I Hear Dead People ***with Audiobook Narrator David K. Martin***

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Sometimes I feel the weight of the world fall down on me, so heavy

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And I need a friendly voice with some good theology

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Calvinistic speaking So I mix a manly drink Pepsi Chupacabra And I hit the

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YouTube link Don't say hit, that sounds violent And I feel my troubles all melt away

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It's your Calvinist Podcast with Keith Barsky Beards and bowties, laughs till sunrise

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It's your Calvinist Podcast with Keith Barsky He's not like most

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Calvinists, he's nice Your Calvinist Podcast is filmed before a live studio audience

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Welcome to Your Calvinist Podcast My name is Keith Barsky and I am your Calvinist I'm glad to have you with me today

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And I'm excited to welcome back a good friend to the show And the person who

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I think he's been on now three times My good friend David K.

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Martin He is an audio book narrator He is a person who

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I have had on the show several times So if you've watched the show, if you've been a consistent listener for the last few years

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You've seen David and I together talking Usually though we're talking to an author

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Someone that he has read their book But today I'm going to be talking to him Because the author of the book that he read is no longer with us

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David has brought B .B. Warfield back to life And so David, thank you for being with me on the show today

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Thank you I love the face you made when I said you brought B .B. Warfield back to life

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And the title of the show is I Speak Dead People And the reason for that of course is because you did produce an audio book

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Of an author who is again with the Lord He's no longer with us

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So right away out of the gate I just want to reintroduce you to our audience And ask you a quick few questions

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Number one, tell us a little bit about yourself Tell us where you go to church How you got into doing audio books

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And why you do what you do Okay I live near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania I am a member of Grace Bible Fellowship Church there

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Nothing I say here is in any way an official statement by them And I am not an officer or otherwise in charge in any way there

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So I'm just telling you my affiliation Not claiming any that I'm speaking on their behalf in any way Sure I have been recording audio books for I think four years now

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But it's getting fuzzy I have a background in college with a

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Bachelor of Arts In integrative arts from Penn State University Which I jokingly call the choose your own adventure major It's a major which

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I worked with an advisor To put together a number of things that interested me Including some arts, art history, media, photography

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Just a bunch of things that we were able to work together In what we claimed was a coherent major And you know, they gave me a degree for it

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I have worked as I've sold cameras I have worked as a photo retoucher

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I have taught people how to use cameras I have worked as a forensic photographer in a crime lab

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I have been a social security disability claims adjudicator I have worked in a call center where I call people up and say

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Hello, my name is David Martin and I'm calling with so and so And I'd like to ask your opinion today about some political candidates

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And most recently You have a perfect voice for that one I've heard those calls before And you know, 99 out of 100 people hang up on you

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But that one person is one of the people who ends up being part of the We surveyed 3 ,000 Americans and they said

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And then most recently now I'm an audiobook narrator And I really got into it as an excuse to read books

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Yeah, sounds like a great way to enjoy the book As well as be able to produce it for someone else

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And let me ask you a question Because I don't think I've ever asked you this before Do you do exclusively Christian audiobooks?

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Or do you sort of kind of widen yourself out to other areas? I do not do exclusively

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Christian audiobooks But I do I didn't set out to do that The first book

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I recorded was a strictly secular book On interviewing for working at Amazon That's actually my best -selling book to date

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People are still buying copies of it Thank you Helps keep the lights on And I've also done another book that is on the subject of product marketing

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A couple years ago The problem I ran into when

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I started out I didn't set out to be a Christian A narrator of Christian audiobooks The problem

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I ran into is I kept finding I would have a crisis of conscience With the audition material or in some cases even books

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I was offered Where I just didn't want to read what I saw I wasn't comfortable reading the language or the situations described

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And I just didn't want to do it And so that kept funneling me more and more into the Christian space

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And then even more specifically into reformed or reformed adjacent theology For the most part

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Because even within the Christian space There were things I just didn't want to touch So that's sort of where I've ended up If you have a clean secular book on business or history

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Or pretty much any topic It could be fiction as well I would probably be happy to record it for an appropriate fee

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But the limitation I've ran into is The publishing industry for the most part

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Has absolutely no limitations on what content they'll publish In terms of sex scenes and foul language and profanity and all that And I just wasn't comfortable with it

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And I wasn't going to go against my conscience To force myself to record something I just wasn't feeling right about doing

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Sure, that's great And it's awesome that you had the liberty of conscience to do that Is this a self -employment thing?

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And I'm just curious because I'm curious about how you do this Is this sort of your business and the author contacts you

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Or the publisher contacts you? How does that work? I know you come through Audible So are you employed by Audible?

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How does that work? I'm not employed by Audible It is all freelance work

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And pretty much the whole audiobook industry is freelance work In the case of independently published books

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I work directly typically with the author Because the author is the rights holder The rights holder for a book published by a publishing company

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Is typically the publisher So in that case I'm working for the publisher Not for the author

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And in fact it's considered unprofessional Within the audiobook industry If you're working for a publisher rights holder

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To even contact the author Because the author has as part of their contract

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Given their audio rights Sold their audio rights to the publisher And they no longer have a say

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Unless the publisher chooses to give it to the author In who or how that book is voiced

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So it depends on who the rights holder is on the book For a publisher it's the publisher For an independent author it's typically the author

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Awesome, awesome And that's interesting to know And like I said, I know I want to get to the plan of salvation

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That's really what we're talking about today But you're just such an interesting person And I know, I want to tell you

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My wife was excited that I was having you on today Because not only are you interesting

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On the subject of audiobooks But you're a very funny individual Your Facebook posts just cause her a lot of laughter

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When you became my friend on Facebook I guess she friended you as well And when I told her

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I said, yeah, I'm interviewing David again On the show And she goes, you mean the meme guy? So she thinks, so that's you

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You're the meme lord of Facebook Can't stand that term

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Oh, I'm sorry But I do enjoy stealing

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In quotes there And resharing others' memes I always try to honor the watermark If there's one there of whoever posted it originally

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And occasionally come up with a few of my own Gotcha Well here's one you came up with Just to, for the audience's sake

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This is One from the office And the people can read it on the screen

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But for those who are listening It says, guess who just ordered Hodge's book on Romans And then it's one of the characters

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Saying Is it Charles Hodge or Zane Hodge Now for people in the audience Who don't get that What's the difference there

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Charles Hodge's was Princeton theologian Staunch Presbyterian Very much in the

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Reform tradition And Zane Hodge's taught a little later At Dallas Theological Seminary And I don't know as much about him

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But dispensational And very much a proponent of the Free grace movement from what I understand

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Versus the more lordship Salvation arena that someone like John MacArthur is in Gotcha So it would be a much different book on Romans Dramatically different understanding of What Romans means

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Not saying either of them Is perfect necessarily Not saying either of them is wholly wrong

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But certainly I would have a much stronger affinity For and appreciation of one than the other

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And Those are two very different books Both in terms of content and overall helpfulness

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Yeah Now I asked you about your church earlier Because I know you're not endorsing your church

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But just to show you are a churchman Would you consider yourself Reformed in your theology

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Or are you kind of in the middle And you don't have to be a Calvinist To be on my Calvinist show

