July 30, 2015 ISI Radio Show with Former Radical Liberal Theologian Thomas C. Oden on his autobiography & Jim Harrison on “Lessons For a Calvinist From a Methodist’s Journey”

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

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors,

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

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

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.

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.

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

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth, listening via live streaming.

This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Thursday on this 30th day of July 2015, and I'm very eager to interview our next guest because of his very fascinating testimony of conversion from liberalism, in fact radical liberalism, to biblical

Christianity, and I'm speaking of Dr. Thomas C. Oden, and we are going to be addressing his autobiography,

A Change of Heart, a personal and theological memoir, and before I introduce

Dr. Oden, I want to just read a couple of the commendations for his book.

Timothy George of Beeson Divinity School says, Tom Oden is one of the most remarkable Christians of our time.

This is the story of how he has lived through, contributed to, and helped overthrow several revolutions during his long and fruitful life.

Deeply rooted in Wesleyan spiritual traditions, Oden shows us the meaning of grace in a human life, grace that shatters in order to restore and bring joy.

Those of us who know and love the great theologian will be delighted to read the story of his pilgrimage thus far.

The whole church will be blessed by it. Then we also have someone who is no fan of my

Calvinism, but who is also at least very well known for his firm commitment to conservative

Christianity and biblical orthodoxy, Page Patterson of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

He says of Dr. Oden's book, if ever a theologian should provide a memoir of his journey,

Tom Oden is the one. A change of heart is the record of that phenomenal sojourn intersecting the lives of countless theologians and religious leaders.

And as readers of the relentless Oden would expect, the pages of this book fly by on the winds of Oden the wordsmith.

This is the montage of a master artist. Well, that's a pretty powerful endorsement, and I'm honored and privileged to welcome you for the first time to Iron Sharpens Iron, Dr.

Thomas C. Oden. Well, I'm sure he knew he was speaking of you when he wrote that, unless your publisher made a horrible blunder there in the packaging of the book.

But it is my honor and privilege to have you on the program, Dr. Oden, and I've heard many wonderful things about you and your work.

And, in fact, as you know, the second hour of our two -hour broadcast today will feature

Pastor Jim Harrison of the Red Mills Baptist Church, who was so blessed by reading your book that he really felt compelled to write a paper, a thorough paper, on your book and how the

Evangelical Church at large needs to hear the message that you've contained in your autobiography.

So he is going to be addressing that very subject in the second hour. Well, first of all, so our listeners can get a little bit of an understanding of you as a person and where you are coming from as a

Christian and a theologian, let's get some background on you. I understand that you were raised in a

Methodist home and in a Christian upbringing. I'm Methodist, or if we meant mean, the

Methodists were born in 1931, and that means a different kind of Methodist than exists today.

Since 1930, the church has changed significantly to the certainly the largest but still declining of all the so -called mainline churches in North America.

And before I even continue on, I'm going to give our email address. If you have a question for Dr. Oden, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

That's C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. And if you're writing with a question, please include your first name, your city and state, and your country, if outside the

USA. But I have a surprise for you. The first three listeners who send in a question that is good enough to be read on air, that is applicable to our subject, you'll receive a free copy of Dr.

Oden's book. And today we're also restricting that to folks who have not recently won a book, and we're also restricting this offer to the

United States. We urge our foreign listeners, our overseas listeners, and our listeners in Canada to write to us with a question and include where you're from, but our sponsor who is shipping out the free books cannot be overwhelmed with overseas shipping costs and Canadian shipping costs.

So we ask of you to be patient with us on that, and we'd still love to hear from you, nonetheless, because we know that we do have listeners all over the world, and we'd still love to hear from you, nonetheless, because we know that we do have listeners all over the world, and we'd still love to hear from you, nonetheless, because we know that we do have listeners all over the world, and we'd still love to hear from you, nonetheless, because we know that we do have listeners all over the world, and we'd still love to hear from you, nonetheless, because we know that we do have listeners all over the world, and we'd still love to hear from you, nonetheless, because we know that we do have listeners all over the world, and we know that we do have listeners all over the world, and that's chrisarnson at gmail .com.

So you were raised in a Bible -believing Methodist home, which was much more common, you're saying, back in that day, the earlier part of the 20th century.

Tell us something about how long in your youth you retained and believed in any of these major elements that are common in a true

Christian household? Well, I had a very, very faithful grandmother who prayed for me every day.

I didn't pay much attention to it, but I did know that somehow God had something for me to do in the world, and it took me a long time to find my vocation.

Meanwhile, I did take a very long journey through, in university years, through practically every leftist and left -wing and radical experimental view of the world that I could find.

That was my world. I enjoyed it for a while until I got disillusioned by it.

So, basically, you were intellectually seduced by people like Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, discovering them as a young man, their writings?

You know, it takes to be seduced. I was willing to be seduced. So, I mean, it's not just something that I was forced into.

I loved it. I loved heresy, and it took me a long time to see its limitations.

And you were also intrigued, I understand, after World War II with pacifism, which since many liberals are pacifists, not all, and not all pacifists are liberal, but there is obviously a large liberal element in that ideology or connected to it.

Tell us something about that. Well, some of the most godly persons I knew as a 15-, 16-, 17 -year -old were far left liberal pacifists, and they were in my church.

They were in the youth movements of my church. And so, you know, I trusted them because I trusted the church, and they were very sincere in their hatred of war and their desire for peace.

But at the time, I was not able to see the limitations of the basic arguments of pacifism.

I didn't really turn around that until I read the great essay by Reinhold Niebuhr called

Why Communism Is So Evil. And in that essay, he significantly put away the pacifism that I had had at one time.

And I still respect the pacifists, but I don't see the world as they do because, as Reinhold Niebuhr says in that essay, they do not understand original sin.

They don't understand the perpetuity and the continuity of sin in history.

They don't understand how sin could be so powerful. Yeah, and my apologies to those who are

Bible -believing Christians who are pacifists, such as people who are in different Anabaptist groups.

I didn't mean to broad -brush you with liberalism, but it just so happens, as you are probably fully aware, those of you listening from those backgrounds, because I know there are a lot of them here in Pennsylvania, that I did not intend to broad -brush you, but that you know, you're fully aware that this is a statistical fact that there is much liberalism connected with pacifism and that ideology.

And so, did you actually become a full -blown Marxist in your ideology? Well, I was a

Marxist in historical orientation, yes, definitely. But I certainly never became a member of the

Communist or the Socialist Party. I was a left -wing Democrat. I was very much involved in the

Americans for Democratic Action and the Students for Democratic Action, that's SDA.

Those were my university years, and a lot of the effects lasted on much later.

But just back to the pacifism, I was very much involved in the World Federalist Movement.

I was involved in the national and international organizations of pacifists.

Almost all of whom, in my view, were strongly leftist in their political opinions.

And while you were delving deeper and deeper into the clutch of liberalism, into the enslavement or the trap of it, of course you didn't view it that way, as you said, you loved it, but did you always identify yourself either in your mind or in public as a

Christian? And did you see this as being completely compatible, if not more of an expression of Christianity?

Because very often, as you know, liberals will make the false claim that their ideology actually resembles

Jesus Christ in a more vibrant way because he is, of course, for the underdog and has compassion for the poor.

And you could go on and on with the elements of Christ's descriptions that the liberals would believe they identify and manifest more clearly than conservatives do.

So did you always consider yourself a Christian during this period? Except for a short period of time when

I, as a university student, was actively reading some agnostics and atheists and people like Nietzsche and others,

I sort of entertained the idea, only briefly, of being identified as an agnostic.

I think I never identified myself as an atheist. But I always appeared to others,

I suppose, as being Christian since I went to church. I still was involved in the church that was teaching me and leading me and in some ways leading me further and further left as I went.

Did you also get involved in pro -choice activism, or at least belief in the abortion of unborn children and the homosexual rights movement?

Were those elements of your liberalism? No, I did not.

I've never been involved. Well, let me put this. First of all, pro -life. It took until 1972 when the

Supreme Court decision was made to cause a moral revulsion for me, who had taught and argued for a liberalized view of abortion.

