April 10, 2019 Show with Ken Samples on “Classic Christian Thinkers: An Introduction”

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Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is

Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 10th day of April 2019, and I'm delighted to have back on the program, probably somebody as far as Christian apologetics is concerned, is my oldest friend.

Even before I knew and became close friends with Dr. James R.

White of Alpha Omega Ministries and most of the other theologians and apologists I know, my first friend of them all when

I was a new Christian, or fairly recent Christian, was Kenneth R. Samples, who became my friend in the late 1980s, and in fact he came by my invitation to preach at the church where I was a member.

I was thrilled that my pastor at the time, Mike Gaydosh, enthusiastically agreed with me that we should invite

Ken Samples to preach at what was then called Calvary Baptist Church in Amityville, Long Island, New York, and Ken has been a frequent guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, a former panelist on the

Bible Answer Man program when there were multiple hosts of that daily show, along with Hank Hanegraaff back in the 1990s, and now for quite a while has been the senior research scholar at Reasons to Believe.

We're going to be discussing Ken's new book, Classic Christian Thinkers, an

Introduction, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, my old friend,

Ken Samples. Well, hello, Chris. It's good to be with you again. It's always a pleasure to chat with you and to be on your fine program, so thank you for inviting me.

Well, the pleasure is all mine, brother. And for our listeners that are unfamiliar with Reasons to Believe, why don't you give us a summary of what that organization is all about and what is involved in your post as senior research scholar there?

Yeah, very good. Reasons to Believe is primarily a science -faith apologetic organization, so we're attempting to show that the

Book of Scripture and the Book of Nature are compatible because they come from the hand of the

Creator, and I'm the non -scientist on the scholar team.

I work with a biologist, an astrophysicist, an astronomer, a number of very qualified Ph .D.

scientists, and I kind of bring the theological and philosophical perspectives to things.

And I've been with Reasons to Believe, I think, this summer will be 22 years, and so I've written a number of books for Reasons to Believe on faith and apologetic -type issues, and so you can go on our website, reasons .org,

there's just a ton of material in science -faith apologetics. Great, and, well, you have, for quite a while, been really, one of your passions is to convince, to urge

Christians to become better readers, to discover the classic

Christian thinkers, as your book is titled, and although you are a strong proponent, a strong advocate of Sola Scriptura, obviously, as a theologically reformed and evangelical

Christian apologist, at the same time you recognize that we have been given gifts here in the body of Christ on Earth that we should not neglect, and these gifts

I'm speaking of are great mines of history. It's kind of ironic that you will have some

Christians who will say, I don't need anything but the

Bible. They will distort the great pillar of the

Reformation, Sola Scriptura, and change it into something that never was intended to be

Sola Scriptura, as if the Bible is the only thing that we should read and gain wisdom from.

But it's funny when people say that, I don't need anything but the Bible. They typically have a pastor, and that pastor is exegeting what the

Bible teaches, at least you hope he is, and you are unconsciously adding to the

Bible a man, a human being, who has flaws and sins, and it is really absurd to view that one man or that board of elders in your own congregation as the sole arbiters of truth and the only ones that should be interpreting the scriptures for you.

That might be a minority today, but those folks do exist, and this is a troublesome mindset that you have sometimes amongst, probably predominantly, either some of your

King James only fundamentalists, who are hyper -separatists, and you even have that as a classic ideology and practice amongst the cults, where only people in their organization can rightly understand and exegete and explain the scriptures.

But obviously you do not believe that, and this book is living proof of that. Yeah, that's a very important point that you've made,

Chris, that, you know, the principle of Sola Scriptura is that scripture is the supreme authority.

It's not that there aren't other authorities. Tradition bears our attention, human reason, the creeds, there are numerous authorities that we have respect for, but scripture is the final court of appeals in all of our beliefs and practices, and occasionally

I run into people... I did just recently a fellow who was reluctant to read, for example,

Athanasius or Augustine, because he thought that, you know, scripture was all that he needed.

And I pointed out that Augustine quotes scripture 40 ,000 times in his writings, and that even

Thomas Aquinas, the very famous Catholic philosopher, has a very high view of scripture, and so yes, absolutely, there is truth found nowhere else that is like scripture.

And one of the reasons I left the Roman Catholic Church and became a Protestant many years ago is because I think there is something in scripture that can't be found in tradition or anywhere else.

But I think we would be... we certainly wouldn't be benefiting if we failed to read some of the great classics, and so in my book,

Classic Christian Thinkers, I provide a beginner's guide to some of... I choose nine...

I selected nine individuals kind of covering Church history, and I encourage people to know what they believe, their distinctive ideas, their contributions.

And then I close the book inviting people to take a step further. Maybe you want to read

Athanasius' book on the Incarnation, Augustine's Confessions. Maybe you want to read

Calvin's Institutes, and not just take what people tell you.

The other point I want to make, Chris, is this. You know, I think in evangelicalism there is a bit of a crisis, and that crisis is we often don't know what we believe or why, but maybe even more importantly, we don't know how we came to believe some of the things we affirm.

You know, we believe the Trinity, but we don't know how the controversies and the heresies were addressed in the various councils, or the

Incarnation, and I would even say this. One of the reasons I wrote this book is because I know a lot of evangelicals...

I can't say a lot, I've known some evangelicals who actually consider

Eastern Orthodoxy or Catholicism because they felt their evangelical environment didn't open them enough to the history of the

Church, to historical theology, so those are some of the reasons I wrote the book that I did.

Yeah, in fact, on the opposite end of the spectrum, the opposite end of the spectrum of those who say, all

I need is my King James Bible and I'm fine, I don't need these great minds of history, well, number one, that would be an arrogant claim upon yourself, even if it was an unconscious claim, that you are the most brilliant thinker that has ever walked the face of the earth, and therefore you don't need anybody to guide you into deeper truths of the

Scripture than you don't already know, which is a very wicked sin to have that level of arrogance.

But the opposite end of the spectrum is that you have many pastors today, and you have many people in the

Christian media feeding people the words of contemporary authors, and I'm not slamming all contemporary authors, there are a number of phenomenal, biblically faithful, brilliant Christian authors, and you're one of them, but they are feeding them the garbage, really, of the modern literary world within Christendom, and much of it is just borrowed secular pop psychology or Wall Street marketing strategies transformed with a very thin veneer of Christianity, and things like that, that are trying to pass as the best of Christian theology today.

