May 23, 2018 Show with Dr. Richard Barcellos on “Getting the Garden Right: Adam’s Work & God’s Rest in Light of Christ” PLUS Andrew J. Lindsey on “The Life, Teaching & Legacy of Martin Luther”

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

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

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

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

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, quote, we are cautioned to take heed whom we converse with and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

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This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 23rd day of May 2018.

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I'm delighted to have back as a returning guest to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Richard C.

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Barcelos. He will be on for the first hour. He is the author of five books, editor and co -author of three others.

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He's a contributor to various journals and magazines, including Table Talk, the magazine of Ligonier Ministries, founded by the late

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Dr. R .C. Sproul, and he's also an associate professor of biblical studies at IRBS Theological Seminary and a pastor at Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Palmdale, California.

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Today we are going to be addressing a very controversial issue, an issue that divides

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Baptists that both claim to be believers and proclaimers and defenders of the doctrines of sovereign grace, aka

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Calvinism. The book we are addressing is Getting the Garden Right, Adam's Work and God's Rest in Light of Christ, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

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Richard Barcelos. Hey, thanks for having me. Great, and let me right off the bat give our email address for those of our listeners who would like to join us on the air with a question of their own.

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It's chrisarnsen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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Please give us your first name, city, and state and country of residence if you live outside the USA. Only remain anonymous if your question is a personal and private one.

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Let's say you disagree with your own pastor on the issue we're addressing or something like that. Perhaps you're a pastor, you disagree with your own congregation or denomination over this issue.

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Whatever the issue is that compels you to remain anonymous, we'll grant you that request, but if it's not personal, please give us first name, city and state and country of residence.

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Since we only have an hour, let's have an abbreviated description, if you could, of IRBS Theological Seminary and then also

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Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Palmdale, California. Oh, okay. IRBS Theological Seminary is starting classes, actually, this summer, and then semester courses start in the fall.

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It is supported by the Association of Reformed Baptist Churches of America.

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IRBS actually started in the late 90s and was housed at Westminster Seminary, California.

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Dr. James Renahan has been with IRBS from its inception, and he's going to be our new president, inaugurated later this year as the president.

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I teach courses in New Testament, which include also a course on hermeneutics and then a course on biblical theology.

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So I'm looking forward to be able to do that, and I commend the seminary to anybody who's interested. Great, and if anybody wants to find out more information later, the website is irbsseminary .org.

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IRBSseminary .org. Make sure you put those two S's in there back to back, because sometimes people forget to put one

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S when they have two letters next to each like that. And IRBS, if you're wondering, stands for Institute for Reformed Baptist Studies.

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So we'll repeat that, God willing, later on in the program. And as I mentioned earlier at the outset of the program,

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Getting the Garden Right, Adam's Work, and God's Rest in Light of Christ, this book is written in the midst of an ongoing dispute, sometimes very loving, sometimes not so loving dispute between fellow

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Baptists who believe in the doctrines of sovereign grace. Most of those on the

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Covenant side would refer to themselves as Reformed Baptists. You have a mixture of those on the

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New Covenant theologian side, whether or not to use that term Reformed. Most, I believe, at this point do not, but there are still some that do.

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But if you could, I think it would be very helpful to define what is a

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New Covenant theologian, and then from a Baptist perspective, define what a Covenant theologian is.

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And you could decide which one you want to define first, but I think it would make sense to get those definitions, at least in a summarized version, stated at the outset.

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Yep, those are good questions. In the book, I try to define what

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New Covenant theology is by allowing them to speak for themselves, and usually the answers by the prominent

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New Covenant theology writers are basically the same. And on the positive side, they would say they believe the

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Bible is the written Word of God, inerrant, infallible, authoritative, and all that it asserts, and that the center of Scripture, or the target or goal, is the presentation of a

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Redeemer, the Redeemer of God's elect, our Lord Jesus Christ. They would go on and say that the

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Old Testament ought to be interpreted in light of the New Testament, which I discuss that a little in the book.

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I think that's right, but there's more to it than that. The Old Testament ought to be allowed to interpret the

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Old Testament as well. And then, after that, it's mostly what they deny, as opposed to Covenant theology, then what they assert.

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A lot of what they assert, the traditional Baptist Covenant theology is found in the

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Second London Confession, the 1689 Confession. A lot of what New Covenant theology asserts is found in there, but a lot of what they deny is also found in that confession, and also the

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Westminster Confession and other Protestant documents. For instance, they deny the

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Covenant of Works. Some of them would deny, at least the terminology, the

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Covenant of Grace, and then the perpetuity of a Sabbath from creation to consummation.

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They would view the Sabbath as limited to ancient Israel, and its duration lasts as long as ancient

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Israel lasted under the Older Mosaic Covenant, so that when Christ comes, the concept of one day per week as a

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Sabbath under the Lord is fulfilled, therefore abrogated.

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So, it's their denials, more so, that I think, at least from a Covenantal Baptist perspective, it's their denials that we define them by, but they don't define themselves by that primarily, though they would say that, and they do say that.

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And I also want to say that, at the outset, that we are not describing some group that we believe to be non -Christian, or our enemies in any way.

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I have many dear, dear brothers in Christ who represent

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New Covenant theology, who are pastors in churches that would label themselves that way. Much of my upbringing in the

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Christian faith involved going to their primary conference, which is no longer being held, but the

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Bunyan Conference, which is named after, of course, John Bunyan, and my late wife was from a

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Baptist church that was labeled itself as a New Covenant Baptist church, and therefore

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I have developed many close friendships. But even those who, especially those who are leaders of the

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New Covenant movement, were primary figures within it, they would also agree that the differences are important.

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They shouldn't be viewed as so highly important that people become mean -spirited towards each other and that kind of a thing, but they're still important.

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But I know that one of the problems in writing a book like this, Dr. Barcelos, is that New Covenant theology or New Covenant theologians do not make up a monolith.

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They're not all the same. In fact, I can remember going to the John Bunyan Conference, or the

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Bunyan Conference, that you would have a lot more variety there, typically, than if you were to go to a typical

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Reformed Baptist conference where the participants, the speakers, were adhering to the 1689

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Confession. You would have a lot less disagreement at a Reformed Baptist conference than a

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New Covenant theologian conference. You even had a number of dispensationalists that would be there, even on the roster of speakers.

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So there seems to be a much more of a diversity with New Covenant theology. Am I right? Yeah, and that's probably due to the fact that they don't have an agreed -upon confession of faith.

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So they're not monolithic in that sense. Yes, some were even, they ranged, from my experience, from anti -confessional to those that adhere to the

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First London Baptist Confession. Right. Yes, that's correct. I have to bite my tongue because I don't think the

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First London Confession supports a New Covenant theology view. But that's for another discussion.

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You can have Dr. James Randahan on for that. Okay. And I know that, in your opinion, hermeneutics is the key of the difference between New Covenant theology and Covenant theology.

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And this may come as quite a surprise to people because there are so many similarities between the two groups that you could visit a

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New Covenant theology church and be there for even years, perhaps, and you might not even really notice any tangible, substantial difference between your experience at a

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Reformed Baptist church that was confessional. But tell us, why is the hermeneutical issue so key in this difference?

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Well, our hermeneutics, the principles of hermeneutics are interpretation that we imbibe and apply to determine our conclusions.

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So if we're inconsistent or have the wrong principles, if we're inconsistent or have the wrong principles, we're going to have the wrong conclusions.

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And I try to argue in the book that I think a lot of the hermeneutical principles that I lay down in one of the earlier chapters,

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I think most, if not all, at least the writing New Covenant guys that I've interacted with, would probably agree with the principles themselves.

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What I do is I try to push back on them and say, you need to be more consistent in your application of these principles.

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And I even try to show that there are some, at least one, there might be more, writing

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New Covenant theology guys that are advocating for a covenant in the garden, which is not what the older guys, the older guys denied any covenant whatsoever in the garden.

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But some of the newer guys, writers, more contemporary writers, are affirming, some would call it a covenant of creation.