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But where do you land on that I am broadly in sympathy

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With the Reform tradition I have been in the past a member of a Reformed Baptist church

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The church I am at now does not Describe itself as Reformed Baptist And we can get into a whole other discussion

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R. Scott Clark would be Shouting there's no such thing as a Reformed Baptist That's a whole other discussion

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But the church where I am now Teaches the doctrines of grace And it's probably the closest thing you'd

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Find to a Reformed Baptist church that's not a Reformed Baptist church. Interestingly the denomination Came out of a

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Mennonite background historically And I don't know all the History because I came into this

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Comparatively recently But from what little I've learned about it It was sort of a Group of Mennonite men who wanted

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To be more evangelistic And have more of an outreach And so they ended up forming a

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Separate organization, a separate church And then They were coming from sort of the

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Anabaptist tradition, a very Pietistic sort of background And over the

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Course of a few decades in the 20th Century there was a doctrinal Shift as more and more of the

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Young men were being trained and then brought Into the church through Reformed or Reformed -ish seminaries

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To the point where now It's very close To something like what you would find in Say the 1689

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Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, although we are Not, again, a Reformed Baptist denomination

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Awesome. Well that Leads me to my Would You Rather question And people who listen to the show often know that I Like to throw out these

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Would You Rathers And the Would You Rather this Week is going to be one that I often ask

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People when I'm sort of Just kind of having a question About church backgrounds and things like That and I'm Baptist and I'm Reformed even though Like you said,

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R. Scott Clark, hard to say, Wouldn't allow for me to be a Reformed Baptist So I just say

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I'm a Calvinistic Baptist But let's say you moved to a Let's say you moved to a small town

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For whatever reason, you had to Move to a small town and in that town there was Only two churches. There was the

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Evangelical Southern Baptist Church But it was not Reformed or it was The Presbyterian Church which

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Obviously would be Reformed but also would be Covenant theology with full

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Understanding of baptizing Children and covenant families And you had to make a choice for you

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And your family to choose one Of those churches, all things being equal in regard To the fact that We're not considering things like size and things like that We're just saying just on the basis of that Theology, would you be more likely to Go to the

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Evangelical Southern Baptist Church and just sort of understand that They don't hold to Calvinism or would you be more Likely to go to the

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Calvinistic church Understanding that you're going to disagree on The baptism issue? I would probably visit both

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Because it's really going to be down to The specifics of how that all Shakes out in each congregation

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I Can sit under preaching that is not Explicitly Calvinistic as long as it's not Militantly Arminian, I guess might be the way to put it

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Sure But I'm probably going to be more comfortable With the sermons coming from the

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Presbyterian Pulpit. I have been a Presbyterian I was actually baptized in a Presbyterian church As an adult by Immersion.

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Long story, not going to get into it Here But I have been a member of a

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Presbyterian Church. I have great respect And love for a lot of Presbyterian theology That's probably as obvious by some of the

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Books I've recorded. I just Think they're wrong about a couple things Including chiefly

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The proper subjects Of baptism and I'm not I'm not convinced

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That the Presbyterian form of Church government is the best Or certainly that it's required by Scripture.

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Not that it's necessarily bad Awesome Well I think that's helpful and again

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It helps the audience get to know you a little bit better And we're going to go In just a moment and talk about the

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Audiobook that is the subject Of today's show and that is the plan of Salvation by B .B.

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Warfield. But before we do that I have a very quick Message that I'd like To share with the audience so we'll be

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Back in about one minute Hey guys I just want to quickly say thank you for Watching this episode and if you're enjoying it

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Please hit the thumbs up button. If you're not Enjoying it hit the thumbs down button Twice. Also if you

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Haven't already please subscribe to the channel It really helps us out. And some of you've Asked about how to support the channel

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If you'd like to support us you can go to buymeacoffee .com slash yourcalvinist And leave a donation

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Most importantly we want to make sure That everybody who hears this podcast hears The gospel. The word gospel means

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Good news and that good news Has to be preceded by some bad news And the bad news is this

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That we are all sinners. Sin is Breaking God's law so we stand guilty Before the Lord of the universe

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But the good news is God sent his son Into the world to pay the penalty for everyone Who would believe in him

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Jesus came into the world, lived a perfect Life and he died a substitutionary death For everyone who will believe

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And he calls us all to repent of our sin To turn from our unbelief And trust in him as Lord and Savior And if you've never done that I encourage you to do so today

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Now back to the show And we're back. Alright Well David we are talking

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Today about a specific book And this is the book I'll put the picture up on the screen here

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It's called The Plan of Salvation By B .B. Warfield And can you tell us a little bit

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About when this book was written and who B .B. Warfield is for those who may Not know. Sure And I'm going to cheat a little bit here by pulling up On my screen my description of The book that I wrote for Audible Which includes a gross

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Typo It's out there for everyone to see And then I'm also going to check

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Wikipedia quickly For the dates here so I'm totally Cheating on this because I'm terrible at Memorizing details like this

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So The description that I came up with For Audible because this is a Self -started project.

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A lot of times I'm recording Something for an author or a publisher Who is asking me to record for Them.

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This is something that I wanted to record And put out there myself so I found a Distributor who would put out a book that was

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Originally coming from the public domain And so I had to come up with everything. I came up with The cover art and the description and all that And I managed to put a typo in The first couple of words of my description

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And not catch it when I sent it out So right now on Audible it says In five of lectures

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In five lectures delivered at Princeton Seminary during the summer of 1914 B .B.

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Warfield used A progressive series of corrections To explain the divine Dealing with man which ends in His salvation.

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Starting with the Divide between naturalism and supernaturalism Continuing to sacerdotalism And evangelicalism and on through Universalistic versus Particularistic views

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Warfield emphasized complete dependence upon God and then I concluded With what is the closing

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Or nearly the closing sentence of the book It is only the Calvinist that has Warrant to believe in salvation

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Whether of the individual or Of the world. Which is a really Bold and really dramatic statement

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I just quoted it verbatim from The book. Warfield was A professor of reformed theology at Princeton Seminary He lived from 1851 to 1921.

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So we're talking Back when Princeton was A bastion of Presbyterian theology

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Reformed Presbyterian theology Thoroughly orthodox as We would think of the term today for Orthodox Presbyterianism He's coming in the line

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Of before him Alexander Archibald Hodge and then Charles Hodge and then

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Charles Hodge's Son whom he named for his mentor Alexander Archibald Hodge I just referenced

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Charles Hodge in that one meme that you put up There. These are all Writers who are solid

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Presbyterians Whose commentaries are still quoted today Referenced today and that sort of thing In the 19th

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Century they're fighting the influx Of German liberalism especially That's coming across the

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Pond and getting Into this sort of idea that The Bible is more about Jesus teaching how to be a good

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Person and it's Sort of mythologized One of Warfield's Friends at Princeton would

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Be J. Gresson Machen Who's one of his books I've also recorded, great book What is Faith And Machen would go on to write the book

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The Virgin Birth of Christ Defending the literal virgin birth of Christ Because that was very much an issue

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When you're looking at this sort of Liberal theology that was starting To encroach there

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Warfield would be the last Principle of Princeton Theological Seminary After him he was succeeded by Francis Landy Patton who would be the first President of the seminary

