August 26, 2025 Show with Dr. Sean Morris on “John Knox: The Thundering Scot”

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Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 26th day of August 2025.

I'm delighted to have a first-time guest today to talk about a very important figure from church history. Our guest today is Dr. Sean Morris, Associate Pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which is a congregation in the Presbyterian Church in America denomination, also known as the PCA.

And Sean earned his Master of Theology from the University of Glasgow, Scotland, on Scottish theology and church history, and his Ph .D. from Puritan Reform Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan, founded by my longtime dear friend, Dr. Joel Beeky.

Today we're going to address John Knox, the thundering Scot, the man and his pastoral theology. It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Sean Morris.

Chris, it's a delight to be here. Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be with you on this platform. I don't know if you remember, I think we met briefly in the flesh a few years back at the Banner of Truth Ministries Conference there on the campus of Elizabethtown College.

And so it's great to see you again, even if it is mediated through the Internet.

Well, it's a delight to have you on the show finally. And tell our listeners something more about Covenant Presbyterian Church in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Certainly, Covenant PCA was founded here in the little community of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, just outside Knoxville in the 1950s. It was part of the old Southern Church, the old PCUS, and came into the PCA in its early days.

And for those folks who may not be familiar with the story of Oak Ridge, it's a fascinating tale. Oak Ridge was a town, was a city, quite literally a secret city built by the federal government in the days of World War II as part of the Manhattan Project.

And so as the atomic bombs were developed, a lot of that development happened here at what is now the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and were tested at Los Alamos and eventually used, as folks will know, in Japan to bring a sooner end to that war.

And so Oak Ridge was a secret city built by the government for that project. And I think if I have my story straight, initially it was meant to be destroyed after the war was over. But they built a town and they had brought in a population and there were people living here.

There were schools, there were families. And they thought, you know, we have this world-class, state-of-the-art laboratory that's functioning here. Why, why get rid of it? And besides, the secret is out.

People know that this facility exists, so let's just use it for purposes now in the post-war era. And so Oak Ridge has been here ever since. And there were Presbyterians, Bible-believing, Bible-loving Presbyterians that wanted a congregation here.

And as things went south in the mainline church, eventually those folks realized, you know, we need to seek greener, more faithful pastors. And so they came into the PCA and we've been, by the grace of God, going strong ever.

Since. Hallelujah. Well, if anybody wants more details on this fine congregation, Covenant Presbyterian Church of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, you can go to their website, covprezpca—I'm sorry, I'm looking at your email address—your website is covenant-pca .com, covenant-pca .com, and God willing, we'll be repeating that later on in the program.

And I've got to introduce you to a very dear friend of mine in Knoxville, since you're so close, Pastor Claude Ramsey of Reformata Baptist Church in Knoxville, which is a Reformed Baptist church. And you will absolutely love Claude if and when you meet him.

Oh, I'd love to.

Very humble, gracious, and just a wise brother in Christ, and also a very powerful preacher. And they call John Knox the Thundering Scott. I guess you could probably call Claude Ramsey the Thundering Redneck.

But he's a great guy, and I'm sure that he would laugh at that comment and not be offended by it. Well, we have a tradition here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, whenever we have a first-time guest, before we delve into our main topic at hand, we always have first-time guests give a summary of their salvation testimony, which would include any kind of religious atmosphere in which they were raised, if any.

And what kind of providential circumstances our sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and saved them. So we would love to hear your story.

Oh, I'd be delighted. Thanks. Well, I grew up in a church-going home, and I'm thankful for that. My parents, they brought me to church, they brought me to—we went to all kinds of variety of different churches.

And, you know, it's one of those complicated things where not knowing exactly the spiritual state of family members, but nevertheless, I'm thankful that my parents saw fit to raise me in a church-going environment.

And so growing up, we attended a variety of different kinds of congregations. We were—oh, we went to Methodist churches, we went to Pentecostal churches, we went to Baptist churches, we went to Churches of Christ.

We were all over the place. But I think that I was converted at age 11 through the ministry of just a Bible camp that a fourth-grade friend of mine invited me to tag along to. And it was one of those instances where there was no dramatic sort of emotional manipulation, there was no sort of altar call at the end of the week or anything like that, but I think that just as a result of being in that environment and listening to the preaching of the Word and sermons day in and day out and Bible studies and singing God's praises and hearing those sermons in our evening worship services throughout the week, that I came home a Christian.

