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2004 Ligonier Conference Panel Questions and Answers, Part 2 · THE BELIEVER'S CHURCH | Let’s Build Our Faith Together

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Speaker 1: So let's just get right into it.
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Speaker 2: I've got a bunch of questions and we've got one hour.
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Speaker 2: Ligon Duncan, can you elaborate on the distinction between the
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Speaker 2: visible and the invisible church?
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Speaker 1: The visible church.
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Speaker 3: Consists, Presbyterians would say, of all those who profess belief
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Speaker 3: in Jesus Christ alone for salvation as he is offered
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Speaker 3: in the gospel and their children, our Baptist friends or
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Speaker 3: Reformed Baptist friends would limit the visible church to professing believers,
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Speaker 3: but the point of the distinction between the invisible and
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Speaker 3: the visible church would be held by both Baptists and Presbyterians.
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Speaker 3: The invisible church is the church consisting of all true
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Speaker 3: believers in Christ throughout all ages, those who have been
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Speaker 3: redeemed by the blood of the Lamb under the old
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Speaker 3: covenant and those who are alive today, redeemed, and those
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Speaker 3: who will be redeemed in the future. And so it
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Speaker 3: entails both those who are alive on earth, believing in
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Speaker 3: the Lord Jesus Christ, and those who are in heaven above,
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Speaker 3: having gone before, and those who are yet to be
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Speaker 3: born who will come to faith in Christ. And the
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Speaker 3: importance of the distinction between the visible and the invisible
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Speaker 3: church is simply the recognition that, first, In the visible
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Speaker 3: church today, just because a person is a member of
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Speaker 3: a local congregation, you cannot simply assume that they are
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Speaker 3: in vital saving union with Jesus Christ. That's the significance
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Speaker 3: of all those prophetic passages warning of the wrath of
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Speaker 3: God against Israel in the Old Testament. There was the
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Speaker 3: visible body of the people of God, and yet the
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Speaker 3: prophets are warning them of wrath if they are not
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Speaker 3: truly trusting in the promises of God.
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Speaker 1: Many of the Israelites died in the desert.
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Speaker 2: Now, you were making the point last night, though, that
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Speaker 2: the judgment of God falls upon the visible church but
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Speaker 2: not the invisible church. I have another question later on.
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Speaker 2: Maybe we'll just roll that up into now. Now, how
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Speaker 2: is it, in what sense do we speak or should
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Speaker 2: we or should we not speak about God's judgment or
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Speaker 2: wrath falling upon his people in a true sense?
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Speaker 3: Well, because the wrath of God has fallen on Christ
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Speaker 3: on behalf of his people, it would be unjust for
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Speaker 3: God's wrath to fall upon those who are resting and
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Speaker 3: trusting in Christ because God's judicial punishment has been meted
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Speaker 3: out against His Son. And so there is a sense
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Speaker 3: in which the believer is never under the judicial or
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Speaker 3: punitive wrath of God, though we may be under the
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Speaker 3: disciplinary wrath of God. But that punitive or judicial, that
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Speaker 3: moral visitation of God's wrath in punishment for sin is
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Speaker 3: not something that the believer united to Jesus Christ by
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Speaker 3: the work of the Holy Spirit experiences.
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Speaker 2: So we want to distinguish between punitive wrath and fatherly discipline.
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Speaker 1: Right. Okay, thank you.
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Speaker 2: Let's go to a lot of questions dealing with this.
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Speaker 1: Anybody who, maybe you are, see, I don't know. Why
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Speaker 1: does God seek glory?
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Speaker 2: And a number of questions take sort of the line of,
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Speaker 2: isn't it selfish of God and boastful of God to
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Speaker 2: want to be glorified. This particular question says, how can
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Speaker 2: God be an impartial judge when he's trying to be glorified?
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Speaker 1: Can you handle that whole subject? And then after you,
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Speaker 1: anybody else?
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Speaker 4: You know, I always tell my students, you know, that
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Speaker 4: there's no such thing as a stupid question because, and
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Speaker 4: I tell them, I said, if you ever get in
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Speaker 4: the ministry and people ask questions that you've heard a
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Speaker 4: thousand times, you've got to pretend that it's the first
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Speaker 4: time because There may be something deeply troubling the person
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Speaker 4: that's asking the question. And like I say, the only
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Speaker 4: stupid question is the one you're afraid to ask. But
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Speaker 4: this one comes perilously close.
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Speaker 2: But I want to make clear that I'm just reading it.
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Speaker 5: But again, when we were hearing this morning about how
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Speaker 5: the tendency for us is to project our own attributes
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Speaker 5: and our own viewpoints upon God, You know, we think, well, how,
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Speaker 5: what a selfish thing it is for God to seek
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Speaker 5: His own glory.
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Speaker 4: Now, what a foolish thing it would be, what an
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Speaker 4: irrational thing it would be for the most perfect being
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Speaker 4: who alone is worthy of glory to not seek His glory.
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Speaker 4: For God to seek His glory is perfectly consistent with
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Speaker 4: His righteousness and His holiness. For us to seek His
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Speaker 4: glory is the essence of arrogance and of selfishness, where
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Speaker 4: we try to rob from God what properly belongs to Him. Glory,
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Speaker 4: I mean, when God works for His glory, it means
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Speaker 4: He works to maintain His own perfection, His own righteousness,
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Speaker 4: His own majesty, His own holiness, which is the greatest
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Speaker 4: good there is, period. You know, so to think of
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Speaker 4: that as something selfish in God is to drag God
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Speaker 4: down from his level of being to ours. Because we
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Speaker 4: understand the pursuit of glory as something that is selfish.
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Speaker 4: But God will share his glory with no man.
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Speaker 6: I think that takes you back to the very, very
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Speaker 6: helpful distinction that you made, R.C., between being and becoming.
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Speaker 6: The reason we feel selfish in seeking our glory is
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Speaker 6: is because comparatively we're like so many others, and we're
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Speaker 6: comparing ourselves with ourselves. In God's case, since there is
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Speaker 6: no other being like him, it is essential to his
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Speaker 6: own nature, his divine glory, and it can belong to
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Speaker 6: no other. That's why he said in the Old Testament,
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Speaker 6: my glory will I not give to another.
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Speaker 7: There is no other to take his glory.
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Speaker 6: Therefore, there is no sense of comparison between He stands
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Speaker 6: utterly alone in the universe as the all-glorious one.
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Speaker 2: So the chief end of God then is the same
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Speaker 2: as the chief end of man.
