June 26, 2024 Show with Roger Salter on “The Force of Truth: Rediscovering the 18th Century Anglican Thomas Scott”

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Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 26th day of June 2024.

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Today, I have a returning guest. He's one of my favorite guests to interview, and he has become a favorite guest of many in my audience over the years. In fact, I've had this dear brother on my program since the earliest days of Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio when we began broadcasting out of WNYG and WGBB Radio on Long Island, New York, and he has continued to bless us with his presence on Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio after we relocated and relaunched in Pennsylvania.

His name will be no stranger to most of our listeners. Reverend Roger Salter, an ordained minister and a confessional Reformed Anglican adhering to the 39 Articles of Religion as a faithful summary of the inerrant teachings of the Holy Scriptures.

And today, we're going to be addressing the force of truth, how the biblically trained mind of the 18th century Anglican Thomas Scott needs to be rediscovered and gleaned from today. And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio.

Reverend Roger Salter.

Many thanks indeed, Chris. It's great to be logged in at last, and it's always a privilege to be with you.

The Force of Truth and the Sovereignty of God in Salvation

Well, if you could start off by letting our listeners know something about this figure from church history, Thomas Scott.

Well, Chris, it's largely, and it animates me greatly, it's largely to the title of his book that grips me, The Force of Truth, because there are many forces operative within the Church of God today whose effect is extremely negative.

Great forces operative in the church. We could all jot down a long list, I'm sure. But I think of forces in the church as intellect, academy, emotion, fanaticism, skepticism, doctrinal laxity, error, and lately, in such a shocking way, great evils of thought and behavior.

And it seems the great and necessary and preeminent force that is lacking in the church today is the force of truth. And sometimes even we who declare it do not declare it as a force. Sometimes it's done apologetically or quietly or to a certain extent with a craven attitude because we don't want to be marked out as extremists.

It's a very British tendency to want to be in the middle, moderate all the time. I don't think anybody who's actually doing the work of God is truly or willingly moderate. We've got to be very decisive about proclaiming the word of God.

After all, God in his eternal decision, he determined to give us his word. And there's no greater authority or force in all creation that the word of God, because the creation itself emerged from the word of God.

And when we think of all the forces and powers within creation, all those emerge from God, his will, his energy. So I am thinking that what the church really needs in these days and has lost because it's not truly reformational in the character that it's assumed, because the church no longer holds the truth in its entirety, in its full force, we have compromises.

Even people who say, I'm reformed, keep it a secret or whisper what they think. And we should have the courage to teach exactly and forcefully what God has revealed to us. And that is the full content of Holy Scripture.

And I'm going to be blunt today. It is the full force of Calvinism, whether you want to call it Calvinism or Augustinianism. This is the truth that God donated to the church. Everything to do with grace and goodness emerges from God's eternal sovereign will.

And he will bestow certain blessings upon people that is his province. And so his grace is his to distribute as far and wide and in particular to certain people as he chooses. He is sovereign over his creation.

He is sovereign over the race. He is sovereign over all sinners of which we are a part. And he is sovereign over all those who are called to enjoy eternal redemption. So that's the great and preeminent force that is lacking in the church of today.

And I'm reminded of that wonderful verse in John 6, 45, where John speaks of divine selection of those who are to be redeemed. They will be all taught by God. If we are taught by God and hold his truth within our hearts because he personally is within our hearts and minds, there will be a force from which his message emerges.

Now, I'm assuming that you would agree with me that although we are never to be moderate in our views, because in essence being moderate means that you are in some way attempting to accommodate men by diminishing the strength of truth, the importance of certain truthful aspects of the scripture, depending upon who it is you are trying to accommodate.

We are always to fear God infinitely more than men, and we are always to seek to please him infinitely more than men. But that does not mean that we are not to be charitable and ironic when we have interaction and fellowship with those with whom we disagree on secondary and tertiary areas.

For instance, if a Reformed Anglican is invited to speak at a Presbyterian church, he doesn't have to cram down the throats of the audience there the ecclesiology of Anglicanism. And if a Reformed Baptist is preaching at a Presbyterian church, he doesn't have to cram credo or believer-only baptism down the throats of the listeners.