You know, I knew that the death of Christ on the cross reflected God's love. I understood that conceptually. But coming home after that week, I finally understood that it was for me, a sinner, and that I could have salvation in and through trusting Christ as my own Lord.

And so from there, from age 11, by God's grace, I just grew exponentially. I went to a local Christian bookshop and bought myself, at the recommendation of the shopkeeper, a good study Bible, and I devoured it.

And then as I grew in grace and as I grew as a Christian, I'll tie this into my own sense of call to ministry because it just goes so part and parcel with that. I think by age 13, I started to sense a call to the ministry.

And in the most unlikely of places, it was my junior high metal shop teacher, a man by the name of Ken Ayers, who's now home with the Lord. Ken Ayers, his full-time job was a woodshop and metal shop teacher in the local public schools, but he also pastored this small little country church in the PCUSA.

He did that bivocationally. And that congregation was conservative as far as that denomination goes, pretty conservative by PCUSA standards. And I got to know Ken, and he invited me and my family to come worship with them at that church sometime.

And I discovered historic Presbyterianism by a man who still believed and taught the Bible and the truths of Scripture. And one day sitting in worship, it just dawned on me that as I was growing as a Christian, that I love to read about Christ, I love to talk about Christ, I love to tell others about Christ, and I was watching Pastor Ken, it just dawned on me, I could do this for a living.

Now, of course, I'd put it in more sophisticated and biblical terms then, but to my 13-year-old mind, it dawned on me, I could study and talk about and teach the Bible for a career. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

And so I talked to Ken, I said, Ken, or Mr. Ayers, what do you have to do to be a pastor? He goes, well, Sean, traditionally, Presbyterians have valued a highly educated ministry, and so you'll want to get ready to go off to undergrad for four years, and then you want to go off to seminary for an additional three years beyond that, that's what you should be planning on doing.

And so throughout high school, that was in the back of my mind, this is the game plan that I intend to pursue post-high school years. And we were there at that little country church for a couple of years, but it was about an hour or so drive from our house, and so it became a little tedious for our family.

But we, again, by the grace of God, were able to find another pretty conservative PCUSA congregation, at least by that denomination standards, closer to our home, about a 20-minute drive from our home, and that was the First Presbyterian Church of Ashtabula, Ohio.

And the pastor's name there was Stephen Long, who's also since gone home to be with the Lord. And I told Stephen the same things I told Ken, and Stephen was the man who introduced me to Reformed theology.

He gave me R .C. Sproul books and R .C. Sproul videos and taught me about the doctrines of grace. He mentored me, both these men did, took me under their wing, brought me to things like presbytery meetings, let me try my hand at leading Bible studies or assisting in worship services in appropriate capacities to test my giftings and inclinations as a young man who thought he might want to go into the ministry.

And that sense of call just continued to get affirmed and confirmed. And so off I went to undergrad at Pastor Stephen's recommendation because his son had gone to Grove City College in nearby Western Pennsylvania, and he had such a wonderful experience there.

So he commended that to me and he steered me in that direction. So off I went after high school to Grove City, and there I came into a theology faculty that was full of men that were PCA ministers and Reformed theologians.

And at that point, it was game over for me. I had already been sensing that the PCUSA was not likely to be a good or happy home for me long-term, given where that denomination was going. So within a couple of years, thanks to the mentoring of professors, including a music professor who was a PCA deacon of all things, I came into the PCA and I told the elders there the same thing, that I was sensing a call to ministry.

They mentored me. They loved me. They shepherded me. They invested in me. They let me test out gifts and inclinations, leading Bible studies and things like that for the church, teaching Sunday school, and they affirmed that inclination.

And so they, post-undergrad, sent me off to seminary, both with their prayers and financial support and their commendation. And I met my wife, Sarah, at Grove City. We got married there. And shortly after we got married, we packed the car and off we went to Jackson, Mississippi, so that I could study at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson.

And we had four wonderful years there. I had a wonderful internship at the First Presbyterian Church of Jackson. And then after that, took my first fall in Roanoke, Virginia, at Westminster Presbyterian Church, PCA.

And that's where I ministered for eight years or so before taking the call here where I am now, at Covenant Oak Ridge, where I labor alongside my wonderful man, wonderful colleague, my dear friend, and frankly, a man, another man I consider a mentor, Dr. Nick Wilborn, who's the senior minister here.

Yes, and he's actually agreed to be on the program in October. So we're looking forward to that.