And this is the opposite problem, but equally dangerous, isn't it? Yeah, we have, just as you've said, we have a lot of ideas in the modern world that pass through the

Church, many of them are not deeply anchored in Scripture, many of them are mixed with secular ideas and psychology and various other fields, and seldom,

Chris, do we find people recommending some of the great classics that really are grounded in Scripture.

Again, I'm thinking of some of the great heroes that I write about, you know, Athanasius battled

Arianism. I mean, if you want to know how to talk to a Jehovah's Witness at your front door, Athanasius can help you.

And another thinker, Augustine, battled Pelagianism. We have many people today who would propose that you are saved by a combination of grace, faith, mixed with your own good works, and lots of other

Christian thinkers that you can be reading, rather than some of the people today, and I, as you said, there are some very fine people writing today, but I think that there are just some classics that you can't miss.

I view these people that I've written about as, really, my friends.

They are mentors to me, they challenge me, they point me back to the triune

God. When I see their flaws, it also encourages me, because I realize that God can love even imperfect people.

And again, I draw that point that, you know, many intellectuals, they are attracted to Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, and I think sometimes because they feel that their local evangelical church isn't well anchored in history, and that they're not exposed to some of the thinkers of the past.

So I also include Luther and Calvin. I don't think you can be a Protestant, really, without understanding the ethos of Luther.

What motivated Luther to do what he did? What was the crisis that led to his leading the

Reformation? Then I write about Calvin, who I call the Reformation's greatest systematic theologian.

And so Calvin is the most controversial figure, probably, in church history, but I think is often misunderstood, and so I'm trying to expose a lot of my evangelicals to some of those great thinkers and say, you can read their works, you're not stuck in the modern world with the authors we have today, even though there are some fine people writing today.

Yeah, and before we go to each of the nine, or as many as the Lord will allow us to because of our time restraints, before we go through each of the nine classic thinkers from Christendom that you have chosen to highlight in this book, this introduction for Christians to deepen their understanding of Christianity and to perhaps even broaden it, to hear from brilliant minds from different backgrounds within Christendom, I wanted to have something explained by you to our listeners.

One of the reasons that Protestants, evangelicals, are paranoid about reading the

Church Fathers, reading anything from the patristics, is because they actually have unconsciously swallowed the lie of Roman Catholicism and Roman Catholic apologists, that the

Church Fathers were thoroughly Roman Catholic in their understanding of the scriptures and theology and doctrine, when the truth of the matter is, many of the primary things that separate

Rome from historic Protestantism were not believed by the

Church Fathers. Those things that, especially, historically the

Reformers viewed as heresies, you would not find these things amongst the majority, anyway, of the

Church Fathers. Am I right, Annette, that they wrongly have swallowed the lie that the

Church Fathers were Roman Catholic rather than Catholic with a small C? Yeah, I think that it's very unfortunate that certain

Roman Catholic thinkers have tried to give the impression that there is a complete unanimity among the

Fathers, and that unanimity is in their minds simply repeating what modern -day

Roman Catholics believe. The reality, and this has been brought out in a number of works, for example,

Yoroslav Pelikan, in his book in 1960, The Riddle of Roman Catholicism, a very insightful book.

Yeah, in fact, I bought that years ago, decades ago, by your recommendation.

Yeah, Pelikan points out in that book that when the

Council of Trent anathematized the Reformers, they were in effect anathematizing part of their own

Catholic system, because prior to Luther, prior to Calvin, there were rigorous debates about the relationship between Scripture and Tradition, and different positions were taken.

There was also rigorous debates about the doctrine of justification, whether it is the same thing as sanctification, or whether it is distinct.

And, you know, other historians have pointed out, again, that when you read the

Fathers, in some respects they are a mixed bag. They have differing ideas about various things, but Tom Oden's book,

The Justification Reader, says that there is a deep consensus in the Fathers, that justification is by grace and it is through faith.

They may not add always by faith alone, but Chris, I think it's very critical that we be careful that we don't read back into people the controversies.

I mean, you look at somebody like Thomas Aquinas, he's a great Catholic philosopher. There's a good bit in Thomas that, as a

Protestant, you will not accept. But there is a lot in Thomas, similar to Augustine, that is really a classic form of Christianity, and both

Thomas and Augustine have enormous...they grant enormous authority to the

Scriptures. And so I think it's very important that Christians know their history, and I wrote this book,

Chris, really for a person who is beginning, who doesn't have a lot of background, so that they can kind of take a first step thinking through a lot of these thinkers.

Well, let me give our listeners our email address if you have a question for Kenneth R's samples regarding classic

Christian thinkers, those men, at least in summary form, who he believes have made the most significant impact on Christianity lasting through the centuries until today.

And some of these men, or at least one of them, is from the 19th,

I'm sorry, from the 20th century. But there are a lot of Christians who have not yet really discovered the richness of what these men have to offer the body of Christ.

So, if you have a question, our email address is ChrisArnson at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com.

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

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. Let's go into the first name amongst the nine in your book.

Irenaeus, one of the church fathers that unfortunately you might have a lot of modern day evangelicals or Protestants or fundamentalists never daring to pick up anything or looking through the internet for anything written by this hero of the faith, and it would be to their great loss if they were to ignore somebody like this because they wrongly think that he was as Roman Catholic as the

Council of Trent, and they would be very seriously wrong on that matter. But if you could, tell us why you chose

Irenaeus and something about him, where in church history does he arrive on the scene, etc.

Yeah, Irenaeus's dates are 130 to 202

A .D., and so Irenaeus is really only one generation away from the

Apostles. Irenaeus knew Polycarp, and Polycarp knew the

Apostle John. So Irenaeus plays a very critical role in kind of connecting us back to ancient first century

Christianity. A couple reasons that I picked Irenaeus.

I think he is one among the church fathers, and so he lives in the second and early into the third century.

Irenaeus, I think, really is an architect of orthodoxy, and what I mean by that is,

I think that it's very clear that the doctrine of the Trinity, the doctrine of the

Incarnation, the Resurrection, the Atonement, clearly taught in Scripture, but there are many elements that later had to be debated and worked through, and we see this in councils, we see this in the creeds.

Irenaeus is a critical thinker. I think he had a really advanced theology, probably

Trinitarian, defended the Incarnation, and of course probably his greatest contribution is he squares off with one of the earliest and most destructive heresies.

He battles Gnosticism, and Gnosticism was a mixture of pagan ideas,

Eastern ideas, along with certain Christian elements, but Gnosticism taught things like the

God who created the world, Jehovah, was kind of a sloppy God, but there was a

God above him who was pure spirit, and so matter is evil and spirit is good, there is an esoteric knowledge, a secret knowledge that Christians needed to understand, or Gnostics needed to understand, and Irenaeus battles this and really, really takes them to the mat.

