Classic Friday: Luke Abendroth on Anselm and More

Nepotism, Puritan Names, and the Joke of “Fly Fornication”

Welcome to No Compromised Radio Ministry, Duplex Gratia Radio, DGR. My name is Mike Abendroth, and I'm glad to be your host, and I know many of you have tried to encourage me, saying you've been listening to the shows and have been learning and growing and understanding more about the Lord Jesus.

For that, I rejoice. I additionally rejoice today because I have a special guest online, the one who will inherit the No Compromised Radio Ministry empire, Luke Abendroth. Luke, welcome back to No Compromised Radio.

Thank you.

It's good to be back, and if anybody's wondering, yes, it is nepotism.

Yeah, but you know my line is always, it's not nepotism if the son can actually do it. So I don't think it would be nepotism, but you get the empire, I think you'll get the 11 Patreon members and all the rights to my books.

How's that?

Wow, I could just retire now in anticipation.

So Luke, you're what now, 27 years old, correct?

That's right, 27.

Married to Hannah. She's how many months pregnant?

Six months pregnant. Six months and like a week or something.

Wow.

And do you want to tell the listeners a little bit about some of the names that you were looking at from Puritan origin that you were just kind of in a funny way playing around with if the child would be a boy?

Do you want to tip your hand on that?

Sure.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I don't know if I want to tell people the ones I'm actually thinking of because some of them are pretty, pretty good. I don't know if I want to get that live with the millions of listeners.

Don't tell us the ones that you were thinking about, but tell us some other ones that are just kind of maybe over the top.

Yeah.

So I will.

We looked, I found an article online about Puritan names and there was all kinds of interesting ones. One, I think one of them was Praise God, Praise God. Barebone, I think was his name. So that's a pretty interesting first name.

Praise God. I actually have a website pulled up right now.

How about this one?

If Christ had not died for thee, thou hast been damned.

That's a first name or middle names too.

That's that's a, that's a first name. That's a with, with, with Kleinian hyphens.

Ooh, nice. Anything else on that sheet?

Job dash, Job with hyphens, hyphens, Job raked out of the ashes. First name.

How about this one? This is a good one.

First name, Fly Fornication.

Oh, fly or flee, do you think?

Fly.

Fly.

F-L-Y.

I think, I think Joseph did that, did he not, in Genesis?

Right.

That's why, that's why you got to name your son that, first name. All right. One more.

How about this?

Sorry for Sin with two dashes.

Wow.

Sorry for Sin. Sorry for Sin.

Cooper was a resident of Warbolton.

All right. Well, you know, there are trends and news articles all the time about, you know, hipster names and which names are in, which names are out. And so maybe Mike and Luke are out and Fly Fornication is in.

Yeah.

Fly Fornication is in.

And then maybe, yeah, remember, one more, I still already said one more, I'm not a man of my word, but Jesus Christ came into the world to save.

Nice. Well, it sounds like, you know, URC guys or something, OPC guys might do that. So we'll see. Speaking of which, I was in California not that long ago, as you know, Luke, and got to hang out with you and your family.

And we, meaning myself, my wife, Kim, Hannah, your wife, and you, we all went to Scott Clark's class at Westminster Seminary and just sat in, kind of went unannounced. Tell us about that class. What's the name of it?

It's called Medieval Church and Reformation. So it's basically, yeah, you look, you know, looking after kind of the ancient church fathers in the beginning of the medieval time through the Reformation.

So we're still in the medieval church portion right now, which is basically something I know nothing about. So thanks for teaching me that stuff.

Faith Seeking Understanding and the Place of Reason

Well, some of that was because I had a low view of maybe the Spirit's work, even in what they used to call dark ages, until I was corrected by Scott Clark. I liked it that we were learning in your class a little bit about what do you do?

Do you have understanding that somehow leads to faith, or faith that seeks understanding? What was Dr. Clark meaning by that, so you can let our listeners know?

Oh, I think he's just, you know, there's kind of always been a debate, you know, hopefully he doesn't listen to this because I'm gonna get the answer wrong and he's gonna think I wasn't listening. But I think, you know, it just goes back to the debate about what's the place of reason, what's the place of logic with, you know, in the Christian religion, you know, are we anti-intellectuals?