Wonderful. Yeah, we've got all kinds of church history here at Covenant. Nick is a scholar of Southern Presbyterianism. He did his PhD on John Girardeau. He taught for many years at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, still does teach for them, adjunct.

And so whether it's Scottish church history or Southern Presbyterian church history, from me or from him, we've got church history and historical theology coursing through our veins here at Covenant. It's a wonderful place to be.

Well, I'm assuming this love affair that you began with Reformed theology and discovering, no doubt, that much of the rich history of the Reformed faith can trace its roots back to Scotland. I'm sure that was one of the reasons you sought to be getting further education there in Glasgow, Scotland, and to learn more about the Scottish Reformation and your primary hero that we are discussing today, John Knox.

Yeah, that's right. I, during undergrad, you know, I, like so many other folks in the Reformed world, you know, I knew who John Knox was. He was the leader of the Scottish Reformation. He's the so-called father of Scottish Presbyterianism.

He'd been influenced by Calvin, but that's really all I knew about him. I didn't know a whole ton about Scottish Presbyterianism or the Scottish Reformation. And it was really through the influence of two of my pastors when I was in Jackson, as well as another, a friend of mine who was adjunct faculty at the seminary, that I found a love for Scottish theology.

So when we were at, in Jackson, we worshipped, we were members at First Presbyterian, the first couple of years there, Ligon Duncan was our pastor. And if anyone knows Ligon, they know he loves Scottish history.

He loves Scottish theology. And so he first whet my appetite for learning more about Scottish church history, and then when he went on to be the chancellor of Reformed Theological Seminary, the next man who became our senior pastor at First Pres was David Strain, and David does hail from Glasgow, Scotland.

So he's a Scotsman, and he absolutely ignited my love and interest in Scottish church history and Scottish theology, just through tons of conversations and learning more about the Free Church of Scotland, which was the denomination that he hailed from, and learning how that denomination arose out of the Mother Church, the Church of Scotland.

And I realized, I want to learn more about this further. I want to study more about this. Another gentleman, friend of mine, Dr. Duncan Rankin, he did his PhD at the University of Edinburgh. He's a lover of Scottish theology and church history.

And so talking with Duncan and having him in some classes also further bolstered that interest in Scottish church history and theology, and so I was excited. And then it was only further exacerbated, if you like, when I was able to go on a short mission trip with our church in Jackson.

We went to Scotland. I visited Scotland for the first time, and we did a week of evangelism and outreach in the city of Dundee at St. Peter's Free Church. Where David Robertson was the minister at the time.

But that, as your listeners might know, that's the historic church where Robert Murray McShane served, St. Peter's, what is now St. Peter's Free Church in Dundee. And so I fell in love with the land of Scotland, the land of our Presbyterian heritage.

I wanted to learn more. And so David Strain, Pastor Strain, and others had alerted me to the existence of this wonderful study program through what used to be called the Free Church College, the official training institution of the Free Church of Scotland.

It's now called ETS, or Edinburgh Theological Seminary. And they have this wonderful Master of Theology program where you can study with them, even from afar, like I did. You can study from overseas, maybe fly over, travel over once or twice to be in the library and to do some research.

But to have a distance program, and that's what I did in Scottish church history and theology. I thought to myself, I don't know, I didn't know at this point if I wanted to do further terminal degree studies, to do PhD studies, so I thought it might be wise, and others counseled me as well, it might be wise to try your hand at THM level studies and see how that suits you.

And then if you enjoy it and it's successful, you might want to go on and do further studies. So I did. I did THM studies through ETS slash University of Glasgow. And in those days, I was discovering a love for psalm singing, the singing of psalms, which of course is part of it, just part of the warp and woof of the Scottish Reformation, the classic expression of the sung praises of God's people through psalm singing.

And I just wanted to know more about the history of it. I wanted to know how it developed in the Church of Scotland and on into the Free Church of Scotland and how congressional singing developed over those years.

And so that was the subject of my research for my THM studies was the development of psalmody and hymnody in the Church of Scotland, the mother church denomination, just from a vantage point of historical interest, how that development took place.

And so from there, because I did enjoy it and it did go so well, other men in my life, mentors and pastors and others that I trusted, encouraged me to go further and do some PhD studies. And so I guess it was around 2019, 2020 or so when I had wrapped up the THM program, I was looking at PhD programs and I had a few different characters in mind.