Irenaeus does a great job of understanding what the Gnostics believe, critiquing them, showing how the idea of matter was evil, what would that do to creation, what would that do to the

Incarnation, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection? So Irenaeus is able to checkmate the

Gnostic heresy. Now, there are things in Irenaeus where he does lean in different directions.

For example, he kind of develops this early idea of theosis. Instead of thinking primarily of salvation in terms of the doctrine of justification, he thinks in terms of an

Eastern way of looking at human beings, that human beings are not can be deified.

Now, that's not the Mormon idea, that's not the idea that you add another person to the doctrine of the

Trinity, but it is the idea that a person is transformed by the grace of God into the image of Christ, and so theosis is there.

I might also say that Irenaeus has strong views about apostolic tradition, but he is,

I think, the very best theologian of the second century, very forward -looking, very courageous.

In fact, he became the Bishop of Lyon, and the previous Bishop, Chris, had been brutally martyred.

So Irenaeus had guts, and he practiced what I like to call the

Golden Rule of Apologetics, and what I mean by that is he treated other people's beliefs with fair -mindedness.

He didn't misrepresent them, but he always brought a solid biblical and theological critique.

So I see Irenaeus as a early champion of historic Christianity, and I give all of the people props who have battled these very difficult heresies.

Yes, and some of the things that you brought up also are a reminder of why

Protestants believe in sola scriptura, because there is a very strong tendency amongst

Christians, whether you are a Calvinist Christian, or whether you are an

Arminian Christian, or whether you are a Christian that doesn't describe themselves either way, if you are even a member of the

Roman Catholic Church or the Eastern Orthodox Church, we have a strong tendency towards hero worship.

Although I believe that we should have heroes, I do have heroes in the

Christian faith, and I don't mean that I idolize these people and put them on such a high pedestal that I don't behave like a

Berean when reading them, or if they're a contemporary figure, whether when

I'm listening to sermons or watching them on YouTube or something, we always have to put our

Berean hat on and test everything they say according to the Scriptures. But this is a very strong warning that we have to offer to people, just because we are encouraging people to read a great hero of the faith doesn't mean that everything they said was true, and that everything should be read through the lenses of Scripture when investigating these men, correct?

That's a great point, and it's a point we should always keep in mind. Look, you can disagree with Irenaeus, you can disagree with Athanasius, with Augustine, with Aquinas, you can disagree with Luther and Calvin, Pascal, C .S.

Lewis. Learning from these great Christian thinkers doesn't mean you swallow everything that they say.

But they have a lot of wisdom, and one last point about Irenaeus, Chris, is there's a lot of Gnosticism today, not only in the 20th century finding these

Gnostic Gospels in Egypt, the Nag Hammadi library, but you also have the

Da Vinci Code, you have Oprah and many people on her program who've written

Gnostic novels. So you're absolutely right, you can disagree with Irenaeus.

I think he would encourage you to look at what he says and evaluate it in light of Christian truth, and that Christian truth is finally in Scripture.

But there are many things that these, you know, there's no new heresy today.

They've all been around at one point or another, and I like learning from these guys, and they certainly are heroic -type figures, but they're flawed and they need to be saved by the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ.

We're going to go to our first break right now, and Ken, I forwarded to you an email from a listener that you can read while we're going to a station break, and then when you return, you can answer the question.

But I will read it on the air right now, and then wait until we return from the commercials before you answer.

His name is Grady from Asheboro, North Carolina, and he says, I find a lot of Christians today don't like to read.

I blame TV and computer technology for this. They are missing out on learning from the early church fathers, reformers, and Puritans.

Do you also run into this with Christians in the evangelical church? We'll have you answer that question from Grady in Asheboro, North Carolina when we return.

If anybody else would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com. chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

And as always, please give us your first name, at least your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages with Ken Samples. I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, host of A Visit to the

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Ken Samples will agree that Charles Spurgeon's quote that you just heard during that ad is a perfect way to identify the theme of today's program, that if you don't use the thoughts of other men's brains, it's the proof that you have no brains of your own.

And we are talking with Ken Samples. Ken Samples is the author of the book

Classic Christian Thinker as an Introduction, and if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

I was just saying, you probably did not hear the ad, although you may have heard it from your many guest appearances on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

There's an ad for Solid Ground Christian Books that airs at least once daily, sometimes twice or more, where we quote

Charles Spurgeon, who said, anyone that doesn't make the use of other men's brains proves that he has no brains of his own.

And I thought that was a perfect way to describe or to identify the theme of our discussion today with you and me.

And before the break, as you may recall, we had a listener,

Grady from Asheboro, North Carolina, write in a question, and I will read it again. I find a lot of Christians today don't like to read.

I blame TV and computer technology for this. They are missing out on learning from the early church fathers, reformers, and Puritans.

You also run into this with Christians in the evangelical church. And I think that Grady is partially true.

I think that the way you discipline yourself with the use of TV and computers is the key, because you can even find out much about the men that we are addressing today on the

Internet. But anyway, if you could, Ken, respond to Grady's comment and slash question.

Yeah, I appreciate Grady's comment. In fact, I want to read a little quote

I have from my book from Erasmus, who was a Dutch Renaissance scholar and theologian who debated

Luther on the freedom of the human will. But Erasmus has this quote about books and reading.

He says, quote, When I get a little money, I buy books, and if there's any left over, I buy food.

That's a great diet approach, I think. Put your books before your food.

But I'm really happy that Grady has asked the question that he did, made the comment that he did,

Chris. It's absolutely true that you have to discipline yourself to read.

And I also think that Christian churches should be recommending good reading material for people.

One of the teachers that I came to know was Mortimer Adler, the great educator of the 20th century.

He has a great book on how to read a book. I have discovered that many people really don't have a kind of a refined ability to read and get the most out of various books.

But yeah, that quote from Spurgeon was terrific.

I mean, it's not that Athanasius or Augustine or Aquinas or Luther Calvin or C .S.

Lewis are going to ever replace Scripture. In fact, all of those men would say, Scripture is the powerful revelation from God.

But yet, who wouldn't want to have insight from some of the best church fathers, from some of the best thinkers of the

Middle Ages? And who wouldn't want to have wisdom from the great

Protestant Reformers, Luther and Calvin? And so I'm very big on encouraging people to read, helping people to develop their reading skills.

And you know, we're called as Christians, people of the book. And so we're a bookish people.