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And then shortly after that A more conservative faction Of Presbyterians which included

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J. Gresson Machen would Break off and end up founding What is now Westminster Theological Seminary And in the process they were also

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Leaving the Presbyterian Church denomination that they were part of And founded what became the

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Orthodox Presbyterian Church See that's a lot of great history And a lot of people don't realize that because If you told someone you were going to Princeton Today to go to seminary

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You would probably get a pretty strong Side eye because people would be thinking That you're going to get a very

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Liberal, very Anti -supernatural almost Education That's my understanding of it

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I'm sorry I didn't mean to cut you off there No no no But to think that that seminary

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Was once Like you said a bastion of Reformed Theology And solid Reformed Theology that's still being

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Quoted today, a lot of people don't realize That, a lot of people don't realize the shift That took place In fact in a couple weeks

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I'm going to be Interviewing a young man Josh Barzon who's been on with me before And he's going to Come on to talk about The rise in Fundamentalism that happened as a

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Result of the liberal downturn And there was this sort of divide and it Seems to still be a wide

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Divide that seems to at times be ever Widening between the liberals and the Fundamentalists and what the differences

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Are there and so it's Interesting to look back at that history and to see Kind of where it all

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Started and where it all shakes out And has shook out over the last Hundred years so You mentioned that you did

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This as a self starter project And this book is in the public Domain so this

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Allowed you to do this without having To seek any approval or any Having to get you know any permissions

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Or anything you were able to do this And sort of bring this book back to life Right now and In fairness somebody else also recorded this

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And has it on audible and I did not realize That when I started the project I have a list Of books I have

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I'll See a book and I think I wonder if anybody Recorded that and I'll add it to my list of Unrecorded and I'll just keep

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Updating that list and I hadn't Checked recently enough on this book when I started recording it so that by the time

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I Released it I found there was a recording that had been out For a couple months and I wasn't trying to step on Whoever that person's toes are

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Just ended up that I didn't realize that there was Already an option out there or I would have chosen something Else for you know pragmatic reasons

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Because I'm not I'm not interested in Splitting my sales with somebody else I Want to sell this I want to make a few dollars

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By people downloading this and listening To it and having as part of their library And so you know there's that pragmatic

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Issue and there's also just the you know like I'm not I'm not looking to pick a fight with anybody Here by recording something that somebody else did

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But in God's providence I didn't Realize it was already out there so I went ahead and I got the approval from the distributor

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That I was going to use and I recorded it And got it all edited and Came up with some cover art and Sent it out there with the

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Incorrect audible description and everything the Typo in the description and everything Well I'm sure people understand

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That and like I said hopefully There won't be any fights picked Understand that things like that just happen

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In the providence of God Things like that happen as you said And speaking of the providence

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Of God as I was going through the book Because you know in preparation for Today's show I did get a chance

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To listen to it and I will say this for Those who are thinking of it it's very Accessible it's only a three hour

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Audiobook I think wasn't that The total time or It was relatively short

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Yeah you're right Yeah right at three hours so I mean for somebody like me I do an hour round Trip to the office every day it's 30 minutes to the office 30 minutes home and so You know three days and I'm through The book and And actually

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I listen I listen and I know this is the For audiobook narrators this is The great this is the great

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Sin so I have to be careful I listen at one And a half speed and I understand that Not I'm fine with that I know some narrators know that takes away from the

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Artistic you know expression of the voice and everything But I'm just thankful to Be able to speed it up a little bit

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And hear it like I said so really it was Really less than two days for me To listen to the entire book

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And was very encouraged By it I'm in fact I have a few Questions for you about it and We're going to kind of talk through what it talks

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About and maybe you and I can banter A little bit about our thoughts But I was so surprised

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How much Warfield Really Shot in on Pelagianism as the

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Really the marking Post between the two Views and you know

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I've heard Sproul Talk about that and I've seen it obviously And other Conversations About Pelagius and There's a big

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Argument right now that Pelagius has been misunderstood That he was misrepresented by Augustine And All of those

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You smile so I'm assuming you've heard some of these arguments Maybe a little bit and I'm not

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By smiling I'm not saying I disagree necessarily I'm smiling because there's always a disagreement About something and sometimes

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I'm part of it Sometimes not to my better Okay well I think That it raises

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Some questions and this Thursday Coming up I'm going to be speaking At the Why Calvinism conference

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And I'm actually going to be addressing What was the connecting

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Point between Calvin and Luther my title Of my message is the Calvinism of Luther Which is a total clickbait

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Title because you know obviously Luther came before Calvin But the idea is that Calvin and Luther were joined by a

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By a fairly Unified anthropology And their anthropology was very

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Augustine And that is that man is Unable apart From God's grace

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To do anything good toward God And so as I was listening to the Book I was hearing so much

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Of that from Warfield's pen Or from your voice which is

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Echoing obviously Warfield's pen And so Did you notice that pick up on that When you were reading through it

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Did that strike you at all that that Was the main issue because when somebody Says we're going to talk about the plan of salvation

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Often my thought is we're going to talk about Faith and we're going to talk about how that Relates to works but he really didn't

26:20

He really got to the heart of it Yeah yeah Exactly that's

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Obviously I read Through the book a couple times and I recorded it And then I partially re -listened to it

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Yesterday and I just Didn't have time to finish it to listen to it again But yeah he's going back to Pelagianism versus Augustinianism being the fundamental

26:41

Dichotomy within what Would call itself Christianity and he's Saying Pelagianism is outside of Christianity essentially

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But he's He's saying within what we would People would call themselves Christian You're either

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Augustinian or you're Pelagian Or you're Semi -Pelagian Or you're Semi -Semi -Pelagian That was a term

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I hadn't heard actually Hearing that in your book made its way into My notes in fact

27:06

Just another feather in your cap Your sermon Your book made it into my sermon last week

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Because I had listened to it before the sermon And so I mentioned Just how

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In depth in just a Three hour book Warfield was able to dig down Really into the depth and say

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Here's the real issues and I was just Talking in the sermon about how we're so superficial Oftentimes with our faith

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And men who lived a hundred years ago Without the advent Of internet and computers and all these

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Things we're still able to dig into the minds Of these things and really pull out the gold And silver that we often leave

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Left on the floor because we just aren't Willing to go and dig so deep And so that's why I pointed it out in the sermon

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But also I was thinking Just For my sermon this week

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I'm going to mention it Again that Warfield's Reference is There's Pelagianism There's Augustinianism There's Semi -Pelagianism and then what he called

28:04

Semi -Semi -Pelagianism And I'm not even sure I really understand Where the lines would be drawn

28:10

But that was a new one on me Semi -Semi -Pelagian Yeah I think he was saying that's

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That was how he was characterizing essentially The Council of Trent where they ended up there As being

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Semi -Semi -Pelagianism Where there's Lip service paid to justification by faith

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And it all being Of God But then you start getting back into this

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Issue of works Being back -added into it and Imparted good

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Works You know It's that whole mess you start getting into When you look at Roman Catholic theology

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Historically as well as what it is today Post -Vatican too And that's a whole realm that I know teensy -teensy -tiny