One man, one church history scholar highly suggested, he said, you're a man whose full-time vocation is pastoral ministry. And so having a concrete, distinct subject matter that's maybe not too amorphous will be very beneficial to you.

Otherwise it might carry on forever. So he said, if you can pick up an historical figure who has an obvious beginning and end date, he has a birthday, he has a date of death, that's where his body of work ends, and you can study and analyze that, that could really suit you well to do those studies in tandem with your pastoral ministry.

And so I talked to a few folks and said, who's out there in Scottish Reformation studies that needs further exploration? And in 2016 or so, Professor Jane Dawson of Edinburgh had published that magnificent biography, probably her magnum opus on John Knox.

And so there was a fresh interest in Knoxian studies going on. And so it became clear to me that Knox might be a man worth pursuing. And if I could dovetail the studies nicely so that it really supplemented and strengthened and reinforced my own pastoral ministry, all the better.

And so my doctoral advisor said, well, then you need to do the pastoral theology of John Knox, because that really hasn't been covered yet. You're a pastor, you love pastoral theology. Let's examine this man in terms of his pastoral theology, because lots of other facets of his life and ministry have been examined, but not this one.

And so in looking at different programs, I thought, well, I want to stay in ministry. I want to keep on pastoring. I don't necessarily want to pause and go move somewhere for full-time studies. So there were only a few institutions that would allow for that.

And one of them was Puritan Reformed in Grand Rapids, where you can be a full-time minister and do studies part-time at a distance, just fly up there a couple of times a year for week-long intensives, do other classes online via Zoom, and continue your studies in a part-time capacity.

And so I was very blessed, the generous people that operate PRTS. I was awarded a fully funded scholarship, for which we thank God. And I did that course of study for about five years. And then that came to a terminus this past spring at our May graduation ceremony.

Oh, praise God. Just out of curiosity, do you know one of my former pastors, John Miller?

I don't, I'm sorry.

Okay. I was just curious because he's likely a little older than you, but he had some of his education at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary and also Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Taylor, South Carolina.

But I was just curious. I've known other people as well. I know other people who were educated at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary. Well, we're going to our first commercial break. And if you have a question about John Knox and about the Scottish Reformation in general, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Chrisarnson at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name at least, city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA.

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John Knox’s Life, Call, and Scottish Reformation Background

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnson, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And if you just tuned in, our guest today is Dr. Sean Morris, associate pastor at Covenant Presbyterian Church in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which is a congregation in the Presbyterian Church in America.

And today we are talking about John Knox, the thundering Scott, the man and his pastoral theology. And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. So tell us, Dr. Morris, why is it that you wanted to really highlight this great man of history, John Knox, among all of the other men of history that were giants of the Reformation, why is it that he stands out to you as someone that needs to be addressed more thoroughly?

I know that one reason is it must be because something that you mentioned before about your own knowledge initially being very thin in regard to John Knox. You knew that he was the father of Scottish Presbyterianism and not really a lot beyond that.

And I think that is generally, if you were to quiz even Reformed Christians, that would be their answer. And they probably wouldn't have much else to say. And it's a shame because it seems that out of all of the Reformers, John Calvin and Martin Luther are the ones that are more frequently cited, discussed.

And of course, I'm not lamenting that these men are holding significant places in the hearts and minds and pulpits of pastors all over the world, but it just seems that their legacies have far overshadowed Knox.

But if you could tell us in your own words, not only what compelled you to focus your studies on this man, but also about the man himself. And just as I asked you earlier, something about his own upbringing and his coming to Christ and so on.

Certainly. I think in many ways, and like you just said, Chris, it's certainly not a shame. It's just a statement of fact. I think Knox is overshadowed by Calvin because Calvin is such an indomitable figure in terms of Reformation history, and rightly so.

And Knox is so similar to Calvin. Now, these men are not, he's not a carbon copy of Calvin. He does have some differences, but he's more or less in lockstep with Calvin. And so the emphases and the strands that we find in Knox perhaps don't strike people as terribly unique, but they can find them in Calvin anyway.

And so I think there's this thought of Knox as, well, he's the man who was influenced by Calvin in Geneva. And so he took Calvin's idea back with him to Scotland, exported it there, applied it to the Scottish scene, and there we have the Scottish Reformation.

And there is some credence to that, that perhaps overly simplistic assessment. And so I thought, well, but surely there's more to the man than just, he learned a lot from Calvin and then copied it, and indeed there is more to that man.

I think in the church, and especially outside of the church, if anyone has heard of Knox at all, they've probably heard of him with respect to his infamous political treatise, the first blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment of women.

In fact, that has been reprinted and people are still selling it and reading it.

That's right. And with such a fiery title like that, it's bound to attract attention.

I thought it was about the view. That's why I grabbed it.

There's probably some good applicatory connections to make there. And so as I was looking into Knox and seeing what research, what studies have been done on him, there were various aspects of the man that have been covered.

He'd been analyzed along the lines of his work as a reformer, as a statesman, as an orator, as something of the prophetic dimension that he brought to his preaching and to his ministry in the Reformation.

There's even a PhD dissertation out there on him about how he's this surly, misogynistic woman hater and so forth. And again, I think if people have any impression, if they've even heard of Knox at all, and if they do have any impression of him, it might be something like that, which is unfortunate.

They know that title. It sounds fiery and it sounds abrasive. And so they think, oh, well, he's just some backwards fella with these backwards views who was hateful towards the fairer sex in the time of the Reformation, so who needs time with him?

And as I was digging into it, I thought, no, there's more to this man than meets the eye, there's more than I think has been fairly portrayed about him. And he was a complex figure. That's one of the reasons I love Jane Dawson's biographical work so much, because I think she's eminently fair to the man in painting a rather sympathetic picture of him, but not committing hagiography and not simply whitewashing his flaws and foibles away.

But it also occurred to me that there is an in, so going back for just a second, so that because he was a pastor, because he was a preacher, because he was a minister, I thought this is the lion's share of his work and attention and where his energies went, that warrants further analysis.

What was his pastoral theology all about? What did he spend the vast majority of his time doing? These other dimensions of his life have been analyzed, but that which perhaps was the soul of the man, that which was his heartbeat, his pastoral ministry, that really hasn't been given a detailed analysis.

In fact, my own doctoral advisor from PRTS, Stephen Myers, he was in correspondence with Jane Dawson, who is probably the world's leading living expert on Knox, and she said the same thing. She goes, I'm so glad that someone is doing this because there is further work on Knox that needs to be done on this aspect of his life and of his person, on his pastoral ministry.

So kudos to your student, she said, that he's doing this analysis on his pastoral theology. It needs to be done.

And it's just interesting that in spite of his reputation, probably the majority of it being slandered with misrepresentation and exaggeration, but the man who is viewed by many as the arch male chauvinist of history, his chief scholar and biographer is a woman.

Yes, it is quite something. And we can talk about that title and what he meant in context as we go on in the conversation. And of course, as a novice scholar, I'm not interested in excusing away the flaws and foibles that Knox had.

He had them, we all have them. We all, all of us sinners have flaws and foibles, but I am interested in getting a more accurate, fair depiction and representation of the man and understanding him on his own terms.

That was one of the big things they hammered home to us at Puritan as historical scholars is striving to understand historical figures in their own words and on their own terms, not simply on the terms that we would like to import back on them or not simply on the terms that are convenient for us to foist upon them.

And so that's so key, I think, to understanding Knox. And as I was reflecting on it a couple of years ago, and I've been reflecting on it some more even recently, it occurred to me that there is something of a renewed interest in Knox amongst some folks in the reformed world, but I think that it's an imbalanced interest.

And here's what I mean by that. I see sometimes out there, this is just anecdotally, I don't have any hard numbers or anything, but I see sometimes out there, young men in particular, young red-blooded men who like what Knox says, they like the things that he says about those dirty, wicked papists and the evils that they were promulgating and how he was opposed to that.

And they like what he said when he was calling out these wicked Roman Catholic female monarchs for what he viewed as an unnatural reign and rule and the wickedness that they were bringing to their kingdoms and opposing the Protestant cause and frustrating the efforts of reformation.

They like Knox when he speaks boldly in those regards. And so they say, we need a boldness like this in our day. And to some extent, I would agree. We do need boldness in our day. These are precarious times that we live in, spiritually speaking, and we need some boldness.

We need gospel boldness in our day. That's true. But it occurred to me that that's an aspect or a dimension or a sliver of Knox that some of these fellows like to highlight and gravitate to and grab onto.

But they often do it to the neglect of what I think is the lion's share of this man's life and ministry. Yes, he said those bold things and yes, he went toe to toe with Mary, Queen of Scots, and he had some epic showdowns, you might say.