The Bible is God's book. And so that's another reason

I wrote my book, Classic Christian Thinkers, to encourage Christians not to just hear what

Ken Sample says about Luther and Calvin or Anselm and Aquinas, but maybe to open up one of those books and read a little bit and benefit from it.

I can tell you, the Confessions by Augustine, it has been enormously helpful to me in my spiritual life, in my life of thought and reflection.

I'd say the same about Athanasius. I would say the same about Luther and Calvin.

So reading is critical, and we're made in the image of God, and that is one of the abilities,

I think, that comes from being image bearers. Oh, by the way,

Grady, you have won a free copy of the book we are addressing today, Classic Christian Thinkers, an

Introduction by Kenneth R. Samples. So please give us your full mailing address in Asheboro, North Carolina, so we can have that book shipped out to you by our friends at Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.

They will be shipping it out to you at no charge to you or to Orange Reference Iron Radio, and we thank

Reasons to Believe for providing us with these free copies of the book to give away.

One of the favorite, what's the word I'm looking for, a favorite slogan or idea in our modern day, and it has been true for a couple of decades at least now, and it is wrongly used, that children, or anyone for that matter, but I think it's specifically targeting or addressing children, that be yourself, no matter what anybody else says, don't be too frightened or ashamed to be yourself, and even if you are the only one that you know that thinks the way you do, you remain steadfast and be true to yourself, etc.

Now, there is an element of truth in that that I will address in a second, because it has something to do with the next name in your list, but unfortunately, the way that our modern anti -scriptural culture views that is that even if you are involved in something that has been viewed as morally inappropriate or even wicked for centuries, that you should do that and identify yourself with that activity or thought process or quote -quote lifestyle, no matter what anybody says, and of course, we as Christians would be repulsed and condemn that notion, but on the other hand, you may have children that are the only

Christian kids in the neighborhood, and they are the only ones that say anything in defense of Christ, and they're the only ones that read the

Bible, they're the only ones that attend worship services, and they may be mocked for that, they may be outcasts for that, they may be even beaten up for that, then they should have as their hero, or at least one of their heroes, one of my favorite heroes,

Athanasius, where the phrase Athanasius Contramundum comes from, which means

Athanasius against the world, and if you could tell our listeners, Ken, why

Athanasius has that slogan connected to his name, and before that, even tell us something about the time from which he has appeared on the scene of Christendom.

Yeah, very good. Athanasius, Chris, I would say is probably the most respected of all of the church fathers, and what

I mean by that is Athanasius, you know, I sometimes ask myself the question, is there a universal

Christian voice? Well, of course, Scripture is the universal Christian voice, but you know, there are thinkers like St.

Augustine is extremely popular in the West among Catholics and Protestants, but Augustine is not necessarily high on the list in Eastern Christendom among Orthodox.

Athanasius, on the other hand, is enormously popular in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the

Roman Catholic tradition, he's considered a saint in both of those church traditions, and Protestants view him as one of the great defenders of the deity of Christ.

His dates are 296 to 373. Athanasius, by the way, was an

Egyptian man, and he attended the Council of Nicaea that dealt with the great controversy, the heresy of Arianism, that Arius said that Jesus was not equal to the

Father, but he was a creature. And so the highest creature of God, but not equal to God, and so a denial of the deity of Christ, to give people a modern context,

Jehovah's Witnesses would have a Christology that is very, very similar to an

Arian view. Well, Athanasius, as a young man, went to Nicaea, and for 50 years

Athanasius battled Arianism, because even though the Council of Nicaea and other councils condemned

Arianism as a heresy, there were still pockets of the Church that entertained it, bishops who were sympathetic to it, and Athanasius battled the heresy, he came up with arguments, biblical arguments, arguing for the deity of Christ, defending the deity and personality of the

Holy Spirit, so essentially affirming the doctrine of the Trinity. And again,

Athanasius was, five times he was pushed out of his particular area, and he is, in many respects, the person who kind of was the champion of defending the

Trinity, the deity of Christ, the deity of the Spirit, and this idea of Athanasius Contramundum.

Interestingly enough, Chris, when I was four years old I was baptized into the Catholic Church at St.

Athanasius Parish, Long Beach, California, and on the front of the door it said,

Athanasius Contramundum. I could barely pronounce Athanasius when I was a young boy, but had no idea what

Contramundum meant, but that's Latin for Athanasius against the world, and so at one of the peaks in which there was a real struggle between Nicene Christianity versus Arianism, the

Arian bishops kind of taunted Athanasius and said to him, the whole world is against you, don't you know that,

Athanasius? Don't you know the whole world is against you? And Athanasius said very calmly, he said, is the world against Athanasius?

Then it's Athanasius against the world. And many scholars, many scholars, both

Catholic and Protestant and Orthodox, would tell you that God used

Athanasius to defend the deity of Christ, and without him, it's hard to see how a biblically -oriented, historic

Christianity would have been able to survive. So yeah, like all people, he has feet of clay.

You may not agree with everything Athanasius thought. He also held a view of theosis rather than a more justification -oriented view, but Athanasius is clearly, he's got guts.

And there are so many things that we can learn from him, and one of them is that when it comes to essential

Christian doctrine, Christians cannot back down, and Athanasius never backed down.

Amen. And I think that Athanasius is also a very valuable tool in the arsenal of Protestants, because I think that he and his life and his actions were a clear dismissal, or should

I say, they eradicate the notion of papal inerrancy and papal primacy existing in his day, because he clearly did not go to councils and bishops or a pope.

I don't even believe there was a pope, despite what Rome thinks at that time. But he did not go to the hierarchy of the

Catholic Church as being the final arbiter of what truth was. He went to the Scriptures. Absolutely, and in my book,

Chris, I bring up some of Athanasius' arguments. For example, he would argue from the

Scriptures that only God can save us. Jesus saves us, therefore

Jesus is God. He looks into the Scriptures, and in fact, one of the things

I encourage people is to read some of Athanasius' arguments, and when Jehovah's Witnesses knock on your door, present some of those ideas.

Another point, Chris, that I think is critical is Athanasius is also very important in terms of identifying the canon.

He mentions the 27 books of the New Testament, and says, this is the

New Testament canon. Now, there were other people who identified those books before him, but he plays a critical role in identifying the

New Testament canon. So Athanasius is a person you don't want to miss, whether you're a

Protestant, a Catholic, Orthodox, an Evangelical. You want to know about Athanasius' life, and I want to encourage you to pick up his book,

On the Incarnation. Great, and we have to go to our midway break right now.