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They don't like the terminology covenant of works, but at least they're seeing a covenant there. And the reason why they're seeing a covenant there, from what

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I can tell, is a more consistent application of their own hermeneutical principles, which one would be scripture interprets scripture.

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So they're reading outside of the Genesis 1, 2, and 3 context. They're reading scripture after that, and they're seeing scripture look back and describe what was going on there in covenantal language.

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So I think that's a move in the right direction. Yeah, one of the reasons that they would deny, that those within the

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New Covenant camp that would deny a covenantal relationship between God and Adam is that the

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Hebrew term for covenant doesn't exist within the first two chapters of Genesis.

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Am I right? Yeah, that's one of the older arguments. Not only do

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New Covenant, some New Covenant theology guys use that, but dispensationalists typically use that argument.

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That's what I was taught when I was a student at a dispensational seminary. Since the word is not there, therefore the concept isn't there.

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But like I said, some of the New Covenant writing theologians are recognizing that even though the word's not there, the concept is embodied there.

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And we know that because God tells us elsewhere in Holy Scripture. Well, I know that the difference on hermeneutical approach to the scriptures between the two camps, those that believe in covenant theology and those that believe in New Covenant theology, is that you would believe, as would your allies or brethren and colleagues in the covenant theology camp, that proper hermeneutics leads to a covenant of works in the

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Garden of Eden and also to a perpetuity of the Sabbath day to be kept under the inaugurated

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New Covenant. Those seem to be the two primary areas of concern here.

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Would I be correct in simplifying it that way? Yeah, and the reason is because I believe both of those doctrines are grounded in the

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Genesis 1 -3 narrative. And the reason why I say that is because the way the rest of the scripture looks back at that and teases those concepts out.

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And just a word of advice to you, if there's any way that you could either put your mouth closer to whatever mouthpiece or microphone or phone you're using, or speak a little bit more loudly, because sometimes we have a hard time understanding you.

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It's a little bit quiet on your side. Sorry about that. Okay. I'll try to get the volume up.

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That's perfect. Okay. Well, why don't we go right now to New Covenant theology on the

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Garden of Eden, since your book is titled, Getting the Garden Right, obviously, in Covenant theology and not in New Covenant theology.

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Tell us what specifically, other than what you've already said, that New Covenant theology denies.

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And I know that you were addressing the 1689 or Second London Baptist Confession of Faith earlier.

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I know that you've, like, for instance, you've said that the confession that we adhere to as Covenantal Reformed Baptists, that New Covenant theologians rightly point out that they are, in an effort to be biblicist, are not importing a word for covenant where it doesn't appear.

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And now, how do you define biblicist, first of all? Because immediately, there are going to be

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Christians who love that term, who think it's a correct term. They're going to be recoiling a bit when they hear you defining that in some kind of a negative way.

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Yeah. Well, the term biblicist or biblicism is actually a pejorative in our day.

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Probably 20 years ago, people didn't, at least in the public sphere, didn't consider it in any negative light whatsoever.

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But what I meant by that, and I have a bunch of footnotes that gives you other things to read about it, is a tendency to believe what the

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Bible says only using the words that the

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Bible says what it says. In other words, since, in our case, since Genesis 1 and 2 doesn't,

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Moses doesn't use the word covenant, therefore it would be wrong for us to describe the relationship

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God imposed upon Adam as a covenant. We want to be biblical, the

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Bible doesn't use the word covenant in Genesis 1 and 2, therefore we're not going to use it.

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So a biblicist would demand Bible words in our explanation of Bible text.

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Now that's, it sounds really good, but if you went to church last Lord's Day, your pastor didn't do that.

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Nobody ever does that. You would have to just get up from a pulpit and read the Bible and just sit down afterwards, right?

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That's right. So nobody's a consistent biblicist, but I think there is some biblicism that is demanding

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Bible words to explain Bible doctrines in some of the, I would say more so, the older New Covenant theology writers.

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Gary Long, for instance, is a contemporary writer on the issue, and he affirms a covenant in the

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Garden, and he actually uses Hosea 6 -7 like Adam. They transgressed or broke the covenant.

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Israel broke a covenant, Adam broke a covenant. He interprets Hosea 6 -7 that way, which is, by the way, the older interpretation.

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So in that sense, he's not a biblicist at all. He recognizes that subsequent writers in scripture often bring out explicitly what is implied in antecedent or prior texts.

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Now, not all New Covenant theologies, you guys, do that. John Riesinger, for instance, denied any sort of covenant in the

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Garden imposed upon Adam by God, and one of the reasons would be because the word covenant is not there.

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I think Gary Long even says that's a silly way to argue or something like that. That's not my words.

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It could be my words, but I'm paraphrasing what he said. So I think it's a flimsy way to do theology.

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We don't just do theology by rehearsing the exact words in scripture.

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We try to explain what those words mean in words that we think our target audience will understand.

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And if we don't think they'll understand the words we're using, then we need to be like R .C. Sproul. We need to explain the words and their meaning and then show how the concepts are embedded in the text that we're referencing.

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By the way, I happen to really enjoy Gary D. Long's book,

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Definite Atonement, and I've given it out. Just as a side note, what are your thoughts on that book if you've read it?

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That's an older book, right? Yes. I don't know if I made it all the way through the book.

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I already agreed with it and didn't find from what I can remember much wrong with anything at all, so I'm not an expert on that book.

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It was so long ago when I bought the book and I never read the whole thing, so I'm sure it's good.

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Well, it can be difficult going back and forth with our brethren and friends from outside of our specific camp.

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And of course, there are even disputes within our own camp between those who are

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Pato Baptists and Baptists who both claim covenant theology. I know that this is not the primary reason you wrote the book, but can you at least give a very brief description of why there is a difference between two groups on a very, very important thing who claim the same term for their theology, covenant theology?

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Can you repeat that question? Well, covenant theologians, those who believe in covenant theology, are separated between those who are

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Crato Baptists, such as us, and also Pato Baptists, Presbyterians. And there are even

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Presbyterians and Pato Baptists who would say that we as Baptists really have no business using the term at all to describe us.

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So I was just wondering if you could, in a very summarized way, so our listeners know when they hear these terms going back and forth, they may be puzzled as to why their

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Presbyterian pastor, for instance, says he holds the covenant theology. And in fact, the thing that I always heard for the last 25 to 30 years of my

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Christian life from new covenant theologians is that if you are a covenant theologian, by necessity you will eventually become, if you are consistent logically, you will become a

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Pato Baptist. Yeah. Well, the issues that distinguish

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Pato Baptist covenant theologians and Baptist covenant theologians are outside the purview of my book.

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And in fact, you have Pato Baptists writing commendations for the book. So I don't feel like I'm an expert to answer that question.

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No, no. The issues that divide Pato Baptists from Credo Baptists are not, at least confessional ones, are not the covenant of works and the

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Sabbath. The issues that divide us come in terms of who are the recipients of God's covenant, how they become recipients of that, what is the sign of that, and things of that nature.

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So you probably have to get somebody else to articulate that more deeply. Right. I understand. I just wanted to say that because there are going to be people who are

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Pato Baptists who might be a bit confused. And to sum it up, we who are

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Reformed Baptists believe that all who are in the covenant are of the elect, whereas Pato Baptists, not all, but many

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Pato Baptists believe that there are non -elect people included in the covenant because they are baptized by Christian parents.

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Yeah, and by covenant you would mean the covenant of grace or the new covenant. Right. Yeah.

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And well, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who seems to be claimed by both sides a great hero of the faith, 19th century hero, he said that the doctrine of covenant lies at the root of all true theology.

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Would you agree with that statement by our forefather in the faith? Yeah, and what he meant by that was at least the covenant of works and covenant of grace.

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If you get those wrong, you know Spurgeon well enough, at some point you're going to get even the doctrine of justification by faith alone wrong.

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You're going to get the law gospel antithesis wrong. Now, here's what's interesting,

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I think, about the law gospel antithesis and new covenant theology.

