November 2, 2020 Show with Dr. Owen Strachan on “Reenchanting Humanity: A Theology of Mankind”

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

Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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

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

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

It is this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions, and now here's your host,

Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this second day of November, 2020, the day before Election Day, and I'm thrilled to have back as a returning guest on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

Owen Strand. There's one thing that I know that my dear friend of many years,

Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, does not know, as brilliant as he is, the one thing that I know that he does not know is how to pronounce

Dr. Owen Strand's last name. It's not Straken or Stracken, it's

Strand, and he is Associate Professor of Christian Theology, Director of the

Center for Public Theology, and Director for the Residency Ph .D. Program at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and today we're going to be addressing his new book,

Re -Enchanting Humanity, A Theology of Mankind, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

Owen Strand. Thank you so much, Chris, it's great to be back with you, and I especially give you credit, not merely for standing for the truth faithfully, but for getting a

Scottish last name with a Gaelic pronunciation pronounced the right way. Well, that was just like Barack Obama and Joe Biden's efforts to quell the pandemic when they were in office, it was all by accident.

Many have tried, my friend, but you have done well. I appreciate that very much, and I'm going to give our listeners our email address right away in case they want to join us on the air with a question of their own.

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

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

USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Before we go into the details of your book, tell us about Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Yeah, Midwestern is in Kansas City. It's the fastest growing seminary, basically, out there, which is not attributable to human ingenuity or effort, ultimately, but to God's kindness.

It's led by a very gifted president named Jason Allen, a very faithful man and a friend of mine as well as my president.

Some of the scholars that you can study under at Midwestern would include Andreas Kostenberger.

Yes, he's been on the program. I'm sure, and Dale Johnson, biblical counseling, among others.

Yes, he's also been on the show. Yeah, I'm sure. It makes perfect sense. I would expect as much.

It's an exciting time here at Midwestern. We also have a college called Spurgeon College, which is growing like a rocket.

That's a lot of fun. There's a lot of schools out there, Chris, as you know, that are struggling in this day and age to,

A, remain faithful, and B, keep the lights on. We're grateful that God is blessing us, and we're striving to remain faithful.

Yes, it's a shame when many institutions resort to not remaining faithful in order to keep the lights on.

At least, that's what they think will happen. I'm glad that your seminary is doing both, remaining faithful and keeping the lights on.

If anybody wants to find out more about this seminary, go to mbts .edu.

This is a fascinating title of your new book, Re -Enchanting

Humanity, A Theology of Mankind. I know that people can still be heretics if they have an authentic and biblically accurate theology of God, and yet have a poor or unbiblical theology of mankind.

Why is having an accurate, a biblically faithful theology of mankind just as important as knowing who

God truly is from the Scriptures? Mankind is the crown of God's creation.

Mankind is made on the sixth day. The man is formed from the dust of the ground, and then the woman is formed from the rib of the man.

And so, even while all creation is made by God and thus has tremendous inherent worth, nonetheless, creation, in terms of the man and the woman, comes to its height and its artistic and aesthetic apex.

So when we're looking at humanity, we're not simply looking at a clump of cells that has evolved into its present form, a human being, a little bit more advanced than the apes or something like this.

When you are looking at a human being, you're looking at an enchanted being, understood in the right way.

In other words, you're looking at a being that is made by God, uniquely for God, to know

God. And that's what marks humanity out as distinct. It's fascinating.

I'm sure we'll go this way at some point in the conversation. But it's fascinating, Chris, because when you take away belief in a creator,

God, you really are left without any real understanding of what humanity is.

And so, we've seen Peter Singer at Princeton, for example, and others argue that there's basically no difference between the human person and other species.

If you believe in that, you're falling prey to what is called speciesism. But we start from the opposite vantage point as Christians.

We believe that there is a creator, and that the creator, God, made the man on the sixth day, made the man first and formed him in his image, and then formed the woman from the man.

So, the man and the woman are equally image -bearers made for God's glory. Well, I'm assuming one of the reasons that you found a need to write this book was because that there have been books prior to you, written by very capable men in years past, who covered a theology of mankind in detail.

But there are views of mankind today that didn't even exist, some of them even a decade ago or longer.

But if you could, tell us in your own words why you felt that this book was a needed addition to the volumes in our libraries.

I wrote the book because in the Christian world, there are books on anthropology, the doctrine of humanity, but most of the ones that I would recommend are several decades in the rear -view mirror, and so they don't normally engage a lot of the hot -button issues that are facing us within the doctrine of man today.

Transhumanism, transgenderism, homosexuality, wokeism, and other ideologies that are very much in play in 2020 and beyond.

And so I didn't want to try to write just an ethical handbook or something like this.

This is a theology of humanity, so it's anchored in the biblical text, and it's in conversation with past theologians in the

Christian tradition. And yet I did feel a need to try to stake out a position on the image of God that is in keeping with the

Christian tradition, but is a bit different from some voices, including some voices in the

Reformed tradition. We can talk about that. Even at the same time that I wanted to try to show people that the answers to the ideologies before us, vying for the

Church today, are not simply to be found in reason or in natural law, however you want to define these things, but are to be found in the

Scripture itself. So we need to be biblically thinking Christians in every area of life, given that the doctrine of man is really the front -burner issue, we need a lot of theological thinking there.

And that's a distinction, Chris, in the last 60 years. Sixty years ago, roughly, we heard about the death of God.

Death of God theology was hot. It was everywhere. And now I would argue that we're witnessing the death of man, in the sense that our public square no longer has a meaningful doctrine of what humanity is.

No longer knows who the human person is. And so we've witnessed in our lifetime,

I would say in the last decade or so, we've witnessed the corresponding death of man, the loss of any centered meaning of what the human person is.

And so for these clusters of reasons, I took a stab at this book and this doctrine.

Now tell us about the actual title, Re -Enchanting Humanity. It's kind of humorous that whenever I type your title into my computer, my computer is telling me that I'm misspelling it.

It's such a rarely used word, I'm assuming. But tell us about Re -Enchanting

Humanity. Yeah, that's funny. I think there's a few scientific titles out there with a similar title.

