Peter Sammons Interview

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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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.

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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 ministry.

My name is Mike Abendroth. And I think we're coming up to about show 2400, something like that.

Too bad they couldn't just take all the shows and all the data and boil it down and then let me know what the themes would be.

Maybe the themes would be moralism, pietism, legalism.

Let's hope not. Anyway, we're called No Compromise Radio because the Lord Jesus, can you imagine,

He never compromised. He said, I always do what's pleasing to the Father. And of course, the Father said, this is my beloved

Son in whom I'm well pleased. And in light of Christ's lack of compromise, we don't want to compromise either.

The show is pretty simple. Sometimes I'll have Pastor Steve Cooley in the office here in the study and we talk about church issues.

Sometimes I'll discuss topics that come up even in evangelicalism or maybe a new topic like what's going on with eternal subordination of the

Son. And Wednesdays are my favorite days usually, because I get to talk to theologians and pastors and friends and people that I've met who the

Lord is using in gospel ministry. And so today, while it's Tuesday, real time, this is going to air on Wednesday, I have

Peter Sammons on the line, Dr. Peter Sammons, Peter Sammons, PhD. And Peter, I'm so thankful you're able to come on No Compromise Radio.

Welcome. Well, thank you for having me. Always been a big fan of what you guys do and following your ministry and just, yeah,

I'm thrilled to be able to spend some time with you guys. Hey, Peter, how did we end up meeting? What was the background for that?

That's a good question. I think it had to do, I think your brother was doing his doctorate with J .D.

Festo as his advisor. Does that sound right? Yep, that's right. And I think he was doing it on the doctrine of Christ's act of obedience.

And I had written my PhD thesis on, you know, the doctrine of imputed righteousness and Christ's act of obedience.

And actually they reached out to me to, you know, consider using it for some, you know, in some format with the project he was doing.

And I think that's how I first got a chance to actually meet you was in, I think, shortly after the

Shepherds Conference we met. I mean, I'd always, you know, followed you guys on the radio and knew about you from that, but I didn't get a chance to meet you until I think after the

Shepherds Conference and I think it was through that kind of circumstance that we got to meet first. Okay, I think that sounds about right.

Well, Peter, I'm excited about being involved in the local church. Of course, the

Lord said he's going to build his church and nothing will stop it. And then I see the world and some of the crazy things in the world.

And when I meet men like you, a younger man, much younger than I am, I'm encouraged by the next generation of leaders.

Peter, how old are you? I'm 33. All right. Hey, that's perfect. So, I want to know what you do for TMS and some other things, but since you talked about active obedience and the connection there with my brother and Dr.

Fesko, just could you give us briefly a kind of an overview of what active obedience is and what are the issues around it?

Of course, many people know what Machen said when he was dying and gave a telegraph to John Murray back at Westminster, that there's no hope without the act of obedience.

Tell us what it is and why is there kind of a controversy even surrounding it?

Maybe, Peter, you want to tell us why you wrote it. Yeah, that's great. I could spend days and hours just talking about the act of obedience of Christ.

The doctrine has always been near and dear to my heart. And really, you know, what's interesting is it's really one of the forgotten doctrines of the

Protestant Reformation in the Church today. Most people, when they present the Gospel to unbelievers, all they mention is

Christ's death. And that's likely as a kind of oversimplification of the Gospel in response to liberalism that denied penal substitution, and so it got so much attention in the early 19th century.

But ultimately, what makes us Protestant and not Catholic is not our view of the doctrine of penal substitution, but rather it's our view of imputed righteousness, and explicitly the merit of Jesus' life, his human life, with obedience to the law, that is imputed to us, that is different and separate us from Catholicism.

And so whenever I started to realize that there was such a big resurgence of denying act of obedience and imputed righteousness, and I think a lot of it stems from N .T.

Wright and a lot of the influences that he had on Norman Shepard, Michael Byrd, and kind of just how that permeated into more of the mainline denominations, and even in the

SBC denominations and a lot of Baptist denominations, it's just been this denial that we need a positive merit, we need to keep

God's natural law. And so as you asked about how it relates to other doctrines, and this is a far -reaching doctrine.

It influences your view of federal headship, whether or not you know, Christ and Adam in what way are they the headship of their representatives.