That's very popular today, you know, Christianity is very anti-intellectual. But in our family history, you see many men who start off with faith, right, they start off with authority, they start off with scripture, and then they use their powers of logic and reason and the gifting that God's given them to make conclusions, make observations, make deductions from that place of authority.

So you know, I think that faith-seeking understanding idea is we don't start off with our reason, right, we don't do this kind of Descartes thing where I start off with just myself and what I can observe and I start off with authority, I start off with revelation, I start off with scripture, but then my reason and my logic and my faculties are active from that point to even look at things like the conclusions of revelation or the, you know, how to synchronize different aspects of revelation.

So I think, you know, what he's getting at in that class is in our family history as Christians, we have never been anti-intellectuals, we've always been those who wanted to think deeply about our faith, and you know, there's this idea of faith today that's just, it's actually the opposite of reason and thinking, and that's just not true.

Talking to Luke Abenroth today at No Compromise Radio Ministry. It's been a long time, Luke, since I've sat in on a seminary class. I really loved sitting there just listening, learning. He talked some about Anselm in the Incarnation.

And I liked it that he said it wasn't Anselm that, you know, came up with the early view of substitutionary atonement that was found in, obviously, in the epistles, but Athanasius and other things. I thought that was good.

And then he talked about Abelard. Tell our listeners a little bit about the scandal of Abelard because that was, I'm going to always remember that story.

Abelard, Heloise, and the Scandal of Medieval Church History

Yeah, I don't know how many, you know, I think people listen to this podcast with their kids, you know? And you think church history would be a safe topic, but, you know, the more you study it, the more you realize how R-rated some things that happen in church history are.

But he basically, Abelard, basically dated or was a tutor to a young woman, Heloise, and, you know, it's a famous, famous story, you know, even in secular literature. But basically she was, you know, a child when he had a relationship with her, a sexual relationship, and then continued on.

So basically, you know, he was a pedophile from modern, in modern vernacular. And then his, I think, believe her father hired a few men to castrate him.

Do something bad.

Okay, you said it.

That's okay.

Well, you asked me the question.

I know, I know. I asked him a question. He gives me an answer. So keep going.

Yeah, don't ask a famous Mike Ebendroth line that I've heard many times in my life. It applies in ministry, in business, in personal relationships. Don't ask questions you don't want to hear the answer to.

Or how about this? Do you want me to give you the answer that you want to hear or what I think? That's a Mike Ebenroth line, Mike.

Yeah.

Is it a real question?

You want to know what I'm thinking or you want me to just tell you what you want to.

Hear?

And what they do, what happened to the men that did that bad thing to Abelard?

What was it? You see, you were probably listening closer than I was because I was being distracted by my mom and Hannah in the class, but I think it was they got killed or something.

Well, they grabbed the guys who did that to Abelard and then they poked their eyes out.

Yes.

Yeah.

Something. Yeah, that's right.

Well, you know, just like the Bible's boring, church history's boring, medieval time is.

Boring.

Everything's boring except today.

Yep. Yep.

Greek and Hebrew, Seminary Work, and a Future in Ministry

So, Luke, you are going to Westminster. What are your other classes and how can you learn both Greek and Hebrew at the same time?

Well, I am studying Greek and Hebrew, as you just gave away. So I'm taking Medieval Church Reformation with Dr. Clark, Greek and Hebrew, and then I am taking Biblical Theology in Canon with Brian Estelle, Dr. Estelle, which is a great class, kind of Kleinian Biblical Theology stuff.

And then I believe, am I missing something? I believe that's it. So, yeah, it's good. Greek and Hebrew are challenging to do at the same time, but you just got to put the work in. And it's been, you know, just as life gets busier, sometimes you don't, you know, you all like to get A's and sometimes that doesn't happen if you have other things going on and you've got to spend time with my wife and all kinds of things.

So yeah, it's going well, but it's a lot of work.

So can you say anything in Hebrew at all that we might recognize?

L 'chaim.

L 'chaim.

Well, okay, good. There you have it.

It's a life.

Yeah.

Luke, you would like to be a pastor one day. Is that true?

Yes, that's true.

I would like to be your associate pastor one day. How would that all work out?

Nepotism.