So depending on what you search for on Amazon, you might get me or you might get something by Stephen Hawking.

So that's great. I'll listen to Stephen Hawking's audience if I can get it. I stole the concept of enchantment from Charles Taylor, who's a

Catholic philosopher. He used the term in his own form and not a pro -Reformation form in his book,

A Secular Age, for example, where he really faults the Reformation as the cause of modern secularism, essentially.

So he and I are up to different ends. I think the Reformation is fantastic and is very much the recovery of the biblical gospel and the biblical worldview.

Nonetheless, I do agree with Taylor, this Catholic thinker, that we are in a secular age and that in a secular age, one of the first things to go is any meaningful understanding of who the human person is.

So Taylor famously argues for his understanding of humanity in traditional terms as the porous self, meaning that human beings can be operated upon by outside forces.

So you're not your own iron self impervious to any influence from any outside agency or institution.

You're a porous self. In contrast to that, he argues that today we have witnessed the rise of the buffered self.

And what he means by the buffered self is that the human person is its own institutional authority.

So to take this out of academic speak, essentially what Taylor was saying over a decade ago is that people think the core value of the age.

The principle they really need to be faithful to is their own authentic understanding of who they are.

So your own authenticity is really your cardinal value and the corresponding need that comes out of your own unchallenged, self -defined authenticity is affirmation on the part of others.

So the two sides of the modern anthropological coin are personal authenticity and societal affirmation.

And in contrast to that, Taylor is calling from his own worldview for a recovery of an enchanted understanding of the human person as, you know, essentially in some form impacted by broader institutions.

In my handling, to bring all this little commentary to a close here, in my handling, when we're talking about re -enchanting the human person, we are talking about recovering a biblical understanding of who the human person is.

And in that understanding, the most important truth we can discover is not our authentic understanding of who we are.

The most important truth we can recover and uncover is who God has made us to be and thus to discover our duties before the

Lord. So our greatest need societally or socially, if you will, is not affirmation.

Our greatest need is transformation. And you can already tell how in laying out these basic theological principles, even though we haven't talked about sex and sexual ethics, for example, we are squarely in the territory of numerous major contested issues today.

Yeah, well, three of the issues that immediately come to mind that have radically changed in the last decade and even less, some of them just within the last few years.

But transgenderism, homosexuality and the advancements of technology. Now, obviously, homosexuality has been around for thousands of years, which is why it is cited in the scriptures as something that is a damnable sin and an abnormality, an unnatural thing.

And so obviously I'm not saying that homosexuality has only existed for the last decade, but the way that humans are in mass responding to this issue has radically changed.

And lest we forget, Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama originally were all opposed to same sex marriage, for instance.

Now, they are all gung ho in favor of it. And of course, Joe Biden is as well.

And he was actually the one that outed, pardon the pun, Barack Obama for stating publicly before Barack Obama did that, that they were both on the same page in affirming same sex marriage.

But tell us why this is a book that is quite vital in this day and age because of those things that I just mentioned.

And of course, you can illustrate your own examples as well. Yeah, that's right.

I think what we're used to today, Chris, is we're used to issue by issue thinking, right?

So we think, what should I think about this issue? And then a new issue pops up.

What should I think about this one? Huh. There sure is a lot coming at me as a Christian today.

This is an interesting situation. Here's what I think we need to see and what I argue in Re -Enchanting

Humanity, this book we're discussing. Actually, it's like there will be a terrible weed, okay?

A weed cluster five feet, ten feet underneath your soil in your backyard.

And interestingly, you see a weed pop up here and you see another one there and another one there.

And what you realize once it comes time to actually perhaps own a piece of land and have to take dominion over it or do the best approximation of that that you can is that with the really nasty weeds, they're coming from a common cluster often.

In other words, you can't usually just pluck one up and it's done. When you're dealing with weeds that have been there for a long time, you have a whole bunch you have to dig up and it traces, as I say, to a single source.

In the same way, I think what we're dealing with today is really what I call in the book neo -paganism, neo meaning new.

I think we have a new outbreak of this ideology, this worldview that we call paganism, the idea that there is no creator

God, that we are really divinized beings, and thus that we can do whatever we want without any constraints, that our central duty in life is to figure out who our authentic self is and then everyone else's role is to affirm that self.

We're looking at the late stages, I would argue, of the neo -pagan ascendancy.

Peter Jones of Westminster West is really the only theologian in the last 30 years who gave any sustained attention to paganism and, as I call it, neo -paganism.

Yeah, I've even interviewed him on that very subject. I am, I, that doesn't, truthfully,

I'll keep repeating myself, that doesn't surprise me because I know you're on to something. And Peter Jones, honestly, he saw it in Star Wars.

He was writing about this with Star Wars 30, 40 years ago because he was arguing this isn't just an interesting arcane worldview that George Lucas has dreamed up.

This is actually where the West is going. And then he traced that in a number of books as to the ascendancy of paganism.

So I pick up on Jones in Re -Enchanting Humanity and I say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

You thought we were on to neo -paganism 40 years ago. Look at it now. When you're looking at these issues of sexual ethics, homosexuality, and then gender identity, transgenderism, when you're looking at wokeness, when you're looking at transhumanism, you are looking at different weeds, so to speak, sinful weeds, that all trace to a single source.

And I believe that's a neo -pagan worldview. Now, one of the things that when it comes to transgenderism, which is a very confusing issue because it even confuses those within the so -called

LBGTQ community. They are not always on the same page in agreement over that issue.

You have homosexuals even that are protesting some of the things that are being demanded by those who identify as transgendered.

One example that's on the news fairly often is the insistence that men who believe they are women be able to compete with biological women in sporting events, in high schools, in colleges, and in the

Olympics, and we could go on and on. One of the things that has been brought up as a defense of this being something that we should appease those who claim to be transgendered is the very rare instances of physical deformity where you may have somebody who is born with both genitalia, both male and female.

But if you could, how do you approach this as a Christian? Most of us are not scientists.

We could not go into detail any kind of a response to those kinds of claims.

But as a Christian, how do we respond to those claims that we must allow people to pursue identifying themselves as the gender of their choice because these things have happened in nature and therefore we should not discount them as being an authentic phenomenon?