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I don't think they get it wrong. They're solid on justification by faith alone, in Christ alone, by grace alone.

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It's Christ's work for us, not our works whatsoever, that are the grounds for the justifying verdict of God for believing sinners.

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The problem I have is I don't think most of them ground the works or the law of gospel antithesis, at least the law part of it, far enough back in redemptive history.

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If you ground the works principle in the covenant of works, that Adam's obedience by the mercy of God was for the purpose of attaining a quality of life he did not possess via creation, then

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I think you're on good terms. You're grounding the works principle of the Bible, ultimately, in the relationship

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God imposed upon Adam. Now, what ends up happening, for instance, in at least

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John Riesinger's older writing, is that he grounds the works principle of the law gospel antithesis in the

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Mosaic covenant. And before we go to a break, because we have to go to one very quickly, you define, according to the

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Second London Baptist Confession of Faith formula, you define a covenant of works as being a sovereign divine imposition, a representation by Adam, federal headship, and sinless image -bearing son of God, a conditional element, obedience, a penalty for disobedience, which is death, and a promise of reward, eschatological potential.

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Now, perhaps if you go in an abbreviated fashion through those when we come back from the break, our listeners will maybe get a better grasp as to why this is an important issue and not something just for ivory tower theologians to discuss over snifters of brandy and cigars in a locked room somewhere.

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These are things that have practical implication on the teaching and practice of the Christian church.

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But we have to go to our first break right now. It will be brief, and don't go away, God willing, we will be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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31:05

Iron Sharpens today. Welcome back, this is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest for the first hour is

31:11

Dr. Richard C. Barcelos, who is Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at IRBS Theological Seminary in Mansfield, Texas, and Pastor at Grace Reform Baptist Church of Palmdale, Florida.

31:25

We are discussing his book, Getting the Garden Right, Adam's Work, and God's Rest in Light of Christ.

31:31

During our second hour, our guest will be Andrew J. Lindsay to discuss his book, The Life, Teaching, and Legacy of Martin Luther.

31:38

If anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com. And we have some of you waiting patiently, or at least you're waiting,

31:47

I don't know if you're being patient, but you have some people waiting to have their questions asked and answered. But I would like to go through some of these primary points which seem to be crucial to our discussion today.

31:58

As far as the way the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith formulates the covenant of works, let's start with it is a sovereign divine imposition.

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Okay, first of all, my church is not in Florida, it's in California. You said Palmdale, Florida.

32:18

Oh, I did? I don't want hundreds of people looking for our church in Florida this,

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Lord. That's odd, because I'm staring right at it and it says California. I don't know, maybe a palm tree directed me the wrong side of the

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United States. I don't know why. Sorry, did I always say Florida, or did I at least? Okay, all right, sorry about that.

32:39

Okay, sovereign divine imposition is the first part of the definition of the phrase covenant of works

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I give in the book, and I try to argue that elsewhere. But I think that's important, especially in light of the fact that I remember reading like 20 -30 years ago,

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I'd read literature, and they would say that the older covenant theologians of the 17th century viewed a covenant as a compact between two equals, as if there was some sort of equality between the creator and the creature in terms of these covenants.

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What like a marriage would be between a man and woman or even a business contract?

33:23

Yeah, like a business contract where there's negotiations at a table, and you said, well, let's talk, you know, further our negotiations tomorrow, we'll think about it.

33:31

And then you came with your suggestion for the contract, and then the other side gives their suggestion, there's give and take and all that stuff.

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But I did further research after reading those books a long time ago and concluded that's not what the older writers meant by what they said.

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What they meant was that covenants are these relational arrangements that God imposes upon man.

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There is a manward side of it, that is, man stipulates or re -stipulates, or man agrees with them, but there's not a 50 -50 relationship.

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So the first covenant was imposed by God upon Adam without any negotiations whatsoever.

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You want me to just keep going through the elements? Oh yeah, sure, sure. The second is representation by Adam.

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We know that Adam was the representative of mankind. We don't know by reading Genesis 1 and 2 all by itself, but we know by reading the rest of the

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Bible that Adam was a, what I was taught in seminary, a federal or covenant head.

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And if he's a federal or covenant head, then there must be a covenant he's the head of. And that is very interesting, because some people believe, say,

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I don't believe in a covenant of works, but I believe in federal headship, the federal headship of Adam. Well, you can't have both.

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You have to believe, or you can have both, but you can't have one without the other. And you were incorrectly taught about this in seminary.

35:07

Yes, yes. And this Adam, the first, was, by the way, a sinless, image -bearing son of God.

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So this first covenant was imposed upon Adam as he was stationed by God as a, the older writers would say, a public person, or a representative of others, who was sinless, who was an image -bearer, who was a man, and who was also a son of God.

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And I try to argue in the book, at least I think, or maybe it's elsewhere, that in order for this covenant to be fulfilled, it has to be fulfilled by a representative who is a sinless, image -bearing son of God.

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That's why I argue that that is only doable by the Lord Jesus. The third element of the covenant of works

35:57

I argue for is a conditional element, which would be obedience. Adam was to obey his covenant

36:03

Lord. The fourth is a penalty for disobedience, which would be death.

36:08

I think that's very clear in the passage. And probably the most unclear one, at least just by reading

36:14

Genesis 1 and 2, is the fifth element, is a promised reward, or what

36:20

I call eschatological potential. And the way, the reason why

36:26

I say that is because of the way the rest of the Bible reflects upon not only

36:35

Adam in his prelapse or pre -fall state, but how the

36:42

Bible, especially the Apostle Paul, reflects upon Adam not obeying.

36:48

For instance, in Romans 3 .23, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

36:57

Now, if we tease that out and think through it a little bit and ask the question, who was the first sinner? We would say

37:04

Adam. What did Adam therefore fall short of? Glory, whatever that is, the glory of God.

37:12

So whatever he fell short of is something he was not endowed with at his creation.

37:20

But if he did not sin, in other words, if he obeyed, the implication is he would have attained to this status that he did not have via his creation.

37:33

That's the eschatological potential that I mentioned in the fifth element of that definition in the book.

37:42

I'm going to take some of our listener questions because we are, as I predicted, running out of time very rapidly.

37:50

But we have RJ in White Plains, New York, who says,

37:56

Would you agree with the assessment that I have come to understand in regard to my friends and brothers and sisters in Christ who adhere to New Covenant theology is that they wrongly assume, because of our view of the law being perpetual in the

38:14

New Covenant era, that we are somehow some kind of Judaizers that are importing old covenant principles into the

38:25

New Covenant where they don't belong, and therefore we are blurring the glorious and wonderful doctrine of salvation that is totally of God and totally free to man?

38:40

If I understand what he's saying correctly, I think I would agree that they misunderstand some things and therefore impose that neo -Judaizing label upon us.

38:53

So the fact that the covenant theologian believes that the Decalogue was not exclusively meant for Israel alone, but is also applicable to the church for all ages while the earth exists, that does not necessitate or even hint at the fact that we believe that our obedience to God somehow is meritorious or is involved in us becoming either regenerate or worthy of heaven.

39:22

Yeah, what's interesting about the moral, the principles contained in the Decalogue is that if you do a careful read of the

39:32

Old Testament, Genesis through Exodus 19, you can find, not in the exact words of the

39:40

Ten Commandments, but you can find the substance of those commandments in different words throughout the narrative from Genesis 1 through Exodus 19, which tells us that the principles embodied in the

39:52

Decalogue as revealed by God to Moses upon Mount Sinai predate the

39:58

Old or Mosaic Covenant. Therefore, in one sense, they have a foundation that's older than the

40:05

Mosaic Covenant. That's why I think it's very important to understand Adam as a sinless, image -bearing son of God, and you have to ask the question, what does being an image -bearer entail in terms of our moral responsibility before God?

40:24

And if you do a full study of Scripture, you'll find that Paul, for instance, argues that the law is written on man's heart, and I would say by creation.

40:35

Therefore, the moral principles embodied in the Ten Commandments predate the

40:41

Mosaic Law and are grounded in creation itself, because we're creatures in God's image.

