Joel Beeke Interview (Reformed Systematic Theology)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said,.

�But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you. In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you.

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

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and one of the great things about this radio opportunity that I have that the Lord gave me nine years ago is that on Tuesdays, while I talk to my pastor about church issues, Wednesdays I particularly like because I get to talk to pastors and theologians and authors, sometimes they�re all three, and I get to hear what the Lord is doing in their life and what they�re writing about, and it�s introduced me to some people that I never would get to meet otherwise.

And today is a returning guest, I don�t think Joel Beeky has been on No Compromise Radio for several years, but I�m happy today, pleased to have Dr. Joel Beeky on No Compromise Radio. Joel, welcome back to the show.

Thank you. Good to be with you, Mike. Now one of the things I appreciate about you, Joel, is your publishing company. I don�t know if it�s yours technically, but in the old days when people would ask me, �Pastor, is this a good book or is that a good book?

Is this a good author Many times I would look at the publisher, and I could say based on Moody or Word, Banner of Truth, Soledad Gloria, some of the older companies, I could say, �Well, this is what they typically do, and this is their bent.

And I have to say, and I�m not trying to flatter you, but I think Reformation Heritage is the best book publisher out there today, and I�m thrilled every time I get a new book from your publishing company.

Well, wow, thank you. That�s a real compliment, and we�re grateful for it.

Yeah, that�s great. I just picked up the two-volume Vitsios, I think, on the Lord�s Prayer. Is that right?

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Probably on the Economy of the Covenants or the Apostles� Creed if it�s two volumes. Oh, you know what? I think Apostles� Creed. That�s right.

Yep, that�s right. Yep, I appreciate that. Well, it�s kind of an odd introduction today, because the book I want to talk to you about this afternoon, Joel, is not published by your own publishing company, but by Crossway, and it�s called Reformed Systematic Theology, Volume 1, that you wrote with Paul Smalley.

And that�s what I want to talk to you about a little bit today, is your new systematic theology book. And maybe we could just start with the first question, Joel. I�m looking at my wall, and I see Bavinck, and I see Turretin, and I see Dabney, and I see Raymond, and I see all these different people.

Calvin, why�and it�s not a setup question. I really want to know the answer. Why do we need another systematic theology, and what made you write it? I guess those questions are tied together.

Why Write Another Systematic Theology?

Well, I�ve been teaching systematic theology for close to 30 years now, and I�m in my mid -60s, and I have a TA who�s with me by the name of Paul Smalley, and what I was hoping to do ever since I�ve been a teenager was to write one day a full systematic theology that would be contemporary, as well as be the best of the old writers, the Reformers and the Puritans, in terms of how they approach theology, which is basically doing four things.

You first say what the Bible says about each doctrine. You then explain how the Holy Spirit has led the church and church history to embrace that doctrine, a series of errors and corrections and tweaks and so on.

And then you look at, how do you experience that doctrine yourself? How does it resonate to your inmost being, and how does it impact you? And then the practical applications. What are the major takeaways from this doctrine?

So that was the old way of doing theology. And then the goal was, by the end of each chapter, you would just be worshiping and praising God, if you read it rightly, and you take it to heart. And so the goal of systematic theology in the olden days was to minister to head, heart, and hands.

So that's our goal today. But of course, we have many, many different issues today that Calvin and Bovink and even Raymond have not addressed. And so what I'm trying to do is say, here's a legacy I want to leave behind in my life of what I've taught in systematics for 30 years.

I want to do it at a level that is at a beginning seminary level, or just say, an educated layperson's level so they're very readable for the typical layperson in the church that is interested in theology.

And I want to do it in these four categories, a biblical, Reformed, confessional, experiential, practical. It reads well. Many of the old systematic theologies are difficult for people with the antiquated language.

Bovink, for example, is a great set. But Bovink is really at a THM or a PhD level, and so ours is a bit simpler than his. And of course, this is already a hundred years old, so we're trying to deal with a lot more issues than what the old systematics have done.

Well, Joel, I want to get into some of the particular chapters in just a moment, but I was struck by what you said earlier. You were a teenager, and you thought about doing this. Were you reading Berkhoff as a teenager?

What propelled you to think, as a teenager, I'd like to write a systematic theology book?

It was kind of a crazy dream, actually. But I was converted, very powerfully converted, when I was 14 and 15. And then when I was 15 or 16, I was powerfully called into sacred ministry, and I just started devoting my whole life to God.

I read, when I was 15, I read Thomas Watson's Body of Divinity and Calvin's Institutes, and just fell in love with systematic theology, because I thought it so embraced the whole counsel of God as revealed in the Scriptures.

And I was in a small denomination, and they didn't have a good systematic theology. I just had this dream that when I would become a minister one day, I would pick away at this. Now, when I was in my 30s, I realized what a huge task this was, and I said to myself, well, if I could just do one, if I could just do the doctrine of salvation, just one of the six branches of Reformed theology, I'd be happy by the time I die.

But meanwhile, I started a seminary, and I've been teaching systematic theology for 30 years. Still, I don't think I could put it all together if it weren't for Paul Smalley, my co-author, coming along and taking my notes and fleshing them out and putting footnotes in, and then I go over it again.

So it's only been in the last four years that I've really resurrected this dream and said, you know what, I can really do this with Paul Smalley's help.

Well, it is a wonderful volume, three more to come. Do you ever think to yourself, Joel, you might have to have four more after this?

No, no, actually, we've got pagination restrictions, and we just sent volume two into Crossway yesterday. So it was due June 15, so we managed to make the deadline, and that's just a tad bit longer than this volume, so that'll be another probably 1 ,400 pages or so.

And then tomorrow, we're starting on volume three. And volume three, by the way, is 70 done, because we did Soteriolet, the doctrine of salvation first. Four is the one that will take us probably two years to write.

Well, I would commend this book for our listeners, or maybe you want to buy this for your pastor listeners. The Reformed Systematic Theology Volume One on Revelation and God by Joel Beeky and Paul Smalley.

Joel, one of the things I like about you as you preach and study and even talk about the Lord, and as you write, you are not the stereotypical, it's a false stereotype of Calvinist and Reformed people, they're staid, they're stoic, kind of like this cold, steely, John Calvin caricature.

I appreciate the experiential side, the practical side, coming through, as you said earlier, with the head, heart, and hands. How do you go about writing the way you think slash feel so it comes across warmly, yet not hyper-devotionally, if you know what I mean?

Warm Theology, Not Cold Scholasticism

Right, there's a balance there, and I think when it comes to writing systematic theology, you want to consider, first of all, what does the Bible say? And the Bible is not cold and staid and dry, and therefore, if you're being faithful to the Word, you won't be cold and staid and dry.

Yeah, you mentioned that Calvin being dry is a caricature, and that's a huge, huge caricature. Calvin is so warm. Calvin said he wrote his Institutes for one purpose, to promote godly piety, and that was his major goal.

And so our major goal in writing this is to conform people to the image of Christ, and that Christians would grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ, come to love Him more, come to hate sin more, come to pursue holiness more.

So, you know, the old definition of theology is the science of living to God, and so it's not just the dry head knowledge. Doctrine, said Martin Luther, is heaven, because by these things men live. And Calvin followed in that line, and so did all the Reformers, so did all the Puritans, and it's only been the last few centuries that we have these dry, systematic theologies that don't speak very much to the heart.

They're only esoteric things with the head. So yes, we're consciously, purposely, intentionally writing in the old tradition, which you minister to the heart as well, because we believe that that's really what people need and what people want today.

Well, there are some good things in Wayne Grudem's systematic theology. I think maybe one of the reasons why it's so popular, maybe it's current, that could be one of the reasons. But I think he tries to write in a warm fashion as well.

I think each section ends with a hymn, for instance. But I tell people all the time, if you want the next generation of your church to be charismatic, you know, use that particular systematic theology, because he presents things, you know, in a way that's, you know, attractive.

Therefore, I'm glad this is out, because I think people can have a warm, engaging, good theology that will not lend them towards the charismatic bent. And I want to talk about your chapter in particular, The Cessation of Special Revelation, Charismatic Continuationism.

And here's what I'd like to ask you, Joel. Some issues like this come up in the local church, and I don't see chapters like this in a typical systematic theology. Tell me why you would put that chapter in, or chapters like Errors Regarding Special Revelation, Liberalism's Offspring.

I'm glad they're in there. Could you tell our readers why you did that? Sure.

Cessationism, Special Revelation, and Charismatic Continuationism

You know, see, this is precisely—you're putting your finger on the pulse—one reason why a new systematic theology is significant. Because a hundred years ago, when Bob Inke was writing his, you know, the Pentecostal charismatic movement, was next to nothing in the Netherlands when he wrote.

Today, it's booming all over the world. And what we're trying to show people implicitly, and more explicitly than these chapters, is that we think that the special gifts of the Spirit, so-called, were used in the New Testament age to spread the Gospel, but now we have something more sure, something more permanent, the Word of God, in God principally, so that we learn to live, walk by faith, and live by the Word of God, and not by these so-called special gifts.