That was when I was teaching as a theologian in the 70s, early 70s.

But it was not until the Supreme Court decision that I had a strong moral revulsion against the intentional taking of life, and specifically of abortion.

Now, as far as sexuality issues go, I've always been involved,

I've always been a kind of, I would say, an average

Protestant in terms of being faithful and being married, honoring the marriage between a man and a woman.

That was never a question for me. Never. Well, I didn't mean personally as an active lifestyle for you.

I meant as far as supporting or advocating homosexuals and that activity. Not really, because we had so few at the time that I was politically involved liberally.

I'm sure there were more than I might have known, but it was never an issue until much later.

Okay, we do have a listener from Massapequa Park, Long Island, New York.

Susan, who writes, I am interested in knowing if there is something inherent in Methodism that allowed for the encroachment of liberalism.

Although doctrine meant a lot to Wesley, and the Book of Discipline asserted that, do you think that the unconventional beginnings of the

Methodist movement may have created the ability for heresy to eventually poke its way in?

Thanks. And Susan is a member of Seaford Methodist Church on Long Island.

I think the answer to that is no. The problem is not in Wesley. It's not in the evangelical revivals that Wesley created, which were in no sense liberal in any way

I can understand it. But there were some vulnerabilities that later, a century after Wesley, those vulnerabilities began to appear.

And I'll tell you what the vulnerabilities were, it's quite evident. They were the doctrines of prevenient grace and the diminishing, contrary to Wesley, of justification by grace through faith.

Just to clarify, there's no question in my mind, and I've studied this carefully, that Wesley has a

Reformed and Puritan and basically

Lutheran understanding of, and basically a classical Anglican understanding of, salvation by grace through faith, active in love.

All of that is deeply embedded in the Wesleyan teaching.

And if you want to see more of what I've written about that, there's a four -volume work called John Wesley's Teaching.

And the section on justification, and the sections on prevenient grace, and on predestination, all of those are dealt with.

Wesley did have a doctrine of predestination. He did have a doctrine of election. But you were asking about how did this turn into liberalism, and it did.

It began to turn about 1905,

I would say, and from the 1910s through the 1930s or 40s, the liberals still were very much a minority voice, a growing voice in the bureaucracies and in the leadership, and in the youth movements.

I wanted to also let our listeners know, since I believe I probably have a predominantly

Reformed or Calvinistic audience, just because of the fact that people are aware that I am, and that's how word typically spreads about my program, but although you are not a thoroughgoing five -point

Calvinist, you are not anti -Calvinist, are you? All of the five points of Calvin fundamentalism would have been affirmed by Wesley, including biblical inerrancy, including incarnation in the tomb.

All of those were affirmed by Wesley. All you need to do is read him. But a good many

Reformed people, sincere Reformed people, have never read Wesley. They've only read about the abuses and the distortions that followed

Wesley. I just suggest that it would be good for your audience to read

Wesley for yourself and judge for yourself. Well, I've read the disputes, plural

I should say, brotherly disputes that he has had in the past, obviously, with George Whitefield, who was a thoroughgoing

Calvinist, and obviously there were some differences regarding to unconditional election and limited atonement, but that isn't the thrust of our discussion today.

But you do not, as some Wesleyans do and some Arminians do, you don't count your

Calvinist brethren as heretics or anything such as that? Oh, no, I'm greatly indebted to Calvin.

I'm greatly indebted to the evangelical tradition of Anglicanism, which spawned the

Wesleyan tradition that I adhere to. I still am, I'm still an ordained Methodist minister, but I'm an ordained minister in resistance in some ways to the good bit of what happens in the leadership, not in the laity, but in the leadership of the

United Methodist Church. There seems to be a paradox, well actually it's more than it just seems to be, there is a paradox in liberalism, because you have people on the one hand who view themselves as the primary advocates for the underdog, and you have people who have a compassion for the poor, and you have people who have a compassion and a love for minorities, and a desire to make sure that they are protected from bigotry, hatred, and physical harm, and so on and so on.

But then you have this strange paradox where you have, who are the most vulnerable people on the planet

Earth, who are the greatest underdogs, if you will, or the least among us?

Unborn children. And there seems to be little compassion amongst many, and I don't mean to broad brush,

I'm sure that there are a number of pro -life liberals, but the absolute lack of concern, it seems, for the torturous death that goes on in abortion, and then on top of that, the inherent racism that has existed in the abortion industry, it came out of the desire of Margaret Sanger and other white elitists to eradicate minorities from the face of the

Earth through forced sterilization and abortion. How do you explain that, or even conceive of that in your mind, how those two polar opposite things exist within liberalism?

I believe in pro -choice before sex, and pro -life after. Amen. But do you see where I'm coming from, though, that there seems to be a strange paradox within liberalism?

There is a paradox in liberalism, but also in human existence, between the dialectic between grace and freedom.

God gives us the possibilities which we distort in human freedom, grossly distort.

Now, the story of God's election of Israel is something that anyone, including

Wesley, who reads the Bible would rejoice in, that God has elected

Israel, and that Israel's election has been manifested and fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

All of that is clear there. The only point at which there is a significant disagreement is in what is called double predestination.

That is, God assigns before the creation of the world those who are to be damned and those who are to be elected.

Now, that is an idea that Wesley did find in some Calvinist writers and that he rejected.

But aside from that, let's say, ancillary point, there's not much difference between Calvinists and Methodists, as I see it, in the fundamental doctrine of soteriology and salvation.

God has elected all who believe, all who repent and sincerely believe and who follow the holy life.

Yes, well, obviously, since most of the Reformed Christians I know hold to their

Wesleyan and Arminian brethren as brothers, we obviously believe that the gospel, there is enough of the gospel that is held in common that we would look forward to seeing one another in heaven one day.

But how long did you live and work and teach and write as a liberal, and when did the cracks start to form?

How long ago did the cracks start to form in this cherished ideology and theology that you had embraced and celebrated and rejoiced in?

Too long. It took me too long to find my way through a serious critique of the illusions that I had held for so long.

And I'm talking about the period from 1950 to 1970. That's 20 years, Chris, and that took too long.

It was in 1970 that the cracks had already begun to form.

In the 1960s, as you will see, if you read my autobiography, you will see that by 1966, when

I attended the World Council of Churches meeting in Geneva in 1966, they were already well formed there, but I had not quite received them into my life, if you will, the critique.

In 1970, I began teaching at Drew University and met my friend

Will Erberg, who is a Jewish theologian, sociologist, philosopher, one of the brightest men

I've ever known, perhaps the brightest. And he brought me to a recognition that I was ignorant of my own tradition.

He was a faithful Jew. The irony, in part, in my life story is that I was brought into classical traditional

Christianity by a classical traditional Jew. Huh.

Wow. Well, we do have a listener in Tavares, Florida, and I hope

I'm pronouncing that correctly, Reverend Dr. Richard F. Williamson.

Oh, this is an old friend of mine who used to be a guest years ago on the old Iron Sharpens Iron, and I'm glad that Richard is listening today.

He said, here is my question for Dr. Oden. Do you see a split coming in the

United Methodist Church should the next General Conference normalize homosexual behavior? If yes, what advice would you give to theologically orthodox clergy and congregations?

Very good question. I advise evangelicals in the United Methodist Church, which are many, far, far more than liberals, in the laity, my advice is to stay and fight, to stay and change, to stay and use legislative processes to correct what has been grossly incorrect over several decades now.

Yes, the answer is that the coming General Conference in 2016 will be an important one, but every

General Conference in the United Methodist Church is important because that's where legislative policy is decided, but every four years.

But in this case, let me just say, God's grace is remarkable in this respect.

There is in the United Methodist Church a fast -growing constituency of Africans in Africa, in the

United Methodist Church. They are full members of the United Methodist Church. The United Methodist Church is not just a

North American entity, it is an international entity. So the irony here,

Richard Williamson, the irony here is that the numbers are steadily diminishing in the

United Methodist Church in terms of energy and depth and evangelical determination.

