June 24, 2016 Show with Steven Dilday on “Exegetical and Theological Archaeology”

The Program’s Purpose and the Iron Sharpens Iron Mission

Live from the historic parsonage of 19th century gospel minister George Norcross in downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron, a radio platform on which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next hour and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. Now here's our host, Chris Arntzen. Good afternoon. Cumberland County, Pennsylvania,.

And the rest of humanity, humanity, it is humid out, the rest of humanity living on the planet earth listening via live streaming. This is Chris Arntzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you a happy Friday on this 24th day of June 2016, and I have a friend named Jim Garcia who has been urging me for years to get Dr. Stephen Dilday on my program for an interview.

Dr. Dilday was formerly my friend's pastor, and now we finally have the opportunity where our schedules are in harmony and we can conduct this interview, and I'm thanking God for it, especially after all the wonderful things I've heard about Dr. Stephen Dilday.

He holds a B .A. in Religion and Philosophy from Campbell University, a Master of Arts in Religion from Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, and both a Master of Divinity and a Ph .D. in Puritan History and Literature from Whitfield Theological Seminary.

He is also the translator of the Matthew Poole Project, which you can learn more about at MatthewPoole .net, and Poole is spelt with an E at the end. MatthewPoole .net, but it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron, Dr. Stephen Dilday.

Thank you, Chris.

Let me also introduce you to my co-host, the Reverend Buzz Taylor.

Hello, Dr. Stephen Dilday, good to talk with you.

It's good to talk to you.

And once again, I am outnumbered by Presbyterians being the only Reformed Baptist on the program.

I think it's good for you once in a while.

My guest being Presbyterian and my co-host being Presbyterian, but I'd like to also make sure I get up front our email address if anybody listening would like to ask questions of Dr. Dilday, our email address is ChrisArnzen at gmail .com, C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

Please give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA. That's ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. What I typically like to do, Dr. Dilday, before we get into the heart of a subject, by the way, to our listeners, our subject today, our primary subject is exegetical and theological archaeology, which is not something you hear a lot about in the media or elsewhere.

Although the foundation and much of the superstructure of the Reformed faith is readily accessible, there are gaps and important information and material remains locked up in Latin books, ultimately to the hurt of the church, and Dr. Dilday's project that he is currently working on is designed for the recovery of this material.

So we are going to be delving into that momentarily, but first I'd like to hear something about your own personal Christian testimony, Dr. Dilday, what kind of an upbringing you had religiously, if any, and how you not only became a believer in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, but also how you.

Dr. Dilday’s Background and Conversion from Deism to Reformed Christianity

Became theologically Reformed. My dad is something along the lines of an orgy.

I know what a deist is, but I don't know the other adjective you put behind it.

The old world, he said, deist or orgy.

Now, are you saying theist or deist?

Deist.

Deist with a deist, David, yes. But basically, is not a deist the view that God created all things but he is not personally involved in them and basically is a spectator in some sense?

Yes, that's right.

Okay, and so how did that kind of an upbringing eventually lead to you coming to a knowledge and faith in the biblical Jesus Christ and his gospel?

My mother's, I was maybe three or eight, made in our, my mother's hand, but I would say over years, great issues pertaining to my youth, decisive. I found that all I wanted to do...

Would you say personal training? You mean fitness, like physical fitness?

Yes, that's right. Yeah, so I was running a business and doing well, and I was, I was...

Oh yeah, I've got one right here.

So I found this introduction controversy with Zwingli at my resolution of the debate between reading these names down in a notebook, but it was strange, and the beauty with which, again by Scroll, Jonathan Edwards, so out of the mind in Brooklyn Chronicles.

Well, how did you eventually discover the writings and the person of Matthew Poole? And when, and also perhaps before you even say that, why don't you tell our listeners something about who Matthew Poole was?

So he was, he was coming up to tremendous, obviously he was, he was fully in sympathy with the Presbyterian cause, English annotation of his life. He died in the midst of them. When you buy Matthew Poole's English annotations, he actually died in the midst of them in a manner similar.