It influences your view of the law, and it influences your view of, really, salvation ultimately, and where your righteousness comes from that allows you to stand before the

Father. And you can really look at any one of those issues and see how important Christ's act of obedience is to the law.

But in a nutshell, basically, what we're trying to discuss is, with Adam, as a representative head, as a federal head,

Adam had the ability to obey the law. We call that the natural demand of the law. And he didn't.

So attached to the natural demand of the law was a penal demand, and that was, you know, the day you eat of the tree, you will die.

And so that's why we need Christ's positive and negative imputation, including double imputation.

And essentially, what we're trying to discuss is how justification, when I tell new believers what justification is,

I say it's two things. It's just as if I'd never sinned, and that's the penal substitution part, what we call passive obedience.

And it's just as if I'd always obeyed, and that's the positive imputation of Christ's act of obedience.

And so Christ is fulfilling the law of God, the moral standard that God has for humans.

And that's one of the reasons he became a man. The Incarnation was more than just him coming to earth to die.

It was him fulfilling the natural demand of God's law for all men and all time. And essentially, what we see there is that if someone denies the act of obedience of Christ, they're denying a key tenet of what

Paul is talking about in Romans 4 and 5. So Peter, when I look at 1 Corinthians chapter 1, for instance, and it closes the chapter with not having anyone boast in his presence, and it says in verse 30, "...and

because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God."

And the way I translate it, or see it as wisdom from God, that is righteousness and sanctification and redemption.

So that, as it is written, let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord. I know in your paper you talked about 1

Corinthians chapter 1, verse 30. Tell us a little bit about what that verse means when it comes to righteousness there.

Yeah, I mean, I think that that text is a great text. It kind of summarizes all the ways that we are in Christ.

And it's interesting to me, it's one of the bad things to do now with guys who deny and impute righteousness, is to just kick it back and say, oh, it's just about union with Christ.

And that's oftentimes the verse that I'll appeal to, is I'll just go there and say, oh, see, it's just talking about union with Christ, but what's important there in that text specifically is the word for righteousness is the same word that you see in Romans 5 and Romans 4.

And that's one of the things that M .P. Wright did in his new perspective on Paul, was to undermine the historic lexical meaning of that term.

And that term, if you look it up in your Greek lexicons or anything, it's always going to have... And you look at its counterpart in the

Septuagint, how it's used, its counterpart in the Hebrew, is both of them, no matter how you look them up, it has to do with law of obedience.

And so, to say he came for us righteousness, and then try to remove the element of law of obedience, not only does it justice to the semantic range and the lexical meaning of that term, but it violates any kind of notion of consistency in Paul's thought.

And that's why I think Romans 5 is one of the most clear examples of it, Romans 5 .18, which is actually mistranslated in almost all of our

English Bibles. I think if you go there, let me bring it up real quick, it says that Christ, you know,

I'm just going to read it real quick, says, "...so then, just as by one man's trespass to all men came condemnation, so also by one in..."

In our English versions, it says, "...act of righteousness to all men came justification of life."

That's kind of a really wooden, literal kind of reading of the Greek. But if you read it and do a study of the

Greek, the word that's used there, the act of righteousness, most English translations, like the New American Standard and ESV, they put it in a parenthesis, they put a note in there that says, "...act

of," it's not in the Greek. It could just be through one man's righteousness. And that's the way it's translated throughout the entire time that Paul, every time

Paul uses it, it's one man's righteousness. It's not about one man's obedience, or law of obedience, and you see that also in Philippians.

So to interpret 1 Corinthians as if it's saying something other than Christ's law of obedience is not intellectually fair to the lexical meaning of the word or to how

Paul speaks of Christ's righteousness anywhere else. Peter, as we look at this, even with a lot of people who are listening today, tell our listeners the tie -in between act of obedience and even the doctrine of assurance.

How do you know that you're a Christian? Maybe you've struggled throughout the week, and you've failed in many areas.

Does this doctrine help with the assurance of a believer? Oh, man, yeah. And that's one of the beautiful things about that statement that you gave at the beginning with John Murray and Machen.

And here's a guy who, just like, you know, your guys' radio show, didn't compromise. You know, here's a man who left, you know,

Princeton when it was going liberal and started Westminster on a dream of prayer, you know, just being faithful to God's word.