But if you can do the...

It's reverse nepotism.

But if you can do it, if you can do it, Dad, then it's not nepotism.

I've said many times, and you've heard me say this, I would love to be Luke's associate because Luke is gifted to preach and he's got his mother's love for people, and that's a dynamic combination there that the Lord certainly can use.

And I know he wants to preach Christ and just work through passages of the Bible, trained men, love the flock, and I would love to just be an associate. And what I would do is I would proverbially sit in the back, and if you, Luke, my son, made a mistake or you had to own up to something, I just let you take your lumps.

But if people tried to get after you or you're too young and take advantage of their power and their money to get you to do something, I would crush them. So that would be my ministry, to encourage, to let you take your lumps, and also to crush when needed.

How's that sound?

Sounds good. Sounds like an Abed Rockman.

Well, I could teach Bible Institute classes, I could preach for you when you were gone or something like that. But I don't know if the Lord will have that in our future, but that sure would be wonderful.

Well, you're hired.

Tell us a story a little bit about how you would sit in on some of my men's discipleship classes here at Bethlehem Bible Church, and you weren't even regenerate, and then we would have you read a book, and you'd read the book as an unbeliever, and then later you'd say, I was glad to read that book now as a Christian.

Do you remember that story?

I do, yeah.

I think the only one I remember is Lorraine Bettner's The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination. I remember, I don't know if I read the whole thing, but I read a good amount of it. So I was interested in it, and I think when I was younger, I thought I was a believer, and then as you know, of course, more than anybody, as I got older, I just never thought about the Lord, no real conviction of sin.

So I don't see how there was any proof for years, so that's why I say I wasn't a believer. But I was interested, and then obviously once I was saved, then I was like, man, I should have read that and actually paid attention, because I know this stuff.

But I remember that, and the great thing, and this is although we were catechized somewhat, but not really with necessarily the Westminster Catechism or anything, or the Heidelberg, but it's kind of a plug for catechizing your kids, because thankfully, when I was at Master's College, or I guess now Master's University, when I was saved, I didn't have to go and learn a lot of theology, because you had taught me doctrine and all those things growing up as a kid.

So I was able to understand the things that I already had in my mind by the Holy Spirit and that actually mattered to me. So I just think, you know, I love that way of doing things, and I think catechisms are awesome for that purpose, because, you know, when you do pray and hope that your child will be regenerated, and then they already have scripture to work with and to convict and to guide.

So yeah, so that was really helpful. I kind of just changed the topic, but...

No, that's good. And as I look back, Luke, I did a lot more catechism with Haley than I did you and Maddie and Gracie, and that's one of the things I regret in life. But I did teach you the Bible, and I did teach you theology, not just on Sundays, but, you know, most...many days of the week, if not most, we had family devotions, and we'd read the Bible or sing hymns or whatever.

But I think you make a wonderful point, and that is we, as Christian parents, teach our children the Bible, try to model our faith in Christ and our love for the saints, and then if the Lord decides to turn the light on, i .e. regenerate the person, the child or the young adult, then they've got all that data stored in there, right?

Oh, you never said to yourself, how could God be three in one and one in three? How could Jesus be truly human and truly divine? How could Paul and the Holy Spirit have written Romans? You might have studied a little bit about those topics, but you probably deep down never questioned those things, right?

Right.

Right.

Catechizing Children and the Shorter Catechism Story

Well, can I... You I just found that story about B .B. Warfield, that he told. Do you know the story about the Shorter Catechism?

These days I can't remember much, so remind me what I forgot.

Well, how about I read you the little snippet?

Come on, that'd be perfect.

So while you catechize your kids.

Okay.

What is...we have the following bit of personal experience from a general officer of the United States Army. He was in a great western city at a time of intense excitement and violent rioting. The streets were overrun daily by a dangerous crowd.

One day he observed approaching him a man of singularly combined calmness and firmness of bearing, whose very demeanor inspired confidence. So impressed was he with his bearing amid the surrounding uproar that when he had passed, he turned to look back at him, only to find that the stranger had done the same.

On observing his turning, the stranger at once came back to him and touching his chest with his forefinger, demanded without preface, what is the chief end of man? On receiving the countersign, man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.