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Speaker 4: That's right.
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Speaker 1: To glorify God and enjoy him forever.
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Speaker 2: Now, I had another question that's somewhere in this pile
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Speaker 2: that says, okay, even if we get that straight, okay,
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Speaker 2: we're going to say God's glory is above all else.
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Speaker 2: Is there a right sense in which the creature is
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Speaker 2: glorified or partakes or shares in that glory?
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Speaker 1: Were we made for glory? Can we use that kind
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Speaker 1: of language?
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Speaker 4: Yeah, we're bound for glory, to quote the book title
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Speaker 4: of a certain young man. But the idea is that,
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Speaker 4: you know, the Bible says there's a glory of the stars,
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Speaker 4: a glory of the moon, there's a glory of this
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Speaker 4: and a glory of that. That has to do there
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Speaker 4: with a sense of worth or dignity, solemnity or value
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Speaker 4: that is associated with certain things. And there's also... the privilege,
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Speaker 4: the unique privilege that we enjoy as human beings that
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Speaker 4: is being made in God's image, that part of our
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Speaker 4: task is to mirror and reflect His glory. But that
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Speaker 4: glory that we enjoy at that point is not intrinsic.
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Speaker 4: It's extrinsic. It's real. We have real dignity because God
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Speaker 4: says so, because God assigns it to us and gives
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Speaker 4: us the capacity uniquely to reflect it. And not only that,
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Speaker 4: that the end of the line of the plan of salvation,
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Speaker 4: the order of salvation, is our glorification. Not our deification,
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Speaker 4: but our glorification where that image, all of the mars
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Speaker 4: and blemishes from sin are removed and erased and we
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Speaker 4: reach the pinnacle of our sanctification, which is called glorification,
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Speaker 4: where we most perfectly understand reflect what we're supposed to
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Speaker 4: reflect that belongs inherently to God.
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Speaker 6: Just a footnote, I think the incident of Moses and
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Speaker 6: the fading glory in Exodus and reiterated in 2 Corinthians
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Speaker 6: 3 where it clearly indicates that Moses covered his face
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Speaker 6: so that people wouldn't see the fading glory.
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Speaker 7: There's the extrinsic and the intrinsic.
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Speaker 4: All right.
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Speaker 1: Changing subjects a little bit, Dr. Ferguson, let's get you
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Speaker 1: into this. Very good.
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Speaker 2: Does God's foreknowledge mean that all of life is predetermined?
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Speaker 2: If so, does this mean that human free choice is
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Speaker 2: merely illusionary?
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Speaker 8: Well, that is a difficult question. I think the simplest
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Speaker 8: answer to it is to recognize that what is what
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Speaker 8: is foreknown by God in the deterministic sense is nevertheless
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Speaker 8: contingent for us. I.
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Speaker 8: Maybe if I can back up just a little bit.
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Speaker 8: In all of our thinking about the relationship between the
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Speaker 8: divine and the human, you've heard me say this before.
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Speaker 4: I have.
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Speaker 8: Our tendency is always to think in terms of a
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Speaker 8: football field.
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Speaker 4: Um.
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Speaker 8: There's a 100% event, and if two individuals, two persons
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Speaker 8: are involved in that event on the field, then somehow
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Speaker 8: or another we've got to divide the field up. And
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Speaker 8: we seem to think about that in relationship virtually to
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Speaker 8: all of the attributes of God as they are expressed
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Speaker 8: extrinsically in the world. And in doing that, it seems
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Speaker 8: to me we do exactly the thing I was trying
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Speaker 8: to warn against earlier on, which is we try to
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Speaker 8: see God simply by magnifying man. And the fundamental thing
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Speaker 8: for us to grasp is that God is related to
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Speaker 8: all reality in a completely different way from the way
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Speaker 8: in which we are related to all reality. So that
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Speaker 8: there is never a situation in which, in an event
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Speaker 8: in which the divine and the human interact, we begin
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Speaker 8: to divide the field up and say, this is fundamentally Sosinian, Pelagian, Arminian,
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Speaker 8: and all these bad words, styles of thinking, to say, well,
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Speaker 8: maybe it's 1% me, You know, I must leave some
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Speaker 8: room for my freedom. The nature of God's relationship to
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Speaker 8: the creature is that all room is left for the
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Speaker 8: creature's freedom. The Westminster Confession of Faith very carefully works
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Speaker 8: its way through the principle that we are at liberty,
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Speaker 8: consistent with our own nature and being at every stage
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Speaker 8: of our lives. So there's no question about the issues.
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Speaker 8: Although I would rather drop the term with Calvin, free will.
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Speaker 8: We all have free will. But we don't have a
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Speaker 8: will that is set free from our natures. And so
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Speaker 8: our liberty in that sense as humans is always restricted, perverted,
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Speaker 8: twisted by our own natures. But the thing that I
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Speaker 8: think we need to grasp is that God is related
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Speaker 8: to all the actions of our lives in which we
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Speaker 8: exercise human volitions. 100% working out His will, even while
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Speaker 8: we are 100% working out our will. Now, I find, actually,
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Speaker 8: it's somewhat easier for people to get into this along
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Speaker 8: the lines of omnipresence. Here's Ligon and here am I. Now,
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Speaker 8: we both believe in the omnipresence of God, but neither
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Speaker 8: of us thinks that God is omnipresent except in the
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Speaker 8: space he's taking up and the space I'm taking up.
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Speaker 8: We believe the fact that Ligon is taking up that
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Speaker 8: space and I'm taking up this space, both of which
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Speaker 8: spaces are not insubstantial, does not mean that God is
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Speaker 8: present everywhere except where Ligon is present and except where
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Speaker 8: I'm present. So it seems to be easier for us
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Speaker 8: to get our minds around the notion that we are
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Speaker 8: not dividing up the space. in relationship to the presence
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Speaker 8: of God than it seems to be in relationship to
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Speaker 8: the will of God.
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Speaker 2: I remember you in the classroom using the example of
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Speaker 2: our Lord Jesus, whose life was not merely predetermined, it
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Speaker 2: was prerecorded.
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Speaker 1: And yet we wouldn't say that he was a puppet,
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Speaker 1: would we? No.
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Speaker 8: I mean, he is, I think, as I said this morning,
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Speaker 8: and all these things, if you bring a doctrine back
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Speaker 8: to Jesus and say, does it work with Jesus? If
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Speaker 8: the answer is no, then it doesn't work. Does it
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Speaker 8: work with his teaching? Does it work with his reflection?