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Little bit about and I can't really comment on it All that knowledgeably But yeah he's essentially saying that over time

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The church Renounced Pelagianism And then it crept back toward it into Semi -Pelagianism

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And then it renounced Semi -Pelagianism And then it crept back toward it with Semi -Semi -Pelagianism

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And that's where it got stuck And that's why And he's saying essentially that's why the

29:16

Reformation Came about. You know Luther was an Augustinian monk. Luther is trained in the Augustinian tradition

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And he's looking At Augustine and he's reading the Bible And he's listening to what he's

29:29

Being taught and he's saying these do not add up You know if you look at what Augustine Says here and you look at what

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Holy Scripture says Here these Issues from these other things From tradition and the magisterial

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Teaching of the church are not Agreeing with what Augustine A doctor of the church or you know

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A church father is teaching The founder of my order is teaching And what the Bible more importantly is teaching

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Because ultimately The Bible is our standard for everything And he's saying we can't

29:59

Look to the church to Reinterpret the Bible when we see the Bible Is clearly saying something different That's that whole issue of sola scriptura

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Which is one of the hallmarks of the Reformation Five solas Yeah I want to read the quote that I do have for my

30:15

Sermon on Luther This was directly taken from The audio book. In fact I don't have a

30:20

Hard copy of the book. I only have Your audio book So I had to go back a couple of times

30:28

To get The actual quote I'll put in a plug here This is unsolicited, uncompensated

30:34

They don't know I'm saying this But monergism .org I believe that's the correct website Monergism has a great

30:41

PDF Of it that's searchable And easily readable I did not read from that because If they changed anything, and I don't know that they did

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But if they changed anything I didn't want there to be An issue of me not using the original And using their potentially copyright

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Or just otherwise you know Intellectual property or It's in any way proprietary to them

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So I actually used a copy from Open Library It's a scan from an Originally published copy.

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But if you want an Easy to read copy where you're not looking at Yellowed pages from a Sometimes kind of blurry

31:12

PDF image Monergism has a great copy of it Oh that's cool That's very helpful.

31:18

I may look that up just so that I can Actually, because usually in my notes Even though I don't say it when I'm preaching I'll quote someone but I won't say this came from this book

31:25

Or whatever, but I have it in my notes In case I ever have to go back and cite it You know, and be able to do that But here is the

31:33

Here's the actual quote And it's From the book, from Warfield's book

31:39

It says, quote, the Reformation Is nothing more than Augustinianism coming into Its rights

31:48

And so, again The Reformation is nothing more than Augustinianism Coming into its rights

31:53

And I would agree With that. I would agree that even though There are very many

31:59

Areas where we would disagree with Augustin The heart of The Reformation, which is

32:05

The nature of man And the nature of God. Well, we'll Turn that around. The nature of God and the nature of man

32:11

The holiness of God, the sinfulness of man How do you rectify and reconcile The two? Is it through some

32:17

Sacerdotal church priesthood Model or is it through justification By faith alone and Christ alone?

32:23

That's the heart of the divide And it goes back to Augustin's Recognition that man is

32:29

Unable to do these things And again, this is the heart of the Issue today. Even today

32:35

Even in the moment where we're at right now I can guarantee you Leighton Flowers is either on A video or making a video

32:44

And I tease Leighton and I'm going to see him in a couple days I'm going to buy his dinner

32:49

Because I'm looking forward to just spending some time Talking to him and I'm going to say Listen, let's have a conversation

32:56

But His contention Is that we have misrepresented

33:03

Pelagius That Pelagius's position Is just not What we have said it is

33:09

But then it seems as if When he begins to explain his position It sounds very much like what we have said

33:14

Pelagianism Is all along So, you know, and Again, I know this isn't really the subject of our

33:21

Discussion, but what are your thoughts on that Larger conversation about what Pelagian Really believe? You've read a lot of books, obviously

33:27

You're not only a reader But you're a speaker of the written word Or a narrator of the written word

33:33

What are your thoughts on I'm going to punt, I'm not going to Comment other than that I think you're probably right

33:39

Okay, fair enough And I'm uttering a post there, but you were Talking really about my wonderful voice

33:44

I'm allowed to say that I think you're right on that one Whatever your position is, you're probably right I just wanted to correct myself here

33:50

It's monergism .com Monergism .org gave me a safety warning Don't go there, so I didn't

33:56

I don't know, my browser says that's something Not acceptable But monergism .com

34:02

And if you do a Google search you can find there The plan of salvation through them Along with an extraordinary number of other

34:08

Wonderful works Such a great website Gotcha As far as the whole

34:14

Pelagian controversy And all that, I don't I have not read anything By Pelagius And The little

34:24

I've read about the controversy I'm not prepared To say for sure that Pelagius is or Has not been misrepresented

34:31

I guess I would probably Come down on the side of thinking he probably Has been quoted accurately

34:37

Enough or characterized accurately Enough that we can see what the problem Is with what he taught

34:42

And teachers that I respect Like Warfield have looked at Pelagius And this is a guy who would have

34:49

Actually read what Pelagius wrote Probably in the original language And had a problem with it and said

34:54

This is clearly not Accepting the sovereignty of God as taught In the Bible That's part of the issue, it's sovereignty

35:02

It's also that issue of Monergism versus synergism Do we in any sense

35:08

In any way have any part In saving ourselves And if there's even an iota

35:14

Of that, then it's synergism It's not all of God You know, it's You get into Ephesians 2 .9

35:22

Where now suddenly you have something to boast about Because God did most of it God did some of it

35:28

You've got all the different flavors anywhere From full on Pelagianism down to Arminianism or Amaraldianism Or whatever, where God is doing

35:36

Most of it but there's a tiny little bit Left for the individual But no matter how you slice that What you end up with is having something to boast

35:44

About and so essentially Ephesians 2 .9 is no Longer in effect where you're saying

35:51

You know All of God lest anyone should boast Yeah And my thought, and again

35:58

I know this is again taking us down A little rabbit hole here And I Would wonder how someone would

36:05

Respond to this if they said Pelagius has been misrepresented I say okay, let's just say that May be the case

36:12

Is it not accurate though To say that Pelagianism Has become a term

36:19

Which references something So divorcing it from the name We're just saying this is what this is

36:25

It's a person who believes That man ultimately has a libertarian Free will, he's able to do good toward God Apart from divine effectual

36:33

Grace, that's what we mean Call it what you want A rose by any other name is still a sweet It's a fair point though about the names

36:41

The person that Something is named after, because Warfield gets into that with the whole issue of Lutheranism He talks about Luther's Beliefs and writings, and then he

36:51

Basically says, and then Came Melanchthon, and then he Talks about Lutheran theologians who have

36:58

In Warfield's View, basically turned Lutheranism back toward A type of synergism

37:04

I am totally unqualified To comment on Lutheranism Today, or Lutheranism during Warfield's Time, I'm not making that Accusation of myself,

37:15

I'm saying That's what Warfield is Teaching in his book there But he's saying that Lutheranism as he knew it then in the early 20th century is not

37:25

Lutheran, it's not Of Luther, it's more Melanchthonism And that, I tell

37:31

You what, I hope I'm looking, I'm actually writing A note about that, as you were saying

37:37

It, I'm like, that is good, what you Just said is a perfect analogy To what I'm saying, and maybe it's something

37:43

That needs to be said Because I'm going to be talking about this in my message I'm actually going to be addressing the fact that hey

37:49

Yeah We're connected to Augustine, we have to Admit that, right, and therefore we're

37:54

Connected to the Pelagian controversy with Augustine, and do we know everything That Pelagius ever said or taught?