I mean, he left tenure, he left security, earthly security, you know, he left all the things he strived for as a professor because of his conviction of the

Word of God. This isn't a guy who just, you know, is easily struggling with assurance.

But what gave him the most assurance on his deathbed was the act of obedience of Christ. And I think for every believer, what's so comforting is this is the great exchange.

You know, it's my filthiness for his righteousness, you know, my dirty clothes for his clean clothes.

And at the end of the day, what the Father sees when he looks at us is the perfect obedience of Christ.

And so, it is assuring that the fact that no matter how many times I've stumbled in my

Christian faith and fallen, even sometimes in big ways, you know, we have an advocate, a high priest who stands in our place with his perfect life of righteousness being the lens through which the

Father views us, you know? That is extremely comforting. We're talking to Dr.

Peter Sammons today, and I am very encouraged when I talk to Peter when we're in person or on the phone or via text and emailing.

Very sharp and wants to be precise when it comes to the Word of God, the person and work of Christ Jesus.

Some of you can benefit from Peter's teaching. Peter, tell us a little bit about the Sound Doctrine certificate and the classes that are offered through the

Master's Seminary and the Institute for Church Leadership, the certificate track, specifically your class on the doctrine of God and the decrees.

Yeah, I'm really glad you asked about that. That's actually one of the most encouraging things that the Master's Seminary is doing right now, because Pastor John McArthur was really kind of discouraged because so many of our graduates, and you would know, being one of our best grads, you would know, guys go into churches and they're sometimes the only guy.

You know, they have a lot of people in their church who haven't had training, and he was like, how can we help our alumni?

How can we help the body of Christ to have more equipped laymen to do the work of the ministry?

Because it's the entire church that does the work of the ministry. If you're a Christian, you're called to ministry, and so how can we get the equipping for them?

And so that's how we came up with the Institute for Church Leadership, and basically it is a layman training platform that goes through all the essentials that you get in seminaries, but it's all been re -taught for the layman in mind.

And so it's all been taught at a different level, but all of the key features that you'd expect from the Master's Seminary.

My class specifically is part of what's called the Sound Doctrine Certificate track, and so we have four different tracks that you can take classes in.

One is our Bible Knowledge track that is Permanent, Old Testament, New Testament. Our Christian Living track is more personal, holiness -oriented classes that deal with prayer, um, shepherding leadership, discipleship mentoring, things like that, uh, biblical manhood and womanhood.

Um, our track on shepherding care is a broader one that deals with eldership, deals with marriage and family counseling, reconciliation counseling, um, and then our theology track is the one, it's called

Sound Doctrine, is the one that my class is in, and in that class it has a theology proper class, which is what mine is on the doctrine of God and the decree.

And for me, that's always been an issue where the Church has been extremely weak recently. And that's what, you know,

Jesus says in Matthew, or I mean, sorry, in John, verse 17, because this is eternal life, that they will know you and the

Son whom you have sent. So eternal life is knowing God, and that means knowing about his attributes and his perfection.

And so this class, then, seeks to kind of bring some of the forgotten attributes of God into the forefront of our minds.

Oftentimes, when we study the attributes, we just study what are known as the communicable attributes, you know, love, grace, mercy, joy, things like that.

So we oftentimes neglect, because they're a little more difficult, what are known as the incommunicable attributes. And so my class focuses heavily on the incommunicable attributes, which would be timelessness, simplicity, aseity, pure actuality, and then it does deal with the communicable attributes, and then finally it concludes with the doctrine of the decree, dealing with election and pre -estimation, which is what

I did my doctoral dissertation on. And so all the doctrines related to theology properly have always been near and dear to my heart, just because it's so neglected.

And I feel like the more you study God's attributes, just the rich treasure that you see, and how you understand the whole world.

You see the whole world through a different lens. And it's interesting, I think John, a few years ago, was asked, if he was standing on a desert island and only had his

Bible and one other book, what book would it be? And he said that it would be Stephen Charnock's The Attributes of God, because there is so much

Bible in studying the attributes, and you just get to know God so much better that way.

And it's just a lost discipline, a lost art. You know, people want to study what they think is eminently practical, and in doing so they neglect what is ultimately essential for your knowledge of God in the world, which is saying who

He is. Well, if people are interested, they could go to tms .edu and look up Institute for Church Leaders, and they can see that.