He was ejected from the ministry after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, as the act of uniformity in 1660, buried, and that he had one, he got the idea to, to draw, to agree with you or didn't agree with you, if it had a bearing upon the history, he wanted to include you.

So basically the synopsis of history had been translated. He did, he did.

Hmm. Wow. So what riveted you to Matthew Poole above all the other contemporaries and those that preceded him in the faith that are giants of the faith? Matthew Poole, although a name recognizable to the more studious reformed Christian, is virtually unknown to the common Christian, as you probably realized.

And what was, what was so unique about him that it really arrested your attention on him and caused you basically to devote much of your life to studying him and his writings?

Introduction was in my general study, the assembly did without very, the doctrines, they did that very, and wonder what the connection is. And so maybe he wrote with uh, John Murray at the chapter two, Dr. Young, he began to explain to you, and I was intrigued.

The first thing that, that came to my mind, if you think about the general million Christianity, there can be a me and my Bible approach. And I don't need any sort of human teachers given us this whole gifts for men, and then he promised to provide, which was brought to, we'd have a,.

We have in it. And I want to repeat our email address. If anybody would like to join us on the air, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. That's C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

And in the event that you have a question that you would like to ask of our guest, Dr. Stephen Dilday, and it can be on any broad issue regarding the reformed faith or even a broader issue regarding the Christian faith, but obviously you can ask a specific question about Matthew Poole, about the project that Dr. Dilday is participating in, and anything connected with that.

That's chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Have you ever read, just out of curiosity, a book that I had picked up quite a while ago from the Northampton Press run by Don Kistler? And this is a book titled, A Dialogue Between a Catholic Priest and a Protestant by Matthew Poole.

Yes, I know it. I've not read it in its entirety, but yeah, he had two great polemical works with respect to it. So it actually has a companion piece that I don't think has been.

Matthew Poole’s Polemics Against Rome and the Need for Clear Gospel Distinctions

Recalled. Yes, and some people in our day and age, they bristle when we basically draw a sharp line between the Church of Rome and the Reformation and Evangelical Christianity today. They say that we are being mean-spirited.

They say that we're being unloving. We're saying that we're living, a lot of what I hear is that we are living in the past and that the Church of Rome is no longer welded, if you will, to the Council of Trent's anathemas and a lot has happened since Vatican II.

So basically, we should get with the times. And since Vatican II has extended an olive branch to us and has identified us as separated brethren, we're supposed to reciprocate. But aren't there unresolved, clear contrasts in regard to the gospel and the unique role of Jesus Christ that are at stake when we compare the Church of Rome.

With the Protestant Reformation and even Reformed Christians today? Evangelical Christianity, as it ever was, has not continued. Right. And with the old Reformations here, believers, communion, and yet at the same time, false gospel.

As soon as you say salvation, once the line is drawn, it's just a thing to do. Yes. As the book of Proverbs reminds us,.

That faithful are the wounds of a friend, but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful. And we should not be covering up vital truths, salvific truths, just because we want to spare someone's feelings. I mean, the matter of somebody's eternal life is much more important.

Than sparing their feelings from being hurt. Yeah. I do think, and my reach is dire,.

At least in Christianity. I don't know if you're familiar with David Silversides, but I had him on the program several months ago, and he addressed that very subject. He wrote a booklet on the papacy being the Antichrist in his summation.

He's a Presbyterian in Northern Ireland,.

David Silversides. Yes. I know the name, and it makes me think about one that would love to be God. And Edward simply... Amen. And we have to actually go to a break right now.

If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. Chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't forget to give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the USA.

Don't go away. We'll be right back with Dr. Stephen Dilday after these messages. I am Chris Arnson, host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, here to tell you about an exciting offer from World Magazine, my trusted source for news from a Christian perspective.

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Reformed Monergism, Pelagianism, and Synergism

Welcome back. This is Chris Arnsen, if you just tuned us in. Our guest today is Dr. Stephen Dilde, and he is discussing, among other things, the Matthew Poole Project, which you can also learn more about at MatthewPoole .net.