40:47

We owe him obedience to what theologians have called the moral law, and I think that's what abides or remains for believers under the

40:59

New Covenant. The law is written on the heart of every participant in the grace of the

41:05

New Covenant, and I think that law is reflected in the propositions contained in the

41:12

Ten Commandments. Well, thank you, R .J. Guess what? You have won a free copy of the book we are discussing,

41:19

Getting the Garden Right, compliments of our friends at Founders Press, the publishing arm of Founders Ministries.

41:26

So please make sure we have your full mailing address so that CVBBS .com can ship that out to you at no charge to you or to us.

41:34

We have B .B. in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who says,

41:39

I hope I am not overly simplifying this, but in my life, having fellowship with my friends in the

41:48

New Covenant Theology Camp, the only distinction I can see in a practical and tangible way is that the brethren from that camp might do things that we would not normally do on Sunday.

42:05

They would perhaps go shopping or eat at a restaurant or go to a sporting event or something like that, whereas many but not all covenant theologians would not be involved in those activities.

42:23

But it seems that in everywhere else in life, they are nearly identical because of the fact that they say that nine of the

42:33

Ten Commandments are repeated and reinstituted in the New Covenant anyway. Can you respond to what

42:40

I said? Yeah, that's pretty typical. I've heard that before.

42:46

The only practical difference is what we do between church services.

42:52

Many people, many New Covenant adherents have a high view of the Lord's Day, but not all of them have a high view of the

43:01

Lord's Day as the first day of the week. I show in the book that at least some believe that all days are alike.

43:10

There's no distinction whatsoever in days. Therefore, if a Christian church agreed to meet every

43:17

Tuesday, they could do so, which is not at all close to the traditional historical practice and doctrine of the

43:27

Christian church from its inception. You can see the primacy of the first day of the week and the first day of every week in the

43:36

New Testament itself, and then you can tease that out in the subsequent centuries afterwards.

43:44

So that has some practical entailments that are,

43:50

I think, difficult to square. For instance, you don't want to be a judge of anybody on the day of which they worship, but if your church says, we're going to meet on Tuesday, and somebody is a member of your church, and they say,

44:02

I don't want to go to church on Tuesdays. I want to go to church on Thursdays.

44:09

Well, can you discipline them if you can't be their judge in these matters?

44:15

I think there are some other practical entailments that come from denying the perpetuity of a special day during the week devoted to God by his people.

44:32

I understand, and I'm sympathetic, that they don't do much different than we do.

44:39

I think that's the case in some cases. But on the other side of that, I would say not going to, for instance, a

44:50

Yankees game on Sunday. Of course, some would say it's heresy to ever go to a

44:56

Yankee game. Red Sox, whoever, the Phillies, whoever, whatever.

45:05

See, for us, in our day, we go, well, at least I went to church, or I'm going to morning service, then I'm going to the ball game, then

45:11

I'm going to evening service. But if you told somebody like Spurgeon that, Pastor Spurgeon, I'm going to church in the morning,

45:17

I'm going to church in the evening, but in between, I'm going to the ball game. What do you think Spurgeon would do or say?

45:24

You think he'd just say, oh, brother, God bless you? I don't think he would at all. Their view... He'd say, who are the

45:30

Yankees? Well, my point is that we live in a culture that has,

45:37

I think, eroded the proper sense of the sanctity of the first day of the week, from the resurrection to the consummation of the ages.

45:48

So saying there's not much difference, on the one hand, I know what people are saying. But on the other hand, that's a huge difference, whether or not it is godly and unto sanctification on Sunday to go to a

46:02

Yankees game, or whoever, Patriots game. Now, do you think that that is the primary reason why there is a difference, is how one views the

46:13

Lord's Day? And I agree with you that that's another way that they are not monolithic, because I've met

46:18

New Covenant people who believe that there is significance to the first day, and I've met others that say exactly what you said.

46:25

Oh, it could be Tuesday, Wednesday, doesn't matter. And yet none of those have picked Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday as their day of gathering.

46:34

But is the primary, the outcome of the differences on how one views the uniqueness of the

46:41

Lord's Day? I don't know.

46:48

I think there's so much more than just the Lord's Day. By the way, you read the first five chapters of the book.

46:57

I didn't discuss the Sabbath until chapter six, and that's what we're discussing now. Yeah, that's because there was a listener who wrote in the question.

47:06

So I think there's so much difference with not only the covenant of works, not only the perpetuity of the

47:12

Sabbath, but the function of the Mosaic covenant. This is stuff outside the book.

47:18

The function of the Mosaic covenant, the law of nature or the law written on the heart and its function throughout redemptive history, all those things are differences that covenant theology and New Covenant theology have that I think are important.

47:33

To make one the most important, I think two are more foundational.

47:39

The foundational ones are the covenant of works and the

47:44

Sabbath. But there's more than just two important issues. That's why initially when

47:50

I was going to... founders asked me to do a revised or updated version of the

47:57

In Defense of the Decalogue, and so I thought of it, thought about it for about five years actually after they first asked me.

48:04

And then at some point I told Tom Askew, I think it was, I'll get to it next year. So I started reading books like crazy.

48:11

Then I wrote a table of contents, and it was like 29 chapters.

48:18

So I called Tom and I said, Tom, I'm not going to do a revision. He said, what? I think it needs a whole new book.

48:26

But the problem is it's going to be 27 or 29 or whatever chapters. He said, that's too many.

48:32

I said, I know. Here's what I'll do. I'll concentrate on the foundational issues that have ramifications for the rest of our theology.

48:42

And if God gives me strength, either I will or somebody else will write another book that deals with the law and the covenants.

48:53

So my book deals with Adam in the covenant words, and as the mediator is related to that, and the

49:03

Sabbath, and as the mediator is related to that. All that to say, there are a lot of issues, a lot of differences, and I haven't worked out all the practical differences in them.

49:14

But theological differences have practical differences as well. So I don't know what those are.

49:20

Would you be able to, because we're rapidly running out of time, we have less than five minutes left, would you be able to just summarize now what you believe the most important implications of the differences are between new covenant theologians and covenant theologians?

49:35

What the most important differences are? Yeah, the main reason why someone should pick up getting the garden right, because it's going to affect other areas in their thinking and hermeneutics and so on.

49:48

Yeah, well I think what the garden book at least attempts to do is it attempts to relate the

49:55

Bible's doctrine of our mediator for us and for our salvation to the covenant of works,

50:06

Christ as the last Adam, and to the doctrine of the divine rest. The divine rest was an exemplar for man to follow in.

50:16

God worked in creation, God entered rest. Adam did not work, therefore it did not enter rest.

50:22

Christ works, Christ enters rest. So the book really is all about Christ, which

50:28

I think the Bible is all about Christ. So that's how why I'd recommend the book, because it helps you with Christology.

50:36

And we have time for maybe one more listener question. By the way, Bibi, you've also won a free copy of the book.

50:41

Make sure we get your full mailing address. John in Bangor, Maine asks,

50:48

I've heard differences of opinion on this. Is the Bible clear enough to give us the answer? According to Adam being the one who, through his disobedience, brought sin to the entirety of the human race, can we expect to see him and Eve in heaven in eternity?

51:09

Yes, I think that the clothing that God gave them was indicating that they were covered, they were justified ultimately by the promise of the skull -crushing sea of the woman.

51:27

So unlike A .W. Pink, I think Adam and Eve were the first redeemed people on the earth, as far as I can tell.

51:35

Well, I do want to make sure, as we run out of time here, that our listeners have all of the proper contact information for you.

51:46

I know that, once again, the website for the Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies Seminary, or IRBS Seminary, is irbsseminary .org.

51:58

IRBSseminary .org. And, of course, the website for Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Palmdale, California.

52:09

Got the state right this time. If you want to look that up, if you are either visiting

52:18

Palmdale, California, or you have family, friends, and loved ones there, you can go to grbcav, as in victory, dot org, g -r -b -c -a -v, as in victory, dot o -r -g.