38:01

No, and I'm sure Many of the things that he wrote are no longer With us, just like many of the things that many people have

38:07

Written, you know, very few things are Kept down through the ages And valued to the point where people

38:13

Will keep them and Keep a repository Of them for us to have, and so Yeah, we have to, we're limited

38:20

On what we know, but what you Just said, I had a Lutheran Pastor say that to me on the show

38:26

It was Topani Who's a Lutheran pastor in The UK, he said

38:33

We are Lutheran But that does not mean that we believe what Luther Taught, and I thought that's

38:38

Such an interesting way of saying It, but he was right, Lutherans don't Is that your Bowtie Dialogues episode?

38:45

It was, it was I've been meaning to watch it, it's sitting there in my queue Along with a million other things that I want to watch or Listen to, but, you know, it's

38:52

Interesting that he's acknowledging that too, I Didn't, I know a few Lutherans, but I don't typically talk theology

38:58

With them, and I didn't know if that's really something That's discussed or acknowledged much within Lutheranism today. Well, he said

39:04

He said that their Governing document, the Book of Concord Is, they recognize

39:10

That it has areas where Luther may have said something different Because, and his argument was

39:16

Luther He said if you combine everything Luther wrote He was publishing a new book, like, every Two weeks, like, he wrote so much

39:22

And that's probably an exaggeration But maybe not too much of an exaggeration Because he just wrote so much

39:28

The voluminous writings that came from him And therefore, to say Well, Luther believed

39:34

This, and come down hard And fast on specifically what He believed, sometimes hard because he

39:40

Had so much that he did, it's almost Impossible to say for certain In some areas where he

39:46

Would have landed. So... Sure, and I wonder too if there's maybe a certain Pragmatic element there because While Luther was great in some areas

39:54

He was not great in other areas By pretty much any Christian measure Including his pretty

40:00

Vicious antisemitism later in his life Which, a Different book that I recorded actually had some quotes from Luther And talks about that a bit

40:09

It's interesting that It really seems to have stemmed From his disappointment that he was

40:14

Unable to convert the Jews That he knew in his time It wasn't sort of a

40:20

He hated the Jews as Jews, he hated the Jews as Rejecting Christ when he

40:26

Presented it Now that doesn't mean that His vicious words are okay by any means

40:32

But it's sort of a little Different from what we think of as Typical antisemitism that we encounter

40:38

Today. But certainly I can completely understand A Lutheran today wanting to disassociate himself

40:44

From that. You know, at the same time I'd like to address Machen Machen apparently was quite racist

40:50

I understand that Just from reading a bit about him That he was opposed to Integration at the seminary

40:58

And he actually fought with Warfield over this Warfield wrote in support Of integration, and Machen Who was his buddy, was at the same time

41:06

Saying, no, that's not acceptable We can't have those people with us So, you know You're always going to have some level

41:14

Of feet of clay of your heroes Sometimes Bigger than others But I guess that's a whole other discussion in itself

41:22

No, and I love The term feet of clay, you're right We're all, you know, what is it Paul talks about in 2

41:28

Corinthians, we're all jars of clay, right We all have The limitations of the flesh

41:34

And also our own particular Issues that we bring into this Christian life and have to deal with And then, you know

41:42

As a Calvinist How many times have I been faced with Well, Calvin did this, or Calvin did that Calvin killed

41:49

Servetus I knew it I know that's coming Right?

41:56

And so yes, our heroes Are failed, they're fallen They are imperfect

42:02

And even though The cultural context Of Luther's life and Calvin's Life and even

42:10

Machen and the rest Much different than ours today It still doesn't necessarily excuse

42:16

Their failures, it's just a different cultural Context that might allow those failures To shine a little brighter than they would today

42:22

If they existed Shine brighter in the sense That people see them more,

42:27

I don't mean shine brighter In a positive way, but they're more Easily seen I really love what

42:33

Vodie Bauckham said in his ethnic Gnosticism speech at Founders Ministries a few years ago

42:39

I think it was. I've quoted it over and over again On Facebook, so if you're a Facebook friend You've seen me quote this multiple times

42:45

And it's long, and I'll just Paraphrase, but it's something like How racism

42:51

Is the new unforgivable sin And so if somebody Was a racist in the past We're now willing to just completely

42:59

Write them off, say they're completely unacceptable So, for example, Jonathan Edwards owned slaves

43:06

It's just a fact of life About him, and although he wrote some good Things, he also did some Not good things

43:13

But he's pointing out that there's a double standard there Because shortly before He was talking, there had been the

43:19

MLK50 conference Celebrating Martin Luther King And he's saying, some of these same people

43:25

Are celebrating Martin Luther King Who was a serial adulterer And denied fundamental

43:31

Tenets of the Christian faith, and they're going to Celebrate him as a hero, but that Edwards, oh, we're going to un -name things

43:37

That are named for Edwards, because he Was a racist, and that is unforgivable And then he says

43:44

Here's a world I'm not Willing to live in, where before I can quote something that's true and right

43:49

From a person, I have to go back through their Lives and retrace Everything they did to try and figure out

43:55

That I'm certain that they went to heaven when they died And I love that, I think that's

44:01

Very liberating in a good way To recognize that we don't Have to try and prove that somebody is

44:07

A saint In the special sense, or even a saint In the general sense, to quote

44:13

Something accurate that they said It doesn't mean that there aren't some people That I would

44:19

Maybe not quote There are people that I will avoid quoting because I just don't think it's helpful But there's nobody

44:26

I'm going to say, well I don't think he was a Christian So I'm not going to quote him You know, he did this particular bad thing, or Even, you know, people alive today

44:34

I look at this and, well, I don't like That he has this theology or this doctrine So it's completely unacceptable

44:40

For me to quote him or reference him I think that's terribly unhelpful It's not a workable

44:49

System, you end up with this sort of Constant fear That maybe you're going to quote the wrong person

44:56

Tomorrow it might be discovered That this person you quoted Was secretly having an affair

45:02

Or secretly a racist Or secretly, whatever else And then everything you've ever quoted

45:07

From that person is invalidated I was trying to come up with a term for that And just this morning

45:14

I posted it on Facebook My theory for that is That it's epistemological donatism

45:20

That the Donatists Were in the early 300s And they had a, they believed

45:26

That those who had left the faith And apostatized and come back Could not

45:32

Properly administer the sacraments And because the sacraments Were dependent upon the faith of the

45:38

Administer, the person administrating them Or celebrating it Depending on your terminology And that was something that was rejected

45:46

By the, you know, What we probably would now call the Catholic Church or the Universal Church then

45:52

And has been rejected by Most Christians down through the ages The, if your

45:57

Baptism was administered by Somebody who turns out to be an apostate That the baptism is

