Machen Quiz #2

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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King. Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth.

Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, and the Relevance of Old Heresies

Welcome to No Compromise Radio ministry. Pastor Steve, I start off in this chair sitting higher than you, because you�re in a different kind of chair. And then by the end of the show, I�m sinking down.

I think there�s that old hymn, remember? When I was sinking down, sinking down? Yes, yes, yes, yes. All right. Anything new with you?

Oh, yeah. I mean, there�s a lot new with me. Okay, good. Hey, I mean, my brother�s getting promoted to detective, my son-in-law�s getting promoted to captain, and I�ve got a glass ceiling, so. Were you ever watching the detectives?

It�s so cute. So, you got a glass ceiling. I know it�s kind of like, you know, in ministry, well, what are you going to do? I mean, you can�t go out and like, I guess you could go do a bunch of extra weddings and funerals to make some money on the side, right?

You have like a fixed income, I guess, glass ceiling.

Well, you know, I�ve also come up with my own little promotion thing. Instead of being associate pastor, I�m going to make myself sergeant pastor, so. Senior sergeant pastor.

By the way, if you�re listening, without any kind of jest, when I have an opportunity to talk to elders of other churches and those that are responsible to take care of their pastor, I just was talking to some elders the other day, and I said, you know what?

Make sure you take care of your pastor, and from vacation to medical to all that stuff, maybe one of you need to, you know, check in once a year. How are you doing on all these things we want to provide for you?

Are there any emergencies? And, you know, good pastors typically don�t say, I�ve got a problem. Could you please help me when it comes to money? So, anyway, be on the lookout. Take care of your pastors out there if you listen to this church.

Listen to this show. We never have that problem, though. We are set. We do not. Signed, sealed, and delivered. Yes. Machen was a great theologian, and I think maybe one of my top five books of all time might be Christianity and Liberalism, because it�s enduring truth.

It�s so fun to be able to read a book a hundred years later, and it�s still relevant. And how could that be? Because the Word of God is so trans-chron, trans-col, trans-chronological. There you go.

It crosses times. So, you�ve got a Machen group on Saturday mornings. You�re reading the book Things Unseen. We�ve talked about it on previous shows, and so we thought we�d continue with the quiz derived from the Word of God and Machen on the deity of Christ.

Good.

And if I could just say this, one of the things that hit everybody in this group when they started reading the book was how some of the names and places and things have changed, but the overall world situation is exactly the same.

And all the problems are exactly the same. So, I mean, it�s a hundred years, and it seems like we�ve made a lot of progress, but you read Machen, you realize we�ve gone nowhere.

You can look at the social gospel, woke, systemic racism, white privilege stuff, through the lens of that book, Christianity and Liberalism, and you go, oh, I see it. It�s liberalism.

He, I mean, and no, he wasn�t a prophet in the sense that we think of, you know, God didn�t tell him anything. He was a prophet in this sense, that he read the Bible rightly, he understood theology, and he looked at the world situation around him and applied the Word of God to it.

And in that sense, yes, he was a prophet.

Amen. So, we are up to question number four. We�ve talked about the deity of Christ, Old Testament, Davidic covenant, the Bible�s declaration on the deity of Christ. Now we come to question number four.

True or false, Jesus is both God and man in one new nature. You can answer that one. Why do you think we fall for this so easily? Do we think it�s some kind of, you know, God-man hybrid or something?

Look, I wrote the question and I�m just reading it. My first response was true, right? I mean, my gut was, oh yeah, true. Oh, wait a second, I tricked myself.

I think you have been doing too many chores taking care of Janet and other things to trick yourself. I�ve been hypnotized, as David Letterman used to say. Well, let�s just kind of go with what we know.

So, we have the eternal Son, divine, right? You think about the Trinity, one God, three persons, subsistences, etc. Stay away from the word manifestations. Pete. Yes.

You know what, until you said that word, I haven�t even, because I talked about the Trinity Sunday, you know, but in Keen. Never even, I avoid manifestations like the plague.

Jared Well, it was T .D. Jakes that said, well, of course we can use manifestations. It says in 1 Timothy 3 .16 that Jesus was manifest in the flesh. And I�m thinking manifest in the flesh is He�s eternal, He�s always existed, and then now He�s, this is talking about the incarnation.