Whereas in the African church, which is growing almost to equal numbers as the

North American church, that is quite exactly the opposite. They are people who live in prayer, who read the scripture, for whom healing and the life of, the holy life is extremely important all the time.

So, just to give you the figures, there were about 7 .7 million

United Methodists a couple of years ago, I think. That number has been steadily decreasing,

I think it's now about 6 .8, maybe less, but it is steadily decreasing. Whereas the

African constituency was a couple of years ago, about 3 million, and now it is steadily increasing.

So you can see what the legislative consequences are for that. And let me just say quite frankly,

I am very, very confident, I've used two verys here, that the United Methodist Church will not change its commitment to classical

Christian sexual ethics. Well, that's good to hear.

And I want to get back to the United Methodist Church specifically towards the end of our discussion, because right now

I still want to continue more about your personal life and transformation. But we're going to be going to a brief station break.

And if you do have a question for Dr. Oden, please email us at chrisarnson at gmail .com.

chrisarnson at gmail .com. We have one more copy to give away of Dr. Oden's autobiography,

A Change of Heart, A Personal and Theological Memoir. If you have a question that's good enough to be read on the air, and if it's applicable to our subject, please include your mailing address as well when you send in your question.

Don't go away. We're going to be right back after these messages with more of Dr. Thomas C.

Oden and his Change of Heart. Thriven Financial is pleased to support

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That's the Thriven story. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen. And if you've just tuned us in, our guest today is Dr. Thomas C. Oden. He is the author of his autobiography that we are discussing today,

A Change of Heart, A Personal and Theological Memoir, and a host of other things that he has written in the scholarly realm regarding theology and church history.

Before we go on with your personal testimony, what are some of the other organizations that you are involved in?

I know that there is one involving African Christian history and so on. Why don't you tell our listeners something more about those organizations and venues where you use your scholarly skills for God's glory today?

I think most briefly I could say that I've been a part of the ancient

Christian commentary on Scripture during the 18 years of its formation, development, and publication.

That's a 29 volume of patristic sources on every text of Scripture. And out of that came a recognition in 2007 that the

African side of the patristic tradition had been ignored because of Euro -American egocentricities,

I would say. And so we realized that the earliest layers of Christian studies of Scripture and the analysis of Scripture and the integration of a whole view of Scripture, including

Old and New Testament, a lot of that took place in Africa before it took place elsewhere in Palestine and Cappadocia and Greece and finally

Rome. So we are trying to correct that error in what we call the

Center for Early African Christianity. It has a website called

EarlyAfricanChristianity .com where you can find out what I've been doing in the last seven years.

EarlyAfricanChristianity .com Yes. Okay, great. And we will repeat that hopefully before the end of the program in your own personal website and so on.

Going back to your liberalism, were you straight across the board theologically a hardcore liberal in regard to a denial of the deity of Christ, a denial of the resurrection of Christ, the virgin birth of Christ, the pillars that many liberals theologically have abandoned, although not all that would be somewhat identified with liberalism would deny those pillars.

But were you among them that would totally obliterate the foundations of the Christian faith theologically in that way?

Well, regrettably, Chris, I must plead guilty to every one. I was a

Beaumontian during the 1960s. I wrote my dissertation at Yale on Beaumont. And I was a true believer in demythologizing the

New Testament and making an existential interpretation of it.

So that applied, yes, to the Incarnation. I could hardly say the

Apostles' Creed because it included the bodily resurrection.

I did have a very rough Christology, but it was not a truly biblical

Christology because I did not understand the historicity of the resurrection. What I'm saying is that I had a symbolic view of the resurrected

Lord, not of his actual bodily resurrection. And for me, the person that drew me beyond my demythologization was clearly

Wolfhard Vandenberg. He was the one theologian that spoke to that most clearly. And he did show me very good and adequate reasons why

I need to take seriously the historicity of the early Christian testimony to the resurrection of the

Lord. And regarding the creation of all things by God, obviously most liberals would be hardcore evolutionists.

And I was wondering if you were even aware back then, especially as a liberal, that the full title originally of Darwin's Origin of the

Species was Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the

Struggle for Life. And it is clear that Darwin was a racist who believed that non -whites were closer in the evolutionary chain to the apes, which is why the

Nazis and other racists had eagerly and enthusiastically adopted the theory, which is another mystery, as I mentioned earlier, about the paradox of liberalism, who seems to be so compassionate and passionate about their fight against racial hatred and so on.

I never had a racist bone in my body because I was brought up to believe that every person is created in the image of a god.

That's very, very clear from day one. But I was, I do plead guilty to being a

Darwinist during a time when there was not a significant critique of Darwin, which there now is.

And so I want to get to the point, unless you have something further to add about your life as a liberal,

I really want to get to what was most involved in your life that confronted you and that the

Lord used to really break your heart of stone and remove it and give you a heart of flesh.

What was the occurrences in your life and the actual documentation and other things that you were faced with that caused the change?

And also, I want to know how gradual or how quick this was. I mean, obviously, after the 20 -year period that you mentioned.

Right. Thank you for asking that question. The answer is not a simple, pietistic one of, on a certain day,

I had a conversion. That's not what happened. I was challenged by my

Jewish friend, as I mentioned, Will Herberg, to read the classical Christian writers.

And that's what started me on a path that took many years. I did not publish

Agenda for Theology until 1979. So I started in 1970, and by 1979,

I had come full circle around to a thoroughgoing critique of my previous ideological direction.

So I would say, even in 1979, I was still in formation. After that,

I was writing on the systematic theology, and you can see that in the 80s, which was attempting to ground every single point of Christian theological reasoning in the patristic writers.

So it was through that long process of spending incalculable hours reading and underlining and fighting with and thinking about the ancient

Christian writers that I came to trust the consensus of classical orthodoxy.

Now, after you came to that conclusion, by God's mercy, was everything, like, dumped in a heap, you believe, or did it take another decade or so to slowly, gradually be released from your grip, if you follow what

I'm saying? I think by 1972, I was released from the grip.

And that was, by 1971, actually, which is pretty well gone, my being indebted and bonded to the liberal view was gone by 1971.

When I was at Fuller Seminary, and I had significant conversations with that faculty,

Fuller Theological Seminary faculty, and I also was reading all of this time in the ancient

Christian writers, and by 1972, as I mentioned, came the abortion decision, which was, in fact, a single feeling of utter revulsion for what

I had been doing in the past. And from then on, my politics were the politics of repentance.

I was trying to understand how I could have gone so far astray for so quickly and so long.

And I'm assuming that a final realization of the truth of the inerrancy of Scripture had to be some kind of a powerful revelation to you, because obviously, if you believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, you have no way to run and hide like liberals do, who have a cafeteria approach to the

Bible, and embrace what seems to suit their fancy and throw out that which makes them uncomfortable.

A perfect example of that would be John Shelby Spong, who still claims to love the

Bible and read it daily and to gain strength from it, but he believes that to believe the

Bible is inerrant is one of the most dangerous and hateful things that you can do. So if you could explain something about that.

I've lost you. Are you still on? Oh, yeah. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. I'm sorry.

Let me tell you about inerrancy. It was not until I read the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy that I really realized what the basic issues were.

And I do, I am a member of the Evangelical Association of Scholars, and ETS, Evangelical Theological Society, which has an inerrancy statement which affirms both inerrancy and trinity, little else, that's crucial.

So I do affirm that statement, still do, but keep in mind that where did

I learn it? I did not learn inerrancy from fundamentalism. I didn't learn it from even conservative evangelical thought.

I learned it from Church Fathers. I learned it from Ionaeus. I learned it from Augustine.

I learned it from Athanasius. Because they all were taking the

Bible, the canonical scripture that was really defined clearly and not until after Nicaea with Athanasius, but they took the canonical scripture with radical seriousness and so I have not quarreled with inerrancy since about 1972 or 3, and it drives my

Wesleyan friends nuts. Oh, I didn't know that Wesleyans had a problem with biblical inerrancy.

Well, yes, there is quite a bit of resistance among Wesleyan scholars to the term inerrancy.

They would prefer other terms. Like infallibility? In the issue.