We can have those animated and vigorous discussions with our brethren, and we should when we disagree over those things, but that doesn't mean that we have to always bring them up in every circumstance.

Would I be stating something according to your agreed beliefs on this?

Absolutely, Chris. I mean, sometimes a force, strong and irresistible, can be very gentle, like the call of God when he says, you know, all those who come to me only come because of the divine work of interior revelation.

I think it means that we are balanced, even-keeled, fair to those who disagree with us, hoping to understand their reasons for that, but nonetheless stating boldly, but inoffensively, I mean in terms of presentation and courtesy, and not giving anyone reason to be angry with us, although they will blame us for uttering this truth.

I have to say this, Chris, and some people think I've got a, I don't know, an obsession with this, but for me, salvation begins with the mind and intention of God, and that is predestination. That is God's selection of his people and the passing by of other sinners, leaving them to the sin that they love and for which they deserve a penalty.

Nobody is wronged in predestination, but there are people whom God has given his grace to repent and believe. They don't even come through to that conclusion that it was electing love, but nonetheless, it is an electing love.

It is a tenderness and compassion of God to redeem those whom he has chosen secretly for himself, and I think it's the most comforting doctrine on the whole that emerges from Holy Scripture. It teaches us that the atonement has a definite outcome, that effectual calling is the great force that draws us into the kingdom, that the perseverance of the saints is the preservation of those whom the Lord has chosen for being destined to be citizens of his eternal kingdom.

So I really take your point, Chris. It's not being immoderate in temper, but in, you know, Scripture is inspired to teach us this doctrine, and we are to imitate the teaching of Scripture.

Amen. And one thing that I find interesting is that none of those who are vehement opponents to the doctrines you and I embrace and cherish and treasure, namely the doctrines of sovereign grace and also nicknamed reform theology and Calvinism, as you put it earlier, none of those systems opponents will, or at least very few, I should say, will have sleepless nights after a loved one dies who died without Christ.

They will not torment themselves that they did not do enough to evangelize these people and evangelize them correctly and evangelize them with the right spirit and manner, and we could go on and on and on, and yet if their system of theology is true, they should be blaming themselves at least in part for that one dying and perishing in their sin.

Because if it is completely left up to the free will of the sinner to embrace the truth, and it's also then, therefore, consequently left up to the articulate nature and the demeanor and manner with which the gospel proclaimer is presenting that message, there is always something more we could do, and we are never sinless on this earth when it comes to the frequency with which we spread the gospel and the love that we pour into that and the humility that we pour into that and the compassion that we pour into that.

We're all to blame in one sense or another, but we cannot, thanks be to God, ultimately blame ourselves for someone dying in their sin, because we who are Reformed know that ultimately the choice was God's.

Am I overstating the case?

Yes, no, not overstating it. All I would say is that every sinner, if you want to say from a Christian background or pagan background, has the law of God etched into their consciences. They know they are sinning, and they prefer it, and they prefer to be untouched.

Yeah, Romans 1.

Yes, exactly. It's fully explained there. So, every sinner who perishes is absolutely responsible for their own sad fate, and of course, when the books are opened, that is God revealing our conscience to ourselves, and no condemned sinner can argue against the verdict.

It's there, written across my conscience, and my conscience struck me with shame or regret for doing, and sometimes my conscience is so hard, I don't even care that I've done it, but it's all written in the conscience, the books that are going to be opened on the day of judgment.

Amen.

The sinner will agree with God. The sinner will agree with God. There it is. It's written in me.

Yes, I did not mean to indicate that the sinner is not responsible for obeying Christ. I meant that the evangelist does not determine the eternal destiny of the audience to that gospel proclamation. That's where I was coming from, obviously.

Yes, I never felt there was anything opposite to that that you said, Chris. It's just that our words only carry home if the Holy Spirit does that, like Samuel's words, not falling to the ground, but they are the words of God applied to the heart, because we at least are meeting our responsibility to relay those words accurately and with honesty to the people that we're dealing with.