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Speaker 8: And none of us would doubt he was the freest
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Speaker 8: man of all, but simultaneously, most clearly and evidently, a
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Speaker 8: thoroughly predetermined man. Did that minimize the agony of Gethsemane
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Speaker 8: or the passion of Calvary?
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Speaker 3: Not at all.
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Speaker 1: So he was 100% of Calvary.
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Speaker 8: The divine will working its way out in an interconnected
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Speaker 8: way with the liberty and freedom of an individual.
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Speaker 1: Let me ask the question and throw it out generally.
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Speaker 2: How do you all feel about the expression free will
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Speaker 2: talking about man?
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Speaker 4: Let me answer that.
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Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 4: We'll let you answer that. You asked me how I
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Speaker 4: feel about it, not what I think about it.
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Speaker 1: I see it matters a lot to you.
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Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, it's such an important concept because I always
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Speaker 4: say that all of us have had our minds played
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Speaker 4: with by pagan ideas. And we're taught from the time
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Speaker 4: we're little kids that nature operates independent from the power
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Speaker 4: of God and that there's inherent powers of nature like
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Speaker 4: gravity and so on. We also have been taught from childhood,
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Speaker 4: from infancy, a pagan understanding of human volition. And that
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Speaker 4: pagan knowledge is that we have a free will that
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Speaker 4: is capable of choosing whatever we want from a spirit
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Speaker 4: or attitude of indifference with no prior bent inclination or
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Speaker 4: disposition to the left or to the right, to the
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Speaker 4: good or to the bad. Now, all Reformed people say
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Speaker 4: that man has a free will in the sense that
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Speaker 4: we have a faculty of choosing that remains after the fall.
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Speaker 4: Every person out there has the ability to choose what
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Speaker 4: they want, and you have all made choices to be
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Speaker 4: here today because that's what you wanted to do more
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Speaker 4: than not wanted to do, and that's what gets us
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Speaker 4: into so much trouble. We sin because we choose to sin,
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Speaker 4: all right? So, we know we have a faculty of choosing,
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Speaker 4: and in the sense that we have wills than volitional creatures,
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Speaker 4: then you can say we have a free will. But
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Speaker 4: at the same time, when the Bible speaks about our will,
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Speaker 4: it speaks about, it doesn't like to use the term free.
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Speaker 4: Because you have to say free for what? If you
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Speaker 4: want to say free from coercion, yes, we have a
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Speaker 4: will that is free from coercion. But if you mean free,
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Speaker 4: free from moral bondage and slavery and which is what
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Speaker 4: the pagan concept is, that we're free to be righteous
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Speaker 4: and to do the right thing and so on. Oh, no, no, no.
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Speaker 4: The Bible says we're dead in sin and trespasses, that
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Speaker 4: the will is enslaved to this, the desires of our
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Speaker 4: heart are only evil continuously. That was the battle between
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Speaker 4: Augustine and Pelagius, between Luther and Erasmus, between Calvin and Pegasus,
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Speaker 4: and between Edwards, you know, and those guys. But like
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Speaker 4: Calvin said, if you mean by free will, the ability
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Speaker 4: to choose the things of God unaided by regeneration, then
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Speaker 4: free will is far too grandiose a term to apply
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Speaker 4: to us mortals.
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Speaker 2: Is there a term you would prefer to use, a
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Speaker 2: human responsibility, full volition?
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Speaker 1: What do you say instead of free will?
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Speaker 4: Well, I still say free will, but then I have
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Speaker 4: to qualify, you know, like Augustine did, and what Sinclair
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Speaker 4: was getting at earlier, the distinction between, Augustine said, you know,
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Speaker 4: before the fall we had liberium arbitrium, a free will,
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Speaker 4: and we also had libertas, liberty, meaning the power to
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Speaker 4: do the right in the things of God. After the fall,
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Speaker 4: we retained the liberium arbitrium, the free will, the faculty
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Speaker 4: of choosing. What we lost was our liberty. And only
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Speaker 4: the Holy Spirit can restore the liberty that we have
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Speaker 4: lost at the fall. And the problem you have with
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Speaker 4: semi-plagian theology is it's been so influenced by paganism that
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Speaker 4: it wants to retain a kind of a pre-fall view
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Speaker 4: of the will. Or at least they recognize that there's
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Speaker 4: a fall and the will's been weakened by sin. They
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Speaker 4: don't really grasp the depths of that weakness and You know,
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Speaker 4: man is sick in sin and trespasses rather than dead
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Speaker 4: in sin and trespasses. That's why I wrote the book,
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Speaker 4: Willing to Believe. I canvassed the whole history of this
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Speaker 4: debate over free will because for my desire is not
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Speaker 4: simply to support Reformed theology and biblical theology, but to
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Speaker 4: try to get people to realize where these ideas come from.
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Speaker 4: They don't come from, you don't see big treatises in
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Speaker 4: the Bible about free will. You do hear about our
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Speaker 4: responsibility and all of that, but you don't find a
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Speaker 4: pagan notion of freedom in the Scriptures. All right.
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Speaker 2: How can we respond to those evangelicals who believe in
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Speaker 2: the annihilation of the soul?
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Speaker 1: I guess, Lig, you ought to take the lead on
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Speaker 1: that one. You want to explain the issue?
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Speaker 3: Well, the doctrine of the annihilation of the soul has
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Speaker 3: been around for a long time in sort of our world.
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Speaker 3: It's been around since the time of the Reformation when
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Speaker 3: it was featured in the writings and teachings of the
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Speaker 3: Sassanians who were sort of the liberals of the Reformation.
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Speaker 3: And the doctrine is that at some point the wicked,
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Speaker 3: after the day of judgment, are annihilated. They cease to exist.
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Speaker 3: There is no eternal punishment. And there are various reasons
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Speaker 3: given for that argumentation Again, it's not exegesis that drives
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Speaker 3: someone to make that assertion. It's a concern over whether
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Speaker 3: eternal punishment, the visitation of God's eternal wrath upon the
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Speaker 3: unrepentant wicked in hell, is consistent with the love and
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Speaker 3: the mercy and the goodness of God. And so people
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Speaker 3: begin to look for a justification for changing the doctrine.