Peter, how many weeks is that class, The Doctrine of God and the Decrees? Yeah, so our average class is 10 weeks.

And the way the classes are all broken down is it's about a one hour to an hour and 20 minute segment each week.

And the weekly lessons are further broken down into 20 minutes, 10 minutes videos for working professionals.

Because not everybody has the time to sit there and watch an hour and 20 minute video in one setting. And so this way they can watch it kind of however long they want.

It's all take -as -you -go, at your own pace, so it never expires, it doesn't go away. If you want to take 10 months to go through a class, you can take 10 months.

If you want to take it in 10 days, you can take it in 10 days. My class specifically is 14 weeks, so it's the longest one we have.

It was more of when I was starting to edit it down and get it, I was just like, you know, people need to know about the Doctrine of Trinity, and they need to know.

I just couldn't seem to think of what to take out, but I just left as much in there as I could. And also, for this month, up until the end of the month, we're offering that course at a $20 discount with the promo code

DOCTRINE50. It's kind of a celebration of John's 50 years of faithfulness to the

Church, but also to kind of advertise our new class as well. Well, what if you just typed in DOCTRINE100 and then you got an extra discount?

That'd be awesome. Yeah, I'd love it. Well, I could say this with all honesty. Peter, if I had the money eye, meaning the royal eye here at the

Church, we have, by the way, we have a Bible Institute here, and we've taught classes throughout the years from Hebrew to Greek to systematic theology, hermeneutics, etc.

I would hire you, and then you could be the full -time guy out here in the middle of the tundra in Massachusetts to teach doctrine at a, not just a lay level, but even one step up and beyond.

I would love to be able to hire you, but since I don't have the money, I guess you're going to have to stay there for a while. Well, I appreciate it.

Yeah, I, you know, I want to spend my whole life and just be spent teaching, you know, systematic theology.

So it's encouraging whenever, you know, we've had people, you know, attend the class and things like that, and just the positive feedback

I get from guys like you is just really encouraging to me, just because, I mean, I don't know, it's just interesting because you have an integrity that stands behind what you've done for so many years at your

Church and on the radio, and so it means a lot whenever you have guys of high caliber that appreciate what you're doing.

We're talking to Dr. Peter Sammons today. Peter, does this tie in directly with your position at TMS as Director of Distance Education?

I assume this is part of that. Yeah, so as a Director of Distance Education, I oversee all of our online platforms.

So I oversee our Head Start program, which is a program that we do where a student can take essentially their first year of courses, out of three, before they move out here to L .A.

So they can take them all online to get a Head Start. I also oversee seven distance locations. So we have locations located throughout the

United States. We have one in D .C., one in Texas, one in Montana, Alaska, and Spokane and Washington.

And basically for those students, they take a third of their classes online. They take a third of their classes two -way live, where we live stream them into our classrooms here in L .A.

And then they take a third of their classes on -site with the pastors of those local churches, who are all either graduates or on the board, or they have some close connection with those doctrines.

And then that's the main thing I do. I oversee that program. And then also the People's Church Leadership, which is our layman training program as well.

All right. Well, I'm looking online right now, Peter, at your 2012 senior testimony, six, seven years ago.

You look so young. Boy, if people want to hear your testimony, they can just pull that up.

Peter Sammons, TMS, 2012 senior testimony. What were you, like 19 then or something?

Yeah, I don't even know. I was four, eight, five. I'm not good at math. I was too young,

I guess. We don't have much time left, Peter, but I want to talk about your book and what you did regarding your doctoral dissertation.

There's been lots of talk, obviously, about hell and erasing hell.

And of course, we don't have to go back that many years before we know Rob Bell. And of course, in the past,

Fudge and Stott and others, it's always an issue because hell and reprobation is such a gut -wrenching topic.

Tell us a little bit about your paper and your book and why you would ever think of talking about and writing about the doctrine of reprobation.

Yeah, it's interesting. It's one of those areas that I feel every Christian, whenever they first come to grasp with the doctrine of election and predestination, the first time they encounter it, whether they accept it or whether they're hesitant, the first thing that they think about is, what about the non -elect?