Okay, and so I guess because of the fact that you learned about inerrancy from the

Fathers, was it because you logically came to the conclusion then that if the ancient

Church believed in inerrancy, it must be a main element or crucial aspect of genuine, authentic, historic

Christianity and therefore you can't really be a Christian in any real sense of the term if you abandon such a belief?

No, I don't think it was a logical decision. It was a decision of the heart which transformed all of my other subsequent forms of rational analysis.

But yes, I do think that once I grasped the faith of the ancient

Christian writers in the scripture, in the apostolic testimony, in the testimony of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Paul, and Peter, and James, it wasn't until I grasped that that I began to read the

Old Testament with seriousness. Because they understood the Old Testament with seriousness. And then

I became more aware of the unity of the Bible, which is a unity that is created.

After all, when we read scripture in the

Protestant tradition, also in the ancient Christian tradition, we read it with the power of the

Spirit undergirding our reading. That's very clear in Calvin, but it's also clear in most of the other

Protestant writers. And so, yes, I strongly believe that. I think that the ways in which

I was guided, providentially guided, in no special way, but just by grace,

I was guided to trust scripture and to trust the earliest interpreters of scripture.

And that means people that I've just named, and others like Basil, and John Chrysostom, and Cyril of Alexandria, and Leo the

Great, and many others, Gregory the Great. There are a lot of great classical Christian writers there of the first five and six and seven centuries.

If any of your readers, or hearers, or listeners want more about this, or see more about this, just go to the ancient

Christian commentary on scripture. If you'll pick out, for example, what is your favorite

Bible verse, and go to the ancient Christian commentary on scripture, and you will see there how that verse has been commented on, and again, and again, and again, in the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh century.

So there's a tradition of interpretation that is 500 years before fundamentalism.

Yeah, and so you had, in your process, the journey that God took you on to become a full -fledged

Bible -believing Christian, evangelical, conservative, however you want to describe that.

Did this cause a great crisis in your life with employment, with friendships, with family?

Was there a lot of abandonment of you by those that you held dear in your life?

Well, you know, I don't want to exaggerate that. Yes, there were things that I had to face, but they're just the kinds of things that Christian believers face every time they turn around.

I mean, yes, I had a lonely role in my faculty, which was, by and large, with few exceptions, a pretty liberal faculty, and some of them radically liberal.

But, you know, I tried to treat my colleagues with respect, and for the most part, they did me, too.

But I don't want to exaggerate the difficulties that I had during the wonderful years that I had with graduate students, with Ph .D.

students, my students at Drew University. Drew is in the New York area, and it certainly is an area in which there is a kind of liberal preponderance in the clergy, not so much in the laity.

The crisis doesn't lie with the laity. It lies with the clergy and the theological schools, and with the tradition of theological interpretation that has strayed long, long away from John Wesley.

Now, what institutions of higher learning were you involved in as a liberal before your departure from liberalism?

I was at the University of Oklahoma for undergraduate studies in literature, history, and philosophy.

Then I went to Southern Methodist University, that's Perkins School of Theology, for three years between 1953 and 1956.

Then from 1956 on, I was at Yale University getting a

Ph .D., and then I taught in the same Perkins School of Theology for two years in the late 60s, and then

I was in a Disciples of Christ, that's a Camelstone tradition, for ten years.

And then I went to Drew. I went to Drew in 1970, and that 1970 is when really the reversal occurred, a 180 -degree reversal from one to another.

Now, have any of those institutions invited you back to speak, as sometimes seminaries and colleges will have even people who oppose their worldview or theology speak, just in the tradition of collegiate debate and so on?

Have any of them invited you back to speak since the conversion into Orthodox Christianity?

Yes, I've been in touch with them. These are my friends, and I've been in touch with them, I've remained in touch with them, I love and respect them.

But I must say that the more they realized what I was doing, the less I was invited to those institutions.

I mean, that's quite clear. They didn't want to hear what I wanted to say, or what I had to say. They wanted to hear what they had always believed to be the case about the accommodation of Christianity to modern consciousness.

That was the basic diversion that changed radically for me, and it is somewhat analogous to the recognition that Gretchen Machen had about 30 or 40 years earlier.

And your friend who will be with you in the second hour is absolutely correct about that. I read

Christianity and Liberalism probably maybe in the early 70s, maybe two, three, or four, somewhere around there.

I thought it was magnificent, but I'd already made my change before I read Machen. But he just confirmed what

I was saying. Other than the patristics, any other more recent or specifically

Protestant heroes of the faith that had any impact on you during your transformation?

Yes, I can certainly cite Richard Niebuhr, who is my major mentor at Yale. I can cite my wonderful friend

Albert C. Outler, who was probably the greatest Methodist theologian of our time, who was also a terrific patristic and Wesleyan scholar.

And there would be quite a few others. Certainly Richard Newhouse, who was a

Lutheran before he became Catholic, and many others, one of whom you mentioned earlier in the program,

Timothy George, who is a Baptist. Now, did you mention Albert Moller in that list?

I mentioned Albert Moller. Okay, for some reason that I'm unaware of, you're breaking up.

I don't know why all of a sudden your phone started breaking up. But could you repeat that one more time? I didn't hear what you said.

I'm sorry. I'm going to try to go to another phone, if you don't mind. Maybe this phone, this is a mobile phone.

I'm going to, hang on, I'll go to another phone. Yeah, you'll have to call back, obviously, so I'll have to hang up.

I'll hang up and call back. All right. And while we are waiting for Dr.

Oden to call back, and he's only going to be on for another seven minutes or so, I'll repeat our email address one more time.

It's chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

And we look forward to hearing from you with a question, if you have one. And we do have one more copy of Dr.

Oden's book left to give away, if you would like to have a copy of that.

In fact, I'm going to go right now to a brief commercial break, so we will be right back after these messages.

Don't go away. Hi, I'm Mike Gallagher.

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Or visit lynnbrookbaptist .org. That's lynnbrookbaptist .org. Well, we're not 100 % sure that Dr.

Oden is going to be able to get back in time. We do have five minutes left and he seems to be having phone problems.

He tried to call me back and was not on the extension. I'm going to take one more brief commercial break to see if we can get him back on.

And, of course, this is just another one of the exuberant joys of live radio.

So we hope that you all will be patient with us as we try to at least conclude the program with Dr.

Oden before we move on to our next guest. And we'll be right back with another message from our sponsors.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnsen. We do have Dr. Oden on the phone. Dr. Oden, are you there? I'm here.

Yes, I apologize. I should have told you. I should have warned you before the show not to use a cell phone.

I apologize. I had a hectic day today, and it slipped my mind to warn you about using cell phones.

I'm sorry about that. No problem. I'm glad to be back on. Yes. We were just saying,

I was trying to hear, did you say Dr. Moeller was an influence on you? Dr. Albert Moeller of Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky?

Or is this somebody else? Oh, no. It is somebody else. Okay. All right.

Well, one of the things that I hear a lot from more conservative evangelicals as we wrap up the program today, fundamentalists and so on, is that a

Christian should never be a part or in alignment with a liberal denomination or group that is really, in many ways, an enemy of Christ and his gospel, and an enemy of unborn life, an enemy of a traditional biblical

God -ordained marriage, an enemy of the scriptures. And they will say that you should flee from that denomination, come out of it, and be apart from it, be separate from it.

How do you respond to that kind of challenge to you as you remain in the

United Methodist Church? I was baptized in the United Methodist Church in order to bring it back to its roots.

So you actually believe that this is something that the Lord will enable faithful, biblically orthodox

Methodists to do in the years to come? There's nothing

I object to about true biblical Methodist doctrine.

I've written four volumes on Wesley, and I have no doubt about his Christian leadership.

The problem is not with Wesley and the Methodist tradition. It is with the abuses and the distortions that have come over the years, and really not just the misinterpretation of Wesley, but the forgetting of Wesley.

Oh, of course, because we know that it's not just the United Methodist Church that has abandoned its biblical roots.