52:31

Do you have any other further contact information or anything else that you'd like to mention before we go off the air for our midway break, before our next guest comes on?

52:41

No, that sounds about right. Thank you. Well, it's been a pleasure having you on, Dr. Barcellos.

52:47

I look forward to your return to the program. Perhaps we can discuss your book on the Lord's Supper in the future.

52:54

And please send my regards to all at the IRBS Theological Seminary. Okay, great.

53:00

Thanks for having me. Hey, my pleasure. God bless. Okay. And don't go away, folks, because any moment now we are going to be joined, after our 12 -minute break, that is, by our second guest,

53:13

Andrew J. Lindsay. We are going to be discussing his book, The Life, Teaching, and Legacy of Martin Luther.

53:20

And our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. C -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

53:27

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence, if you live outside the USA.

53:33

And please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. That's c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com.

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Don't go away. God willing, we'll be back after this 12 -minute break with Andrew J. Lindsay. Tired of box store

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Andrew J. Lindsay, who's going to be discussing his book, The Life, Teaching, and Legacy of Martin Luther, I just have a couple of very quick announcements.

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That's also the email address to use, chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com to send in a question to Andrew J.

01:10:23

Lindsay, who is our second guest today. He has his BA in History from Georgia State University and his

01:10:31

THM in Church History from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and he has seven years of experience teaching from middle school through college and 15 years teaching in the church.

01:10:44

He is addressing, as I said earlier, his book, The Life, Teaching, and Legacy of Martin Luther, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Trip and Zion Radio, Andrew J.

01:10:54

Lindsay. Thank you, sir. It's good to be on with you. Great, and what I typically do when

01:11:00

I have a first -time guest such as yourself, I have them give an abbreviated version of your testimony of salvation, the kind of religious atmosphere you were raised in, if any, and what the providential circumstances our

01:11:13

Sovereign Lord used to draw you to Himself and save you. Well, thank you.

01:11:19

This is good. We just had been going over our testimonies in Sunday school recently, so yeah,

01:11:25

I was raised basically in a Christian home and believed myself to be basically a good person.

01:11:34

At some point, I realized that I didn't want to go to hell and wasn't sure whether I was a

01:11:45

Christian, and at that time, I was about nine years old. I went up in front of the church.

01:11:51

We were a typical Southern Baptist church that had altar calls, and the preacher asked me about my beliefs being raised in the church.

01:12:03

I knew all the right answers to give, and to some extent, I didn't think

01:12:10

I was lying or anything, but I gave him the answers that he wanted to hear, and for a number of years after that,

01:12:17

I thought that that was a conversion experience, but something didn't fit right in my soul, and so, you know,

01:12:24

I tried to rededicate my life to Christ a couple of times, and it was really when

01:12:30

I was 13 years old that I had a faithful Sunday school teacher that was talking about who is

01:12:39

Lord of your life. Are you living for yourself? Do you want God, or do you just not want to go to hell?

01:12:49

And that's when I realized that that's what it had been for me. It had been a desire not to go to hell, and that's why

01:12:56

I prayed the prayer and gone before the church, but there wasn't a real love for God in my heart, and that's just through that faithful Sunday school teacher.

01:13:09

I really called out to Christ and wanted Him to take my sins away, wanted

01:13:16

Him to take my life, wanted to live for Him rather than for myself, and of course, I haven't done that perfectly since then, but I do believe that there was a heart change at that time, and that's why

01:13:29

I hope for my children at home and for my students here at the school

01:13:34

I teach at. And so, yeah, that's just, in short, my conversion experience.

01:13:42

And now let's come to your desire to write this book,

01:13:49

The Life, Teaching, and Legacy of Martin Luther. There have been many, many, many things of varying sizes intended for varying audiences about the life of the great reformer

01:14:02

Martin Luther. Why did you see a need for another edition, another volume to come into print, and who is the intended audience for your work?

01:14:17

Right. I teach 5th through 8th grade students at Sayers Classical Academy here in Louisville, Kentucky.

01:14:24

We're a classical Christian school, and we were using a biography written at the middle school level on Martin Luther, and when we got to the end of the reading of that book and we were reviewing the material from the book,

01:14:41

I asked my students about Luther's life and Luther's experience and his teaching, and one of the questions that I had was, when did

01:14:50

Luther become a Christian? And the answer that basically all the students in the class gave just from their reading of that book was they thought that he became a

01:15:00

Christian when the lightning struck the ground as a young man and he dedicated himself to become a monk.

01:15:09

He cried out to Saint Anne, help me, I shall become a monk, and promised and entered the monastery, and they thought that was his conversion experience.

01:15:18

So I realized that something was very much amiss with that and that book, and I'm not going to name it.

01:15:24

I don't actually remember the name at this point, but that book also incorporated some kind of tall tales that he got and put into the kind of mix of his life there.

01:15:40

So I was dissatisfied with what we were reading. I wanted a short introduction to his life that also did focus on some of the teachings that he thought were most important throughout his ministry, and so I really wrote that with that purpose in view.

01:15:55

Now we've done it here at the school, at Sayers Class School where I teach here, and we have also done it, went through the book with my college

01:16:05

Sunday school class, and they thought it was profitable as well, but it is just a kind of a short introduction into those areas.

01:16:13

Now I know that you are a graduate of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

01:16:19

I am guessing that you are a Calvinistic Southern Baptist, or at least a

01:16:25

Baptist. Am I right on that guess? Yes, sir. Our church, I go to Cosmos Dell Baptist Church here in Louisville, Kentucky.

01:16:34

We are affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention and for membership, the members have to subscribe to the

01:16:43

Baptist faith and message. The elders subscribe to the 1689 Confession.

01:16:49

Yeah, and actually I was pleasantly surprised to hear that you were one of the proof readers for my first guest's book,

01:16:57

Getting the Garden Right. Yes, I love Dr. Barcellas and I really enjoyed the opportunity to read through his book early like that and hopefully catch a few commas and things like that.

01:17:12

Yeah, I had no idea when I arranged these two interviews, just this is for the benefit of our listeners, I had no idea that there was any connection between Dr.

01:17:20

Richard C. Barcellas and my second guest, Andrew J. Lindsay, so it was quite an interesting providential occurrence.

01:17:29

One of the reasons I brought up your Baptist identity is because many people, perhaps even especially

01:17:38

Lutherans, might wonder why on earth is a Calvinist, and not only a

01:17:45

Calvinist, but a Baptist, writing a work in tribute to Martin Luther.

01:17:51

You know, that's no fair, he can't take our hero. But anyway, how do you respond to that?

01:17:57

Well, that's a good point. I would point them to, if you look at John Calvin's Bondage and Liberation of the

01:18:05

Will, early in that work, he refers to himself in one line as a

01:18:10

Lutheran, and the reason he does that is basically showing Protestant unity at that point.

01:18:17

And that was a pivotal debate that Luther had with Erasmus during the

01:18:23

Reformation, so that was a key element of Luther's protest against Rome.

01:18:29

Exactly, and then that's echoed in the debate that John Calvin has with Pigius shortly thereafter, or relatively shortly thereafter.

01:18:37

He's writing his own work on that same subject, and he's looking back to Luther and saying, we're saying the same thing on this point.

01:18:45

And really, the three doctrines that I focus on in the book that I do think were key for Luther are the doctrine of justification by faith alone, the cross, the theology of the cross, and then the third doctrine being the bondage of the will.

01:19:07

And those three, we're in lockstep with what Luther would say about those things,

01:19:14

I believe. All right, well, why don't we go through an evaluation in summary form, obviously, because of our limited time, those three elements.

01:19:25

Sure, okay. Well, justification by faith alone, that is his evangelical breakthrough that he comes to as he's studying through the book of Romans.

01:19:37

At first, he hears that phrase, the righteousness of God, and understands that phrase to mean a righteousness by which

01:19:45

God in his holiness judges sinners. And he hates that phrase as a young man. As he's thinking about his own soul before God, he believes that the righteousness of God is a big problem for him, that he can't measure up to that standard.