Our midway break is the longer than normal break, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM in Lake City, Florida, airs this program, Iron, Sharpens Iron, twice daily in a pre -recorded format, and they need to localize

Iron, Sharpens Iron to the Lake City, Florida area with their own public service announcements and commercials.

So while we air our commercials right now, that are heard globally, the

Grace Life Radio will be airing their own. Use this time wisely, write down questions for Ken's samples on classic thinkers of Christianity, or classic

Christian thinkers. And also, use this time to write down information provided by our advertisers, because the more frequently and successfully you patronize our advertisers here on Iron, Sharpens Iron Radio, the more likely we are going to exist longer, because we rely upon the dollars that come from our advertisers.

We cannot exist without them. So obviously, they're going to be more likely sticking around as our sponsors and using their hard -earned money and their budget for marketing and advertising on Iron, Sharpens Iron Radio.

They'll be more likely doing that if they are getting patronized by our listeners.

So please remember to write down as much of the information that you can from our advertisers, and also write down questions for Ken's samples and send them to chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

chrisarnsen at gmail .com. And as always, please give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter. Don't go away, we'll be right back after this station break with Ken's samples and classic

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Let Todd and Patty know that you heard about them on Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned us in, our guest today for the entire program with a little less than an hour to go is

Kenneth R. Samples, and we are addressing his book about probably the nine of his favorite

Christian thinkers of history, Classic Christian Thinker as an

Introduction. And if you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Please give us your first name, your city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the

USA, and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter. We will get to as many of our listeners waiting to have their questions asked and answered as possible, but before we go to our listener questions,

I just have some important announcements to make regarding upcoming events that I hope that our

Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio listeners will attend, if at all possible. The first event is in Northern Ireland, Ballymena, Northern Ireland, and it is a conference on the original five points of Calvinism in celebration of the 400th anniversary of the canons of Dort.

This is being held at the Covenant Protestant Reformed Church, Ballymena, Northern Ireland, and the speaker is my friend

David Engelsma, who has been a guest on this program a number of times. The conference begins this

Saturday, April 13th, and it also continues on Wednesday, April 17th, and Wednesday, May 1st.

If you would like to attend this, if you happen to live in the United Kingdom, or specifically in Northern Ireland, or you're able to get there, you could get more information at cprf .co

.uk. That's CP, which stands for Covenant Protestant, RF, that stands for Reformed Fellowship, .cu

.uk, cprf .co .uk. Then, after that, the

Dort 400 conference is being held in Hudsonville, Michigan, at the

Trinity Protestant Reformed Church, April 25th through the 27th. That is

Thursday, April 25th, through Saturday, April 27th, and the speakers include

Professor Ronald Kamenga, Professor Barrett Gritters, Reverend Brian Huizinga, Professor Doug Kuyper, Bill Langerak, and Reverend Mark Shand, and Reverend Angus Stewart.

About half of those men have been guests on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, and if you live in Michigan or you can get there,

I would strongly recommend that you attend this conference. It's absolutely free of charge, also, which adds to its value and the ability of our listeners to attend, even if you cannot afford to typically register for conferences that involve a registration fee.

So, I hope that you can attend this conference that is being held April 25th through the 27th in Hudsonville, Michigan.

For more details, go to Dort400 .org, and Dort is spelled D as in David, O -R -D as in David, T -400 .org,

so don't forget that second D in there, D -O -R -D -T -400 .org. And please tell the folks there, if you attend or if you register, that you heard about the event from Chris Arns and Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

Then, after that, Iron Trip and Zion Radio is having our Spring Pastors Luncheon, featuring my dear friend

Dr. Tony Costa, who is Professor of Apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary. He is going to be speaking on how the

Dead Sea Scrolls vindicate the reliability of the scriptures. That's Thursday, May 23rd from 11 a .m.

to 2 p .m. at the Carlisle Fire and Rescue Banquet Hall in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

This is absolutely free of charge to all men in ministry leadership, whether you are a pastor or an elder, and I believe those are the same office, by the way, a deacon, a leader in a parachurch organization.

Any man in ministry leadership is welcome to attend, absolutely free of charge, as long as you register for free before the event.

And you will also be leaving there, if you attend, a very heavy sack of free books that have been donated to us, free brand new books that I have personally selected for every man in attendance, that have been donated by nearly every single major Christian publisher in the

United States and the United Kingdom. They have donated to us 100 copies of each book

I have selected, so that every man in attendance, as long as we don't have any more than 100, will leave with a copy of those books, so you'll be leaving with a couple of dozen free books.

And, of course, the lunch is free, everything is free, there is no ulterior motive, there is no hidden agenda.

My precious late wife, Julie, who also thought very highly of my guest today,

Ken Samples, and had the privilege of dining with Ken and I on a couple of occasions, she is the one that started these pastor's luncheons, and she insisted that there be no ulterior motives and that nothing be sold there, everything is free of charge, and I wholeheartedly agreed with her and have carried on her tradition after she has entered into eternal glory with Christ.

So, if you want to attend this free luncheon, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com,

and put pastor's luncheon in the subject line, I am sure that you are going to be blown away by the gifts and the brilliance of Dr.

Tony Costa of Toronto Baptist Seminary. Every person that has spoken to me, and I'm not exaggerating, every person who has spoken to me, who has seen and heard

Dr. Costa at one of my events, has raved about how wonderful he is, so please try to come if at all possible.

Then, right after that, from May 28th through the 30th, I am heading to Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania.

That's Tuesday through Thursday of May 28th through the 30th, and that is for the

East Coast Ministers Conference of the Banner of Truth on the theme, I Believe in the Holy Spirit. The speakers include

Jeff Kingswood, Terry Johnson, David Vaughn, Steve Nichols, Michael Morales, and Chad Vegas.

If you would like to register for this conference, go to banneroftruth .org, banneroftruth .org,

and scroll down to East Coast Ministers Conference, and please tell the folks at Banner of Truth that you heard about the conference from Chris Arnzen of Iron Trip and Zion Radio, and please look for me, ask around, do you know where Chris Arnzen of Iron Trip and Zion Radio is when you are there at the

East Coast Ministers Conference, because I would love to meet as many in the Iron Trip and Zion Radio audience as I possibly can who may be attending this.

Every time I have attended, I have met people who listen to the show, so I hope to meet you either for the first time, or to be reacquainted with you if I have met you before.

So that's banneroftruth .org, banneroftruth .org, that's the East Coast Ministers Conference, May 28th through the 30th, in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania at the

Elizabethtown College. Then another conference I will be going to, God willing, on December 19th and the 20th in New York City is the

Foundations Conference. The Foundations Conference is a conference of Family Radio, I'm sorry, not

Family Radio, although I love the folks at Family Radio since they have repented of Harold Camping's heresies and have become totally transformed as a new network.