We have the Presbyterian Church USA, although I have some dear friends who are

Bible -believing pastors and members of that denomination, they're pretty much neck and neck with the

United Methodist Church. And there are other denominations that began totally outside of Wesleyanism that were one -time lovers of the

Bible and proclaimers of the gospel, but who have totally abandoned it. So I didn't mean to pin this on Wesley or give him the blame for what has become of your denomination.

I'm just speaking on the basis of that it seems to be overrun by liberals, not necessarily, as you were saying, in the pews, but in the pulpits and in the halls of academia.

The Holy Spirit does not work by counting votes. I don't think that the laity in the

United Methodist Church has ever abandoned the hymns, the confession, the biblical understanding of the gospel.

That has never been in the laity. As I've said before, it is in the clergy. And do you think that – and before we conclude, why do you think that the laity could be

Bible -believing, biblically orthodox, theologically and doctrinally orthodox people in mass and overwhelm those who are in control, who are liberal and apostate?

How could the denomination still be held by the power of liberalism if there are so many in the pews that are not liberal and who are actually in opposition to that?

Hello, Dr. Rodin? Are you on? Yes, I am, Dr. Rodin. I'm here. Well, I'm sorry.

We seem to be having phone problems. Dr. Rodin, we hope to have you back on in the future. I really apologize for this.

And obviously, we are going to have to go on to our next guest. And I have no idea why we – hold on.

I think we have either Dr. Rodin or Jim Harrison. Hello.

Hello. Is this Jim Harrison or Dr. Rodin? Hello. Hello. Well, we are having problems right now, and we're going to go to a station break.

And I have no idea what is happening here with the joys of live radio, as I mentioned earlier.

But we're going to be back after these messages, hopefully. And hopefully, we'll be able to have a remainder of the broadcast.

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We're a diverse family of all ages. Enthusiastically serving our Lord Jesus Christ. In fellowship, play, and together.

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Thriving .com. We know we were made for so much more than ordinary life.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Harnson for the Iron Sharpens Iron Comedy Hour.

And I just can't help but to laugh about the technical problems that we have from time to time.

It's better to laugh than to cry and to throw my soundboard out the window. But I don't actually think this time it had anything to do with my soundboard.

I think it was a phone problem on Dr. Odin's end. And we apologize to all of you who love and appreciate

Dr. Odin and his writings and his ministry, but hopefully we will have him back on in the near future.

And once again, these were things beyond our control here because obviously Dr. Odin didn't seem to understand what was technically happening because he did switch phones.

So I'm not certain. But hopefully we will not have these problems the remaining hour with our guest,

Pastor Jim Harrison of Red Mills Baptist Church in Mahabat Falls, New York.

He's a dear friend that I've known for a number of years. He was a guest from time to time on the

Old Iron Sharpens Iron. And we are very delighted to have him to speak on Dr.

Odin's work and why he believes that the evangelical church at large needs to learn a lesson or learn many lessons from Dr.

Odin's own journey and pilgrimage into biblical orthodoxy.

But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back once again, Pastor Jim Harrison. Thank you very much,

Chris. Good to be back with you. And just briefly again reintroduce Red Mills Baptist Church to our listeners.

Sure. Red Mills Baptist Church is a Calvinistic Baptist church in Putnam County, New York, which is just north of Westchester County, about an hour north of New York City.

I've been at Red Mills for 22 years now, and I've had the privilege of ministering the

Word of God to God's people over that time and watching him do wonderful things.

And it's just a great privilege to be able to serve in that way.

Great. And the website again is redmillsbaptist .org. I'm sorry?

Yeah, redmillsbaptist .org. redmillsbaptist .org. Right. And you can get to our sermon archive there.

You can follow my blog there. You can find out about my Twitter feed there.

Just go to redmillsbaptist .org and you can find all of that. Okay. I think that before we even go into some specific and very important matters that you have gleaned from Dr.

Oden's autobiography, A Change of Heart, A Personal Theological Memoir, I think it might be a good idea to reset the stage for our listeners who may have just tuned us in and do some defining of terms here.

What is, in your opinion, the briefest way to describe liberal theology? And you might even want to throw in there a definition of neo -orthodoxy because of the fact that although we would not view neo -orthodoxy as orthodox, it is not the same as liberalism, which many people seem to make the error and equate it with liberalism when it was really a reaction to liberalism, wasn't it?

Correct, it was. It was with Karl Barth. Liberalism itself is a reaction to what was going on in the academic community in regard to skepticism of all things supernatural, higher criticism of the scriptures, coming to the

Word of God, what we would consider to be the Word of God, and seeing in it only the product of the human imagination.

And so liberalism flowed out of this skeptical mindset and a denial in large part of the supernatural.

And so if you go back to the early 20th century, for instance, you have the controversies between what was termed liberalism or modernism and what came to be called fundamentalism.

Of course, fundamentalism then broke out into fundamentalism and evangelicalism, but in the early days it was all termed fundamentalism.

And those were the Bible -believing people within the churches. So you had men like J.

Gresham Machen, who was struggling to maintain fidelity within the mainline

Presbyterian Church, and he eventually got kicked out of the Presbyterian Church for his troubles and went off to create

Westminster Theological Seminary and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. But that same kind of thing was going on in all of the denominations.

So within my own fellowship, our church is part of the Conservative Baptist Association, we came out of what is now the

American Baptist Convention because of the liberal drift of the American Baptist Convention.

And you have the same thing going on in the Methodist Church as well and all of the other mainline groups, where you have the conservatives by and large coming out, although, as Dr.

Oden said, there is still an evangelical witness in all of them. Now, Dr. Oden and I, I think, would have a difference of opinion on the appropriate response to that, but the reality is there are still men and women in those groups trying to preserve some semblance of fidelity, and they're having a very difficult time of it.

Yeah, you have that across the board, where you have, I know personally, a few very conservative and theologically reformed

Anglican ministers who are not only battling liberalism on the left, they are also battling

Romanism within their own denomination on the right from that wing, the

Anglo -Catholic wing of the Anglican Church. And you also have,

I think it's called the Oxford Movement, but it's escaping my mind.

The Anglican Church is really a unique situation because they've just got everything under the sun that comes under the umbrella of Anglicanism.

And so you have men like John Stott and J .I. Packer, who are Anglicans and evangelicals, and then you have, on another extreme, men like the one you mentioned earlier,

Bishop John Spong out of Newark, who denies every fundamental doctrine of truth and seeks to belittle the word of God at every turn.

And then you have another wing, which, as you say, is the Anglo -Catholic wing, which aside from, now some might argue with this, but from my perspective, aside from not following the

Pope, wouldn't be a lot of difference between them and the Roman Church. And you do see a lot of movement into the

Roman Church from that wing of things as well. Yes, and as I was mentioning too, I hope that Dr.

Oden didn't think that I was blaming John Wesley for all of the ills within the denomination, because I was trying to point out that across all of the mainline denominations, this liberal war had occurred and is still occurring, including the

Lutheran, the Presbyterian, the Congregationalist. That's no more Wesley's fault than you could blame

John Calvin for what happened in the Presbyterian Church. Exactly. You have a humanistic mindset coming in, you have a rationalistic mindset coming in, and we're seeing the end result of all of that now.

In fact, when you were speaking to Dr. Oden about John Wesley, you put in mind, if anybody wants to follow up on what he was saying,

Ian Murray wrote a wonderful biography of John Wesley. Ian Murray, of course, is associated with Banner of Truth publications, a

Reformed publishing house that publishes a lot of Puritan material. He himself has written wonderful biographies of Spurgeon and other men, and he has one on John Wesley entitled

Wesley and the Men Who Followed. It would be well worth people's time to pick that up and give a very sympathetic account of Wesley from someone who is not on the same page theologically.

Right. And so I know that you were really moved in some way, profoundly, by Dr.

Oden's autobiography, A Change of Heart, A Personal and Theological Memoir, and you have really come up with a list of things that you think the evangelical church at large desperately needs to hear again and could learn from, and I know that one of them is that the church must maintain theological boundaries.

Perhaps you could further explore that. Yeah, I mean, there are so many lessons in the theological realm that we need to learn, and the idea of theological boundaries means there has to be a willingness to say, you know, this is within biblical orthodoxy, and this other issue is not.

Ephesians chapter 4, verses 14 and 15 says, No longer be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming, but speaking the truth in love.

We are to grow up in all respects into him who is the head, even Christ. And if there is one thing that characterized the early

Tom Oden, it was exactly that. He was tossed by every wind. If you read his biography, he speaks about his enchantment with psychoanalysis and, as he mentioned, with Marxism, with radical feminism, and he would just jump from one cause to the next, and that's where his allegiance would be, and he'd seek to integrate all of these different philosophies with his

Christianity, or what he considered to be Christianity. And so he went on and on with this and never found solid ground, always jumping from one thing to the next with no foundation, and this is something clearly that we're seeing happen within the church today, the evangelical church.

Oden writes in his autobiography, he says, I functioned as a movement theologian, continuously shifting from movement to movement toward whatever new idea

I thought might seem to be an acceptable modernization to Christianity. And so that's a huge problem, right?

And the reason he did that was because when you follow liberalism, in denying the authority of the word of God, you cut out from underneath you any solid ground, and so you just find yourself floating from this to that, and that's something that I'm seeing happen in the evangelical church.

There are fewer and fewer areas in which people are willing to make a stand and say no, that's out of bounds for biblical orthodoxy.

One of the issues that we've been through not too long ago, it's kind of died down now, but it was open theism, and open theism was a raging issue for some time when people were coming along and saying, well,

God does not have exhaustive foreknowledge of the future. God has to wait to see what his creatures will do before he acts, before he makes decisions concerning his plans.

And this was accepted, and it is now today accepted, by very many who call themselves evangelicals, and that's a very disturbing development.

Now, obviously, one of the most difficult things that individual Christians can do, and even the church corporately can do, is to be in the world and not of the world.

And we very rarely strike just the right balance, because we are sinners, and we are fallible, and we are constantly being lured by the world, the flesh, and the devil.

And one of the things that you believe is a very important aspect of the recovery of evangelicalism to the scriptures is that the church must engage in the culture without accommodating the culture.

And it seems that we have always had opposite polar responses to the culture.

We have the extreme monastic concept, where the only way to remain holy is to be locked in a monastery or a cave somewhere with other fellow believers who are like -minded and totally separated from the world.

And you have a less severe expression of that with fundamentalists, some of which will not even dine in a restaurant that may have a bar in it, or who serve alcohol.

And, you know, you could go on and on with the different ways in which Christians do not engage or inhabit the culture.

And then, of course, probably the more serious problem within evangelicalism is Christians or self -professed

Christians becoming just like their surroundings and adopting the ways of the secular society to entice people into their churches and so on, and also becoming involved in sinful activity, because they are just joining the party with everybody who surrounds them.

So comment on that, if you could, the struggle that we have and the need for it nonetheless to be salt and light in the world.

Yeah, when I was reading Odin's autobiography, it put me in mind of a passage that I read in a book written by James Boyce, in which he was recalling the early struggles of Tenth Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia when they were coming out of the

Presbyterian Church USA. And into the PCA. And he said at that point that what he had seen happening in the liberal mainline churches, he then saw happening in the evangelical churches.

And I believe this was sometime in the 80s or early 90s. And that resonated with me as I read

Thomas Odin's book, because they refer to the same thing. In his discussion with you, he mentioned attending the

World Council of Churches convention in Geneva. In 1968, the

World Council of Churches adopted as its official slogan, The World Sets the Agenda.

And there's the problem right there. The world does not set the agenda for the church.

And the church does not accommodate the world. That's what the liberal churches have been doing for the last century or so.

And it's beginning to happen in the evangelical church as well.

Within the PC USA, for instance, in this past year, of course, they have approved for their denomination same -sex marriage, which is causing all kinds of problems within the

PC USA. And there are a lot of churches and individuals who are leaving. They're just hemorrhaging members in that group.

But it's interesting to listen to the rationale, because the rationale of those who say that we should begin to affirm same -sex marriage is this.

It's not that the scripture has changed. It's not that they've discovered some unknown stream of Christian tradition.

They did it because the world is setting their agenda. They do it because they believe the

Spirit is still speaking. In fact, the name of one of the groups within the

PC USA is called More Light Presbyterians. And so they're using this kind of rationale.

The Spirit is speaking. He's telling us something different now. Yeah, okay, well, if it goes against the scripture, it goes against the scripture.

But we've got to follow where the Spirit is leading. And so there is this rationalization to do what they want to do.

And we're seeing it in evangelical churches. There are a number of evangelical churches over the past year that have begun to affirm active practicing homosexuals in membership and in leadership and are beginning to affirm same -sex marriage within groups like the

Southern Baptist Convention and the Presbyterian Church of America. Now it's going to be interesting to see how that shakes out in regard to the relationship of these churches with those denominations.

But that's what's happening. This isn't isolated to the traditionally liberal churches anymore.

And I want to repeat our email address if you'd like to join us on the air with a question for Jim Harrison as he continues the theme of Dr.

Thomas C. Oden's autobiography A Change of Heart, a personal and theological memoir and what the evangelical church at large needs to know and needs to learn from this book.

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com chrisarnson at gmail dot com

One of the concerns that you have is that the church must resist hyper -individualism finding its sustenance in the historic

Christian consensus and in the community of the gathered church. And I wholeheartedly agree with that as I have brought up recently on the program

I have met many and I'm sure you have met many professed

Christians, evangelicals who are lone wolf Christians, mavericks who believe that in a 180 degree opposite reaction perhaps to Rome and the belief that there is no salvation outside the church they have run to the other extreme of believing that they don't need a church in spite of the commands in the

New Testament that we submit to local elders and so on they seem to have no problem in disobeying commands which is in a

Bible they believe to be inerrant but you do have that lone wolf mentality but at the same time

I have met some folks who seem to want to downplay the personal and individual aspect of the

Christian life that is beautiful and precious I'll give you an example, I have a friend who recoils in horror when he hears people speak of their personal savior and he speaks of the fact that Jesus loved the church and died for the church and I reminded him that as a

Calvinist I believe in particular redemption and one of the things

I find most precious about that is that when Christ completed the atonement on Calvary it wasn't for a faceless nameless sea of humanity that he died for he literally had

Chris Arnzen's name on his heart and mind when he went to the cross and he knew that he was going to complete that act of redemption and he knew that one day he will take me home with him to glory so do you see the polar opposites that I'm trying to set forth here and how we have to be careful not to fall into either one of those camps?

You know that's the tendency of the fallen human heart isn't it Chris that we go to extremes and the pendulum is going to swing from one extreme to the other you're exactly right, he knows a number of hairs on my head

I know because it has become a reality because the spirit of God has drawn me to Christ and he is my savior and I am in union with him

I know now that Christ died for me and that I am in relationship with him and I will be for eternity he will take me to be home with him and I'm looking forward to that day

I'm looking forward to seeing the face of my savior and so there is of course this personal aspect to my relationship with Christ he has saved me as an individual

I have been justified through faith in Christ but at the same time he has saved me not to be isolated but to be a part of his body

I am a part of his body I am a brick in the building of God's temple

Paul uses all kinds of metaphors for the corporate body of Christ and our place within it most of the

New Testament of course is written to churches you cannot read the scriptures and not understand that as individual children of God we are a part of the family of God we cannot be obedient to so many of the commands of scripture unless we are intimately involved in the lives of our brothers and sisters and that comes, scripture tells us, through connection to a local church and so both of those things are true and both emphases have their place we get into trouble when we emphasize one at the expense of the other that's not what we want to do yes, and I think that one of the reasons that hyper -individualism may have come about is presumptive regeneration where you have people believing that they're

Christians just because they were born into a so -called Christian home baptized as babies and even in the

Bible belt they could even be from Baptistic backgrounds and their parents will say to them well, you're 12 years old now,

I think you should get baptized and people just automatically going through traditions that have been customs in their families for generations and that could be a reason for the hyper -individualism because of the fact that we need to have a personal experience with Christ am