Now, what is it, especially in this book, whose title you have chosen for a theme today, The Force of Truth, what is it within the pages of this book by Thomas Scott, who, as I mentioned earlier, was an 18th and actually early 19th century as well, Anglican theologian, Reformed Anglican theologian, who had correspondence with the beloved and renowned author of the hymn Amazing Grace, John Newton?

What is it specifically in this book, The Force of Truth, that is perhaps uncommon in the 21st century and not explored enough and proclaimed enough in modern-day pulpits?

Yes, I think it is precisely this. I'm speaking very generally because I know there are exceptions, but very generally the church in our time is so lukewarm it doesn't care about the truth of God. It will do anything it can to get numbers and popularity, which is not the point.

Our point is to call the chosen of God to their conversion. The outcome of that is God's choice and God's work. We are to be people and called ministers are to be people who relay the divine revelation.

That is the message of the prophets, including the apostles. And present-day preachers are to imitate the prophets in their declaration of the word. I like an expression of an Old Testament specialist from the early 20th century, Walter Eichrod.

He refers to us as mere, he's talking about ships back in the 30s, we are speaking tubes relaying the captain's voice to the crew. We are nothing more than speaking tubes. The Lord has given us his word.

We get out of the way and through prayer and through obedience to God, we, as best we can, as sinful, fallible men, declare to others the divine revelation. It has to be handled with such reverence, with such care, with adequate preparation and a sober, supple mind before the Holy Spirit to ensure that in our preparation and delivery, as far as is humanly possible, with whatever capacity God has given us to relate without compromise the full force of the divine revelation.

It doesn't have to be a brutal or hard force. I mean, I have a wife who loves me and I am forced to love her, but I'm not being beaten into that unwillingly. I am wooed to her. And that's the idea that God woos us with such an attraction.

That's what the, what is it, the effectual calling happens to be. The Lord Jesus appears to us in all his aptness to our condition as a rebel and in all his beauty as a saviour of mercy and donor of eternal blessedness.

So he wins us over by showing his loveliness and the fact that he suits our condition. So that is a force that is an attraction that isn't in any way brutal or contrary to our free agency. It wins over and gives us a new will, as Ezekiel says, I will give you new hearts, but regeneration must precede that conversion.

And the lovely thing about Scott and Newton's mutual correspondence is that you can see Scott moving gradually to the conviction that the doctrines that he hates, I'll say it again, Calvinism, Anglicanism is a Calvinistic church, nothing to do with Calvin.

It's to do with historical Augustinianism that has always been present in the church and taught in the church by great men of God. But Calvin just gets branded with it because for some reason or other, he's been portrayed as a sort of bogeyman.

And we all know that's based on a lie too. But the idea is that Calvinism or the understanding of the sovereignty of God in salvation, adhered to by many before the Reformation, is the truth of God's electing love designated for us according to his eternal purpose before the creation of the world.

And that is a truth that we must emphasize because in the ultimate sense of dependency upon God, we need that doctrine to draw us to him in full trust and total dependence. And nothing makes you more dependent upon God than our utter helplessness and then his saving might.

I think it's a doctrine that cultivates great love for God and great comfort for the Christian.

Amen. Hallelujah. And we have to go to our first commercial break. So if you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Please give us, as always, your first name, at least your city and state of residence and your country of residence.

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As I said, we have no idea when they're going to pull the plug on this offer to us, so go to royaldiadem .com today and mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We're now back with Roger Salter, who is an ordained minister and a theologically reformed and confessional Anglican, and our theme today is The Force of Truth, which is also the theme of a book that was available through the Banner of Truth by the 18th and early 19th century Anglican theologian Thomas Scott.

Unfortunately, this book is out of print, and the only copies you'll be able to get these days are used copies, or perhaps the final copies that are available at different book outlets like cvbbs .com.

Perhaps they have some books left, but if you have a question for our guest, submit it to chrisarnson at gmail .com and give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. Roger, one of the things that I found fascinating about Thomas Scott is that he has something in common with Abraham Kuyper in that both men, even though they were ministers, discovered that they were not truly born-again believers and thankfully came to the point where they truly did come to genuine repentance and faith by God's mercy and grace.

And it reminds me of a very important element of truth, is that we use the scriptures, the only inerrant truth that we have, even when examining whether we are truly a child of God. We cannot base that on some one-time past experience.

We cannot base that on any kind of emotion. It has to be based on the word of God, doesn't it?

It absolutely does, Chris. I find one of the real helps to this is the valley of vision where the sources of those prayers are so honest about their varying condition before God. And it's like the Psalms as well.

We are very variable in our nature and some days we are very sure of things and other days we are not. But I think that we have to be honest with the Lord. He knows what we're thinking anyway, so we're not hiding anything from him.

It's to come to him and address him openly about our concerns. I mean, I'm trying to think of the Yorkshire Anglican Grimshaw. He actually asked God that he could have an inward sign or token that he was a genuine Christian.

And I think that might be possible for some people, even like Charles Wesley after Aldergate. You know that God does give some people a bonus. It doesn't last forever. It's not as if it's infallibly there, but they just need that extra little bit of a push or encouragement.

But fundamentally, it's a matter of faith without props. And that is believing the word of God without any other prop or any other support but the fact that God says it. And so we are to read scripture and read it over and over again until we can sense that I do believe this.

I do know this. I know it's God's truth. Therefore, I can depend upon it. But I think that Scott's life is a sort of diagram of the gradual and merciful calling of the Lord to certain people. I extracted three or four very brief quotes from his autobiography that illustrate this.

First of all, when he started ministry, Scott wanted a vocation that would give him plenty of time to read and to think and to work ultimately for a great reputation as a man of worth and thought. And so on page 12 of his document, as far as I understand such controversies, that's the Arminian, semi-Pelagian Arminian.

I was nearly a Socinian and Pelagian and Holy in Arminian. You know, I say this and people can say I'm cheeky and overstating it. There should be no Arminian preachers in Anglicanism. It's our stated doctrine.

It's there for general understanding. If that isn't a confession of faith, I don't know what is and how men can get up and tongue in cheek, mouth all these words of loyalty to the articles and not care one bit about what they're saying, which is what he did and was convinced of it as great sin.

Yet to my shame, he had spoken. I sought to obtain admission into the ministry in a church whose doctrines are diametrically opposed to all three. It's a sin. And in most Anglican ordination services now, that sin is repeated.

There's no conviction for it. Everybody says, well, who believes the articles? They're three or four hundred years old. The Bible is much older. And so we derive that truth from the ancient scriptures.

And then he says in the introduction, he's ever introducing the book. It must be remembered that Scott was an avowed Calvinist. He'd become settled in his mind concerning the issues of the Armenian Calvinist controversy.

That is not settled anymore within the Church of England. It's supposed to be a bygone issue. And this is what he says a little later on. I was nearly as so Sinian and Pelagian and holy and Armenian. See, that is a heresy.

Yet to my shame, be it spoken. I sought to obtain admission into the ministry in a church whose doctrines are diametrically opposed to all the three without once concerning myself about those barriers, which the wisdom of our forefathers is placed around her purposely to prevent the intrusion of such dangerous heritage.

As I then was. And you see, he regards Arminianism as a heresy. That's not worried about in the Church of England anymore. You can think and say what you like, even though you say you recognize the articles.

There are museum piece from four centuries ago. And that's the problem of the Church of England and the Episcopal Church worldwide. It no longer has the protection, the barriers that encourage orthodoxy that the articles afford us.

So the Church of England, because that's what I still am. And Anglicanism throughout the world is a liar. It's a lying organization. And the lies are coming out and the lies are getting worse. And the morals are now dreadful.

People having Sunday night cabaret shows in cathedrals and churches and bringing in everybody in their smart dancing uniforms that are virtually naked and dancing in the aisles and where the communion is administered.

This is so shocking. And it's so shocking. But people don't notice it anymore. The Armenians deny the doctrines of gratuitous personal election to eternal life and the final perseverance of all true believers.