This is Sermon Audio, who is running the Foundations Conference, and as I said, that will be on the 19th and 20th of December, that's

Thursday and Friday of December 19th and 20th, and they have a remarkable lineup, as always, at the

Foundations Conference. First of all, they have Dr. Stephen J. Lawson, who you every day hear promoting

New Covenant Church NYC, a sponsor of Iron Trip and Zion Radio. He is the founder of One Passion Ministries and one of the finest preachers alive.

Paul Washer, another extraordinary preacher, is on the roster.

Rev. Jeff Thomas, another extraordinary preacher and author, a retired

Baptist from Wales, who I have really been blessed by hearing him preach and reading what he has written.

One of my favorite preachers is a young man, who I think is going to become a household name over the next decade because he is so gifted and powerful,

Rev. Armin Tomasian. Richard Caldwell Jr. and Andrew Quigley, two men

I have not yet heard preach, but I am sure if Sermon Audio selected them for this conference that they are very gifted men.

So, if you would like to attend this event on Thursday and Friday, December 19th and 20th in New York City, go to thefoundationsconference .com

thefoundationsconference .com and you will have all the information that you need. Last but not least, if you love Iron Sharp and Zion Radio and you don't want it to disappear from the airwaves, please go to ironsharpandzionradio .com,

click support, then click, click to donate now. You can donate instantly with a debit or credit card by doing that and we really urgently need your help.

We have really hit another very scary financial pit that we are falling into and this happens about four times a year when our donations nearly dry up and we are getting a little bit anxious.

I know that we are never supposed to be anxious according to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, but being a sinner and being a human being,

I get anxious over these things. If you could please help us out, go to ironsharpandzionradio .com,

click support, and then click, click to donate now and donate instantly with a debit or credit card. You can also mail in a check via snail mail to the address that appears on the screen when you click support and make out the checks payable to Iron Sharp and Zion Radio.

Please never, ever, ever siphon money away from your regular giving that you're accustomed to to your local church where you're a member in order to give to Iron Sharp and Zion Radio.

Never do that. Never put your family in financial jeopardy by giving to Iron Sharp and Zion Radio. Those two things are commands of God providing for church and home.

Obviously, providing for my radio show is not a command of God, but if you are financially blessed above and beyond your ability to obey those two commands and you love the show and you don't want it to disappear, then please go to ironsharpandzionradio .com,

click support, then click, click to donate now. If you want to advertise, send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

and put advertising in the subject line. As long as whatever it is you're promoting is compatible with what we believe, we would love to help you launch an ad campaign because we really do need your advertising dollars.

Also, if you do not have a local church that is biblically faithful where you are a member and you're not prayerfully looking for one, you are living in rebellion against God.

So please rectify that situation if you need help finding a church, even if it's where you're going on vacation.

I've helped quite a number of people find biblically faithful churches. Some of these folks have joined these churches and others have visited them when they are on vacation.

So please send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put something like,

I need a church in the subject line and I will help you find a church from the lists I have of biblically sound churches all over the world.

And also, you could use that email address to send in a question to Ken Samples at chrisarnson at gmail .com

chrisarnson at gmail .com If you've just joined us, Ken Samples is the Senior Research Scholar at Reasons to Believe.

We are addressing his latest book, Classic Christian Thinkers, An Introduction. chrisarnson at gmail .com

Ken, we have a listener from Cork, Ireland.

Mary from Cork, Ireland says, Hi Christopher, I had to study the European Reformation by Carter Lindberg.

It's an excellent book and I learned a lot from it, but I would like to read it again when

I have time. I also love Stephen Wellham's book, God the Son Incarnate.

It is also an excellent book. Who is your favorite author and why?

Yeah, that's great on Mary's part. I'm going to answer her question.

I would say, of course, outside of Scripture, which is the greatest of all the great books because it is a divine revelation given by God.

There are some books that really stand out to me. St. Augustine's book,

Confessions, I would say is one of the most influential books

I've ever read in my life. I try to read it once a year because Mortimer Adler, the great educator and the editor of the

Encyclopedia Britannica, the great books of the Western world, he said a classic is a book that you can never exhaust.

And of course, that's especially true of Scripture. I mean, who could ever exhaust the Book of Romans or the

Gospel of John or Psalms, for example? Well, I see the

Confessions as a classic. It is a book that always challenges me, teaches me.

Sometimes I think Augustine is not just writing about himself, but he's writing about me.

He's writing about all sinners who need the grace of God. And other books,

I like Pascal's Pensees. I'm a big fan of Mere Christianity. I see

S. Lewis. And I take ten books in the last chapter of my book,

Classic Christian Thinkers, and give you a summary of these classics that are written by the scholars and thinkers that I've written about.

Well, thank you, Mary. And we normally don't send out books overseas to people who win them on Iron Trip and Zion Radio because the cost would be astronomical for CVBBS .com

to send books overseas because we have a lot of listeners overseas. But we are very happy to know that you are visiting the

United States, so we will make sure that you get a copy of Ken's book when you are here in the

United States of America. Thank you so much for joining us and keep spreading the word about Iron Trip and Zion Radio in the

Republic of Ireland and beyond. We have Linda in Hilltop Lakes, Texas.

I'm sure enjoying today's show and feel uplifted hearing about the fathers of the church. My question to Brother Ken is this.

When our son was in seminary, he was encouraged to read fiction as well as history and theology books.

Would Brother Ken recommend this too? And if so, what nonfiction book would he recommend?

Well, since I know C .S. Lewis is on his list, I have a feeling that's going to be connected to the answer.

But, Ken, if you could respond to Linda in Hilltop Lakes, Texas. Yeah, I appreciate

Linda's very helpful question. And I certainly would recommend both fiction and nonfiction.

I think there are some great Christian authors through the centuries that have been literary thinkers.

Chris mentioned C .S. Lewis. C .S. Lewis is a unique apologist because in certain respects, he's a literary apologist.

The Chronicles of Narnia, for example, are some of the best -known literature in the world.

They've sold over 100 million copies. In that children's stories, you have some powerful literature that conveys the truth of historic

Christianity. Even Lewis's friend J .R

.R. Tolkien, who was himself a Roman Catholic, has written The Lord of the Rings. I think there's a lot of really good literature.

Again, many Christians have been literary authors. Dickens, numerous others.

So I think that there are some really good books. C .S. Lewis wrote a book, Until We Have Faces, which is one of his novels.