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Speaker 3: And the problem with the view is that with regard
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Speaker 3: to the teaching of the New Testament, many of our
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Speaker 3: proofs of the eternality of the blessed state of the
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Speaker 3: believer are actually the corollary of Jesus' teaching about the
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Speaker 3: eternal state of the wicked. And so there is a
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Speaker 3: paralleling in Jesus' teaching and in Paul's teaching and in
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Speaker 3: the book of Revelation about the eternal state of those
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Speaker 3: who are in Christ and the eternal state of those
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Speaker 3: who have rejected Christ and are not in Christ. And
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Speaker 3: the one goes with the other. And if you start
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Speaker 3: monkeying with the passages that support an eternal conscious punishment
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Speaker 3: of the wicked bodily, then you also begin to undermine
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Speaker 3: the doctrine of the eternal blessed state of those who
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Speaker 3: are in Christ.
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Speaker 1: What do you think is behind?
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Speaker 2: I think it seems to me that the annihilationist view
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Speaker 2: has gained some ground, has gotten some traction.
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Speaker 1: Why do you think people are attracted to that view?
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Speaker 4: How could you not be?
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Speaker 1: Isn't that right?
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Speaker 4: I mean, we heard the recitation of Edwards this morning,
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Speaker 4: sinners in the hands of an angry God. And Lig
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Speaker 4: was talking about last night how, I believe it was Lig,
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Speaker 4: that the doctrine of the wrath of God has been
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Speaker 4: muted in our pulpits, in our society, and there are
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Speaker 4: fleshy reasons for that because we don't like conflict, we
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Speaker 4: don't want to drive people away, and all that sort
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Speaker 4: of thing. But there's also another aspect to it. I
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Speaker 4: like to say this, Rick, that if we think of
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Speaker 4: the most sanctified believer that's ever walked the earth apart
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Speaker 4: from Jesus, maybe it's the Apostle Paul, okay? and put
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Speaker 4: Paul next to Jesus. No, put Paul next to Adolf Hitler,
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Speaker 4: and then put Jesus up on the stage. Now, to
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Speaker 4: whom is Paul closer, to Hitler or to Jesus? There's
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Speaker 4: no comparison. The gap that exists between perfection, the sinlessness
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Speaker 4: of Jesus, the holiness that John was talking about today,
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Speaker 4: and the greatest saint is so vast that golf is almost, well,
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Speaker 4: it is unpassable. And the difference between me and Hitler
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Speaker 4: is just one of degree. It's not one of kind.
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Speaker 4: So in the sense that even in my highest moment
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Speaker 4: of sanctification, I tend to have more sympathy and compassion
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Speaker 4: for my own kind Hitler I can understand, okay? Jesus
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Speaker 4: in His perfection, I can't begin to fathom sinlessness and
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Speaker 4: perfect moral perfection and holiness such as in Jesus. And
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Speaker 4: so as a human being, to me it's, I can't
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Speaker 4: fathom one of us, no matter how bad, being punished
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Speaker 4: forever by the living God, I have to grant intellectually
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Speaker 4: it's perfectly just. It is just. I can't complain and
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Speaker 4: say that's not fair because my sin against God is
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Speaker 4: infinitely heinous, and there's nothing unjust about His punishment. If
23:24
Speaker 4: He would punish me forever, I could not say, hey God,
23:29
Speaker 4: that's not fair. I know that. But yet at the
23:32
Speaker 4: same time, I just I hate the thought of it.
23:37
Speaker 4: You know, when I was in college, I read a
23:38
Speaker 4: psychology textbook that used that sermon we heard from Edwards
23:42
Speaker 4: as an example of sadism. People don't understand Jonathan Edwards.
23:47
Speaker 4: The thing, the difference between Edwards and modern preachers is
23:49
Speaker 4: Edwards believed in hell. He really believed it. And if
23:56
Speaker 4: I'm a sadist and I believe that there is a hell,
23:59
Speaker 4: I'm going to persuade my people that there's no such
24:01
Speaker 4: place and have a gleeful delight in thinking that they're
24:04
Speaker 4: going to go there. But Edwards loved his people, and
24:08
Speaker 4: he believed in hell. And even though it drove him,
24:12
Speaker 4: you know, to this great anguish of soul in himself,
24:15
Speaker 4: I mean, he was trying to awaken people from where
24:19
Speaker 4: they were, you know, inevitably headed. And so, I think
24:26
Speaker 4: it's so hard for us to handle that even the most,
24:30
Speaker 4: you know, hard-hearted theologian has to struggle with this. And again,
24:37
Speaker 4: like I think it was Ligon said, if this were
24:39
Speaker 4: not a dominical doctrine, that is, if it were not
24:42
Speaker 4: taught by Jesus Himself, we just couldn't handle it. But
24:48
Speaker 4: the reality is Jesus taught more about hell than He
24:51
Speaker 4: did about heaven. And you can't, as you just said,
24:55
Speaker 4: buy what He says about heaven and reject what He
24:58
Speaker 4: says about hell. But Let me just say this. I
25:02
Speaker 4: had a teacher that said in seminary, in a seminar,
25:05
Speaker 4: somebody asked this question. They said, Dr. G, what if
25:09
Speaker 4: I get to heaven and I find out that my
25:13
Speaker 4: mother is in hell? How can I be happy? And
25:22
Speaker 4: he answered the question this way. He said, when you
25:25
Speaker 4: get to heaven, you'll be so glorified that You'll no
25:29
Speaker 4: longer think through the prism of your own human sinfulness.
25:34
Speaker 4: You'll be able to look into the pit of hell
25:36
Speaker 4: and see your mother there and rejoice that God is
25:42
Speaker 4: glorified by your mother in hell. When he said that,
25:46
Speaker 4: I burst out laughing. I didn't know what other reaction
25:49
Speaker 4: to have. I can't believe he said that. But he did,
25:51
Speaker 4: and he was serious. But that's true. But right now,
25:55
Speaker 4: I don't have that perspective, Rick. Right now, I look...
26:00
Speaker 4: at the punishment of fellow human beings or family members
26:03
Speaker 4: through the lens of somebody who is a sinner like
26:06
Speaker 4: they are.
26:07
Speaker 2: And that's why we have to believe not what we
26:09
Speaker 2: wish was true, not what we think ought to be true,
26:13
Speaker 2: but what the Word of God plainly teaches is true.
26:16
Speaker 4: I've heard that before, yes.
26:19
Speaker 1: Speaking about Edwards, I read Martin Lloyd-Jones just this week.
26:21
Speaker 2: I was reading him, and he said, we preach not
26:25
Speaker 2: to fill our churches, but to save sinners from hell.