And Poole is spelt with an E as in Edward at the end, an old British spelling. And if you'd like to join us on the air, our email address is ChrisArnsen at gmail .com. ChrisArnsen at gmail .com. We do have Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who has a question for you, Dr. Dilde.

He said, could you, in summary, contrast what is unique about Reformed theology from Arminianism and Romanism?

On the one end of the spectrum, Augustine attributes, he actually touched off the Pelagian controversy unwittingly by saying, whatever you will, but on the other end of the spectrum, you had Pelagius who believed that a human being do the things, you might call that a most mediating position.

Augustine's response, positive that he can respond. So years ago, even if you were some and you said, go ahead, 1 attributed Arminianism or even... Yeah, it seems that you have,.

On either end of the spectrum, monergism. You have the right biblical monergism that attributes all honor and glory and credit to God for salvation. And you have, on the other end of the spectrum, Pelagius also being a monergist, but in the opposite and unbiblical and heretical direction, attributing salvation really in its entirety to man.

And then you have the synergists in the middle who have all different levels of synergism, where they're sharing the credit between man and God. Would that be accurate? Yeah, precisely. By the way, Harrison, I don't believe that Harrison has ever won a New American Standard Bible, so we're going to have one shipped to you as soon as possible because of the fact that you have not won one of those yet.

And we'd like to thank our sponsors of the New American Standard Bible for not only supporting Iron Trump is Iron, but providing Bibles for our listeners who either contact us for the first time ever or who have never received one of the Bibles before.

So, thank you very much, Harrison. Well, let's go into a bit of the heart of what we were discussing before. And this may seem like a heady topic, but I think that it is something that is worthy of our attention, the exegetical and theological archaeology.

I give a little brief description of that before, but perhaps you can give a little more weighty definition to that.

Recovering Lost Reformed Sources Through Exegetical and Theological Archaeology

...opportunism, but it doesn't matter if he wants to include you. But through those reformations, he includes those men who were a medieval rabbi. If you said something, he'd give his own opinion. His conviction was physicians.

So, you really do get Tanah, a sequinist. Mitmaid had no love for such things, but the general idea is the age of the men. So, they apologize. Well, for those interpreters, if you can imagine, and then they get off the arc.

Imagine being a great narrative gets confused. Saturn was a tree. His youngest son sat against the fire, cursing, not of Jupiter, but of his sons, as well as that the Hebrew had to be the original. It was part of the confusion of this discussion as an author in America, because Henry had just been, until now, already been in the foreground for consideration again.

And this particular point, I do think, is an apologetic use.

We do have a listener in Lindenhurst, Long Island, New York, CJ, who asks if you have ever heard of the Jewish scholar Moses Maimonides, who has written extensively on the providence of God.

...genius, and he was that. You can find some reference to Maimonides and almost.

Every... And CJ, we're going to ship you a free copy of the New American Standard Bible, as well compliments of the publishers of the New American Standard Bible. And we thank them for renewing their sponsorship of Iron Sharpens Iron, as we now celebrate our first anniversary on the air.

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Well, what are some of the... It seems like, in looking through book catalogs and stuff, I've seen Matthew Poole's name come up. What are some of the works, the names of the works that are out there, if we wanted to do a little bit more investigation on him?

Well, let's see. So many prints. Online digital edition.

Right, yeah.

A handful of years ago. I'm not going through nine years ago. The most complete biography that's been maybe Life and Times of information about... Encyclopedia entry.

And I'm assuming, since Poole was a more recent figure from history than John Owen, that he is.

More readable and understandable? Okay. If not, his exegetical work, in particular, is easy orders, and he doesn't wish to be insured. He doesn't book Poole volumes. The synopsis, five volumes. So anything that I thought would be your name, nothing.

Right, yes.

And his banquet at the Lerner. The second thing that I do is, as I... Isn't that very interesting? Even go immediately to try to further enrich. And then the last thing, the very best, to make this accessible not just to you, not just to eggheads, but to every Christian.

By the way, we have to...