Yeah, the same claim now is being made by those who would claim their disability, for example, as their fundamental identity.

So not, in other words, seeing their disability as something to be overcome, but as something that is essential to who they are and really not in need of being changed.

Those who would say that if you have a physical disability, for example, you should try to rehabilitate that as much as you can.

Those people are promoting what is called ableism. So in numerous forms today, we are hearing that the body, just the way it comes, is exactly the way it should be.

And we need to recognize that this is a major worldview claim that is in direct opposition to the doctrine of sin.

The doctrine of sin in the Christian worldview, which proceeds from the real historical fall of a real historical

Adam and a real historical Eve in Genesis 3, 1 through 13, teaches us that sin warps the soul first and fundamentally, but also has numerous deleterious aspects, effects on the body.

One of those is for a child in a tiny amount of cases to be born with, as you said, both male and female genitalia.

This condition is sometimes called intersex, but a better term for it is a disorder of sexual development, DSD, a disorder of sexual development.

My Midwestern Seminary colleague, Alan Branch, has written a book about transgender where he unpacks why the term

DSD is to be preferred to intersex, which is really a term that has been developed to give this condition a positive sense.

In truth, when families experience a DSD on the part of a child, a baby, it's not a positive identity reality.

It's something that is very, very difficult and is a clear result of living in a fallen world, one that merits major compassion for the tiny baby born into these circumstances.

And the way that doctors, conscionable, traditional doctors, resolve the situation is to look for an

XY chromosome, and if that is present, then the child is, of course, raised as a male. If it is not present, then the child is typically raised as a girl, as a woman.

And theologians that I know, pastors that I know that think deeply about these things in conjunction with Christian medical professionals see this as a strong and sound resolution to a very difficult situation.

But we should just note, to underline this, that a condition where a baby is born with male and female genitalia is not a positive condition or even a neutral condition.

It's not the result of sin on the part of the baby, of course. That's not the case we're making. But it is the result of living in a sinful world, and that effect is now being exercised upon this child.

And so we don't affirm a transgender identity for that child.

We try, as best we can, to identify the genetic code of the child, which can thankfully happen in this era, to then raise the child per their genetic reality, their genetic identity, depending on what chromosomes are there or not there.

So all that to say, that's a lot already to put on the table, Chris. But we're going the opposite way that those who hold an

LGBTQ -friendly worldview would hold. They would say the opposite of what

I just said. They would say that existence of male and female genitalia proves that we're not born with a defined gender identity.

Where we would say, no, that's the exception, the vast exception to the rule. We are made either male or female, but like everything in a fallen world, there are going to be warped effects on God's design in this world.

And so we need biblical clarity and biblical reasoning, mixed with strong gospel compassion when we face those circumstances.

Well, we have to go to our first station break. If anybody would like to join us, again, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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

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We understand that, but if it's just a general question on theology, and specifically on the theology of mankind, anthropology, please give us at least your first name, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence.

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In Psalm 139 verse 14, the psalmist offers praise to the Lord like this,

I praise you, because I am fearfully and wonderfully made, and wondrous are your works that my soul knows very well.

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Thank you. Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen, and if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the entire program is

Dr. Owen Strand, Associate Professor of Christian Theology, Director of the

Center for Public Theology, and Director of the Residency PhD Program at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

We are addressing Dr. Strand's new book, Re -Enchanting Humanity, A Theology of Mankind. Our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail dot com.

chrisarnzen at gmail dot com. We do have a listener who is remaining anonymous, and the listener says,

I have been having conflicting arguments and relationships in my own family over the issue of homosexuality.

I am the only Christian in the family and one of the things that I have been told by even my conservative

Christian friends is that I should not be referring to the homosexual community with my liberal family as homosexuals, because that is saying that these are actually a people group, when in reality, homosexuality is a sin and an activity.

It's not a kind of person. Do you agree with my conservative

Christian friends who say that I am in error in the way I am communicating? I think that's a very powerful question.

In 1 Corinthians 6, 9 through 11, it is clear that there are sinful identities that the

Corinthian Christians formerly held, and among them are both sides of the homosexual encounter in terms of the active male and the passive male and the

Greek. So there is some biblical basis for identifying people according to sin pattern.

But in saying that, we are not in any way doing what our secular, or perhaps better said, neo -pagan culture is doing.

We're not saying, for example, with homosexuality any more than we are with a thief, that there is a positive or even a neutral connotation to that identity.

Very much related here is the concept of orientation. People take on a homosexual orientation, for example.

So this is another place this conversation goes. Okay, well I've stopped committing sin in a homosexual sense, we are told today, we hear today, but I still have a gay orientation or a lesbian orientation.

That's just the way I'm oriented. That's what I'm drawn to. That describes my natural patterns.

What we need to say in all of this, to this good question that's been raised, Chris, is that there is no positive or neutral sense to the identity of homosexuality, to the activity of homosexuality.

So it probably is ideal for us to say a person who has an attraction to the same sex, not to identify as gay, let alone to see that identity as positive in a biblical sense.

It's probably more careful to say this person, I am a person who has this particular attraction pattern.

I have this sin pattern. And it doesn't just have to be homosexuality, it could be anything. I have the sin pattern of a bad temper.

I have the sin pattern of a thief. I have a sin pattern of gluttony. Well, that doesn't mean you have the orientation in a neutral sense of gluttonous, and it certainly doesn't mean you have a positive identity as a glutton.

What it means, whatever you precisely call yourself or others call you, is that you need the gospel of divine grace to altogether remake you from the inside out, eventuating in a new identity such that you are not a merger of Christian and sin in any way, but you are a new creation in Jesus Christ.

2 Corinthians 5, 17. So yes, I affirm the usage of language that would use a formulation like,

I am drawn to X, but that does not define me. My identity is in Jesus Christ.

Now that brings up another issue that there is disagreement over even in conservative

Christian circles, and even in the theological circles that you and I would most closely identify with.

That is, will God and does God permit one of His elect who

He has regenerated, who He has given new birth, new life, who

He has made a new creation in Christ, will He allow that person to remain in a state as unnatural as being drawn sexually to the same sex in perpetuity, perhaps for decades, until they depart this earth?