26:28
Speaker 2: and the two are not the same. What do you
26:34
Speaker 2: mean by the unpredictability of God? I don't want to
26:37
Speaker 2: address that to anyone in particular, but I think it's
26:39
Speaker 2: come out a couple of times that God does not
26:42
Speaker 2: often do what we thought he would do or what
26:45
Speaker 2: makes sense to us. Is it right to say that
26:49
Speaker 2: God is unpredictable.
26:50
Speaker 1: And what would we mean by that?
26:56
Speaker 3: Ligon.
26:56
Speaker 1: Ligon.
26:57
Speaker 7: Did I say that somewhere?
26:59
Speaker 1: No, but I'm asking you.
27:00
Speaker 4: It's the tame lion thing.
27:02
Speaker 1: It's the tame lion thing. It really is.
27:04
Speaker 4: That was Mc... That was Godfrey.
27:06
Speaker 3: Dr.
27:07
Speaker 4: Godfrey said that.
27:08
Speaker 1: Would you guys want to take that up? Is God predictable?
27:14
Speaker 6: Well, I think in his nature, he's consistent. But from
27:19
Speaker 6: my viewpoint, he may not be predictable, but I'm operating
27:22
Speaker 6: with very minimal information. So from the human viewpoint, things
27:28
Speaker 6: may happen that I wouldn't have expected. I mean, there
27:31
Speaker 6: are certain people who are alive that I think should
27:34
Speaker 6: be dead. And there are definitely people dead that I
27:40
Speaker 6: think we need to be alive. That's not predictable. I
27:44
Speaker 6: wouldn't have done it that way. So from the human viewpoint,
27:47
Speaker 6: God is not predictable to me. But from the divine side,
27:50
Speaker 6: he's absolutely consistent with his eternal purpose.
27:53
Speaker 4: And he's predictable with his promises.
27:55
Speaker 2: Yes, his promises are reliable.
27:59
Speaker 8: Isn't there an illustration of that again in Christ, Rick?
28:03
Speaker 8: You know, now that we read the Old Testament, we
28:07
Speaker 8: see that it was in one sense predictable. God was
28:12
Speaker 8: true to himself and true to his promises. But there
28:15
Speaker 8: was nobody that guessed it would be this way. And
28:19
Speaker 8: it is the same. I mean, I think we learn
28:21
Speaker 8: as we go along that the faithfulness of God to
28:25
Speaker 8: his promises in which we believe is not the same
28:29
Speaker 8: thing as our access to the ways in which he's
28:32
Speaker 8: going to fulfill his promises. And he has some very
28:35
Speaker 8: strange ways to us of fulfilling his promises. And we
28:40
Speaker 8: need to know that when we're obedient to him. Take
28:43
Speaker 8: the disciples getting into the boat because Jesus says we're
28:48
Speaker 8: going over to the other side. He was faithful to
28:51
Speaker 8: his word. But I'm sure when they got to the
28:54
Speaker 8: other side, they were thinking, we never thought.
28:57
Speaker 4: It would be like this.
28:58
Speaker 8: And I think there's a lot to learn about living
29:02
Speaker 8: the Christian life.
29:04
Speaker 1: Absolutely reliable. About what would Jesus do?
29:07
Speaker 2: Of course, we all want to prove the whole idea
29:10
Speaker 2: of trying to follow Jesus, exemplary example. But often Jesus
29:15
Speaker 2: would do things that we could not do, like raise
29:17
Speaker 2: the dead person. Or he would make a whip out
29:20
Speaker 2: of cords and drive the moneylenders out.
29:22
Speaker 8: I think we need to be suspicious of anybody who
29:25
Speaker 8: thinks he knows moment by moment how God is keeping
29:30
Speaker 8: his purposes. That gives me the heebie-jeebies.
29:38
Speaker 1: Did you learn that in Dallas? You didn't use it? heebie-jeebies. Okay.
29:41
Speaker 5: I didn't know they had heebie-jeebies in Scotland.
29:46
Speaker 8: That's what I've learned in Dallas.
29:49
Speaker 1: That gives me the heebie-jeebies, y'all.
29:54
Speaker 4: All y'all. Are y'all both?
29:57
Speaker 8: Are y'all all.
30:00
Speaker 2: Well, we've talked about the aseity of God and the
30:03
Speaker 2: omniscience of God. I had a number of questions dealing
30:05
Speaker 2: with the open theism controversy. And could you explain what
30:12
Speaker 2: open theists are saying and why it's wrong?
30:15
Speaker 1: Who'd like to take that?
30:19
Speaker 3: Open theists are saying that God does not have a complete, exhaustive,
30:27
Speaker 3: and infallible foreknowledge of the future, that there are some
30:32
Speaker 3: future events and contingencies that are not known even to God.
30:37
Speaker 3: The reason that open theists are saying this is they
30:40
Speaker 3: have understood that whereas historical Arminians have affirmed the foreknowledge
30:46
Speaker 3: of God and denied the predestination of God and said
30:51
Speaker 3: that the predestination of God was based upon his foreseeing
30:56
Speaker 3: of the choices of humans, have not been able to
31:01
Speaker 3: escape the philosophical problem for the Arminian view that is
31:05
Speaker 3: entailed in that assertion, and that is that if God
31:08
Speaker 3: infallibly foreknows the future, then it is as fixed as
31:11
Speaker 3: if he had predestinated it, which they deny. And so
31:15
Speaker 3: the open theist says, well, then we're just going to
31:18
Speaker 3: have to get rid of foreknowledge too. And the open
31:21
Speaker 3: theist can do this in one of two ways. He
31:23
Speaker 3: can either say... that God does not know the future
31:27
Speaker 3: exhaustively or infallibly because the future does not exist yet.
31:33
Speaker 3: That's what Greg Boyd says.
31:34
Speaker 1: We haven't created it yet.
31:35
Speaker 3: Because we create the future, and God therefore can't know
31:39
Speaker 3: what does not exist yet. And others argue that God,
31:44
Speaker 3: and this would be more like Clark Pinnock, self-limits himself
31:48
Speaker 3: so that he is not able to know certain aspects
31:51
Speaker 3: of the future in order to protect human free will.