We�re not talking about the Father, then the Son, then the Spirit. Pete Yeah, well, I just put it this way.

Instead of saying He was manifest in the flesh because it�s a verb there, He�s displayed in the flesh. He�s shown in the flesh. You know, what was once only a spirit is now manifest in the flesh.

What would happen to our salvation if there was, if Jesus was God, man, one nature? What would that mean? What kind of nature would that be? Jared. I don�t know. Pete Some kind of weird hobgoblin hybrid.

Jared Yeah, that would be like what they�re doing. I read somewhere that they�ve been working on these chameleons, you know, part human,.

Part something else. Pete Oh, yeah, and part monkey even, DNA with monkeys and stuff. Jared Which is abominable. Pete Well, depending on how we look at Genesis 6, 2 Peter and Jude, who knows if it�s some kind of weird hybrid race or something.

Jared. We net the Nephilim are back.

Pete. We need Jesus, His divine nature, we need that, obviously, for His infinite righteousness to be given to us so He can resist temptation or whatever it is. Let me, I want to reel that one back. I won�t say that one.

But we also need His human nature because He�s our representative, right? He�s the last Adam. Jared. Right.

And so we need that. He had to be a man to actually, for His sacrifice to avail for us, right? I mean, He couldn�t be a lion or, you know, whatever. I mean, a beast from some other planet or what. He had to be a human being, right?

So to actually pay the price for other human beings.

I saw the old Bibles in Ohio that young man Nathan brought up, these Bible displays. And I got to hold the 1534 Tyndale Bible, only 10 on earth. Think about, he died for things like that. The Matthew Bible, which was John Rogers� code name for the Bible that he helped translate.

And then I opened up, I don�t know what it was, either that great Bible or the Matthew Bible, and I opened it up to Job 933. And Job was longing for an arbiter, an umpire that might put his hand on both him and God.

And I think that�s a good picture of we need, you know, Jesus�s divine nature and human nature. Sometime let�s do a show on why that does not mean God has parts, and that God�s still simple, even though the human nature is added.

Pete Why don�t you just get Dolezal on the line and have him do that?

Jared We should. Well, he�s with your friend now, Chad. Vegas up in Bakersfield. Pete Yes.

Jared It�s moving that way, you know. My stepmom would be delighted if we all, you know, just... Pete What if they hire you next? They hire you for like the... Jared So they�re going to go with Dolezal, and they�re going to reach down, you know, into the free agent pool.

Pete. We�re now hiring Steve Cooley, who tricks his own self on blasphemous one-nature theology.

Jared. Well, you don�t even look for the word one-nature. You just, you know, nature. You just kind of go in one, you want it to be one person or one body or whatever, you know, and one nature.

Old Testament Hints of the Trinity and Christophanies

Pete That�s terrible. All right, next one, number five, second one for today. Name two Old Testament passages that hint at the Trinity. Now, I�m trying to think what Machen would do there. Did he do the Isaiah 48?

Pete He didn�t.

This was just one that Steve did. You know, this is Steve kind of giving Machen a booster shot.

Pete. Oh, okay, good. What�s the other one that he gave besides that? Did he do, like, Elohim or Genesis 1?

Jared Yeah, see, so I just open it up for the class, see what they would say, and, you know, somebody mentioned Genesis 1, 1, you know, and I go, okay, good, you know, I�ll buy that since it was one of the ones I thought of, and then Isaiah 48, 16, which nobody did get, but, you know, we talked about that a little bit.

Pete Should we look, Pastor Steve, into the Old Testament and see these Christophanies, these pre-incarnate Jesus, whether it�s Jacob wrestling or whether it�s the burning bush or the captain of the Lord�s army in Joshua 6?

Would Machen go into some of those because we obviously see the second person of the Trinity?

Jared I mean, he hasn�t yet in that book. He hasn�t yet, but I sure would. I mean, I even mentioned Jacob wrestling the angel because, you know, we read about that, and then it reveals, the Word does, that it was God that he was wrestling with, and you just go, okay, well, that�s not too hard to figure out.

Pete The second person of the Trinity when it comes to the garden and, right, he�s walking in the garden, and this is interesting, we�ll conflate things into the Barrett book and Trinity and simply Trinity.

Why couldn�t that have been the Father? Why do we keep saying this is a pre-incarnate Jesus in these places versus, well, maybe it was the Father.

That went down there. Maybe he sent himself. Jared. Well, as far as I know, and you correct me on this, but as far as I know, all the theophanies, in other words, all the sightings.

Of God in the Old Testament are Christophanies. Pete. And you know what I�m thinking, Steve, if the Father is always the Father, right, they�re just not randomly, oh, which one�s the Father? Well, he�s always the Father, and the Father�s the unbegotten one, and the Son is the begotten, and the Spirit is the sent one, proceeding one from the Father and the Son.

Well, the sent one, Jesus, is going to be sent to do these theophany, Christophanic, whatever they�re called.

Jared Christophanies. You know, it�s funny, because I think it was Craig I was having a discussion with about the Trinity and this whole idea that at some point maybe Jesus becomes the Son, and that all gets undercut when you realize, well, when was the Father the Father?

Because if the Father was always the Father, how could he be a father without a son? You know, so.

Pete When did he become the Son? Well, that�s kind of, you know, you think about that brute, biblicistic Psalm 2, for instance, �Today I have begotten you. And therefore, some would say, oh, you know, that�s the incarnation, where now you�re the Son because you�re finally.

Incarnate, that�s when I begotten you. Pete. Almost, there are so many heresies, you know, concerning Christ, and I thought, maybe the next class I�m going to, you know, find a list of all, because adoptionism, he didn�t become the Son until the baptism, you.

Know, and there are just all these heresies. Jared Well, Pastor Steve, when I was preaching through the old, the earlier chapters of 2 Peter 2, the earlier verses, rather, in that chapter, I�m trying to think, okay, there�s another chapter or another sermon on false teachers, how do I approach it this time?

Because for Peter, it�s see what they do, see what they are appealing to, be careful, and, you know, I just didn�t feel like I should make that every sermon. So, one time I looked up all the different heresies, there�s a long list, and Ebionites and everything, I know.

And so, even when I talk, earlier in the show, I had to reel something back because I thought, oh, I want to make sure. Pete I don�t step in a heresy. Jared I don�t think Richard Barcellos is going to listen to the show, but if he does, I want to make sure.

Pete. That heretic. Well, I have to tell you this, talking about heresies and everything like that, somebody at the study, and I won�t say who, but somebody at the study. Jared I wasn�t at the last one.

They uttered a heresy. I don�t even remember what it was now because I blocked it out of my mind, you know, so I could forgive them. And I said, you know what? I think what this class needs is a lion heretic scum hat, which, you know, when somebody does that, they have to wear the hat till.

The next meeting. Pete. Stand in the corner. Yeah, but you know what? It would be more like musical chairs hat because we say them so often. Jared.

Yes. Well, that�s what I mean, you know. So, maybe I should watch out for what I wish for because I could wind up wearing the hat for a while because I�m talking more than anybody else,.

You know, so. Pete. Well, that�s one of the reasons why I had someone put above the urinals in the bathrooms at Bethlehem Bible Church the Nicene Creed above the one and the Athanasian Creed above the other.

Jared. Try to keep us straight. Pete. Question number six, true or false, the New Testament writers were defensive when they wrote about the deity of Christ. I�m assuming you mean they were kind of making an apology.

Jared Yes. Yeah. See, that�s, you know, they were apologetic for their apologetic. You know, I was kind of thinking about that when I wrote this. I go, man, that�s too clever. So, I�m just going to say they were defensive.

But the answer, and we talked about it off the air even, the answer is obviously false.

Pete Yeah. And what I think you said last show or today or, you know, when we are standing at the front door, it�s just assumed, right? When you read the New Testament, I think if a Muslim, Hindu, Martian, anybody just picked up the New Testament and read it without any agenda, right, they didn�t believe in anything, but they would say this man is portrayed as God.

The creator God, the sustainer God, the preserver God, the God who spoke things into existence in Genesis 1, Colossians 1, I�m thinking about. He is God. Now, I don�t believe it. It�s made up. Man wrote the Bible.

He�s a wacko. But they would.

Have to simply believe that. Jared. Right. I mean, no matter what other conclusion they might come to, they would have to go to that, right? The New Testament definitely portrays Jesus Christ as God, no question.

Pete.

When I read 2 Peter, Peter had no problem, and Paul in the pastoral epistles, God our Savior, Jesus our Savior, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, God and Savior Jesus Christ, over and.

Over and over and over. Jared. And here�s the other thing. The writers never kind of couch it with, okay, now, this might be shocking to you guys, right? I know all of you, you know, monotheistic Jews might be offended by this, but because they just don�t, it�s not even a consideration for them.

I mean, they�re Jews, and they�re just like,.

This is the way it is. I mean, mostly Jews. Pete Amen. All right, let�s keep going. I think we�re going to go through more this time than last show. Jared Woo-hoo! Pete. But like I said offline, we get to talk about our favorite person, the Lord Jesus, and we get to talk about one of our favorite theologians, Machen.

Jared It�s a win-win. Pete I know, I know. And you know, I like to just kind of talk off the top of my head, and you like structure, so you win. Jared It�s another win. Pete. Number seven. Uh-oh, I think we talked about this before.

Jesus was sent by the Father and the Holy Spirit was sent by the Father and the Son. So, do we need to put brackets around and the Son, or do we not? Is the divine Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father only, or the Father and the Son?

What did Machen say? I think he said Father and Son. Jared.

I think he said that too, because it would be correct. I mean, oh, and this is the question where the heresy came up. I�ll just tell you what the heresy was without identifying the person. He goes, well, isn�t there a certain sense in which the Spirit sent the Son?

Pete Oh, because maybe he was thinking a covenant of redemption, Father, Son, and Spirit type of thing? Jared.

Yeah. And he said, you know, because they all agreed, and he said the Holy Spirit assented to the Son coming. And I said, well, you know what? I think there are a few problems here. One is we�re kind of thinking of this pre-eternal, before time, pre-temporal pact between the Father and the Son and the Spirit that we would call the covenant of redemption.

But here�s the problem. The problem is we�re thinking that maybe there were three wills of God, right? And that they hashed it out and came out with one will. Well, the truth is, there was never any disagreement.

Pete. No hashing. Jared. Right. The Holy Spirit wasn�t like, okay, you guys can have your way, right? Pete. You give me something next time, I�ll give in this time. Jared. That�s not how the Trinity works.

I mean, it�s like there was no debate, there was no argument. In fact, they all just came together. I mean, if we could put it this way, they all just got together and said, �Hey, what if we do this, right

It was like they all boogered. Yeah, I mean, if we wanted to really anthropomorphize it, you know, and just say, you know, what do we think happened? Well, they would all be in full agreement at every single point.

And I could say all the time, even though there was no time, there was never any disagreement, right? There�s one.

Will of God. Pete. It�d be kind of hard to have a disagreement with one essence.

Jared Yes. I mean, they can�t be.

I think what happened, Steve, is, and this stems back to when I went down to New Zealand for Matt Johnston and taught the Covenant of Redemption, and he wanted something about the Covenant of Redemption and the Holy Spirit or something like that.

He wanted me to teach his folks the Covenant of Redemption. Most of the Covenant of Redemption discussions in the 16th century, 17th century, would only talk about the Father and the Son because they�re using certain verses like Psalm 2 and others that, of course, we have to then say to ourselves, well, the Holy Spirit�s there.

And what this guy said at church the other day, he means, well, the Holy Spirit didn�t disagree. He didn�t dissent. He would attest to that. He would be a witness. He would be in agreement. But when I hear people talk regularly about the Father, the Son, and the Spirit with this Covenant of Redemption, most of the talk that I hear of in church history is just the Father and the Son.

So you have to say something about the Holy Spirit theologically or maybe an inference, but when we technically talk about the Father and the Son in the Covenant of Redemption, there�s not much church history talk about the Holy Spirit.

Pete No. I mean, his work is really kind of enacting.

Mark. Enabling? Yeah, both enabling Jesus to do his divine mission as the sent one and then also, as the Spirit is proceeding from the Father and the Son, then applying the work of the sent Son by the unsent Father to give us redemption,.

Regeneration, etc. Causing us to be born again, all those kind of things.

Excellent. I like that. And by the way, we are very unlike Schleiermacher at the moment because we�re talking about the Trinity and we�re thinking about very practical ramifications of the triune God.

It�s good to be in wonder, love, and praise when it comes to this. We�re in deep water here. We�re making sure we don�t say bad things.

We�re trying not to. And Richard, if you�re out there, you know, sorry.

Richard. All right. No. 8, true or false. The New Testament writers used Old Testament passages referring to Yahweh, the covenant-keeping God of Israel, in reference to Jesus. So the New Testament used an Old Testament quote of capital L-O-R-D, Yahweh, and it used it for Jesus.

True. Although I didn�t give any examples, so sorry.

Well, if I had to give examples, what I would do is I would just go quickly to Hebrews chapter 1. And remember that little list. Remember in Romans 3, there�s a list of all those psalms that talk about no one�s good, not even one, no one seeks after God.

Those little lists are often called katinas, not cantina, but katina. And so it�s the writer under the Spirit�s illumination bringing a list from the Old Testament about a particular topic to kind of say, well, here�s what the Bible says, right?

Here�s my Bible list. And it�s even interesting, Steve, I would add the word Elohim, that even the New Testament writers used Old Testament passages referring to Elohim, the creative, sovereign, powerful God, in reference to Jesus.

And that is in Hebrews 1,. �You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will remain. And he says some more things, but that�s right from Psalm 102, speaking of Elohim, now referring to Jesus.

Pete Okay, but that was outside of the scope of the question, so I�m going to mark those wrong. And by the way, the answer to number eight, for those of you who are keeping track at home, was, or number seven, was true, was sent by the Father, and the Holy Spirit was sent by the Father in a sense.

So, I don�t know if we ever actually answered that, so.

Well, if you can�t answer something well, then you deviate. Steve Yes. Pete It�s the Harlem Shuffle. Steve Yeah, that�s good. Pete Uh-huh. How about things like Hebrews 1, Steve, where it says, �I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son.

And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, �Let all the angels worship him. We have the unbegotten Father and the begotten Son and the proceeding Spirit, but they�re not, the Father had to be the Father always, and he couldn�t have ever been the sent one or the proceeding one.

Steve. Yeah, I mean, the different roles of the Trinity are very well laid out, and it�s, well, I mean, it�s interesting to me as somebody who spent most of his life not believing the Trinity, in fact, you know, attacking it, to now look at, I mean, it�s like we talk about limited atonement and how often we see it in Scripture, and now everywhere I look, I see Trinity, Trinity, Trinity, you know?

So.

Pete. Well, even that, when we think of practical application of the Trinity, well, an application would be, we know Jesus just died for the elect because the Father sent the Son to do a specific task.

The Holy Spirit equipped Jesus to do that exact specific task because we have, you know, one God, three subsistences, three persons, and then Jesus said, �Well, I�m going to one-up the Father and die for more, and I�m going to do some stuff that the Holy Spirit won�t apply.

Steve. One will, you know, and that�s what we keep, I keep coming back to the idea, and I use all kinds of examples, but the idea that Jesus acted somehow out of harmony with the Father and the Spirit is absolutely, you know, it�s just nuts.

Jesus is so loving, he�s more loving than the Father or the Spirit. No, he�s not.

Pete. Because if that was true, that Jesus died for everybody, then that would have to mean then, if we were thinking proper Trinitarianly, in a Trinitarian fashion, that the Father chose everybody. Universalism had to be true.

Steve. That�s right. And then the Spirit would.

Cause everybody to be born again, and he would seal everybody.

Pete. Right. And if that was God�s plan...

Steve. Then it would be God�s plan, and praise the Lord, you know? But it�s clearly not his plan, or Jesus would have spent zero time talking about sin and hell and all those kind of things, because we would have nothing to worry about.

Pete Amen. Machen, Cooley, things, unseen. Steve Preach the Word. Pete Mike Abendroth, Steve Cooley, NOCO Radio.