01:20:01

When he is reading Romans, he comes to the realization that there is a righteousness from God that's given to us in Christ, that we take hold of that righteousness simply by trusting in what

01:20:17

Christ has done on our behalf. And that's the message of life. He talks about born -again believers.

01:20:26

As he's looking into that passage, he says, I felt myself born again, and the gates of heaven opened to me.

01:20:34

And that really is this kind of idea that the just man shall live by his faith.

01:20:41

That is his conversion, not when he becomes a monk. That's just further bondage to him. So I do emphasize this to my students, and I emphasize that as well,

01:20:53

I will say that in terms of the biography of my book, it is kind of focused on his early life more so.

01:21:02

Because the students that I'm teaching, I think they can identify with that more in his early days in terms of the struggles that he had.

01:21:10

I want them to struggle the ways that he struggled to consider their soul before God.

01:21:16

I teach at a Christian school, but we don't take for granted that everybody has truly come to faith in Christ.

01:21:23

And so... We are Baptists after all. That's right, yeah. And not every student at the school is

01:21:32

Baptist. We have a basically evangelical kind of statement of faith here.

01:21:39

But we do, as a whole faculty, still hold that the need to be born again is something we should all affirm,

01:21:46

I would say. Yeah, well, the reason why I brought that up somewhat tongue -in -cheek is because, as you know,

01:21:52

Credo Baptists very often, not always, not always, but very often have a different understanding of how to approach the children of believers than our

01:22:03

Pado Baptist friends do. Right. In a certain sense,

01:22:08

I think that's true. I do... The best... I don't know, there's a lot in the

01:22:15

Puritan tradition of questioning people whether they have truly been converted or not, and I think...

01:22:23

Well, that's why people like Joel Beeke and others who are Pado Baptists disagree with many other

01:22:29

Pado Baptists over that issue, because they would be more in line with the Puritan understanding of that.

01:22:34

Right, yeah, and I think that's what we would want to go with there. Yeah, and so you have the message of the cross, and I think that idea of justification by faith alone in the second doctrine

01:22:49

I was talking about was the message of the cross, the idea of that we don't bring anything before God to commend ourselves to Him, that we have to take up our cross, and that's ultimately based on the fact that of what

01:23:08

Jesus did for us, that the weakness and suffering of Christ, who spends

01:23:16

His life out on the cross in obedience to the Father, that is what gives us life.

01:23:25

He dies so that we can live, and then we die to ourselves so that we can take hold of what

01:23:31

He's done. This message of the cross, and His, again, this is whatever else

01:23:37

He's riding on and other things that would be debatable with Luther's teaching, His writings drip with these doctrines.

01:23:45

Justification by faith alone, the message of the cross, and these are things that do impact our understanding of the gospel rightly.

01:23:54

I think He says these things clearly, and things that we would want to definitely affirm, whatever other faith tradition we might be in.

01:24:02

Well, we are going to go to our final break, which is very brief, and if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own,

01:24:09

I would do so now, before we run out of time. Our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail dot com.

01:24:17

chrisarnsen at gmail dot com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence. If you live outside the

01:24:22

USA, please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. That's c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail dot com.

01:24:31

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Andrew J. Lindsay and more of Martin Luther, the life, teaching, and legacy of the great reformer, right after these messages from our sponsors.

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01:29:06

This is Chris Sorensen. If you just tuned us in, our guest for this remaining hour, actually for the second half of the program, but only a half hour remaining, is

01:29:18

Andrew J. Lindsay. We are discussing his book, The Life, Teaching, and Legacy of Martin Luther. Our email address is chrissorensen at gmail .com.

01:29:25

If you have any questions, c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. We have a listener.

01:29:33

Let's see here. We have CJ from Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, who asks, do you see a conflict between Martin Luther's firm adherence to justification by faith alone and simultaneously his adherence to baptismal regeneration?

01:29:55

Yes, I do. I see really any of the infant baptism schemes.

01:30:07

From my perspective, I do think that there's a conflict there that even when you're reading John Calvin's Institutes of the

01:30:14

Christian Religion, he'll be talking about justification by faith alone, and then he'll be talking about baptism in a later chapter, and it's hard for me to see how those go together.

01:30:26

I think Luther has that, and probably even in a more stark sense.

01:30:32

When he describes faith, and he's just describing faith, it seems like it is.

01:30:39

It's a heart change. It's something that's taking hold of the work of Christ, and to describe how an infant would do that,

01:30:47

I don't see a way to reconcile that, because he wants to say that there is some kind of faith present in the baptism of that infant.

01:31:01

I don't see how... He's not saying that... He said baptismal regeneration. He wants to get away from this idea of the work itself, the baptism itself, doing an automatic work in some kind of sacerdotal sense.

01:31:19

Instead, he wants to say that there is a faith there in that infant, and I don't see how he can really get there with what he said about faith in other places.

01:31:31

So, in other words, Luther's understanding of infant baptism was not that it was a baptism necessarily just by proxy of Christian parents having their baby baptized, that there is nothing within the baby itself that would make it a proper candidate for baptism in a baptistic sense.

01:31:59

But it is solely a baptism by proxy, perhaps, whereas Luther viewed this as almost like a

01:32:06

John the Baptist experience, where John the Baptist leapt to joy in the womb of his mother, being near the pregnant

01:32:15

Mary. That is my understanding, yes. Yeah, he has this... In his writing on baptism, there is this passage where he talks about the person performing the baptism whispering the gospel into the child's ear, and he's saying that how do we know his heart can't grasp a hold of the

01:32:36

Word of God by faith, as faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ, and he wants to draw on that and say that the child can have a faith, a type of faith, just from hearing the

01:32:48

Word of God, that the Holy Spirit can just do that. So, in that sense, it's a monergistic regeneration, if you look at it that way, that's taking place, but it is kind of an odd definition of faith at that point.

01:33:05

No, no, no, I'm assuming you would agree with Luther on the premise that it is possible for a child within the womb to be supernaturally given faith by God, who is sovereign over all things, and he seems to have done something like that with John the

01:33:25

Baptist in the womb, although there is difference of opinion on what that actually means, but that is a separate issue from the ordinance or sacrament of baptism.

01:33:34

Right, right, yeah, I would definitely say that's a different type of thing, and then you have all kinds of other, when you're talking about baptism itself, you can't just say, well,

01:33:44

John the Baptist could have had some kind of regeneration experience, he could have been born again within the womb, we could say that could be the case, but then to say that means we should baptize,

01:33:58

I think we have to look at the New Testament, again, this is me talking as a Baptist now and not as somebody that studied Luther, but as a

01:34:04

Baptist I'm saying that we look to the New Testament and see what the pattern for baptism is, we have to see how the

01:34:12

Lord and his apostles instituted it, and in what order that took place, rather than just saying, because some children might be saved, even from infancy, that we could baptize based on just that.

01:34:27

But you're not just completely importing a Baptist mindset into this, because you said that Luther himself was trying to somehow get around from the sacerdotal implications of a baby being, becoming regenerate by virtue of a baptism by proxy by his

01:34:51

Christian parents. That's right, so yeah, he is trying to get away, I'm willing to say that Latin is ex operae operato, and I'm hoping

01:35:00

I'm saying that right, I'm a Latin teacher here too, so if I just misspoke that I'm going to be very embarrassed, but I think it's ex operae operato, and by the working is the kind of idea, that just the baptism itself, because the church says so, automatically confers regeneration.

01:35:19

That is the Roman Catholic idea that he is pushing back against, so he doesn't want to say that.

01:35:28

Okay, but then he wants to get faith into the infant in some kind of way, and he does want to relate it to baptism.

01:35:37

And I think it's internally inconsistent, the way that he goes about that. So we have to understand

01:35:43

Luther in his own terms, and what he's not doing, and then also I think that there comes in pretty immediately a critique, from my perspective at least.

01:35:53

So then again, I don't really focus on the things that we disagree with, in the book

01:36:01

I don't focus on those. I kind of see what's most important to him, because I don't think,

01:36:08

I think he would say baptism's important, because he's a churchman, and he obviously really places a lot of emphasis on the sacraments, but I don't think he would say those are the most important things.

01:36:25

Looking at his writings, those aren't the things, the things that we disagree on, aren't the things that he emphasizes more than anything.

01:36:32

Near the end of his life, when someone asks him basically what about his works, he says the two works that are worthwhile, that should stand the test of time, that he does, are the children's catechism, and his work on the bondage of the will.

01:36:51

Now I think he must have not been thinking of his translation of the Bible into German at that point, because you'd have to say that as well.

01:36:57

But the children's catechism, and especially the bondage of the will, these are things that I think we should all agree on, and there's nothing in the bondage of the will that I can even recall that would be a point of real disagreement from what the

01:37:19

Reformed would say, along with the Lutherans at his time. It did become controversial even shortly after his time with Melanchthon trying to make some differentiations there.

01:37:33

But there was a unity in the first generation with Luther himself, with Zwingli, with Calvin, flowing from the

01:37:42

Augustinian tradition on that we are sinners so desperately in need of the

01:37:49

Savior that it must be a work of the Holy Spirit that converts us. And that's the third major thing I want to talk about.

01:37:55

I said before that it focuses on justification by faith alone, the theology of the cross, and then this, the bondage of the will.

01:38:06

And I think that those go together in that way, showing that it must be a work of God. It's not something that we can do of ourselves in order to get salvation.

01:38:15

Sorry, I kind of rambled there. No, no, that's fine. And we have another listener from Slovenia. Oh, wow.

01:38:22

We have Joe in Slovenia who says, Dear Brother Chris, as far as I can tell, I'm in agreement with much of what conservative confessional

01:38:29

Lutherans teach who claim to be faithful to the theology of Martin Luther. The most important areas where I completely disagree with them are in the doctrines regarding baptism and the

01:38:41

Lord's Supper. What prevented Brother Martin from interpreting the texts on these topics in the metaphorical way they are presented in Scripture so as to bring unity and disagreement between himself,

01:38:56

Zwingli, Calvin, and Reformed Baptists? Well, obviously, you'd have to read Luther's mind to know that exactly.

01:39:02

But some of it has to do, I'm assuming, with the fact that he was a

01:39:08

Roman Catholic who never really intended to leave the Roman Catholic Church. And because he is a human, a fallible human, a flawed human, he was retaining some of those things from the

01:39:21

Catholicism that he was so entrenched in at one point. Am I right? I think, yeah,

01:39:26

I think that's important to know. Even, you know, we celebrated, I guess, last year the 500th anniversary of Luther nailing the 95

01:39:35

Theses to the door of Castle Church in Vindbergh that kind of sparked this Protestant Reformation.

01:39:41

Those 95 Theses, if you read them from early in Luther's journey there, are still awash in some

01:39:51

Roman Catholic doctrines that later Protestants do move away from.

01:39:56

He still believes in some kind of power of the Pope in that. He still apparently believes that there is a purgatory, although the way people get out of purgatory he's arguing against.

01:40:09

But there's a movement in his life that you can see in his teaching over time where he's continuing this kind of work of Reformation in his own mind, in his own teaching.

01:40:22

So there's some of that. But there's also, for him, he wants to keep,

01:40:33

I think the reason you get this, his errors, is because he thinks that he's honoring

01:40:39

Christ in them in some way, that there is some kind of spiritual thing going on with the sacraments, that you want to have this nearness of Christ in the

01:40:52

Lord's Supper. And he thinks the way you do that is by talking about the body of Christ being in and with and under the elements, as they come to say later, this consubstantiation idea, where he says that it's not transforming the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, but his body and blood are still there in some way.

01:41:16

He wants a nearness to God in that. And the way he's doing that, again, just kind of like what we were saying with how he changes away from the

01:41:26

Roman Catholic notion of infant baptism, and he does adapt it. I think that ultimately it's inconsistent, but you can kind of see how he's moving away and why he's moving away, and a little bit of what his thought process is.

01:41:45

He wants a nearness of Christ that he felt far from him when he was lost in his sins, and he thinks that the language that he's using for the

01:41:54

Lord's Supper is getting him closer to Christ. So if that answers anything,

01:42:02

I'm not sure, but I don't know if that addressed the listener's question there.

01:42:10

Well, thank you, Joe, in Slovenia. Thank you also for providing us with an American address where your daughter lives, because you are also going to get a free copy of The Life, Teaching, and Legacy of Martin Luther by our guest,

01:42:24

Andrew J. Lindsay. So please make sure that your daughter lets you know when that arrives, and she can either ship that out to you or wait for you to visit the

01:42:35

United States to get that book. Let's see here. We have Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who says,

01:42:44

Did Martin Luther, to your knowledge, ever have a similar view as Calvin on what we would call limited atonement, definite atonement, or particular redemption?

01:42:56

It seems that our Lutheran brethren today are very vociferously and adamantly opposed to that notion that we who are

01:43:06

Reformed cling to as a very important doctrine, and I was wondering if they have strayed from the historical

01:43:12

Luther, or if Luther never truly had come to that understanding himself. That is a great question, and it's a hotly debated question among, especially the

01:43:26

Reformed that do look to Luther and see some things that we want to draw from.

01:43:38

I've made the argument before, and I base this some on Dr. Timothy George's work on the theology of the

01:43:47

Reformers, that Christ did, I'm sorry, that Luther held that Christ died for the elect alone.

01:43:57

He has some statements in his commentaries on Romans that talk about all for the sake of the elect, and really emphasizing that kind of language.

01:44:09

Talking about Martin Luther on limited atonement, I was pulling up something, I have some of my notes here.

01:44:19

Yeah, here's Luther from Romans chapter 9, his commentary on that.

01:44:26

He says, everything is there for man's sake, and he is there for God's sake, in order that he may enjoy him et cetera.

01:44:35

So, then he says, he quotes 2 Timothy 2 .10, and he says, all for the elect.

01:44:41

And he says, Christ did not die for absolutely all, for he says, this is my blood which is shed for you,

01:44:47

Luke 22 .20, and for many, Mark 14 .24. He did not say for all to the remission of sins.

01:44:54

So this is from Luther's lectures on the Romans, lecture on Romans, and he's using some of the same kinds of arguments that the

01:45:04

Reformed use later on, in terms of limited atonement.

01:45:12

Now, I have had some Luther scholars that I respect, that have read more in him than me, and even in some of the original language, that say that he actually moved away from holding to a limited atonement view later in life.

01:45:33

These are some of his early writings. In this case, he may have moved to be less

01:45:40

Reformed over time. I don't fully know about that, but at least at this stage, and the reason, just to say, the reason

01:45:48

I think that he's closer to what Calvin says here, earlier in his life, is because they're both drawing upon the

01:45:55

Augustinian tradition. And you have this idea in the Augustinian tradition of God's absolute sovereignty over salvation, and that whenever that's examined in light of the cross, you also have his cross being, you know,

01:46:12

God's sovereign expression of who will be saved, in that sense. So, if that's helpful.

01:46:21

I feel like these are all big questions when it comes to Luther, because I do think there is development in his teaching, and I think that there is, you know, later on, when you get into his later life, and this is,

01:46:31

I definitely don't get into the book on this, but the kind of paradox is that he's okay with, and to say that there's some things about God that we just can't resolve in our minds, then it becomes really tricky to pin him down on certain positions.

01:46:49

Yeah, it seems that Luther, and Lutherans in general, think that Calvin and Calvinists want to say too much, that we don't relegate enough to mystery.

01:47:02

And am I right on that comparison, that they, I'm not saying that they're correct in their assessment, because we still leave a lot to mystery, that we believe that God intended to leave the mystery, there is a tension between the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man, and these kinds of things that our minds cannot completely understand and rectify and harmonize and all that, but would that be an accurate way of saying one of the differences that exist is the realm of mystery, that Luther believed more should be kept as mysterious?

01:47:43

Yeah, I think especially, I think the Lutherans following Luther especially are going to tend to do that, and the seeds for that are in Luther himself, so yes,

01:47:56

I think that might be fair to say it in that way. There's definitely a lot about God that we can't understand in Lutheran thought, and ultimately in Reformed as well, we want to say that God is incomprehensible to us, that he is so high above our thoughts, then the question becomes what has he revealed, and what does he mean for us to understand about who he is and what he's done, and if our reflections on him are actually consistent with what he wants us to know and act on, so yeah.

01:48:36

Well, thank you, Harrison. You've also won a free copy of The Life, Teaching, and Legacy of Martin Luther by our guest

01:48:42

Andrew J. Lindsay. Make sure we have your full mailing address, or you can go by cvbbs .com

01:48:49

in Carlisle, Pennsylvania on North Hanover Street, since you're so close.

01:48:55

You could pick it up there, but let us know either way. Let's see here.

01:49:03

We have a listener, Christopher in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, who says,

01:49:14

Do you believe that Luther finally came to a place of genuine repentance in regard to things he thought and said that were sinful in regard to the

01:49:25

Jews? I don't think so, really, in terms of that.

01:49:32

I think that because of anti -Semitism seems to grow later in life.

01:49:39

We're talking about 1543, he writes The Jews and Their Lives, and then shortly thereafter he's writing

01:49:48

On the Ineffable Name. These are works that are the kind of most steeped in anti -Semitism, and so those are getting there near the end of his life.

01:50:02

He seems to be kind of hardened into that. The way he gets into anti -Semitism is for religious reasons.

01:50:11

He really believes that the Jewish people are going to see the truth of what he's saying, that the kind of Protestant Reformation, pushing back against the

01:50:22

Roman Catholics and proclaiming the message of simple faith in Christ, that he has a great hope that other groups that have been distanced from the

01:50:34

Roman Catholic Church will see the Gospel as the Reformers are proclaiming it, and that they'll come in and become part of this movement, and the

01:50:45

Jews are one of those groups that he's hoping that will happen with.

01:50:51

And then when they reject the Gospel, he becomes bitter against the

01:51:00

Jews, and also because of the idea of church and state that he has being all kind of mixed up, he comes to the point of embracing the idea of official persecution of the

01:51:16

Jews, really. And so, yeah, that's a very problematic area, and I don't see any reason to think that that was really resolved within his lifetime.

01:51:31

Yeah, I seem to recall, and I don't know, he's not here to give further explanation to his interview with me, which was a number of years ago on my old show when it was broadcasting out of New York, but my former webmaster,

01:51:46

James Swan, who is studying at Westminster Theological Seminary, I seem to recall that he thought that there was some historical evidence for right before the end of his life, some kind of repentance by Luther on that.

01:52:01

Really? I would like to see that, and I'm open to being corrected. That would be good news for me. Right, well, we'll have to put you two in connection with each other, but one thing that we have to make clear though, that even though there is no excuse or there is no softening the sin of the kind of hate speech that Luther did spread in regard to the

01:52:28

Jews, it has to be distinguished between ethnic anti -Semitism and hatred as opposed to religious polemics.

01:52:40

We obviously believe he went way overboard with his polemics, but at the same time, that was very common back then by all religions, including the

01:52:50

Jews, and the Nazis, for instance, which sadly tried to use or did use

01:52:59

Luther's words to promote their own hatred and evil.

01:53:06

There was a difference because Luther welcomed converts to Christianity and evangelized the

01:53:14

Jews and prayed for their conversion, whereas in the mindset of Nazism hundreds of years later, it didn't matter if you converted to Christianity.

01:53:25

They were concerned with a bloodline that they believed was evil innately and needed to be eradicated from the earth.

01:53:33

That's why they would go through the family records of people, and if they were a convert to Christianity, it didn't matter if they found out that there was a

01:53:41

Jew in their bloodline. Am I right on this? Right, yeah, and that's a good point.

01:53:49

I'm looking here at some of the, again, I have my notes pulled up here, and I have here

01:53:55

Luther advocating that assets from money lending that the

01:54:00

Jews did would be confiscated and used to support Jews who converted. Now, again, seizing the assets of some

01:54:10

Jewish people and redistributing them, I think we would have problems with that as well, obviously, but the idea that there would be

01:54:18

Jews who converted and that they should be supported, and supported by the state and by the church.

01:54:26

Luther, like you're saying, he would support those who converted to Christianity. Again, his idea of church and state, we would disagree with, but I think any

01:54:40

Christian, this genuine Christian, if someone comes to faith in Christ, is going to see that person as a brother in Christ, and Luther would have seen

01:54:49

Jews who come to faith in Christ as brothers in Christ that need to be supported as well. Amen, and we have time for one more question.

01:54:57

Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who says, can you set this record straight as to the slander by some fundamentalist

01:55:06

Baptists and others that Luther actually called for the execution of Anabaptists?

01:55:14

Isn't the main sin that he was guilty of in this area is that he did not grant

01:55:20

Anabaptists free passage in Germany where they could flee to safety when the government was seeking to persecute them all because of the fact that some of them were anarchists, but Luther himself did not call for or participate in the actual torture or execution of Anabaptists.

01:55:43

Could you clarify whether or not I am correct in my assessment? Yeah, I was interested in this question and looked for evidence that he had actually been involved directly in persecution of Anabaptists.

01:56:00

I can't see any evidence in the historical record that he himself ever was involved in any

01:56:12

Anabaptist being tortured or killed. He does have a, in 1531, there is a memorandum that he argues that those who are going against the church, so if you are going against the state church, you could merit the death penalty.

01:56:33

He basically believes that of any group that is going to be outside of what they would consider the right religion, if you didn't agree with the

01:56:44

Augsburg Confession or something like that, and you were causing problems in a societal order, that you could merit the death penalty because you are undermining society in their view.

01:56:56

You know, the Anabaptists were kind of a mixed group at that point, and some of them did try to overthrow certain cities at that time, so on that basis, he was calling for at least some kind of what we would call persecution, but it was more of the lines of trying to maintain societal order from his point of view, and he didn't actually personally get involved with torture or killing

01:57:21

Anabaptists. Well, you have two minutes now, brother, to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners in regard to the life, teaching, and legacy of Martin Luther.

01:57:31

Right, and I think what I want to emphasize is, again, the doctrine that he emphasized throughout all of his life was this doctrine, from his whole

01:57:43

Christian life, is this doctrine of justification by faith alone, that we're counted right in God's sight through simply trusting in Christ and who he is and what he's done for us and dying for our sins and being raised again on the third day, that that's the message that he rejoiced in, that he found freedom and life through that message, and that as much as his life is useful to study and his teaching is useful to study, it will point people to that truth as well.

01:58:13

Well, do you have any contact information that you'd like to provide our listeners?

01:58:19

I know that basically nearly any book that we address here on Iron Trip and Zion Radio can be purchased through our sponsors,

01:58:27

CVBBS .com, CV for Cumberland Valley, BBS for Bible Book Service .com,

01:58:32

and if they don't have it in stock, they can order it, but do you have any other websites or contact information that you care to share with our listeners?

01:58:40

Sure, anybody can just email me if they want. My email is ajlindsey, a -j -l -i -n -d -s -e -y at gmail .com,

01:58:52

and I'd be happy to interact with anybody on that. Great. Well, I want to thank you so much for being our guest today for the second hour of the program,

01:59:01

Andrew, and I want to thank those that took the time to write in questions.

01:59:06

You've all won a free copy of the book, The Life, Teaching, and Legacy of Martin Luther by our guest, and I hope that you all make a note to listen to our program tomorrow.

01:59:18

We have some excellent guests lined up on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, so please continue to tune in.

01:59:26

Please continue to pray for our finances. Please continue to donate whenever possible, and I hope that you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater

01:59:38

Savior than you are a sinner. I look forward to hearing from you and your questions tomorrow for our guests on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.