Part of the archaeological work, right?

Yeah. We have to go to a break right now. If you'd like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com.

And don't go away. We're going to be right back with Dr. Stephen Dilday and more of our discussion with him on Matthew Poole, the Reformed faith in general, and other things that you might want to ask about regarding the Christian faith and the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We'll be right back.

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So thank you very much, World, and we look forward to many years of a relationship with you. And this is Chris Arnzen, if you just tuned us in, for the last hour and the next hour to come. Our guest is Dr. Stephen Dilday, and we are discussing the Matthew Poole Project, which is something that he is devoting a great deal of his life to.

And if you'd like to join us on the air with a question about the great historic figure Matthew Poole, or about Reformed theology in general, or even about Christianity in general, perhaps you're not even Christian and you want to know more about Jesus Christ and his Gospel, well, you can email us a question about any of those things at chrisarnzen at gmail .com, and we do have a listener.

We have Christian in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, is the book that you were referring to earlier, Matthew Poole, His Life, His Times, his contributions along with his argument against the infallibility of the Roman Catholic Church by Thomas Harley, published in 2009 by Universe Publications?

Yes. Great. Well, thank you very much, Christian. And guess what, Christian, you're also getting a free New American Standard Bible today, compliments of the publishers of the New American Standard Bible, as we celebrate Iron, Sharp, and Zion's first anniversary on the air, since we relocated to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, that is, and we hope that you enjoy that for many years to come, Christian.

And what, give us some, oh, you had a question? Well, I was just kind of curious, before we get.

Personal Backgrounds, Charismaticism, and the Matthew Poole Project’s Practical Work

Back into the subject that we're covering, I was just, I couldn't help but notice how similar our backgrounds are. Dr. Dilday, I also, I didn't come from Catholicism, but I was raised in the Episcopal Church.

I also went through a brief stint of being charismatic, and also ended up.

Reformed Presbyterian. But I think Dr. Dilday was actually a Covenanter, weren't you?

Not exactly, no, although there's that. Well, wasn't the Reformed Presbyterian.

Church denomination that you were part of, the Covenanter group? No, it wasn't. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, okay, I'm sorry. I thought it was an exclusive.

Psalmody group with a cappella, am I incorrect on that? No, you should know what happened.

Oh, okay. But I'm sorry, Buzz, I interrupted you, go ahead. Well, that's okay, I was just kind of.

Curious about the little trip you took through your charismatic beliefs and how you got out of that.

Yeah, well, I went to the doctrines and eventually found some of these. I made my way to a PCA church, Campbell University, and did a bit of preaching. If you'd asked me at that point if I ever wanted to be a pastor, would I want to do something like that?

I'm not sure I'd ever heard a worthwhile sermon. At that point in the assembly, the sweet salve of the gospel at OPC church, a handful of years, was a better fit because of my...

And I'll fill in that gap that Buzz didn't have, I was a Roman Catholic before becoming a Christian. So I was an altar boy in the whole nine yards. So tell us more about the actual hands-on work that you are specifically doing with the Matthew Poole project.

And let me once again repeat that website for those of our listeners who want to get more information. It's MatthewPoole, with an E as in Edward at the end, .net, MatthewPoole .net. If you could tell us exactly all of your duties and your activities with this project that you are working on.

Currently, I'm trying to give myself to it full-time. I do think if I could give myself to it full-time, DeMoore's systematic theology could be done in 10 years' time. But I know that even then it's still something.

What I do is, of course, I spend a lot of time translating. At this point in the translating, I can read and type, but researching these obscure places, events, so that the text is to normal English readers.

And so then beyond making that, making the translation and posting it online, I've then got to go back and proofread and edit and try to get as readable a text as possible, so that implication both in book format as well will raise up.

Part of the trick of raising up others is others have to accrue. We don't know that we've lost something until we've lost things along the way. Maybe just once upon a time, there was a Lutheran theologian by the name of Christopher Helvicus.