46:03

Invalid, well, Roman Catholics Don't believe that, Eastern Orthodox don't believe that As far as I know, and most

46:09

Protestants don't Believe that, because it's not The faith of the person administering it That matters, it's either or Both of the

46:17

Church, if you're in a more sacerdotal system You're looking at the Authority of the church to do it

46:24

Or the faith of the individual If you're in a Anti -sacerdotal system, or some combination

46:30

Depending on how you parse all that That matters, it's not specifically The faith of the person doing the administering

46:36

It Yeah, absolutely So that's Donatism, which we all

46:42

Reject, and if we all reject Donatism We should reject epistemological Donatism And epistemological

46:47

Donatism is That if an idea comes from somebody Who's not faithful, we can't Quote or use that idea

46:55

That's good That's a good thought, yeah, and Hopefully people will hear That and apply it

47:02

Because that's good thinking Alright, so I want to pull up this Going back to the book,

47:09

I want to pull up this Chart, and for the sake of the For those who are listening, you won't be able to see The chart if you're listening to the podcast

47:15

But if you want to go over to our YouTube page, you can go over There and you'll be able to watch

47:22

The video, and we're Going to look at the The way that Warfield Now is this his chart, did he create this

47:30

Chart, or was this something that Someone else did It's published in his book, presumably

47:36

He signed off on it, I imagine he probably Handwrote this and then somebody typeset it For him The book is from a set of lectures

47:43

And Today this would probably be a handout at the First lecture, we would probably photocopy this

47:50

Or print off a bunch on our laser printer That wasn't a thing at the time, this was before Not only photocopiers, but before mimeograph

47:56

Or spirit duplicators or ditto and all that And I doubt he paid somebody To typeset this and print it out

48:01

These are probably something that After the His lectures were transcribed, his notes were transcribed

48:08

That he came up with Something along this line and then gave it To his publisher and they typeset,

48:13

I'm guessing And I chose not to include this, which is Actually kind of a, I won't say a Cardinal sin, but it's kind of a no -no

48:20

In the audiobook world, unless The information occurs elsewhere in the book And I cannot guarantee that every bit

48:26

Of this information occurs elsewhere in the book But I just didn't think it would be helpful To try and read this

48:33

Vast matrix of Different ideas and Subcategories and the order in which

48:38

These different things occur, so I left it out I admit it, I just Plain left it out Okay, alright, but we have it now

48:45

We can look at it now You can look at it on the screen You can find it for free

48:52

At OpenLibrary, I believe it is I think there's probably, well

48:57

I don't know if there's a copy Included in Monergism's version or not, I don't know if they did it or not But you can also google it, you can find Warfield, the

49:02

Order of Decrees chart And I think you can find it that way It's kind of helpful

49:08

But it's very technical And narrating it would have been very, very dry There are ways to narrate almost anything

49:14

You've got a Venn diagram And the diagram is Iron and man

49:20

And so on one side In one circle you have a car, in the other circle You have a person

49:26

And in the middle overlap you have Iron man, okay And there are ways to describe that You can say, well we have

49:33

And so let's consider these categories We have the category of man, an example of man Might be

49:38

Keith Foskey And we have categories of iron, an example of iron Might be a car And we have an overlap, and in the overlap of iron and man

49:46

We might have iron man That's a super simple version There's a way to narrate almost any diagram

49:52

But at some point it becomes not worth it Sure And this, I mean, like I said

49:57

The chart is Really Very extensive, note -wise

50:03

And if you didn't listen to the book Or read the book, it might even be Almost impossible to sort of Maybe not impossible, but it would be

50:11

Very difficult for the average person To just look at this and make heads or tails Out of it, because the first Divide is the divide between The supernatural and the natural

50:21

And under the natural You have the Pelagian position, which is on the far right

50:29

And On the Supernatural, you have on the far left

50:34

The particularists, and then of course That being the Calvinistic particularists And so Again, the divide is between The, as we talked about earlier

50:44

The divide is between The Those who would hold to a Pelagian Or synergistic, or however we

50:52

Want to say, or naturalistic, rather Not even synergistic, but a naturalistic view And a Calvinistic Particularist view, and the end of the book

50:59

Is, and you quoted it earlier That Calvinism is the only one that makes sense of this And That sounds like a bold claim

51:07

And some would say it sounds like a prideful claim But yet, that's The reason why many of us are

51:13

Calvinists Because we feel like there's so much data When it comes to How we're dealing with this question

51:19

The question of man and his Abilities and God and his sovereignty And the lack thereof

51:25

Of our abilities and the Extent of God's sovereignty All of those things come into question

51:30

And you have to start categorizing some things I heard a Lutheran pastor this last week As I was preparing for my

51:37

Lutheran message He said that The Calvinist wants to talk about divine decrees Well, we don't talk in categories

51:44

Like that, that's what he said We don't speak in categories of divine decree And I said, oh, okay

51:51

Well Again, it goes back to A rose of any other Name, right?

51:56

What do you call it then? If you don't say divine decree, you still gotta say God did something or God chose something

52:03

But As I'm looking at this It's trying to flesh out

52:09

That which is Logical Would you agree with that? He's trying to make a logical argument

52:16

You've got two axes here And essentially the X -axis left -right is between The more

52:23

God -does -everything axis And the God -does -maybe -not -nothing

52:29

But God is essentially not really Part of the actual salvation He's just sort of the creator

52:36

And then on the Y -axis up and down It's not actually degrees

52:41

But it's an order It's a logical order And that's part of what makes this chart a little bit

52:46

Confusing the first time you look at it Because on the one axis you're Looking at things that are in opposition You're looking at Calvinism on one side and Pelagianism on the other side

52:55

But on the other axis you're not looking at things that are in opposition You're looking at things that are in succession So there's a logical succession

53:03

Where the Calvinist is A supernaturalistic view He's evangelical

53:09

He is particularistic He is consistently particularistic He is, in Warfield's view, the best

53:15

Calvinist Is infralapsarian And that means

53:21

That what he believes is that First, there was a permission Of fall equaling guilt

53:26

And a corruption and total inability of man And then, there was An election of some men to life in Christ And then, there was a gift

53:35

Of Christ to redeem his elect And to ground the offer to all And then, there's

53:41

Excuse me, I misspoke there Gift of Christ to redeem his elect And ground offer to all

53:46

And I'd actually have to re -read his exact words In the book where he's talking about that See what he's using by ground offer to all

53:53

I think he might be talking there about Just the idea that there is a general call That we offer We offer the call to all

54:01

Spurgeon would talk about how Since we don't know who the elect are We are called to Offer the gospel to all

54:09

And then, the elect will sort themselves out Or rather, God will sort the elect out of them But we're not looking at The sort of hyper -Calvinist view of We've got to figure out who the elect are so we can preach the gospel to them

54:20

Anyway, that aside So then, after that The gift of Christ to redeem his elect, ground offer to all Then there is the gift of the

54:27

Holy Spirit To save the redeemed And then, there is Sanctification of all the redeemed and regenerated

54:33

And all of that is meant as a logical Succession Not necessarily a temporal succession

54:40

Even though they Some of them Will happen after others But the point is that the one follows the other

54:46

And that's where you get into that somewhat Subtle and theologically nitpicky Difference between infralapsarianism and superlapsarianism

54:54

Which he does talk about there And I think he makes a very compelling Argument for infralapsarianism But yeah, if I could

55:00

Just for a moment, because I appreciate You're going through it and you're being very helpful But I want to say this

55:06

As a person who has Sort of, at times, struggled Even with defining that I think this book, if somebody

55:14

Has struggled with where you stand On the supra versus infralapsarian View I had always kind of felt like the infra

55:22

Was the position that I was at least arguing for As far as logically From, you know, fall And the choice was

55:30

God choosing to elect Those who were fallen and leaving Some to their own sin

55:36

That would come after the Decree of the fall But with that,

55:42

I think this Book does a tremendous job of Helping to Explain that and make the argument

55:48

So yeah, I think I would agree with you that that's definitely where he Would land, even though that's not the farthest to the left

55:54

It's on the Chart, but it still Seems to be where His argument's coming from Yeah, there are a few things that aren't on the chart

56:03

There's nothing specifically labeled Arminianism On there I think he has He has

56:09

Amaraldianism, but not Arminianism And the two are not the same Although they're certainly related

56:16

You know And yeah, if we're looking at what he likes The most, or what he believes, truly You know,

56:22

Warfield, it's pretty clear From the book, believes in infralapsarianism But he doesn't put that all the way on the left He finds it more logical

56:29

In the ordering of things On his chart to put it Second from the left, right after superlapsarianism

56:36

And that's in part Because of how he's laying out All these order of decrees, showing how one Comes after the other, he's saying

56:42

If you were trying to line these up in a logical sequence You'd probably start with The superlapsarian view here

56:48

And then you move over to the infralapsarian view Where you've switched the Basically switched the top two boxes

56:54

You've switched election of some And With the permission of fall

57:00

And guilt, corruption, total inability Where you're saying that superlapsarians Are teaching that election occurs

57:06

Before anything else, and infralapsarians Are saying that the fall comes first And then there is the election of some

57:12

And he just thinks it's better Presumably, thought it made more sense to put the superlapsarians There on the left, leaving himself

57:18

At the second from left position Yeah Again, I could see this chart

57:24

Again, being super helpful Just by, you know, along with reading The book, but having the chart

57:29

If I were teaching on this subject I'd want to give everybody a copy of this And if you could

57:35

Just for the sake of the audience Because, again, it may be somewhat Hard for them to read all of this

57:41

And you did such a good job of taking us through the Infralapsarian view, could you take us Through the Pelagian view, because again, this is what

57:47

His view of Pelagianism was, regardless Of what the modern argument is About what Pelagius believed

57:53

What is he saying Pelagianism Taught there? He's saying

57:58

Pelagianism is, first of all Naturalistic Versus supernaturalistic, in other words

58:03

It's focused on the natural world, rather than Focusing on God's Sovereignty, and Then under Pelagian, he's putting

58:11

First of all, the order of decrees As he's lining up here Is the gift of Free will, by virtue

58:19

Of which each may do all that Is required of him So he's

58:25

Talking about libertarian Free will, to use that term, which is a very Helpful one, I think You mentioned earlier, he's talking about pure Libertarian free will, man

58:35

Is free and Able and competent to Do all that is required

58:41

Of him because of the Gift of free will And then, subsequent to That gift of free will, there is the

58:48

Gift of law and gospel To illuminate the way And persuade to Walk in it, and Law and gospel is a wonderful Subject and a whole other issue under reformed theology

59:00

But that's, you know, reformed theology Just The person who likes reformed theology

59:06

Rebels at this, first of all Conflation, and also this idea that They are, they're simply meant to Illuminate and persuade and nothing else

59:14

But, he's saying The Pelagian plea is the gift of free will And then there's the gift of law and gospel to Illuminate the way and persuade

59:22

To walk in it, and then There was the gift of Christ To expiate past sin

59:28

And to set a good example And so, Christ Gives payment for Takes away in some way the past Sin, and provides a good example

59:38

For us, and then, there is The acceptance of all who Walk in the right way

59:44

And so, this is again A libertarian free will kind of point of view Where certain people choose to accept

59:50

It, and certain people choose not to, but certain people choose To accept it, and those Who accept it will walk in the right way

59:56

And then there is continuance In right doing by voluntary Effort, so You've done, you've

01:00:04

Justified yourself, and now you're Sanctifying yourself, essentially And it's all centered in Man's will,

01:00:11

God does something God is acknowledged to exist and to have done something But it is, it's almost

01:00:16

Monergistic in Man's action, other than Acknowledging that God's out there and he's done some stuff

01:00:22

Like sending Jesus as a good example But it's synergistic Veering over toward a monergism

01:00:28

Of centering salvation in man Well, completely Entirely the opposite of A monergism of Calvinism Centering salvation entirely in God Now the next one over You mentioned it doesn't say

01:00:45

Arminianism specifically But it does mention the Remonstrants The Remonstrants, right, yeah, exactly

01:00:50

The Remonstrants were the Followers of Arminius Who wrote the five points

01:00:56

Of Arminianism, you know The five points of Remonstrants Which the, what we now call

01:01:02

The five points of Calvinism were written in response To, you know, the whole Senate of Dorton All that, so the

01:01:08

Remonstrants That stands in for Arminianism there Essentially, right, yeah

01:01:13

I just wanted to mention that, no, no, no, you don't have to You're right, I hadn't thought about that But you're exactly right, it's standing

01:01:20

In for, instead of the category of Arminianism, it's using the category of the Remonstrants Who were, in fact, followers

01:01:26

Of Arminius, and you get into the Discussion then, were they accurate followers of Arminius Was Arminius an

01:01:31

Arminian, you know Yeah, again That's a good point, and I just think it's interesting

01:01:38

That Warfield put that Also under the Naturalism, so because Yeah, because Arminianism Would be

01:01:48

Differentiated from Pelagianism, but it Would be, according to most

01:01:54

Reformed scholars That I've read, they would see it as Semi -Pelagianism

01:02:00

Still a form, but just not Full Pelagianism, and they would argue That that was condemned

01:02:06

At the Council of Orange In France, so I'm going to be mentioning that In my message as well, because we see

01:02:14

Not only Pelagianism condemned During the lifetime

01:02:20

Of Augustine, but we see even the Semi -Pelagianism, which was The next evolution of that Was condemned

01:02:27

Not by an ecumenical, worldwide council But a local council did condemn it You know, and that's the

01:02:33

Council of Orange And so we see these things We see the Church recognizing Augustine's accuracy

01:02:40

And how he is Describing The nature of man

01:02:46

That's my point It's just interesting, I think, that Warfield puts it in the category of Basically, they're both

01:02:52

In the category of Naturalism Yeah, I remember seeing a lecture By R .C. Sproul in which he's describing

01:02:57

Arminianism as Semi -Pelagianism He's just conflating the two And I think he's talking historically there

01:03:04

Historical Arminianism I think it's probably fair to say that Many people who are in the broad

01:03:10

Generic Non -technical category of Arminian today Are not tightly aligned

01:03:15

With where the Remonstrants were I think it was, I want to say it's

01:03:21

Phil Johnson who has said That every Arminian Is an inconsistent Arminian because he'll

01:03:27

Pray for the salvation of his brother or something like that Sure And so, you know, there's

01:03:32

A tension there and an acknowledgement of the sovereignty Of God that In changing the heart

01:03:40

That might Not be as clear in the Remonstrants' view that Warfield categorizes as a naturalistic one

01:03:47

Where it's really It's of man Is essentially what he's Saying there

01:03:53

So yeah, I think that's I think that's a good point that Warfield is putting at least classical

01:04:00

Arminianism or the Arminianism that He knew 100 years ago 120 years ago

01:04:05

When he was preparing these lectures In the category Basically of Semi -Pelagian

01:04:12

Almost, you know, sort of Pelagian but not Yeah, exactly I want to We're going to start drawing to a close

01:04:20

We're right here at the hour mark and I appreciate You giving this time to the audience and I hope that this Is, I hope that people hear me when

01:04:26

I Say this, one, this is a great book to get I hope you get David's Audiobook, I hope that you

01:04:32

Learn from it as I have and be Able to apply it to your own understanding of Christianity and The plan of salvation, but As I'm thinking through one

01:04:42

Final thought I mentioned in my Sermon that we need to think deeper, we need to be

01:04:47

Willing to mind, we need to be willing to Go down and look for the gold and the silver And not just be satisfied with the surface level

01:04:53

Things Do you think That there's any validity at all?

01:04:59

And I know this may be like an odd Question, but I've heard a lot recently I've been looking at a lot of Lutheran scholars

01:05:05

And a lot of the things That I'm hearing and a lot of things I'm reading It seems as if they would say

01:05:11

That the Calvinist does Too much to try to make Things logical and they're not willing

01:05:17

To simply be Willing to accept A little bit of mystery

01:05:22

And I don't want to mischaracterize my Lutheran Brothers, I have dear

01:05:29

Friends, I'm thankful for Hans Feeney, he and I have been working together doing some things lately Very thankful for the guys who are on my show

01:05:35

So I'm not trying to misrepresent them, but Like for instance when we talked about the table Right, they're very convinced

01:05:41

That it's the body and blood of Christ But then when I ask them about transubstantiation It's like they don't believe in transubstantiation

01:05:47

But they believe it's the real presence And they're willing to have some tension there In what they mean and not necessarily

01:05:53

Try to explain it With such Definitive terms

01:05:59

As transubstantiation and Substance and accidents and things which are Described in Roman Catholicism And when it comes to things like They will say faith is a gift

01:06:08

And God is sovereign over who he gives the gift Of faith, but yet they still believe in a Universalistic view of The ability of man to be saved

01:06:16

And so it seems like there's Some areas where I would say Calvinism is more consistent

01:06:22

Obviously I believe as a Calvinist I think it's fair for me to say that, that's why I'm a Calvinist I think it's more consistent, they would say

01:06:27

We're too logical, they would say we're trying To reach beyond The veil, we're trying to look in places

01:06:34

Where we're not supposed to look, and the Bible does say That the things that are secret belong to the Lord So what are your thoughts

01:06:40

On that, do you think that as Calvinists we go Too far in our seeking Of a logical answer and maybe

01:06:46

To the point where sometimes we're Maybe In danger of even misrepresenting

01:06:52

God because we've tried to make him logical From our perspective, and so that's Kind of an odd question maybe

01:06:58

But I want to hear your thoughts on that Well I'd say your last point there is the most Important one, are we in danger

01:07:04

Of misrepresenting God because can there be Anything worse than misrepresenting God And so that's absolutely the

01:07:10

Fear we should have, the concern we should have A wholesome, legitimate fear I Can't say for sure

01:07:21

Part of it might Come down to some degree to an individual's Personality or general

01:07:26

Frame of mind, how much they're willing to accept Mystery You know It's funny, somebody had said to me

01:07:33

Years ago, you know You talk to Lutherans, they're just going to say everything's a mystery And I got into a discussion with a

01:07:39

Lutheran Relatively recently And I asked him a question, and within a Paragraph or two it turned into, well this is a mystery

01:07:48

Yeah, okay, I get it And in fairness There are things in the Bible that are

01:07:53

A mystery I don't think it's wrong to try and understand them But it might be fair to say

01:07:59

That sometimes we go too far in trying to explain them Amen, and I think that was a very

01:08:06

Gentlemanly answer I think you're right To say yes, certainly

01:08:13

We want to understand them But we're not always going to be able to We're not always going to be able to have Not always going to be able to Figure everything out

01:08:23

Well David, I want to thank you for coming On the show today, sharing with us Again, your golden voice

01:08:29

I always look forward to hearing it Why thank you And again, tell people how to Contact you if they're interested

01:08:36

I see your Website is Davidkmartin .net

01:08:43

And people can contact you if they're interested In their audiobooks and things like that Yeah, I have a contact form on there

01:08:49

It goes to my Davidkmartin .net email address If you email me there, I'll probably email you

01:08:54

Back from Gmail though, because I found that several major service providers Don't seem to like my web host and they think that I am

01:09:00

A spammer, and so When I try and send email from that address It sometimes gets rejected

01:09:05

So I might email you back from a different address, but you can contact Me there by going to Davidkmartin .net

01:09:11

I have some samples I should probably update those I think it's been a year or two since I put them out there

01:09:16

There's a sample, I think There's one on there from Either Will Dobby's book And you and I were talking

01:09:22

I think about with Will Dobby Or it might be Matthew Ever Might currently be

01:09:27

Matthew Everhard's book And we talked together about Matthew Everhard And you also had

01:09:33

Joshua Barzon on He was talking about the King James Controversy, wasn't he?

01:09:39

Yeah, you were on that show too, weren't you? I think I was on that one too, so I think that's Because I recorded his very short

01:09:45

Book on that subject, so I think that's three previous Times that I've been on So yeah, Davidkmartin .net

01:09:51

is where You can hear a few more samples of My voice, including A nonfiction sample, or excuse me, a fiction sample

01:09:57

If you want to hear how I would handle that If you're a Christian author who Is willing to spring for having an

01:10:03

Audiobook made of your Work, I'd be interested in talking About that Amen.

01:10:09

Well, thank you, David, for being a part of the Show today and for continuing to be a good Friend and a person that provides

01:10:15

A few laughs every once in a while to my wife So thank you from her as well I'm glad I'm a joke to you

01:10:21

Oh Absolutely. Alright, well Again, I want to thank you all for being a part of Your Calvinist Podcast today

01:10:29

It's a joy to do the show And to get to speak to people like David, and to get to Do so, hopefully, as a way to Encourage and to educate you and to Point you to good resources

01:10:41

I want to also remind you that we have plenty of other Videos on the channel, so if you Want to, you can go and check those out

01:10:47

At calvinistpodcast .com Please hit the subscribe button, it really helps us out If you like this video, hit the thumbs up button

01:10:53

If you didn't like it, hit the thumbs down button Twice. I want to thank you again for listening To Your Calvinist Podcast.

01:10:59

My name is Keith Foskey, and I've been your Calvinist May God bless you Laughs till sunrise

01:11:17

It's your Calvinist Podcast With Keith Foskey He's not