There are differences of opinion. There are some who say they could understand a person occasionally having a struggle or battle with it, but if it's an ongoing oppressive desire that never ceases, they would question that person's regeneration.

There are other people who are even pastors who have written books and who claim to be evangelical, who will actually call themselves gay

Christian. Now I think that you and I would disagree with that terminology. First of all,

I don't even like to use the word gay because it's putting a smiley face on an abomination.

It's giving a label to something that is actually a wonderful word. It used to be a wonderful word, gay.

Even Dean Martin sang about it, and that's amore. But he didn't mean what people mean by it today.

Basically, the point I'm making is is it a reality that regenerate people remain, especially solely and exclusively, with the same sex attraction for the rest of their lives.

Yeah, with apologies to the great Dean Martin. Anytime you can answer a theology question with that clause, you do.

You have to. I will continue here.

Yeah, I think we need to recognize that there's at least a couple different points that are meant here.

There are a couple different viewpoints that that claim will be made from in our time.

There are some who do not seem to want to break fully with their sinful identity from their fallen past, right?

So they have this sin pattern, and they profess faith in Christ, but they tell us,

I'm this kind of beautiful mess, and there are parts of me that are deeply informed, for example, by my gayness, so Jesus is fully my

Savior, and yet I'm not able to break all the way with my gay orientation, something like this.

That, at best, Chris, is not a sound formulation. That is not a stable atom.

That is not a good situation. If you and I are doing pastoral counseling and a person tells us that, then what we are trying to do lovingly, graciously, and convictionally is help them to see that that is not a 1

Corinthians 6, 9 through 11 formulation. In 1 Corinthians 6, in verse 11, the

Apostle Paul says, this is what you used to be. This is what you were formerly.

But you were washed. You were sanctified. You were justified. So you were.

You were that. You have those seeds in you. Perhaps you didn't even want that sin from birth.

Perhaps it wasn't a chosen matter. You know, there used to be these battles over the gay gene, for example. Well, who knows where these sinful instincts of various kinds came from?

But the point is, they were in you, and they were in you naturally, and they were going to send you to hell, but God reached down in His grace and He saved you, and now that's what you used to be.

That's not what you are anymore. Okay, so that's to the first viewpoint that will say that.

That's what I would say. That was me speaking. Then there's a second group that would say,

I don't claim gayness as any part of my identity. I do not make the terrible error of saying that I am a gay

Christian. Okay, I'm not doing any of that. And yet, let's say I'm doing pastoral counseling as an elder at a local church, and yet, elder,

I am still battling this sin pattern of attraction to men.

Let's say it's a man talking. I'm born again. I hate this sin. I don't want to commit it, but it's a battle for me.

What do you say? Well, to that person I say, look, at some level, we are all going to be battling sin until we die.

Many men who are married, godly Christian men, have weekly accountability that they need because they are drawn to lust after women who are not their wife, and that is a terrible thing, and it is wrong that they commit that sin, and yet, that is a pattern that they are going to have to battle for a long time.

So we need to have a category with sin, with desire, with our temptation patterns such that we reckon that people will have varying degrees of struggle with those temptation patterns after coming to Christ.

What we need to make sure is that we are never sanctifying ungodly desire, we are never sanctifying ungodly identity, and we are never making excuses for our sin, that we are always pushing people to lay hold of the grace that is in the gospel of Jesus Christ and appropriate that in the power of the

Spirit. And so then, we're equipped to do counseling with a brother or with a sister who does have some kind of attraction pattern to the same sex and say to them and help them see they need to repent of any ungodly thought or desire or word or action.

They need to never claim that as any kind of positive identity or state. And yet, they may have to do battle with a given struggle for a long time, for some time, until they die.

Last thing, Chris, I know this is a long answer. The Bible does not lay out exactly one expectation for us post -conversion of what our pre -conversion temptation patterns are going to be like.

Some people, if I can switch the subject, some people battle addiction to food prior to their conversion and following their conversion.

That battle is basically resolved. Now, they have other sins they have to fight, but that battle is resolved. Other people battle that problem for a long time.

Other people battle that problem until the day they die. There's just different levels of experience here and further, different levels of victory that Christians claim as they rely upon the

Holy Spirit. We don't have a one -size -fits -all reality, even though we do have it clearly established that we can't claim sin as our identity, we can't merge

Christianity and any sin, and we must battle sin, not simply at the level of behavior, but at the level of thinking, word, and desire.

Excellent. And I do want to follow up on that with a couple more questions, and we'll do so after this midway break.

And folks, please be patient with us, because the midway break in our show is a bit longer than the other breaks that we have, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1

FM, in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of the show, because they are required by the

FCC to localize Iron Sharpens Iron and all of their programming to Lake City, Florida.

So they air their own public service announcements and other local announcements that draw attention and identify the station as being physically located in Lake City, Florida.

So, while they do that, we air our globally heard commercials, and we would urge you, please don't just, especially if you're listening to this on a recording, don't fast forward through the ads, because we rely upon our advertisers to exist.

Please try to write down as much of the information as you can provided by our advertisers, so that you can more frequently and successfully patronize them, because that will further ensure that our advertisers remain our advertisers, if they're happy with the results, and then we, in turn,

God willing, will remain on the air for a longer future, because we absolutely depend on the finances that come in from our advertisers.

So write down as much of the information as you can from our sponsors, and also write down questions for Owen Strand and send them to chrisarnson at gmail .com

chrisarnson at gmail .com Don't go away, we'll be right back with Dr. Owen Strand, right after these messages from our sponsors.

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as frequently as you can and purchase as generously as you can. We're going to be going back or returning to our discussion with Owen Strand momentarily to re -enter our discussion of Re -Enchanting

Humanity, a Theology of Mankind. Some of my comments or announcements

I will make at the end of the program because Owen has to leave a little bit earlier today.

He has some obligations with his family. But I just want to remind our listeners if you are not a member of a local

Bible -believing church, I'm asking you to please send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com

and put I need a church in the subject line. I have lists, extensive lists of biblically faithful churches all over the planet

Earth and I've helped many people in our audience all over the world who didn't even know that there were biblically faithful churches right near them.

I was able to lead them to those churches where some of them have joined and some of them have recommended these churches to family friends and loved ones in all parts of the world.

Sometimes our listeners go on vacation in a certain area and they are not familiar with the good churches that are located in their vacation spot.

I may be able to help you with all those things. So send me an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com and put

I need a church in the subject line. We are now back with Owen Strand and we are discussing as I said

Re -Enchanting Humanity, a Theology of Mankind, his latest book. And Owen, I'm assuming you are still with us.

I'm here. Owen, one of the things I wanted to say in response to your excellent answer is that I wanted to have you clarify something however because I happen to be in disagreement with something that has been occurring within the body of Christ even amongst theologically conservative and reformed

Christians. They very often will equate the sin of homosexuality with the sin of heterosexual lust and so on.

Now, I agree that they are all on the same level in that they all send the unrepentant to hell.

If they are not covered with the blood of Christ, if they do not repent whether they are homosexual or heterosexual, whatever the sin may be, they will go to hell.

However, on this earth, I think that there are different ramifications to these sins. One is the clearly an unnatural sin.

It defies not only the law of God but biology. It defies nature. And the other, the sins involving heterosexual lust and heterosexual sin are the abuse of and actually, like for instance,

God gave us a gift, a beautiful gift, to be attracted to the opposite sex which is why one of the reasons we are motivated to be married and so on and to prostitute whereas homosexuality is not just another sexual sin equally in its damaging effects.

And where this is kind of equating with sin has recently come up is there has been big controversy over John Piper's comments that appear to have equated the actual sin arrogance and vulgarity and boastfulness of Donald Trump with those that aggressively and gleefully promise in the political arena to broaden the reasons and legal rights of women to murder their children in the womb and so on.

And I have heard some excellent responses to that mindset that sin is not sin is not sin.

That old saying sin is sin is sin. That there are differences and there are different ramifications of sin

Yes. Sin is sin. Every sin separates us from God by an infinite gulf.

So let that be said. And yet there is a lot to say here. I don't think we should approach any sin pattern as if there is the equivalent of a bug zapper that comes with the

Gospel such that when you trust in Jesus Christ that temptation pattern is automatically zapped and you never can have such a desire again.

I do think that absolutely when you come to Christ your behavior should absolutely change.

It should altogether change. But we may we were talking in the context of desire before the break you may have certain desire patterns that you do have to battle for different periods of your life as a

Christian whether that's a short -term battle a medium -term battle or a long -term battle with an ungodly desire even something abhorrent.

Now your behavior in those spheres should cease. It really should.

In other words there should not be a string of you know even heterosexual adulterous relationships where you say well

I'm doing the best I can most of the time I'm pretty good I've only had ten affairs since I became a

Christian. That's not good. But your behavior has to stop. But you may you may have certain ungodly thoughts and ungodly desires that you have to battle and kill and crucify again for varying lengths of time as a believer.

So that's what I would say fundamentally to that issue. I also would say this though Chris and I think this is some of what you're getting at I talk about this in Re -Enchanting

Humanity I also talk about this in a trilogy I published just this year just a few months ago called

What Does the Bible Teach About Lust What Does the Bible Teach About Homosexuality and What Does the

Bible Teach About Transgenderism Gavin Peacock and I co -wrote those short books together.

In that trilogy and also in Re -Enchanting Humanity the book we're discussing here today I make very clear that it is not appropriate to say something like this.

The gospel doesn't make me straight. The gospel makes me holy. And I think that's some of what

I hear you critiquing just a minute ago. When we are saved it's not that we automatically become what is sometimes called heterosexual.

But it is that the gospel returns us to what God calls natural.

In Romans 1 25 -32 there is what is unnatural and that is what we pursue with glee in our sin prior to knowing

Christ as our Savior. And then there is what is natural. Now in point of fact a lot of people follow the natural plan

God has for humanity prior to conversion. A lot of people never get saved. But a man gets married to a woman and they have children and so on and so forth.

The point is that what the gospel does for somebody who has been living an unnatural life is it returns us to what

God calls nature or what is natural. That doesn't necessarily mean that everybody who gets saved and has a homosexual background or a broken sexual background automatically gets married or even wants to get married.

But it does mean that we now live in accordance with God's design for men and women.

Whether or not marriage happens. There's a lot more to say there. Not everybody who gets saved has a desire for marriage emerge within them.

But everyone who is saved is called to be a biblical man or a biblical woman for God's glory and is called to pursue what is natural at every point in their life by the power of God.

Amen. And one of the things, and I'll move on to another subject, but one of the things that disturbs me about the gay

Christian concept, those that say,

I am not heterosexual, but I identify as gay and I do battle daily with homosexual desires, but I am celibate and I will remain celibate as long as God gives me the strength to have any sexual relationships outside of marriage, which would only be between a man and a woman, is sinful.

Now, I disagree with the concept that this person has already waved the white flag and said, basically,

I've given up on God's ability to transform me and change me. It seems that they have just given up.

And that really disturbs me. Yes, I don't think that coming to Christ is automatically going to mean that you're going to have a desire for marriage or something like this to the opposite sex, but I do believe that it means, at the very least, at minimum, you have to leave behind any vestige of identification with any ungodly identity or attraction pattern.

So you don't have the ability, you don't get the luxury of saying, well, this is an orientation for me.

I don't act on it, but it still describes me. Or, well, okay, maybe

I don't have that full -fledged identity, but I'm never going to be able to, you know, go all the way down the line and embrace so -called heterosexuality.

What I want to say to people is that this is a very technical response here, Chris. We don't really know what

God's going to do to us once we get saved. Being a born -again

Christian is not a dull and tame existence. God makes us a new creation in the moment of regeneration unto conversion.

All things become new. So the opposite of what happens is that there are limits placed on us.

No, no, no, no, we need to understand in this day and age that when you become a Christian, you are in God's hands, and God can do with you whatever

He desires, and there may be God - glorifying instincts that you never thought you would have that He then gives you.

There's not a one -size -fits -all blueprint. Some people come out of a depraved sexual background, and they now want to fully embrace a godly plan for marriage and the family.

Some people do not have a call to marriage. But we can't ourselves say, I could never have that, or I'm always going to be this way.

We need to recognize the newness of the Gospel in all these different conversations. Amen.

Well, we have a listener in western Suffolk County in Long Island, New York, named

Christopher. And Christopher asks, When it comes to the aberrant views that Christians have of anthropology,

I think that many of the sins of secular society and misunderstandings and aberrations of thought that secular society embrace actually flow from even

Christian misunderstandings of anthropology, and I would include those who are outside of reform theology.

I am not saying that reform people have everything perfect, and I'm not saying that those who are

Arminians and others who are outside of the Calvinist camp have everything wrong, but I think there are crucial issues involving the sin of man, where, to give you an example, we who are reformed believe in the doctrine of total depravity, whereas those outside of our camp appear to believe in something akin to man being very sick but not spiritually dead, and if you could comment.

Yes, that can be true. I have seen that. Interestingly, though, support of so -called gay

Christianity honestly has come as much from different corners of the professing important word there, reformed world, as it has from other camps.

Yes, the Presbyterian Pentecostal denomination, PCA, and I have a lot of friends in the

PCA, and I interview a lot of PCA folk, but that seems to be where a lot of it is coming from, and even my friends in the

Presbyterian Church in America are the first to admit that and to be angry about it. Yes, that's been very surprising for a lot of us that that has been the case, but it is the case.

So I do think, though, that the more you embrace man -centeredness, yes, the more you are going to be queued up to affirm some formulation of the secular identity paradigm, that I need to be,

A, true to my authentic self, and you need to affirm me in my true self.

I do think that that is the spirit of the age today and broad form. That is secular or neo -pagan anthropology today in its simplest rendition.

And I think that that is going to co -opt man -centered

Christianity, so -called. So let that be said. The problem, Chris, is that there is actually, shockingly, a good deal of man -centered

Christianity in all camps. The spirit of the age has invaded the so -called

Reformed world, or even, if you want to use this formulation, Gospel -centered world, as much as it has invaded traditional

Arminianism. I might even say more than it has. So Satan has executed,

I don't know his playbook, I don't get to read it, but Satan has executed an absolutely devastating attack on Presbyterians and Baptists as well.

There are gay Christian leaders who would identify as Baptist and who would say they are

Reformed as well. And so, honestly, much as it shocks me, there is failure among numerous denominations and groups on these counts today.

Yes, and not to sound like I'm being overly boastful about the

Reformed faith, but usually when I have encountered Reformed people who are buying into these ideas of the spirit of the age, they are actually contradicting or abandoning, even if it's unconsciously, the roots of what it means to be

Reformed. Yes, and we've seen this happen a hundred years ago. We're in a new

Christianity and liberalism context. I think that anthropology is at the core of a lot of this.

The latest issue that is really dividing the Church is wokeness, this understanding of race that is driven by critical race theory and that effectively argues that America is basically a white supremacist order, and so in order to make any growth and change in America, we're all going to have to admit those of us who have benefited from white supremacy, that is, that we are incorrigibly racist at our core.

So we're in a new Christianity and liberalism context, but the fascinating thing here is that Fosdick and others come from so -called

Reformed circles ostensibly, and it is Princeton, the seminary that most funds conservative

Presbyterians over the decades, over the years, a hundred years ago, that is captive, taken captive and co -opted, and so that's not, this isn't me as a

Baptist saying, you know, the Presbyterians always go first or something like this in a bad sense, because Baptists get co -opted as well, so we don't need to be competitive here.

It is to say that it is not enough to have a good confessional statement.

It is not enough to, you know, have a strong liturgy in your Sunday services.

It is not enough to go to a seminary that at least claims, you know, the giants of the

Reformed faith. You have to be diligent to watch your life and your doctrine closely.

Every generation has to do that. And guess what? Here's a spoiler alert to recent church history in America and beyond.

Lots of denominations, lots of Christians, lots of churches didn't do that.

And many of them came with a Reformed price tag, but sadly they didn't live up to that heritage.

Amen. And by the way, I believe I failed to mention this exciting news to the anonymous listener and also to Christopher in Western Suffolk County, New York.

You have both won Re -Enchanting Humanity, A Theology of Mankind by our guest

Dr. Owen Strand. This is compliments of our friends at Christian Focus Publications, and these books will be mailed to you courtesy of Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

C -V as in Cumberland Valley, B -B -S for Bible Book Service dot com.

C -V -B -B -S dot com. And when we interview an author, those of you who don't win or if you win and you just want to buy extra copies, please rather than order them from the publisher, order them from C -V -B -B -S dot com because everybody wins that way.

They are a sponsor of the program, so the publishers don't lose out because they have to purchase the books from the publishers.

So that's C -V -B -B -S dot com. We thank them for always mailing out the winners in our audience, their books and Bibles and other things they win by submitting questions to our guests.

Okay, we have another listener, another listener who chooses to remain anonymous, and this anonymous listener says,

I have been very blessed for quite a while with the materials and speakers and recordings and videos provided by the

Gospel Coalition, and I know from reading your own bio that you have been involved very much with that organization, but I have been dismayed lately, to say the least, that there are quite a number of people that seem to be very much involved in promoting the woke movement.

Can you please explain how you can be ever in existence there while maintaining the views that you have been stating?

That's a good question. I have in the past been a contributing writer for TGC and really enjoyed getting to do that, but in the last year,

I had to leave that role. I determined that my writing for different outlets, including a little website that I work on with some peers,

I heard Nate Pikowitz on one of the ads earlier about NASB. I know he's well -known to you.

Nate and I are part of this group called ReferManda. I've just determined that that's more of where I should put my energies with writing and some of the commentary and speaking.

I can't speak to where exactly TGC leadership is on these matters because I'm not privy to that.

I've never spoken at a TGC conference or something like that, so I was never part of the board or anything major.

I was kind of way down on the list as a contributing writer in terms of affiliation with TGC, but again,

I do not have that affiliation any longer. So I can't speak specifically to wokeness.

I know that there's diversity, it seems like, among the personalities who make up some of the public faces of TGC.

It strikes me that there are individuals who would probably disagree on a good number of matters, including wokeness.

I won't name names, but I'm guessing listeners and others would be able to ascertain some of who

I'm thinking of. And I think what is taking place at TGC right now in terms of that diversity of public speech on these issues represents where Evangelicalism and even

Reformed Evangelicalism is right now. I think the same tensions are found in different denominations, different networks, publishing houses, and groups.

And I think, likely, in the future, the Evangelical future, there is going to be more definition along the lines of who holds to woke theology and who does not.

And I, for one, believe that we need much more clarity on wokeness.

We need to understand that wokeness as a system and a body of activism does not come from fundamentally

Christian roots. And as I have argued in a lecture series called Christianity and Wokeness that you can find on YouTube if you search that title,

Christianity and Wokeness, which is, yes, intentionally drawing off of Machen's famous title of his book

Christianity and Liberalism. Not that I am any Machen, but it seemed to me to be a kind of similar issue.

If you Google the Christianity and Wokeness lectures, you will hear me say in no uncertain terms that I believe that we need to reject wokeness as a system of thought, a secular system of thought.

And so my prayer in days ahead is that evangelical institutions, networks, parachurch outfits, and especially churches will not embrace wokeness, but will instead see that it co -ops biblical terminology and biblical concepts, and in fact ends up with a different system than the biblical gospel and biblical justice.

Amen. Well, thank you, Anonymous, and you have also won a free copy of Re -Enchanting

Humanity, a Theology of Mankind, compliments of Christian -focused publications, and compliments of cvbbs .com.

We'll be shipping it out to you. If you email me your full name and address, obviously we will not disclose that information on the air, because you have requested to remain anonymous, so don't worry about that.

So just make sure we get your full name and mailing address, so cvbbs .com,

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, can ship that out to you. We have B .B.

in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who asks, Can you please list some more of the aberrant views that otherwise

Orthodox Christians have about anthropology? And of course, assuming she doesn't, or he,

I don't know if B .B. is a man or a woman, I'm assuming B .B. doesn't mean

Eastern Orthodox, by saying Orthodox, but just biblically sound, but if you could. I'm sorry,

I think I missed the precise nature of the question. Listing some other aberrancies that are common amongst otherwise biblically sound

Christians. On the doctrine of anthropology? Yes. Yeah, I mean, a number of what we have said would come to mind, different understandings of justice.

We haven't talked a lot in depth on this particular program about, for example, transhumanism, to go into the category of technology, the idea that the human person should be augmented by technology to lead a greater existence.

Actually, transhumanism really gives way to what's called post -humanism, the idea that we're eventually going to upload,

I don't know how this works exactly, don't ask me, but we're going to upload our consciousness to the cloud, and then we'll be able to live in disembodied existence.

We'll be pure consciousness. That's the way that humanity is headed, and many Silicon Valley technologists believe, by the way, that they are going to eventually solve the problem, not just of human frailty, but of human death.

So transhumanism is a major competitor on the horizon as well.

When you talk about it, when you describe robot -human hybrids, for example, many people will recoil.

But here's something unsettling to think through on this particular issue, Chris. There's lots of places we could go, but I'll just go here for now.

Many of us are already in danger of living some kind of augmented reality existence by virtue of our devices.

So if you are checking your phone 60 to 70 times a day, you are already living in a kind of augmented reality.

If you can't have a 40 -minute conversation with a fellow church member or a friend without having reflexively checking your phone numerous times,

I could make a pretty good argument to you that you're already living in augmented reality. What I mean by that is, you are not able to function in the normal course of existence without relying on technology in some form to occupy your attention.

This is a major challenge. This is a major discipleship reality, and Christians who are raising their children on almost unfettered access to tablets, computers, and smartphones need to recognize that they are in real danger of raising their children in an augmented reality situation.

There are other matters we could mention. Skipping to a slightly less technological or ethical issue, we could talk about matters regarding the person of Christ.

Many people, many theologians in recent years have argued that Christ was peccable, that He was able to sin, and have argued in fact that the humanity that Christ assumed was a fallen humanity.

If you hold that view, one place you may go, and some do go, is that you will argue that Christ, in entering into all the human experience, yet without sin, experienced, for example, transgender desire and attraction to the same sex and these kinds of things, as listeners will expect, you're redefining what is sinful, even as you're defining

Christ in these terms, and yet suffice it to say that voices even in the

Reformed world have argued in the last year or so that Jesus experienced transgender instincts and same -sex desire.

That is a different Christ than the Biblical Christ, who I believe is impeccable. Yes, he was tempted in all things, but he was totally without sin, which means that the

Biblical Christ, the true Christ, never had sinful desire come from within his heart.

He didn't experience what want to cross -dress, he didn't want to commit pedophilia at any level, he didn't have heterosexual lust in any kind of sinful way, but this is another whole area that we're experiencing deficient anthropology in.

Yes, I think that many Christians who have confusion or even heretical concepts about Christ being tempted in all ways as we have, they use the term tempt, or tempted in a way that is commonly used, perhaps even most commonly used in our day and age, when that means you're mulling something over in your mind.

You know, you're considering and you're being aroused by the notion of something that is sinful, and you're mulling it over in your mind, and whether you acquiesce and bring that thought to fruition, or if you just keep it in your head, that's what they think tempted is, and they think that's what, unfortunately, they think that's what

Jesus was doing. Yeah, that's exactly right, Chris. That's helpful. People don't recognize that there are two kinds of temptation that the

Bible speaks of. It doesn't use this exact language, but it's speaking of these two situations. There's internal temptation,

James 1, 13 to 15, which comes from within, where we lure and entice ourselves into sin by our own sinful desires, and then there is external temptation, which is what

Jesus experiences in Matthew 4, as Satan tries to get him to fall. We have internal temptation, which is to say sinful temptation.

We tempt ourselves, even as we also experience external temptation, which is not necessarily sinful.

It's not necessarily sinful to have someone try to get you to sin, of course, because Jesus didn't sin.

Jesus did not have internal temptation, I believe. He had no internal compulsion to sin, at all, of a

James 1 kind, but he definitely did experience external temptation and resisted it perfectly.

Sometimes people will say, well, Stran, that's an interesting two -fold understanding of temptation, but I believe in this kind of real, authentic human

Jesus who really experienced temptation, and so, therefore, he had to have experienced a desire to cross -dress or commit bestiality or homosexual sin or that kind of thing, and what we need to say very clearly in response to this is no.

Jesus experienced temptation unlike any of us, because he experienced it to the full, without giving in.

In other words, as Leon Morris makes clear, he felt the pull of temptation much more strongly than we ever will, because he resisted it fully, whereas we give in at,

I don't know, the one -third point or the halfway mark. Jesus didn't. Well, B .B.,

make sure we have your full mailing address so we can get Re -Enchanting Humanity, The Theology of Mankind by Owen Stran to you.

Compliments of the publishers, Christian Focus Publications, and also compliments of CVBBS .com,

Cumberland Riley, Bible Book Service. In fact, since you apparently live in Cumberland Valley, perhaps you could even stop by CVBBS and pick up the copy.

They should have them by tomorrow. Well, I want you now to have five minutes of uninterrupted time where you can summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today.

I think I want our listeners to understand that they are made in the image of God, that they are made by God to know

God, but that our sin has derailed us from that glorious cosmic project, and so we're all depraved in our sin.

We're not just sinful. We don't just sample sin occasionally, and God is not simply trying to get us to stop committing sinful behavior and sinful actions.

God wants to redeem our entire person, and the Gospel is that powerful.

The Gospel redeems our whole person and frees us from being enslaved to sin at every level in our mind, in our identity, in our words, in our actions.

What we need to recognize, though, is that we're not simply redeemed, we're not simply regenerated, we're not simply converted, we're not simply justified by faith.

All of that is true. We're adopted, we're reconciled, we're cleansed, and on and on the salvific metaphors go, but we are also remade in the image of Christ, so we are all fully an image -bearer in Adam.

I don't believe that the image of God is diminished, lost, tarnished, or emptied in the human person following Adam's fall.

I think the ontology of the human person being made in God's image holds steady both before and after the fall, even as the ontology of this world being the world before the fall and the same world after the fall holds steady.

That means, then, that every human person is fully an image -bearer, so when you are looking at a tiny baby in the

NICU ward, a baby that cannot keep itself alive has to be on, strapped to a machine to keep itself alive.

You are looking at a tiny, frail, little image -bearer.

And when you go to a nursing home to visit a loved one or a church member, let's say a person who does not even recognize you anymore, let's say somebody who suffers from Alzheimer's, a beloved family member, and again, cannot feed themselves or even care for themselves in numerous ways, you are still looking at an image -bearer.

So that doctrine, the image of God, is what is missing from contemporary discourse and contemporary thinking.

In fact, the image of God has been extracted from thinking on the human person today, and that is why the human person in particular is disenchanted today.

It's because we've lost the Imago Dei in terms of the human person as defining the human person.

But actually, it's not enough simply to affirm that every person is made in God's image. 1 Corinthians 11, 7, of course, saying that the man is the image and glory of God.

I think that's referring to creation order, so I think it's still appropriate to say that the man and the woman are alike image -bearers.

Nonetheless, it's clear there that the man is the image and glory of God, even in the post -fall context.

All of this means that it can't be enough simply to affirm that we are image -bearers.

Now we need to affirm as Christians along the lines of our Gospel Confession that the

Gospel now frees us from being oriented to Adam's death to being remade in the image of Christ and being oriented to the new heavens and new earth.

So it's not that the Gospel simply restores us to our former order of existence,

Adamic humanity. The Gospel, contrary to the way we often talk in evangelical circles and preach from evangelical pulpits, actually orders us to the new humanity, to the true human, you could say it that way, to Jesus Christ.

So again, being saved does not mean being restored to Adam. Being saved means being caught up in the escalation and consummation of Christic humanity.

It means now that you're being changed from one degree of glory to another into the image of Jesus Christ, 2

Corinthians 3 .18. So the thrust of the Gospel and redemptive history is not a return to Eden, though we often talk that way and think that way.

It is that the Gospel now orients us to the new and better Eden, and the new and better Adam, the second

Adam, Jesus Christ. That is what every person desperately needs.

We need not simply to know that we're an image bearer. That's extremely important. There's tremendous cash value in knowing that.

But we actually need now to know the much greater truth that we can be remade in the image of Jesus Christ and thus escape everlasting judgment, which we fully deserve, and know everlasting glory in the person, through the work of Jesus Christ, by the power of the

Holy Spirit, all by the Father's plan and to His glory. Amen. And by the way, folks, because our guest,

Owen Strand, mentioned something related to this book, if you look up on the

Iron Sharpens Iron radio website in the archive, and you type in the name David Herbert, I interviewed

David some time ago on his book Becoming God, Transhumanism, and the Quest for Cybernetic Immortality.

You might find that interesting. Owen Strand, can you please give our listeners any contact information you care to share?

Yeah. Probably the best place to go would be my Twitter account, which I update pretty regularly.

That's at O -S -T -R -A -C -H -A -N at O -S -T -R -A -C -H -A -N.

I have a podcast called City of God that you can find on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

City of God. So those are two places folks can go. And the

Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary is M -B -T -S dot

E -D -U, right? M -B -T -S dot E -D -U. That's exactly right. And I run a center, as you mentioned kindly, already called the

Center for Public Theology. So if folks want to read my writing or hear my podcast there, they can just go to C -P -T dot

M -B -T -S dot E -D -U. Great. Well, Owen, I definitely want to have you back in the program again very soon.

And I'll send you an email with a list of dates where we can get you scheduled again if you are willing and, of course, if God is willing.

You are very kind. Thank you so much for having me on and for your great questions. I really appreciate it. Thank you, brother.

And folks, please don't go away because Owen had to leave a little early today to meet with family during an important event that they are involved in.

So please don't go away because I'm going to air my very brief station break and then close the show with some final words.

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