Lots of really good books out there that you can read. And many of them include both fiction and nonfiction.

Well, thank you, Linda. You've also won a free copy of the book we are addressing by Ken Samples.

So please make sure you give us your full mailing address in Hilltop Lakes, Texas, so that CVBBS .com

can ship that out to you free of charge. And we thank Reasons to Believe once again for providing us with these free books.

And this book, again, is Classic Christian Thinkers, an introduction by our guest, Ken Samples.

Thank you so much, Linda. And I want to thank also you and your husband,

Glenn, for being regular supporters financially of Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio. We rely upon your generosity to exist, so we thank you in ways that are inadequate in the

English language to convey the deep gratitude that I have for folks like you who listen to Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio and want us to exist and who generously give to us as often as they can.

Thank you so much, and God bless you. Let's go on to probably one of the greatest giants of Christendom.

In fact, many people would argue, and I think many people with great wisdom and discernment would argue that in regard to extra -biblical thinkers,

Augustine is the champion of them all. But if you could tell us about why you included

Augustine and about what time in church history does he appear on the screen. On the scene, not on the screen.

Yeah, very good. Well, I would agree with you, Chris. I think

St. Augustine is arguably the most influential Christian thinker outside of the

New Testament authors. He is a huge figure influencing Catholic thinkers, but Carl Truman, a good, solid

Presbyterian theologian, has said that Augustine is probably as important to Protestants as he is to Catholics.

So he is really the most influential church father and casts a big shadow in Western Christendom.

He's not terribly well -liked among the Eastern Orthodox. They see him as rather pessimistic in his view of original sin, not fond of his views of predestination.

But Augustine is born in 354, dies in 430, so he lives in what we call late antiquity, really as the

Roman Empire is beginning to crumble. And Augustine is born in a little city called

Tagaste in North Africa, that is today in the country of Algeria.

Augustine has a great story. His mother, Monica, is a Christian.

His father is a pagan. Augustine is sharp as a tack. When he's a young guy, his mother kind of teaches him about Christianity, but he's very rebellious.

Some of his neighborhood friends, they go out and steal pears. And Augustine says, not because they're hungry, but because they wanted to do something illicit.

And you see these stories coming out in the Confessions about Augustine being a restless and rebellious kind of guy.

He's enormously talented. His great skill is in the area of rhetoric, speech, and debate.

He opens up schools in Carthage, in Rome, and in Milan. And Augustine really walks away from the faith.

He has a relationship with a woman in whom he is not married. They have a child.

Augustine really embraces a paganistic, hedonistic lifestyle.

Augustine wants to work for Caesar. He wants to be a spokesman for Caesar himself.

He pursues a cultic religion like Manichaeanism. He's interested in philosophy.

But Augustine really comes to a short end in all of that. None of these pursuits, his pursuit of Manichaean religion doesn't fulfill him.

His pursuit of hedonism doesn't fulfill him. His interest in Neoplatonistic philosophy is not enough.

And about the age of 30 years old, early 30s, is a dramatic conversion to Christianity.

Bumps into Bishop Ambrose in Milan. Ambrose is a great speaker and preacher.

That's the initial attraction that Augustine has to him. Ambrose helps him overcome some of his misunderstandings of Christianity.

And ultimately, he has a conversion where he hears a child's voice saying in Latin the words, tolle lege, tolle lege, take up and read, take up and read.

And Ambrose, of course, has introduced Augustine to the scriptures. Augustine picks up the book of Romans and reads a passage in Romans 13 about turning away from the things of the flesh and put on Jesus Christ.

Augustine and his son are baptized. And then Augustine becomes ultimately a priest and a bishop in North Africa.

He writes more than five million words. In fact, Chris, Augustine is the most prolific author in the entire ancient world,

Latin or Greek. Five million words. He becomes really an incredibly important person.

He tackles the Pelagian heresy. Pelagius was a British monk who taught that you could perform works in which you could be saved apart from grace.

Augustine goes after that with all of his power and mind showing that salvation is solely by grace, not by works.

He also takes on the Dantetist controversy, another heresy in church history that relates to the issue of church authority.

And so Augustine's areas of influence are very deep.

He writes a book on the Trinity called On the Trinity, writes The City of God, which is a critique of Greco -Roman civilization, writes

The Confessions. And again, while it may be a bit of an overstatement,

I don't think it's much that Augustine's writings influenced not only people like Anselm, who was

Catholic, Thomas Aquinas, who was Roman Catholic, but Augustine influences

Luther. Remember, Luther is in the monastery. He is in the Augustinian order.

Calvin quotes Luther 100 times. He quotes

Thomas Aquinas 100 times. He quotes Augustine 4200 times. Cranmer, the great reformer connected to the

Anglican tradition, strong Augustinian. So Augustine is a theologian, a philosopher, a writer, an apologist.

I really don't think you can understand Western Christendom without the influence of this great

North African church father. And even a 19th century Baptist hero,

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, had a great admiration for Augustine and thought of him as a hero of the

Christian church. So that's a lesson to be learned from some of our fundamentalist

Baptist friends who would entirely reject Augustine, who at the same time simultaneously claimed to love

Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Spurgeon was influenced greatly by this great hero of Christendom.

We're going to get to our final break, which is a shorter break than the last one.

But before I go to the final break, I do want to read a question from Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, who says,

I didn't hear you mention this earlier. I tuned in late, so forgive me if you already said this, but what theological background does your guest

Ken Samples come from? Great question, and we'll have Ken answer that when we return. And if you want to join us, do so now or forever hold your peace because we're rapidly running out of time.

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Spread the word about FirstLoveRadio .org. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen and this is the last about 20 minutes or so of our discussion today with Kenneth R.

Sample, Senior Research Scholar at Reasons to Believe. We are addressing his latest book classic

Christian Thinker as an introduction. If you want to join us on the air, please do so quickly at chrisarnzen at gmail .com

chrisarnzen at gmail .com and please give us as always your first name at least, your city and state and your country of residence if you live outside the

USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter and as you may remember,

Ken, Susan Margaret from Dauphin County, Pennsylvania wants to know your own personal theological background.

Yes. Susan, I was raised in what I would call a nominal

Roman Catholic family. My parents converted to Catholicism in the early 1960s and so I was baptized as a small child.

By early 20s, I became an evangelical Christian, got to know

Walter Martin who was a world famous apologist in the area of cults and new religious movements.

He had a big influence on my early evangelical Protestant thinking.