31:56
Speaker 3: Greg Boyd especially will appeal to a range of scripture passages, wrongly,
32:01
Speaker 3: I think, to attempt to support that view. He has
32:05
Speaker 3: been ably rebutted by a number of good Reformed scholars
32:10
Speaker 3: in the last few years. There have been a number
32:12
Speaker 3: of good books coming from consistent evangelical Reformed perspective, responding,
32:17
Speaker 3: not the least of which are Bruce Ware's books, which
32:22
Speaker 3: have responded to Greg Boyd and to Clark Pinnock in
32:25
Speaker 3: some measure.
32:26
Speaker 2: Now, Greg Boyd will say, see, we need to be
32:29
Speaker 2: able to hold that doctrine. Otherwise, we tell some poor
32:32
Speaker 2: wife who's had a tragedy. I think he uses the
32:35
Speaker 2: example of a woman who married a man. She was
32:38
Speaker 2: certain it was God's will in her life. He ended
32:41
Speaker 2: up betraying her. She had misery. And he says, you
32:44
Speaker 2: Calvinists are going to tell her that was God's will.
32:47
Speaker 1: Now, how would we, as Calvinists, how would we pastorally.
32:50
Speaker 2: Respond to a woman who or anyone who's been through
32:53
Speaker 2: a great tragedy with regard to God's foreknowledge and omniscience?
32:57
Speaker 4: First of all, if God wasn't sovereign over that situation,
33:00
Speaker 4: that woman would be utterly hopeless. Our great comfort in
33:04
Speaker 4: this world is that even our tragedies are underneath the
33:09
Speaker 4: sovereignty of God. And therefore, for the Christian, ultimately there
33:13
Speaker 4: is no such thing as this tragedy. And you can
33:15
Speaker 4: say that and say it flippantly, but it's the biblical truth.
33:19
Speaker 4: If we really believe in the character of God as
33:21
Speaker 4: He says it, One of the things, though, Rick, that's
33:26
Speaker 4: refreshing to me about open theism, particularly from Clark Pinnock,
33:29
Speaker 4: who was its earliest champion, is that when Pinnock developed
33:33
Speaker 4: this concept, he right up front did something that heretics
33:39
Speaker 4: never do. All heresy in the history of the church
33:43
Speaker 4: is brought forward when the heretic claims to be teaching orthodoxy.
33:49
Speaker 4: We'll use Orthodox language. We'll try to appeal to the
33:52
Speaker 4: Bible and do all that stuff with the historic creeds. Whereas, refreshingly,
33:57
Speaker 4: Pinnock said, we need to reconstruct what he called free
34:04
Speaker 4: will theism somewhere between the finite God of process theology
34:12
Speaker 4: and Orthodox theism. So he knew at the front that
34:19
Speaker 4: his open theism view was a conscious departure from Christian orthodoxy. Now,
34:29
Speaker 4: open theism itself, you could debate whether that's an oxymoron,
34:33
Speaker 4: but open Christian theism is an oxymoron. I don't think
34:38
Speaker 4: that this position is simply an error within the Christian
34:44
Speaker 4: family where there's errors abounding and we tolerate each other.
34:48
Speaker 4: I believe this is sub-Christian and anti-Christian because it utterly
34:52
Speaker 4: destroys the biblical God. And I hope our people are
34:58
Speaker 4: not open to open theism.
35:06
Speaker 7: You know, in some.
35:06
Speaker 6: Sense, this is sort of the last frontier the effort
35:14
Speaker 6: has been made to undo the last member.
35:18
Speaker 7: Of the Trinity.
35:21
Speaker 6: We all kind of grew up when they were assaulting
35:23
Speaker 6: Christ and redefining Christ.
35:26
Speaker 7: Then we lived through the mystical.
35:28
Speaker 6: Charismania in which they did in the Holy Spirit and
35:32
Speaker 6: attributed to him things he would never do, redefining the
35:37
Speaker 6: Holy Spirit in unbiblical terms.
35:40
Speaker 7: And the only place left is to assault Christ the
35:43
Speaker 7: throne of God.
35:45
Speaker 6: And this is just another in the long line, I think,
35:49
Speaker 6: of demonic doctrines that are espoused to destroy the Christian
35:54
Speaker 6: faith at its most foundational point, the very nature of God.
36:01
Speaker 8: Rick, I've read a fair amount through not just the
36:06
Speaker 8: open theism, but the whole history of these areas, and
36:11
Speaker 8: it's just always struck me that the thing that gives
36:15
Speaker 8: rise to middle knowledge, to everything between middle knowledge and
36:22
Speaker 8: open theism, and it was present in the Middle Ages,
36:27
Speaker 8: present in the post-Reformation period, is how do we make
36:32
Speaker 8: God so that we are free? Really meaning, how can
36:38
Speaker 8: we make God so that we are God? And I
36:42
Speaker 8: think this has come, in the case of Clark Pinnock,
36:46
Speaker 8: it's the tail end of a long process in which,
36:50
Speaker 8: in a variety of different ways, he's been saying, man, man, man, man.
36:57
Speaker 1: Ever more loudly.
36:58
Speaker 8: And, you know, at the end of the day, you
37:00
Speaker 8: need to say, if we're talking about freedom, when are
37:06
Speaker 8: we going to start talking about God's freedom to be God? And,
37:10
Speaker 8: you know, I think that's why the point that John
37:12
Speaker 8: is making is really so critical. This is God's freedom
37:17
Speaker 8: to be God.
37:18
Speaker 4: The axiom you hear all the time is that God's
37:21
Speaker 4: sovereignty is limited by human freedom. I mean, just think
37:27
Speaker 4: about that for five seconds. If that's true, then who's sovereign?
37:32
Speaker 4: But rather, we believe that man has true freedom, but
37:36
Speaker 4: our freedom is always and everywhere limited by God's freedom
37:43
Speaker 4: because he's sovereign, not us.
37:47
Speaker 2: I think at one point, I think it's in one
37:49
Speaker 2: of Boyd's books, he says that when you embrace open theism,
37:52
Speaker 2: it's exciting because our prayers control the future. Now, what
37:58
Speaker 2: do you think about that thought, that our prayers actually
38:02
Speaker 2: change God?
38:04
Speaker 3: The Greeks used to say... whom the gods would destroy,
38:07
Speaker 3: they answer their prayers. So the thought that my prayers
38:11
Speaker 3: were controlling the future of the world should be a
38:13
Speaker 3: scary thought for you.
38:16
Speaker 1: And for me.
38:18
Speaker 4: Take it easy here, Rick, because I still have another
38:21
Speaker 4: message to give on the immutability of God. And you've
38:25
Speaker 4: just stolen half of it.