And that's always what kind of holds people back or makes people critical of the doctrine of predestination in general, is that they don't know how to reconcile

God's predestined all of the wicked for judgment and maintaining

God's holiness. And so the goal of my dissertation was multifaceted, but really to do an exhaustive study of the doctrine of reprobation, historically, exegetically, and then theologically.

And so I started studying the doctrine of reprobation a long, long time ago.

When I first became a Calvinist and learned the doctrines of grace, I was like, well, what about this? I went to an

Arminian undergrad, so I had a lot of friends who had questions about it. My home church was an

SBC church that wasn't really friendly towards Calvinism, so I mean, I had a lot of explaining to me, you know?

So I've been studying it for a long time, and one of the things I did in my dissertation was to go through and to explain the difference between the decree and the execution of the decree, and ultimately to explain how

God uses secondary causes in the execution of the decree of reprobation to maintain

His holiness. And so I spent a lot of time on that. That's kind of one of the key things of the book that I'm working on.

And that's one of the things that most guys have found helpful. A lot of the guys who have helped endorse me in the book and want to see it in print have benefited a lot from the categories of secondary causes in reprobation that I've put forth in the book.

And so, yeah, I think it's one of those neglected areas, and it's interesting, like, when you go to try to find material on it, systematics generally don't have much.

I think Burkoff has like a paragraph, maybe a page and a half. Most systematics don't have a ton on it.

And what was interesting to me as I was doing a historical study, I did a study from the early Church all the way through the

Synod of Dort, and I found that John Knox and John Budden both had longer treaties on the doctrine of reprobation in specific than Calvin or anybody else up until the

Reformation, which was surprising to me, considering those two guys are known for their evangelism, their extreme evangelism, you know, give me

Scotland lest I die, that's what you think of, what do you think of not, and Bunyan even, which is one of those things that people oftentimes criticize those who hold to reprobation as being hyper -Calvinist.

And so that's one of the things my doctorate seems to kind of unravel with how it's a wrong association to conclude that reprobation means hyper -Calvinism.

Peter, any opportunity for, I know I'm interrupting you, but time is going, any way that people can get a copy of that dissertation slash book?

Yeah, so the book I'm working on right now, I'm still trying to get it into publication, it's not really ready yet, but I'm hoping that it'll be in contract within the next, you know, six months or so, and then maybe

I'll be able to come back on and tell everybody how they can get it. Okay, great. Well, one of the things

I've noticed with reprobation, and of course I think about hell and when I think about those doctrines, now that the

Lord has taught me in scripture, you know, the validity of those things, I just think to myself two things.

One, I'm thankful I don't have to go there. And number two, I'd like to evangelize, right?

So, it really does drive that. I mean, it's just a false canard, this, well, you know, you believe in reprobation, so why evangelize?

And you were right, the men that taught it the most were known for evangelism.

Yeah. All right, well, Peter, thank you for being on No Compromise Radio today. If I were the dean of Master's Seminary or Southern Seminary or RTS or Westminster Escondido, I would want to hire you.

So, I'd have you teach lots of theology classes, doctrine of God classes, and does anybody think you're ever a

Presbyterian? You're so Reformed, you're almost a Presbyterian, but you're not. Do they think that? Yeah, I've been asked that a number of times.

It's funny, Ligon Duncan once told me that he would hire me immediately to teach at his school if only I had baptized

David. I always think it's a compliment when people ask me if I'm a

Paedo -Baptist, because I'm swimming in the circles that are around there. Peter, Salmon's a

TMS, Director of Distance Education. Do you teach anyplace else?

Are there Bible studies or other classes that people might be able to access online? Yeah, I teach a ministry here in Grace Church and Grace Life, and a number of my sermons are available on the

Grace Life pulpit, where Phil Johnson and Michael Carty both have all their sermons. So, a number of my

Hebrew sermons are available there, and I'm looking forward to hopefully be teaching systematic theology here at the seminary, and for the most part, yeah, that's what all my ministry is focused on.

It's just kind of, I teach a Bible study and I preach when I get opportunities. Great. Well, I am so glad the

Lord had our paths intersect, Peter. I appreciate you and your ministry, and I look forward to seeing you face -to -face in about three weeks.

Oh, I can't wait. Thanks for being on No Compromise Radio. Thank you. 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 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

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