And when you teach that, and you teach all of theology in a warm-hearted way, I believe that there are many Pentecostals and Charismatics—I do hope they read these books—that will say, you know what?

This is more biblical, as they study what the Scriptures actually say. So there's an alternative here. The Puritans, for example, they ministered to head, heart, and hands. Today, some Reformed people are indeed very dry.

They minister only to the head. The Pentecostals are all about ministering to the heart, grounded in the Word, and so the idea is, well, we'll speak to the heart, but not to the head. And what we're saying is, the Traditional Reformed, the gap that the Pentecostals see in some Reformed theology today.

So we want to blow to smithereens that idea, that the Reformed are not warm, and passionate, and zealous, and evangelistic, and speak to the heart. After all, almost all major theologians up to the 1830s were Reformed in their theology from the 1500s, and they were all warm and engaging, the affections, as well as the mind.

It's only been in the last 150 years or so that the Reformed, in many cases, have lost touch with this warm-hearted theology.

Today on No Compromise Radio, we have Dr. Joel Beakey, who is pastor of Heritage Reformed Congregation in Grand Rapids, Michigan. You could just pull that up online and listen to some of his sermons. He also is president at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary.

Joel, tell our listeners a little bit about that second section and how it relates to the first. That is, you talked about what's the Bible say, and then what's the history of the Church? I think a lot of listeners maybe function as biblicists.

They don't really understand where Church history comes in, as the Spirit of God has been building the Church for a long time. I don't know. I think it's Van Hooser who said, there's tradition zero, that's biblicism, whatever the Bible says.

There's tradition one, that is, what has the Church affirmed as biblical over the centuries, and then tradition two, things like purgatory and wrong traditions, and how Sola Scriptura fits in there. Tell our listeners a little bit about the importance of historical theology in a book entitled Reformed Systematic Theology.

Yes. Well, I think the best way to do that is to look at the Bible itself. So let's take a chapter like 1 Corinthians 15. The Corinthians are saying, you know, we don't mind so much that Jesus rose from the dead.

Well, we can swallow that, but we don't want to rise from the dead because our bodies are the negative side of us, and our spirits, our souls, are the positive side of us. So when we go to eternity, we don't want our bodies back.

That's like a bird, the soul, in a cage, the body. And so they were Platonists, and they had embraced the philosophy of Plato that your soul is good and your body is bad. So what does Paul do? He spends 58 verses in 1 Corinthians 15 saying to them that our bodies will rise from the dead, and if they don't believe that, their faith is in vain, and so on and so on.

And so through their heresy, he corrects the teaching so that they have a good understanding of soul and body, together being brought to be with the Lord on the great day of judgment. Now what Paul is doing there is, of course, what happens in church history over and over again, true in a non-fully inspired way.

But we do believe that the Holy Spirit does guide the church, and that's biblical. And so through error, and through corrections, and through iron sharpening iron, we do need to pay attention to church history.

Now the difference is, of course, that church history must always be subject to Scripture as well. But for example, if you just say, I'm a Biblicist, and I'm going to ignore all of church history, you would not even necessarily, would you, believe in the Trinity, because you wouldn't have dreamt that up yourself, because the Bible doesn't ever use the word Trinity.

You might say, well I think the Bible says Jesus is God, the Spirit is God, but the relationship exactly of the three in one, three persons in one essence, literally from Scripture. But when you look at church history, you see how our forefathers developed the doctrine of the Trinity from the Bible, then you have no trouble seeing the soundness of it.

And you marvel at how the Lord, the Holy Spirit, led the ancient church to glean all of the Scriptures and bring them all together, and to see and understand this precious doctrine of the Trinity. Well, it's that way with many other doctrines as well.

Through trial and error, the church has developed various doctrines grounded on Scripture that are now more clear 2 ,000 years later than they were to the ancient church. It's not something that's perfect by any means, lots of errors, but we bring everything back to the touchstone of Scripture, and by doing so, we can then see how the Holy Spirit, particularly the invisible church's people, into truth in so many areas.

Excellent. How about in the book, Joel, you talk about some of the things that seem to be very in the news today in evangelical news, that is, aseity, impassibility, simplicity. I hear a lot about those doctrines now.

There wasn't so much talk about those back in the old days with the Arthur Pink Attributes of God book, or some of those more popular ones. But these doctrines of aseity and simplicity and impassibility, even with some debates within evangelicalism, can you tell our listeners a little bit about why you included those important aspects of the nature of God?

The Doctrine of God: Aseity, Impassibility, and Simplicity

Yes. Now, two things here are important to understand, Mike. One is, when you write a systematic theology as a life legacy, you want to bear in mind that current burning issues will come and go. And so, if I was writing this book to last only for ten years, we probably would have written about seven or eight chapters on impassibility of God, since it's such a major debate in some circles right now, and maybe had 200 pages devoted to it.

If there was no debate at all, probably we would have written just one half to maybe one chapter on the impassibility of God. Given the debate the way it is, we did two chapters on it, but we did want to have the doctrine of God dominated by that one area, because there are so many other important things in the doctrine of God.

So what we're saying in good systematic theology is you do take into account the current burning debates and maybe give them a bit more attention, but not so much more that you forget that you're writing this for generations to come as well.

So it wouldn't surprise me if Paul and I, when we get all done, God willing, we still have some time and energy, if this debate on impassibility is still going on, we might do a separate book on it, a couple hundred pages, I mean that would be a perfectly legitimate thing to do.

But yes, impossibility, atheity, it's important because you want to understand the real character of God. In the Bible, one of the greatest questions of Christians is, who is my God? And who am I? And how am I related to God through Jesus Christ?

I mean these are foundational questions. So if you get the doctrine of God wrong, or seriously wrong, worse yet, that's hugely problematic for all of your theology. So it's important to maintain that God is unchangeable and that He's not blown about by every kind of temper or mood change that people like we are, hence our forefathers, rightly said, based on Scripture, that God is unchangeable and without passions, that is, without emotions that change Him to be a different person than who He really is.

It's not saying that God is not angry with sin or that God is not compassionate with the needy, that God doesn't have any affections, but those affections and the exercise of them don't change His essential character.

Excellent, I'd like to encourage our listeners to pick up a copy of this systematic theology called Reformed Systematic Theology, Volume 1, Revelation and God, a Crossway book. And what I like about this book, as a pastor, I can read it and glean from it, but I could also give this to a layperson and say, you know what, open up the book to the table of contents and if you want to look at God's immutability, you're interested in that, read it.

If you want to learn more about the name of the Lord Yahweh, you can read that. If you'd like to understand the doctrine of predestination and its historical development, just go ahead and read that chapter and then one chapter would lead to another chapter and to another chapter.

And so I think I really like that part of the book, that you have these succinct doctrinal statements and writings that you could use to help you with Sunday school or all kinds of things. Joel, the time has gone by so fast.

I just want to thank you for your ministry. I read somewhere that you've written over 100 books now. I think you need a vacation.

I feel closer to God when I write, Mike, so I feel compelled to write. I'm a compulsive writer. By the way, this book is available. It's a $60 book. Right now, we're still doing a special on it at heritagebooks .org and 50 off to introduce it to people.

I'm pleased to report that lay people are sending in letters and comments that they're actually starting at the front, just reading straight through it and saying, hey, here's a book of systematic theology I can finally enjoy and understand and learn from, so we're excited about that.

Excellent. Well, I do have one last question I think I'm going to ask you. It's a PS question. Lots of people don't know what to do with Thomas Aquinas, and I looked in the index and there's plenty of quotes from Aquinas.

Could you give just a couple minute pastoral reminder on how Protestant Christians could or should read Aquinas?

Reading Thomas Aquinas as a Protestant

Yes. Yes. Well, Aquinas is, of course, the premier Roman Catholic theologian of all ages, so there's going to be all kinds of things that we disagree with Aquinas on, but he was a Mount Everest figure in terms of theology, and this particular book, of course, the bulk of it deals with the doctrine of God, and in many areas of the doctrine of God, Aquinas was spot on.

And so, naturally, he's a major figure. Calvin and others in the Reformation read Aquinas, and in their own doctrines of God, leaned fairly heavily on him in certain areas, not always agreeing in every detail.

So it's natural in volume one, you'll probably find more quotes from Thomas Aquinas than you will in the other volumes we produce, certainly more than you will in the Ecclesiology volume, Doctrine of the Church, because there he runs astray quite a bit.

Also Soteriology, the Doctrine of Salvation, he would believe in man's free will in salvation and, of course, we're not going to be quoting him there in areas where he's seriously in error.

Good, I think that's good advice. Joel, thank you for being on the radio show again. I appreciate you and your ministry, and I will leave the show today with a quote from your book on God's sovereignty, page 775.

The living God is the mighty king, Jeremiah 10 .10, even if we are in prison we may exalt with the Apostle Paul, now unto him that is able to do exceedingly, abundantly, above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all the ages, world without end, amen.

Thanks Joel. Thank you. God bless. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 10 .15 and in the evening at 6. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.