He wrote a whole book on Genesis 4 .1 entitled Desiderium Matris Dy, The Desire of Mother Eve. What is it that Eve, he defends her reading of Genesis 4 .1 ought to be, I have gotten a man, in which Eve had the doctrine of the Incarnation.

We might wonder how she, Helvicus has the point that this would be the natural reading. East, where man is in the direct object position, but then you get the at, which is the direct object marker, and then the divine name.

East, standing in apposition. Calvin doesn't like this so much about the doctrine of the Incarnation. But if you pick up the Covenants, and we can be so very grateful that at some point, somebody took Vitius's work and translated it into English.

I mean, somebody had to do with Vitius once upon a time, but what I'm trying to do now is cool. But Vitius talks of Endium at the very beginning, and that development at the roots of Genesis 3 .15, the response of faith in our carnate lost.

You have to really know where to go to look for these again.

And what would be the greatest missing piece of the puzzle that you think this project is providing for. The, not only the scholarly realm of Reformed theology, but the body of Christ who.

Will be benefited as a result? Reducing it to one thing, if there were one, I do think that in spite of the fact that we have Bibles aplenty, easy access to Greek and Hebrew, you can access them for him to collect these books.

Yeah, I know that you have some friendship.

With the Still Waters Revival Books folks, and they've got the massive amounts of the works of the Puritans available on CD-ROM and so forth. Yes, so we've got all these Bibles, and yet.

There's that belongs. We do hope that getting this out, just that you can learn wonderful things under pools, just as Matthew Henry did. Just recently for Jonathan Edwards' encyclopedia, Matthew Poole, which I've done, and we marvel, material had to come to his own mind.

Yeah.

...trueism, as far as in a very minor role, and a Jesuit by the name of, continues to cite throughout because he was important. The preterism that is going on now, you have it a little bit in the Jesuits, and a little bit in the British Isles.

That doesn't make it right, but that is very interesting, isn't it? It helps carry us out of our own time and out of our own... ...particulate with the images, but they find a historicist anymore. The reason is more.

Another interesting framework, I thought, doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone until the rise of the modern science.

Right. Yeah, that figures.

So, yeah, but isn't it interesting that the natural reading of the text, without the libertation, reading of the text, Very interesting, right? We do end up with an issue, is the nature of what God teaches in Scripture, harmonious, and are going to harmonize.

It probably should...

Well, yes, and it seems like one of the nice features here that we're discussing is the fact that we are part of a rich heritage in history, and we're part of those who've gone before us. We are the kingdom of Christ, and yeah, we can benefit from those who've gone before us.

And I think there's this tendency today, I think you mentioned it earlier, you know, the Jesus and me mentality that is so prevalent. This is putting us back where we belong in a long line of people.

Yeah. Yeah, and I'm very grateful to be in a long line of people.

It is a rich heritage, that's for sure. And I will admit, though, sometimes, you know, when you read some of the older works, it is difficult to understand. Our English today isn't quite what it used to be.

Yes, yeah. And I do think that we're not being thinking...

Right, yeah.

...and we're blindsided. That was one of the things that struck me all those years ago, to write a sentence in interrelation, and then all of this He was able to think it and write it. It it.

Yeah.

We do have a listener in Mastic Beach, Long Island, Tyler, who says, let's see here... Was Matthew Poole unapologetically opposed to Arminian soteriology such as that embraced by Augustus Toplady? I didn't know that Augustus Toplady was an Arminian, but...

Do you have a response to that?

I'm aligned to those two standards, which are Arminianism upon all...

And I know that Tyler already has a New American Standard Bible, so guess what, Tyler? You're not getting nothing. But we thank Tyler for being a faithful new listener. We're hearing a lot lately from Tyler, and we really value his contributions to our discussions very often.

He's a bright young man, and thanks for becoming a part of the Iron Sharpens Iron listening family. We are going to our final break right now. If you would like to join us on the air with a question of your own for our guest, Stephen Dilday, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

That's C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-S-E-N at gmail .com. And please include your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside of the good old USA. And we ask of you not to remain anonymous unless it's about a personal and private matter, which is unlikely during a topic like this, but you never know.