And numbers of them hold the doctrine of justification by works. Yes, 50 of evangelicals now think works play a part in our justification, in part at least, and verging some degree to the Pelagian system in respect to the final moving cause in the conversion of sinners.

And I believe on page 28, it is a paragraph, but I think it's worth reading, Chris. The blasphemous approach of Anglicanism as a world institution. Thus, with a heart full of pride and wickedness, my life polluted with many unrepentant, unforsaken sins, without one cry for mercy, one prayer for direction or assistance or blessing upon what I was about to do.

And having concealed my real sentiments under the mask of general expressions, after having subscribed articles directly contrary to what I believed, and after having blasphemously declared in the presence of God and of the congregation and in the most solemn manner, sealing it with the Lord's Supper, that I judged myself to be inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost to take that office upon me, not knowing or believing that there was a Holy Ghost.

On September 20, 1772, I was ordained a deacon. Hundreds of Anglican clergy could echo those words, and they don't care about it. When I moved into my first Anglican church, my vicar was away and a substitute came.

And he said, you don't have to do anything before you come to communion, except feel that you're all one community. Trash, damning trash. And the Anglican church is weak because it's lost 39 strong vitamins that it ought to be taking daily.

Anglican clergy ought to read their articles at least once a week, and the litany as well, because these fortify the souls of the people and especially the ministers who have to be strong on their Lord's days to declare the truth well.

Amen. Have you completed what you wanted to read, Rodney?

I'm sorry.

That's quite all right, brother. Our guest has moved to tears, so please be patient with him. It's refreshing to see people who care so much about God's truth that it would even move them to tears during a live broadcast where they just can't control what is happening due to a reflection upon God's truth as compared to the abandonment of that truth.

And would you like me to read a question?

Yes, please.

Okay. We have quite a number of questions from a single listener, Donald Veatch. I usually don't give the full name of listeners, but Donald is one of the most faithful Anglican listeners in our program who thinks that you're the most faithful voice of Anglicanism in the 21st century.

He shares your Cranmerian views, for those of our listeners who are unfamiliar with that term. That would be the theology of the great Protestant Reformation hero or English Reformation hero, Thomas Cranmer, who was executed for his faith after, in cowardice, denying the faith of Protestantism after the death of King Henry VIII when the Roman Catholic Church seized control of the Church of England.

And Protestants were being persecuted and martyred. Thomas Cranmer denied the Protestant faith, which is, of course, what he believed to be the biblical faith of Christianity. And it began to overwhelm him.

The guilt began to overwhelm him as to what he had done. And he finally recanted his recantation and not only was burned at the stake, but ran in front of his guards that were marching him there so that he could immediately plunge his hand that signed his recantation of Protestantism into the flames to be burned off first.

But that's what I mean by Cranmerian, the theology of that hero of the English Reformation. But Donald Veitch runs the Twist House Facebook page, and he asks, I don't know if I'm going to be able to read all of his questions because he has quite a number of them.

But he asks, should the Anglican bodies add the 1595 Lambeth articles, 1615 Irish articles, and 1618 through 1619 canons of Dort be codified in the Book of Common Prayer alongside the 39 articles? He also asked, why were these ever excluded?

Are you able to respond to those specific questions?

Yes, I'm going to say yes. I'm not talking about competence. I'm willing to have a shot at the question. For me, I would do that so willingly. The delegates from the Church of England under James V were sent to the canons of Dort, the Dort Synod.

And all of them agreed with the canons. And one of them was Joseph Hall. I can't remember all the others off the top of my head, but they all agreed with the canons as concluded on the doctrine of sovereignty of grace.

And when they came back, and there was also somebody else who was a close friend of John Davenant, those two beautiful men who wrote to each other saying, we do believe that the canons of Dort are fully in agreement with the teaching of the 39 articles.

And I think they would have liked them to have been somehow included in the official statements of the Church of England. But by that time, Arminianism had gotten a long stretch of favor and publicity under that terrible Archbishop Lord.