Ah, said he, I knew you were a Shorter Catechism boy by your looks. Why that was just what I was thinking of you, was the rejoinder. To which Warfield concludes, it is worthwhile to be a Shorter Catechism boy.

They grow to be men, and better than that, they are exceedingly apt to grow to be men of God. So apt that we cannot afford to have them miss the chance of it. And then he quotes something from the Proverbs.

How about that?

That is awesome. And halfway through, I remember that, so I give you...

Wow, cheers for your memory.

No, cheers for that great quote, looking at that quote.

I love that story.

That is such a great story. I think there's some Civil War stuff too, when Confederates and Yankees and kind of swapping back and forth and when they were in prisoner of war camps and other things. But tell me, Luke, do you have any questions for me today on No Compromise Radio?

If in fact I am now your associate pastor or whatever, and now you're in charge, at least at the local church, do you have questions for me? Is there something you've been dying to know?

Hmm.

Why are you an antinomian?

Today I was reading from Ernest Kevar's book. I think it's called The Grace of the Law, and I don't really like the title, and I may or may not like the book, I'm not sure, but right now it's an introduction to some Puritan theology and some real antinomians like Saltmarsh and Gatiger and others, and Baxter's in the mix too, and Baxter was on the flip side because he kind of added some law, and so guys down the middle of the line were men like Robert Trail, Samuel Rutherford, and the Merrow men, and you know how I love to study that stuff.

So, so far I've at least enjoyed the intro to the book.

Well, that's great.

I've been looking at the, it reminds me of that book about John Colquhoun that I found at your house, bought at a bookstore recently, and so I've been reading that, and it's all about the Merrow. Merrow, free offer of the gospel stuff.

So, I've been reading a little bit about that too.

I don't know why I didn't teach you about the Merrow, because I didn't know is the answer, but that is really, really important to work through. Do you have to forsake sin in order to come to Christ? So that's a good issue that everybody has to work through.

I originally thought, Luke, that Merrow was from the William Ames book, The Merrow of Theology, which is more kind of a little systematic theology book. Tell me about Estelle's class. What book do you have to read for that class?

All kinds of different things. You know, it's biblical theology and canon, so it starts off with canon, and canon issues with, you know, Ehrman and Walter Bauer and all those people. So we reached out to Kruger for that, and Ritterbosch on canon.

And then you kind of work your way into biblical theology. So right now we're reading, well, I'm still finishing up Images of the Spirit. We're reading some of those chapters by Klein, and then Gimprolog is the main textbook.

So this class is basically the continuation of the Pentateuch class that Meredith Klein taught at Westminster. And Brian Estelle, or Dr. Estelle, I should call him Dr. Estelle, Dr. Estelle was one of the students.

So he's kind of teaching, and Gimprolog was originally the textbook or the notes that Meredith Klein had put together for this class that I'm in now. So that's pretty neat and interesting. There's all kinds of things that I don't understand.

As Dr. Estelle says, Images of the Spirit would be a great book if it was written in English. And I resonate with that.

Luke, why do you think that Meredith Klein was so influential in these circles, our circles, yet he was so hard to read? Don't you think that he would be well-known if he was easy to understand? How can you be hard to understand and be well-known?

How does that work?

I think that should be a question that I should be asking you. I don't know how that works. I think probably a lot of what he's saying is very insightful and something that nobody else was saying. So maybe if other people, well, not nobody else, but something that was being attacked in his day, especially things like the Covenant of Works and its connection to the Law of Gospel Distinction and all those things.

And so he was a staunch defender of that and did it in a very unique way that other people weren't necessarily doing it. So I think maybe if there was somebody that was saying the same things in a simple way that maybe they would have been widely read as well.

But I think that he had a unique approach of really looking at the structure of all these ancient Near Eastern treaties and making these parallels and seeing covenants and not just going to one verse, Hosea 6 -7, and saying that's the Covenant of Works, but seeing there's legal language in Genesis 1 -2 that sets up this idea.

There's the Spirit's presence, which is a covenant witness. All of these, the image of God itself is legal. He kind of comes at all of these things that the Reformed faith teaches, but he supports them from the context and from the original language and from intertextuality and comparing not earlier texts in Genesis, I guess, but earlier and later texts to kind of bring about the same, to make the same point.

So I think that it's a more organic way of doing biblical theology than proof texting. And I think that people like that.

I probably, Luke, should go back and re-listen to some of the Glory Cloud podcasts because I've listened to them in the past, but I've kind of forgotten what I learned. And now knowing more than I did back then, I'd probably benefit from Lee Irons and the Chris Coghie episodes.

So I might have to go do that this summer.

Yeah, you might have to. I think I probably understand some of what's being said.

That's true.

I just like the law gospel stuff, and I like the 2 Kings stuff too, but especially the law gospel stuff. And having a covenant of works and you're setting up and bringing legibility to the work of Christ.

That's what the Old Testament does. It brings legibility to the work of Christ. So now I can actually see it. I can understand it. It's clear. It's not just something that is floating out there. I mean, obviously the life of Jesus in the gospels is so magnificent and significant on its own that if you only had those, you could have a relationship with the Lord and a vibrant one, but it's so much deeper and there's so much, so many more layers, so much thicker when you have the Old Testament, and legible is the word Klein used for that.

So it's pretty cool.

Did I tell you, Luke, I'm sure I did, that I tried to interview Meredith Klein's son who has just retired a while ago from Gordon Conwell Seminary, chief librarian. And I thought that'd be interesting to talk to his son, but he, the son, didn't really want to be on NOCO.

Well, he doesn't want to be around Baptists.

That's right.

Well, no, I don't want to be around Baptists either.

I don't know.

Well, that's true. Without getting into the debate, but just sheer raw numbers, you attend Westminster Seminary, Escondido. They used to have the Baptist IRBS there with Jim Renahan that's since now in Texas and it's on its own.

What's the percentage of Baptist, non-Baptist at the seminary? Is it 90 Pado-Baptist, 10 Credo? What is it?

That sounds right. If I had to guess, maybe 90%, maybe a little bit more. Pado-Baptist.

Okay.

So there's a few Baptist guys there. Yeah, there's a few.

And do you guys all, you know, hang out together? Do you know how to mix well with URC people?

I don't know. You have to ask the URC people. I feel like I do.

Hey, does Chris Gordon ever show up on campus?

Yeah, I see him sometimes. I usually just say hi, but I've seen him around a bunch. So, yeah, he's there at different chapels and things and doing things with probably Dr. Clark and stuff.

So, yeah, it's good.

I mean, I think they're very welcoming. They're nice to the Baptists and, you know, obviously they want you to baptize your children. So that's but, you know, I've gotten some offers. Hannah's already gotten some offers from people.

Hey, I'll do the baptism of your baby when it's born, you know.

Well, it would be a wonderful thing in this sense, Luke. Whoever's the ordained minister who can do the sacraments, they say it is based on I don't know what they say technically for the baptism of infants.

But I now baptize fly fornication in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Maybe we should do it just because of that.

I think it was well, I know who it was, but I'll protect them. Somebody that we know, Luke, very well, they were doing some bad things in college, and somebody said something about fornicators will not inherit the kingdom of God.

And this person went to the library at the university because there was no internet at the time. And, you know, those big thick dictionaries, the big massive maybe Oxford or the complete and opened it up to fornication.

And the person who read that said, I'm doing that. Now, I'm not laughing about fornication, but I'm just laughing that the person didn't even know what the word was until he had to go to the stacks and figure it out.

I know, that's funny.

Well, that's why we're going to name our child Fly Fornication, so they'll know at a young age what to run from.

That is so wrong.

Well, Luke, it is great to have you on. You and I were talking on the phone, and I said, hey, do you have 25 minutes to do a no-co? And there was a pregnant pause, and you were calculating.

Well, I am working right now.

Okay.

I'm the parking lot of a client, and I was a little I got time, so I thought, sure, why not?

All right. Well, thank you for being on. If you ever want to get a hold of Luke and you want him to come and speak at the youth conference or something else, you can always email me, mike at nocompromiseradio .com.

I am Luke's handler, and for that, I get a stipend. Luke, thanks for being on today.

You're welcome, and just so everyone knows, I usually charge around $8 ,000 a second.

Outback Steakhouse, right?

Yeah, that's right. All right.

See you later.

Bye.