38:27
Speaker 1: I'll stop then. I've got a charge on Dr. MacArthur here.
38:31
Speaker 7: Since I don't know what to pray for as I ought,
38:34
Speaker 7: I'm out of the game.
38:39
Speaker 2: So it's not a thrilling idea to you all.
38:43
Speaker 1: Okay, I'll just leave it at that. Here's an easier issue,
38:48
Speaker 1: I think.
38:50
Speaker 2: If we have an infallible Bible, then why do we
38:53
Speaker 2: not agree on everything? Why do we have different denominations
38:55
Speaker 2: and differences between Bible-believing Christians?
38:58
Speaker 1: Maybe Dr. McCarthy will handle that.
39:03
Speaker 6: I think this conference here is a great illustration year
39:07
Speaker 6: after year of how minor an issue this is when
39:12
Speaker 6: it comes to the great matters of our faith because
39:16
Speaker 6: we come from all different backgrounds and denominations and the
39:19
Speaker 6: core of great biblical theology has passed down through the
39:24
Speaker 6: ages under the providential care of God and we are
39:28
Speaker 6: united around these great and glorious truths. The reason we
39:33
Speaker 6: disagree on some matters, tradition is one, presuppositions is another,
39:41
Speaker 6: carnality is another, ignorance is another, lack of study is another.
39:45
Speaker 6: I mean, you could list all of those things. But
39:51
Speaker 6: I think those things are reflective of the human condition.
39:56
Speaker 6: But I think the thing that you have to look
39:58
Speaker 6: at is how God has protected His saving truth, the core,
40:04
Speaker 6: the drivetrain of biblical truth about which we all agree
40:07
Speaker 6: and we stand with those who have passed long off
40:10
Speaker 6: the scene, and how He has protected and preserved that.
40:15
Speaker 6: And I don't think there's as much disagreement as you
40:17
Speaker 6: might think, even though there are somewhat, I should say,
40:23
Speaker 6: unique or maybe sometimes quirky things that separate us denominationally.
40:28
Speaker 6: At the core, we stand with the same great historic faith.
40:34
Speaker 2: Well, let me then follow up this way, and I'll
40:36
Speaker 2: open it to everybody unless you'd like to take it.
40:39
Speaker 2: How do we discern between those core saving truths that
40:43
Speaker 2: are essential and matters in which we may safely disagree?
40:46
Speaker 6: Well, I think you start with those doctrines necessary to salvation.
40:51
Speaker 6: And you would start with God being who he is.
40:54
Speaker 6: You have to start there. Hebrews makes very, very clear.
40:58
Speaker 6: He that comes to God must believe that he is,
41:00
Speaker 6: that he is who he is. He is not the
41:05
Speaker 6: God of the Muslims. Allah is not another name for God.
41:07
Speaker 6: It's another name for Satan. So you start with a
41:12
Speaker 6: true and living God, the God who is a trinity,
41:14
Speaker 6: not a unity. I've been meeting off and on with the...
41:20
Speaker 6: gatekeepers for Mormon theology, the head of the religion department
41:23
Speaker 6: at BYU, and sitting hours talking to them. For some reason,
41:27
Speaker 6: they've included a couple of my books in the curriculum,
41:30
Speaker 6: which is deeply distressing to me. I'm not sure why
41:35
Speaker 6: that happened, but I think something has been left out.
41:39
Speaker 7: I don't know what.
41:41
Speaker 6: But after about three or four hours of talking to
41:46
Speaker 6: these people, one of them writes most of the books
41:48
Speaker 6: on their theology I said, you know, as much as
41:52
Speaker 6: you talk about loving Jesus and loving God and wanting
41:55
Speaker 6: to live a holy life and being saved by grace alone,
42:01
Speaker 6: isn't it gracious of God to let us work our
42:03
Speaker 6: way to heaven, that kind of grace? At the end
42:06
Speaker 6: of the day, you have a God who is not
42:08
Speaker 6: a trinity, you have a Christ who is not deity,
42:11
Speaker 6: and you have a salvation by works.
42:15
Speaker 7: That obviously puts you outside the pale of saving truth.
42:18
Speaker 6: So I think you go right through Christ and his
42:21
Speaker 6: sinless life, his substitutionary death, his resurrection. Those are the
42:24
Speaker 6: core truths that are related to the reality of salvation.
42:29
Speaker 2: Anybody else want to deal with the whole issue of
42:32
Speaker 2: are denominations themselves a problem? And how do we deal
42:37
Speaker 2: with those in a constructive way?
42:41
Speaker 8: I don't have much to add, Rick, except this, that
42:44
Speaker 8: I think you, you know, at the points at which
42:47
Speaker 8: we divide from one another, where we differ with one another,
42:50
Speaker 8: without necessarily dividing from one another, those are the very
42:55
Speaker 8: points that just because they are points of difference, immediately
43:00
Speaker 8: escalate in significance. And it's important for us as we
43:05
Speaker 8: function with one another, which is, I think, what we
43:07
Speaker 8: try to do as friends. to recognize that the points
43:12
Speaker 8: at which we may differ from one another, at points
43:15
Speaker 8: at which communally we seek further light from God's Word,
43:20
Speaker 8: rather than raise them as barriers between us, so that
43:26
Speaker 8: we get to the terrible position where immediately we think
43:29
Speaker 8: about each other, we think about the way the brother
43:32
Speaker 8: has gone wrong with respect to this aspect of Christian
43:36
Speaker 8: doctrine or another. And that's a great, I think as
43:38
Speaker 8: John said, that is a great battle with our flesh
43:41
Speaker 8: and the flesh of our mind and the struggle that
43:46
Speaker 8: all of us have with our tradition because none of
43:50
Speaker 8: us wants to say we begin the Christian church in
43:53
Speaker 8: every generation and forget about the last 20 centuries.
43:57
Speaker 6: Yeah, I don't think there are any inherent problems in
44:01
Speaker 6: denominationalism that don't exist in independence. I can say as
44:05
Speaker 6: a pastor of an independent church, that whole independent movement
44:08
Speaker 6: frightens me. There is such an utter lack of accountability.
44:12
Speaker 6: Any yahoo on the street who wants to open up
44:15
Speaker 6: a church and invent a theology and sort of appoint
44:19
Speaker 6: himself as a preacher and teacher can carry off his
44:24
Speaker 6: people in whatever direction they want, and there is absolutely
44:27
Speaker 6: no one.