I was an evangelical for a time, attended a Lutheran church and then I became

Reformed, attended a Dutch Calvinist church for almost 20 years. Now, I think my preference would be to be called a

Reformed Anglican. I like liturgy, but I love the

Reformed elements that are found in the Anglican tradition, so that's kind of a little quick trip of my own theological history.

Thank you, Susan, and you've also won a free copy of the book, Classic Christian Thinkers, an introduction, so please give us your full mailing address in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania so that CVBBS .com

can ship that book out to you free of charge. Now we are up to a hero of history that is probably on your list,

I would guess, the least known of all of the men that you have on this list,

Anselm. I know that you mentioned Anselm earlier, but if you could give us more details on Anselm and when he arrived on the scene in Christendom.

Yeah, Anselm is a very important Christian thinker. His dates are 1033 to 1109, so now we have moved away from the

Church Fathers, and now Anselm would be part of the Middle Ages, and Anselm is born into a

Catholic family. He is close to his mother, rather distant from his father, is interested in spirituality and becomes a priest, ultimately becomes very influential as the

Archbishop of Canterbury, which today we would associate with the Anglican tradition, but at the time,

Anselm would have been in the Roman Catholic tradition. Anselm is known for a number of things.

One of them is that he is part of the scholastic movement of the

Middle Ages, and scholasticism was really attempting to show that Christian revelation was consistent with reason.

That is, if you looked at the Doctrine of the Trinity or the Doctrine of the Incarnation or the

Doctrine of the Atonement, that while these were theological mysteries, meaning that they are truths that the human mind cannot fully comprehend or exhaustively understand, but the scholastics would argue that those doctrines, nonetheless, were compatible with reason.

And so Anselm looks at the question, for example, in one of his very famous books called, in Latin, Cur Deus Homo, translated,

Why the God -Man, or Why Did God Become Man, and Anselm develops the idea that the

Incarnation is critical to Christianity, that because Jesus is a single person who has both a divine and human nature, he can then reconcile

God and man. He represents God and man and can reconcile God and man.

In that book, he develops a theological view of the Atonement called the

Satisfaction Theory. It's not nearly as influential or as strongly biblical -based as we would see in penal substitution or justification, but nonetheless, a very important idea.

And so, here you have Anselm delving into the realm of theology, dealing with the doctrine of the

Incarnation from an apologetic point of view. And, of course, the Greek word apologia, we get the word apologetics, means to give a reason to defend.

Anselm's probably greatest fame is his very fascinating, interesting, controversial argument for God that we would later call the ontological argument.

And the ontological argument essentially says that God is a being than which none greater can be conceived.

God is a perfect being. But Anselm reasons that if God is perfect, he would have to exist not just as an idea in the mind, but he would also have to exist as a reality.

Because if he only existed as an idea, then you could think of a greater perfection than perfection itself.

And therefore, he argued that God exists. Now, the upshot of this very complicated and very controversial idea is essentially this, that Anselm was reading

Scripture Psalm 14, and he came up with this argument out of his prayerful reflection, and essentially it argues that to deny

God's existence, remember what the psalmist says, the fool has said in his heart there is no God, Anselm argues that there is a logical contradiction in denying

God's existence, and that this ultimately leads to an affirmation of a perfect being existing.

I think Anselm was influenced by Augustine in some of that thinking. Not all

Christian thinkers have been enamored with the idea of the ontological argument. Even Thomas Aquinas was critical of it.

Other Christian thinkers have been critical of it. But many others have been deeply fascinated with it.

Today you have people like Alvin Plantica, a very influential Christian philosophy associated in the

Reformed tradition, who defends an ontological argument.

So for the last thousand years, and I have a degree in philosophy, and I've spent a number of years teaching philosophy, over the last thousand years in Western civilization, people both in theology and philosophy have been debating and critiquing and studying

Anselm's ideas. Anselm was also very devotional.

He left a lot of his prayers and his times of reflection.

He wrote a book in that area. It's true that Anselm is a Roman Catholic, and so you not only have prayers to the

Trinity, but he also offers prayers to Mary and the Saint. This is a reflection of his

Catholic convictions. But Anselm is a remarkable thinker, and one that has a deep influence, and I think in terms of both theology and philosophy and apologetics, he is one of the bright lights of church history.

Yes, and some of the things that you mentioned always bring me back to the need to be Berean. I have, as you know, come out of Roman Catholicism.

I was raised in it, just as you were. I am very protective of those that I know and love still within Roman Catholicism, and I have a great deal of problem with, let's say, what you might call modern -day ecumenism that sees the differences on the

Gospel and on things like prayer to the Saints as being trivial. I don't think that they're trivial. But at the same time,

I agree with the philosophy, for instance, of classical

Christian education, that we should be well -rounded in our understanding and of our knowledge.

We should be reading those people that we might not necessarily agree with on all things, just so we have a broader scope of knowledge.

And of course, wouldn't you say that we should, especially with new Christians, they have to be guided, or should

I say they should be guided, by discerning elders in their own congregation, that they might not just pick up ideas from somebody that they love reading and then adopt them as a doctrine of their own, because of the fact that great men have failed greatly and miserably in many areas.

So wouldn't you say that people have to always remember to be Berean, and the guidance of godly elders and discerning elders is very helpful?

Absolutely. I mean, one of the points I make in this book, you know, we've looked at Irenaeus, Athanasius, Augustine, and Anselm.

To learn from them and to respect them doesn't mean that we have to agree with everything that they say.

Just as we're critical, Paul says, test all things, hold on to that which is good.

John says, don't believe every spirit, but test the spirits, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

The Bereans were more noble than the Thessalonians. Why? Because they put even Paul to the test of Scripture.

And again, there are going to be things in some of the thinkers that I've written about that have more of a

Roman Catholic orientation. Maybe even some of the early would have ideas like theosis, apostolic tradition that would be closely connected to Eastern thinking.

But that doesn't mean we can't learn from them, nor does it mean that we can't criticize them.

And Christians need, I think, to learn from the very best thinkers throughout

Church history. And again, I don't want Evangelicals to feel like the history of Christianity belongs exclusively either to the

Eastern Orthodox or the Roman Catholic Church. Protestantism had deep roots in the theology of Nicaea, the councils that came forward.

And so Protestants saw themselves as Catholics, but not Roman Catholics.

Well, I want you to return as soon as possible to address the other five figures from history from your book.

Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Blaise Pascal, and C .S. Lewis. So perhaps if you could remain on the air after we...remain

on the phone after we go off the air so I can schedule another date with you. But I want to thank you so much,

Ken, for being on the show again. I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write. And I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater