you've been listening you know they've been answered tyler in mastic beach long island new york your question has been answered um the uh the question perhaps you could reiterate something uh that is being asked by our listener in uh mechanicsburg pennsylvania uh his name is gordy and i know that you've already touched on this but perhaps since we are running out of time some people might have missed your answer to this but gordy in mechanics berg pennsylvania i have to enlarge his email because the font is microscopic he says while attending crozer theological cemetery in 1960 dr king wrote regarding the resurrection of christ the external evidence for the authenticity of this doctrine is found wanting was this the prevailing theological perspective or was there change later on in his life perhaps you could reiterate what you were saying before yeah so i was so i i was saying that i believe that a change happened later on in his life um you know based on um you know that um that that vision in the kitchen that he has and uh uh so that he's not so uh so he's not a crozier in 1960 okay by that time he had long graduated from progeny boston university but uh but um but uh so but anyway uh so in 19 you know in 1956 january 1956 he has his vision he makes a step back to depending on trusting on leaning on uh the god that makes a way out of no way the god that his father preached in 1960 king does go back to evanesia baptist church um he takes up um the the charge of of teaching christian doctrine within um the sunday school program of evanesia baptist church as an associate pastor and um and so uh and you know and in terms of his beliefs about the resurrection itself there's a great sermon that he um preached um called um answers that questions that easter answers questions that easter answers what he affirms very clearly his belief in the physical bodily resurrection really so uh yeah so quick just look at you can find online questions that easter answers and of course one thing that even conservatives will quote king on today uh conservatives who may be dismayed at some of the uh the media that seems to be not only dominated by liberalism but sometimes it seems to be totalitarian leftism where uh people are being subject to reverse racism a king said that we're not supposed to be judging people according to the color of the skin but according to the content of their character and that's something that obviously people of all persuasion should be uh firm believers in that kind of uh mantra no question about it no question and uh one thing that i'd like to ask you uh i even uh hinted at this when we were having a private conversation before the program i really enjoyed the way that this uh program uh was handled i hope you did as well there are people out there that if and i'm sure that you would you have seen this or heard this that would jump on anyone especially if they happen to be white like i am for offering any kind of criticism or evaluation or critique of dr king's theology or anything about him for that matter and it is automatically presumed that my motives or the motives of a of a white christian or white uh person of any background the the presumption is that the motivation is racism i'm hoping that you would uh see that that is can be a very slanderous thing although that might be somebody's motive and often has been throughout the history of the united states uh starting with the civil rights movement and when king came on the scene and after his assassination there are obviously many racists who have vilified him and everything about him but don't you think that uh open honest critique as a christian is not only uh appropriate but it's mandated really i mean when you think of the apostle paul uh he was not upset even though he was an apostle when the bereans were examining what he believed and testing every word that came out of his mouth according to the scriptures aren't we supposed to do that with any revered hero especially with anybody that that comes to us that has influence that has some kind of a religious message or a any import on society aren't we supposed to be testing their words according to the bible no doubt about it no doubt about it uh i think i think we can i think we are called to do that um i think that we're caught i think you know there's a particular way in which we do it you know um if you look at so um so the ninth commandment right you shall not bear false witness um right we have a wonderful articulation in the westminster larger catechism on uh on not only the things forbidden by the ninth commandment but the duties required by the ninth commandment and and part of the part of one of the things that are um that's sort of forbidden is uh kind of uh is sinful over criticism right so when we began to approach a person assuming the worst about the person or we begin approach approach the person um sort of uh with an intent to sort of undermine their reputation or disparage them then we're actually violating the ninth commandment right we actually have a duty to resist an evil report that's part of what uh that's part of the language of the westminster large catechism on the ninth commandment that we it's really our responsibility to when we hear about some when we hear about um some you know something uh it's it's not you know it's not that we need to be naive and denying that if a person has sinned then we need to be able to admit that and we need to not dismiss it or downplay it but nevertheless um we need to try to love believe all things we need to have a a desire to want to assume the best about the person and a desire to want to protect their reputation so uh so i think that any any engagement with a with a figure or with anyone else um that the most terrible way to to deal with them would be uh in in in trying to um you know trying to do what we can to protect their reputation and try to do what we can to assume the best while also being honest um in terms of what we see before us so that's what i would say great well uh i want to make sure that our listeners have the website for roman and littlefield publishers it is roman that's spelt r -o -w -m -a -n dot com r -o -w -m -a -n dot com and they have informed us that if you uh order the book it's quite an expensive book as most doctoral dissertations are when they come into print especially with an academic publisher the code to use to get 30 off is l -e -x 30 a -u -t -h 17 that's l -e -x 30 a -u -t as in thomas h 17 and you'll get a 30 off and i want also people to know that if you live in grand rapids michigan or near there or you plan to visit there or you have family and friends and loved ones that either live there or plan to visit there the website for new city fellowship orthodox presbyterian church is newcitygr .org

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new city gr .org that stands for new city grand rapids .org