I wrong there? well, we do have to have a personal experience with Christ and just let me clarify before we go any further that for all of our listeners with southern accents who are offended that was

Chris Tarnson, not Tim Harrison Chris Tarnson, Iron Sharpens Iron Radio again, we have a personal relationship with Christ but that understanding is based on a genuine work of God in the life of an individual through the gospel and so when there is a genuine relationship with Christ that's going to manifest itself in certain ways it's going to manifest itself in the work of sanctification becoming evident in the life of a person and one of the evidences of sanctification is obedience

I'm preaching through John chapter 15 right now and Jesus is saying over and over and over again listen, if you love me, you're going to obey me if you're my disciples, you're going to abide in me there are ramifications, there are consequences there are natural outworkings of God's work in our lives and so for someone to come along and say listen,

I've got this relationship with Christ and I don't need anybody else well that demonstrates either a significant immaturity which

God will at some point rectify or it demonstrates that this person is not a

Christian at all because Christians are a part of the body of Christ and that's where we live and that's where we have our being in this world as we are in Christ and live and move and have our being in Him we are in connection with His body now this also has ramifications in how we understand the word of God people have different ideas of what sola scriptura means but the reality is that we are not out there on our own just me and the

Bible and Jesus God gives teachers to the church and they are gifts, he says,

Paul says in Ephesians 4 to the church so if we abandon the church if we, as I have heard a seminary student say after he quit seminary

I don't need seminary, I don't need teachers I just need me and my Bible and that kind of idea not only demonstrates a lack of understanding but it is really spitting in the face of God's gift to His people and it's the height of arrogance to think that you don't need a teacher when the scriptures even make it clear that not everybody should be a teacher and therefore it is the absolute height of arrogance and foolishness to think that someone doesn't need anybody to guide them at all in the most important, the most crucial and vital areas of life those that involve eternal life and the whole mindset that I even remember well actually

I'm going to go to a break right now before we continue with that discussion but I will pick up on that thought when we return and go on to some of the other vital elements of your paper that you are discussing today shoot us an email if you have a question for Jim Harrison at chrisarnsen at gmail .com

c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com don't go away, we'll be right back

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Welcome back, this is Chris Orns And if you've just tuned us in Our guest today is Jim Harrison For part two of our two -hour broadcast

We began with Dr. Thomas Oden Speaking about A Change of Heart A personal and theological memoir

Which chronicles his journey from radical liberalism Into biblical

Orthodox Christianity And I'm not speaking of the Eastern Orthodox denominations

I'm speaking about biblically accurate and faithful theology And today to pick up in our second hour

That theme that Dr. Oden began Is Pastor Jim Harrison of Red Mills Baptist Church His website is redmillsbaptist .org

redmillsbaptist .org And I was saying before the break We were both saying that people

In their height of arrogance do not believe Many people I should say Do not believe they need teachers

Some of them would claim they don't need any commentaries Or books other than the

Bible Some of them would even think that this is somehow A violation of sola scriptura

Which is absurd And I was thinking of one famous individual

Who is now in heaven David Hunt Who during a radio discussion

With our mutual friend Dr. James R. White When James asked David If he was concerned that He was on the side of the

Church of Rome In the great debate during the Reformation Between Luther and Erasmus That David Hunt was actually on the side

Of Rome in that area And David Hunt was probably most well known For his books refuting

Roman Catholicism And even going to the extremes Of them being the

Antichrist Or the papal office and so on And yet he would be on the side of Rome About the will of man unconsciously

And David Hunt's response was Well I don't really know much about What the reformers wrote

I don't really read them I like to approach the Bible As if I'm the first one reading it

That kind of approach That's really a dangerous approach To the scriptures isn't it?

Oh it's certainly a very dangerous approach It puts me in mind of one of those

Famous C .S. Lewis quotes Everybody has a famous C .S. Lewis quote But he referred to something he called

Chronological snobbery That if something isn't happening right now Then it's not important and it's not valid And that is just a horrible kind of attitude

For a Christian As we've all heard If you ignore history

You're condemned to repeat it One of the things that Dr. Odin Has been very helpful with Is his work on the ancient

Christian Commentary of scripture Going back through the church fathers And pulling out passages

In which they have commented On various portions of scripture One book of his that wasn't mentioned

Which was extremely helpful to me As I was preparing a lecture On the history of the doctrine of grace

Is something called the justification reader In which he does the same thing Goes back through the church fathers

And pulls out all of their teaching On justification And it's just a wonderfully helpful work

And of course today We have such a wealth of help

That we can go to From people who are living now And many more people

Who have passed on to glory Who have left behind their writings That we can learn from And if we ignore that We do so to our peril

Because there are teachers living and dead That God has gifted us with We need to be grateful for that And make use of it

We do have a listener In Tuscaloosa, Alabama Ted who writes

Let's see here I lost the email from Ted Hold on one second

Let me repeat our email address It's chrisarnson at gmail .com chrisarnson at gmail .com

If you'd like to ask a question of our guest Has Pastor Harrison read

Dr. Oden's Systematic Theology And if so, what was his assessment of it?

I have not I have not read Systematic Theology Dr. Oden of course is a

Methodist As we were saying So he and I would have some Disagreements there

But he has written Some smaller volume Obviously than his

Systematic He's written something with J .I. Packer Entitled One Faith Which might be helpful for people as well

The subtitle is The Evangelical Consensus And they go through each chapter

Deals with a different aspect of The Evangelical faith And they're looking at it from Two different perspectives obviously

Dr. Oden from a Methodist Wesleyan perspective And Dr. Packer from a

Reformed perspective And yet they're striving to Bring out the unity within The Evangelical realm

In regards to these doctrines So that might be helpful for people But no

I have not read his Systematic An anonymous writer asks

Can Pastor Harrison as a Calvinist Answer the same question that A listener from Massapequa Park, Long Island Susan asked earlier

Where she asks I am interested in knowing If there is something inherent in Methodism That allowed for the encroachment of Liberalism So this anonymous listener wants to know

If you as a Calvinist have a different answer For that question No I don't

I don't think that there is something Intrinsic in it Frankly because you see the same thing

Happening in traditionally Reformed denominations You see the same thing going on In the

Presbyterian Church USA You see the same thing going on In the Reformed Church of America Which was

Robert Schuller's denomination And so Liberalism Even to apostasy

Is not confined to one theological tradition It is in fact the throwing off Of objective authority

And you can do that No matter what tradition you come from But isn't it interesting though That without exception

To my knowledge All of the denominations That have gone Liberal Like the

PCUSA and the RCA They really abandoned Calvinism Though along with that They weren't for the most part

Simultaneously Liberal and true Calvinists Believing in the total depravity of man And other things such as that That are crucial to the system of Calvinism True But you would be able to say the same thing

About Methodism Those who have gone off into Radical Liberalism Out of the Methodist Church Are no longer holding to a

Wesleyan understanding of doctrine either So you know Again it comes back to That fallen human heart

That wants to be its own authority And wants to throw off objective truth

And determine what is right On a pragmatic basis

I want to be respectable in the academy All of these things

That stem ultimately from man's own pride Are what is at the root of this

And you believe that the Church must recover The concept of heresy If you could explain further

Yeah well this comes back to our Theological discussions doesn't it

In the Evangelical Church We have a hesitancy

To declare anything to be actual heresy In another of Odin's later works

Entitled After Modernity What He says this When a theologian forgets the distinction

Between heterodoxy and orthodoxy It is roughly equivalent to a physician

Forgetting the difference between Disease and health Or axe and a scalpel

And people in the Evangelical Church Frankly seem to be scared to death Of the word heresy

And the reason I think for this As I say in my lecture

Is that we have replaced The gospel of truth With the gospel of nice Odin called it the protestant smile

We want everybody to like us We want to be a part of the club

Now in academia This takes on the form of academic respectability

We don't want to be looked down upon By our colleagues

And so we're not going to Come up with positions

We're not going to publish papers And books They're going to be looked upon As backward

By the rest of the academy This is one of the reasons Why I so respect Dr. Odin Even though we're coming from Different places theologically

Because he hasn't succumbed to that He has followed his convictions

Even though it has cost him And he didn't really Seem to want to go into that too much

But if you'll pick up his book He does go into that a little bit more there

There are These kinds of things cost relationships And they cost

Privilege in the professional life And so there is a price to be paid for this

And some people aren't willing to pay it And some people don't want to damage Their relationships

They don't want to risk their future And so they're unwilling to do this

Within the church As the body of Christ We're seeing this as well

We don't want to say This is black and this is white We want to leave room

And that's something that the church has Always run into problems with When it has tried to do that And in fact

Amongst evangelicals It seems that the greatest heresy That evangelicals at large believe exists

Is the belief that there is such a thing as heresy Oh yeah, exactly right

We see the same thing with The cry for tolerance There is tolerance for everything

Except if you're going to say That this is right or this is wrong Well that's intolerant

We can't have intolerance And heresy is the only thing

That's going to get a rise out of many people these days But we need to do that God has not called us to be liked

He's called us to be faithful And if the church is faithful It will not be liked I think this is one of the things

That the faithful church Is going to have to come to grips with We are, as you said before In the world, but not of it

We have been told that if we are faithful That the world is going to hate us That is the norm for the church

That is what we have to expect If we are going to be faithful to the word of God And to the commission which

Christ has called us to And of course the liberals Believe that everything that we view as heresy

For us to believe that Is heresy to them It's absolute heresy to not celebrate homosexuality

In its varying forms It's absolute heresy To not believe that women

Should have the freedom to murder Unborn babies in their bodies And so on and so on They don't take that lightly

As if that's just an issue to discuss Over cups of tea They believe that is absolute

Arch heresy Oh yes, absolutely Because we have different authorities Those of us who are seeking to be faithful To the word of God Have the scriptures as our authority

And we're seeking to follow that And the word of God leads us to certain conclusions Regarding these things

Those who would present other positions Do not hold the same authority

They might give lip service to the Bible But as in the case of same -sex marriage

In the Presbyterian Church USA As I said before Their argument is not from scripture

Their argument is that the spirit is doing something new Which supersedes scripture And so once we understand

That we have different authorities Then we will understand That there's going to be no common ground here

We're going to end up on different sides Of these very sensitive issues Because the word of God is saying one thing

And the contemporary culture and society Is saying something else And you believe that the church must take seriously

The deceptive nature of false teachers And that's another thing that goes hand in hand

With the evangelical church at large Being so frightened of even using the term heresy

Oh absolutely I go back to J. Gresham Machen again And one of the things that upset

Machen Back in the early 1900s When he was involved in the fundamentalist liberal controversy

Was the fact that there were so many people Who were teaching in the seminaries

Who every year would sign a statement of faith Knowing that they didn't believe what it said

Having to redefine all of the terminology And rationalize it away in their own minds

And Machen said, these men are being dishonest And that was what drove him

To write his classic work Liberalism and Christianity If you read about the history of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville When Al Mohler took over It's the same thing

You had men and women teaching there The denomination had moved greatly toward liberalism

Especially in its seminaries And you had people teaching at that seminary Who could not legitimately sign the statement of faith

And yet every year they did so And this just goes back to what the scripture tells us

About the nature of false teachers They seek to deceive And we need to understand that Odin himself says

I went into the ministry to use the church To elicit political change

According to a soft Marxist vision of wealth distribution And proletarian empowerment

That was his purpose When he was wrapped up in this radical liberalism He says elsewhere

In my seminary teaching I appeared to be relatively orthodox If by that one means using an orthodox vocabulary

I could still speak of God, sin, and salvation But always only in demythologized, secularized, and worldly -wise terms

God became the liberator Sin became oppression Salvation became human effort

The trick was to learn to sound Christian While undermining traditional

Christianity Wow And that's what lies behind it

Those are the words of one Who at that time Even if he didn't recognize it himself

Was a false teacher Those are the words and the thoughts Of men and women

Who are suppressing the truth in unrighteousness Odin even writes of himself

It was truly a self -deceptive time for me But I had no inkling of its dangers

He didn't even realize it at the time And many, perhaps, are like him

And don't realize what they're doing The reality is, however That the church needs to realize it

The church needs to understand What's going on And the danger that exists

When false teachers are permitted into the church And the church doesn't have the backbone

To stand up and say That is out of bounds That is heterodox

That is heresy And you believe In echoing Odin That the church must recover the conviction

That modern questions Are best solved by ancient solutions Now obviously

There has to be great care with that though Because you know As well as I do

That the patristic writers Are not a unified and monolithic group of people

That have wonderful biblical wisdom To impart to us There are some very strange things

That were believed by church fathers And written by them and so on So if you could comment on that Yeah, and that's why when

I talk about Going back to ancient solutions I'm primarily talking about the scripture

There is much help to be found in the church fathers But they have to be judged by scripture

Just like anything else And this move of Odin's to classical orthodoxy

Was a result of his change of understanding Not only in regard to the church fathers

But in regard to the scripture As he described when he was speaking to you Odin had sought answers

In Freud and Nietzsche and Marx And in political movements And community organizing strategies

But he finally came to the place Where he understood He was looking in the wrong place And he had to move backward to go forward

And that brought him back To classical Christianity As it is understood

Through the grid of scripture And of course you just said A lot of what needed to be said

About the church maintaining A high view of scripture But isn't that something that We need to be warned by today

Warned about today Because it's not only liberals Who have lowered their view of scripture

In the charismatic and Pentecostal movement Although they would never admit that In those words

The belief in extra -biblical revelation And the constant searching For manifestations of the miraculous

And so on Seems to have diminished The importance of what The Bible actually teaches Sure, absolutely

And that goes back to what We were talking about previously With these groups Within the mainline churches

Speaking about receiving more light From the spirit And the spirit doing some kind of new work

I mean this is all language That is very common Within charismatic circles

Within circles who believe That God is still going to be Speaking to us directly today Once you go there

All bets are off The objective foundation of truth

Is gone Scripture can say one thing But then ultimately God may be speaking to me

In a different way He may be saying something else And now where do we go from that So we've got to come back

To this high view Of the word of God Odin describes his own use

Of the scripture this way He says I reasoned Now this is when he was a liberal I reasoned out of modern

Naturalistic premises Employing biblical narratives Narrowly and selectively

As I found them politically useful The saving grace of God on the cross Was not in my mix

Of life changing ideas And you find that same kind of thing Within evangelicalism

Across the spectrum The scripture being used As an instrument

To accomplish our purposes Rather than coming to the scripture To have the scripture over us

As an authority And submitting to it And you believe finally

That the church must maintain A clear and focused understanding Of its biblical calling I think that you

Touched on that before When you were talking about Odin's Redefining different aspects

Of Christian truth In liberal terms Like what salvation was And what sin was

And all that type of thing But I think that That kind of touches on What is the real What is the real calling of the church

Yeah, you know Odin and liberalism Want to change the world

According to their Political understanding You mean Odin The old

Odin Yeah, exactly But what's the purpose of the church According to scripture In 1

Peter chapter 2 Paul writes this You are a chosen race A royal priesthood A holy nation A people for God's own possession

So that you may proclaim The excellencies of Him Who has called you Out of darkness Into His marvelous light

For you once were not a people But now you are the people of God You have not received mercy But now you have received mercy

Beloved, I urge you As aliens and strangers To abstain from fleshly lusts Which wage war against the soul

Keep your behavior excellent Among the Gentiles So that in the thing In which they slander you

As evildoers They may because of your good deeds As they observe them Glorify God In the day of visitation

There's our purpose To glorify God And in part we do this

Through our obedience to Him Our good works in the world They see it

God is glorified And I thank you so much For being our guest Our second guest today

Pastor Jim Harrison You did a phenomenal job As always I look forward to having you back And I know your website is redmillsbaptist .org

Thank you, brother Thank you I want to thank Dr. Oden If you're listening For being a part of our program I look forward to having you back

When we have better phone connections I want to thank everybody who listened And especially those who wrote

During the program And I want you to always remember For the rest of your lives Each and every one of you That Jesus Christ Is a far, far greater