44:27
Speaker 7: To whom he answers. I mean, this doesn't seem to
44:30
Speaker 7: me to have.
44:31
Speaker 6: Independence, while it has merit in certain environments, doesn't seem
44:34
Speaker 6: to have protected the church from anything.
44:38
Speaker 2: Now, some of these people, no doubt, have learned things
44:41
Speaker 2: this weekend. I would hope they would, and it may
44:43
Speaker 2: be different from what their pastor teaches, or they may
44:46
Speaker 2: have people in their home Bible study who are going
44:49
Speaker 2: to disagree with them. Would you all have any counsel
44:51
Speaker 2: for them for how to handle that in a productive
44:55
Speaker 2: way if they go back to their churches, Bible studies,
44:58
Speaker 2: and whatnot?
44:59
Speaker 1: To try and.
45:00
Speaker 2: Interact with people who are not going to agree with
45:02
Speaker 2: things they've learned here?
45:03
Speaker 4: We have to search the Scriptures. Again, the first question was,
45:07
Speaker 4: if you have an infallible Bible, how come you have
45:09
Speaker 4: all these denominations? Well, you have infallible people interpreting. I mean,
45:13
Speaker 4: you have fallible people interpreting the infallible Bible. Even if
45:17
Speaker 4: you get an infallible pope or an infallible church, you
45:19
Speaker 4: still have to have infallible people interpreting the infallible teachings
45:24
Speaker 4: of the church. So sooner or later, it gets down
45:26
Speaker 4: to us. as fallible people. So when we disagree, first
45:30
Speaker 4: thing is we're called to be patient and long-suffering and
45:35
Speaker 4: agree at the same time to go to the mat.
45:37
Speaker 4: The thing you don't want to do is buy into
45:39
Speaker 4: relativism to keep the peace. As I've always said about
45:42
Speaker 4: my friend John over here, I said, if John and
45:45
Speaker 4: I disagree on a point, the one thing I know
45:46
Speaker 4: about John MacArthur, absolutely certain that if he and I
45:50
Speaker 4: differ on something, if I can show him from the
45:52
Speaker 4: Scripture that I'm right and he's wrong, he'll change his
45:55
Speaker 4: position in a heartbeat. because he's driven to be faithful
45:59
Speaker 4: to the Word of God. And I hope he believes
46:01
Speaker 4: the same thing about me. And one of the things, too,
46:09
Speaker 4: is that we have to know what issues really are
46:14
Speaker 4: the issues that you have to stand for and the
46:16
Speaker 4: hills you need to die on. You don't negotiate justification
46:20
Speaker 4: by faith. You don't negotiate the Trinity. You don't negotiate
46:23
Speaker 4: the atonement, and so on. to get all bent out
46:28
Speaker 4: of shape as to whether you use grape juice or
46:30
Speaker 4: wine in the Lord's Supper, that's immature. You can talk
46:36
Speaker 4: about it and discuss it, but that's not something that
46:39
Speaker 4: you want to be combative about, it would seem to me.
46:43
Speaker 6: I have to tell you what, at the conference last week,
46:46
Speaker 6: I was telling about Russia, and I was with 1,600
46:49
Speaker 6: leading pastors in the evangelical community, a church in Russia.
46:53
Speaker 6: It's basically one large church called the Baptist slash Evangelical Union.
46:58
Speaker 6: And they're precious, precious saints. And in the middle of this,
47:02
Speaker 6: we had 1,600 of their leading pastors together. And a
47:06
Speaker 6: little group of them decided that they wanted to present
47:08
Speaker 6: a paper in protest against Calvinism. And one very astute
47:17
Speaker 6: and wise leader put the kibosh on it.
47:20
Speaker 7: But I heard about it.
47:21
Speaker 4: So.
47:22
Speaker 6: I said, you know, because you don't understand John Calvin,
47:25
Speaker 6: you think he rolled out of bed one day and
47:26
Speaker 6: came up with these five little deals and stuck them
47:29
Speaker 6: up on a board somewhere, and this is Calvinism. And
47:32
Speaker 6: because you don't understand what's behind it and where it
47:34
Speaker 6: came from, you don't understand his life, I'm going to
47:36
Speaker 6: talk to you about John Calvin. So I gave the
47:40
Speaker 6: history of the man, the suffering that he went through,
47:43
Speaker 6: you know, from the death of his children to the
47:44
Speaker 6: death of his wife to having to take all those
47:46
Speaker 6: kids into his house to his hemorrhoids, his his other problems,
47:50
Speaker 6: one meal a day, and on and on, and how
47:52
Speaker 6: he went through and did a commentary on every book
47:54
Speaker 6: of the Bible except Revelation, how he tested everything he
47:57
Speaker 6: ever believed against the Word of God. I mean, relentlessly
48:02
Speaker 6: against the Word of God. From 1536 to 1564, he's
48:05
Speaker 6: expositing one passage after another, takes a three-year break, comes back,
48:08
Speaker 6: picks up the same verse after he was in exile.
48:12
Speaker 7: And I said, you've misunderstood this man. I went on
48:14
Speaker 7: and on and on.
48:15
Speaker 6: And afterwards, this group of men came and said, We
48:19
Speaker 6: want to repent. We want to repent of our attitude.
48:25
Speaker 6: And I told that to R.C., and R.C. said, John
48:29
Speaker 6: MacArthur came back from Russia, and 3,500 Russian pastors accepted
48:34
Speaker 6: John Calvin into their hearts.
48:44
Speaker 7: That wasn't quite the thing, but.
48:48
Speaker 4: It's a great story.
48:49
Speaker 3: I think it's not only the wisdom issue of what
48:54
Speaker 3: is a significant issue and what is not that we
48:56
Speaker 3: need to have heavenly wisdom for.
48:57
Speaker 1: I think also the attitude.
48:59
Speaker 3: Which we display. Paul tells us that the goal of
49:03
Speaker 3: our instruction is love from a pure heart and a
49:07
Speaker 3: clean conscience and a sincere faith. And so we want
49:10
Speaker 3: to adorn the doctrines of grace with with a demeanor
49:15
Speaker 3: of grace in the way we discuss it, especially with
49:17
Speaker 3: those who disagree because we live in an anti-intellectual age
49:21
Speaker 3: and because that anti-intellectualism pervades the evangelical church, oftentimes anybody
49:26
Speaker 3: who knows anything immediately comes across as hard-edged to someone
49:31
Speaker 3: who doesn't know very much about the faith. And so
49:33
Speaker 3: we will have to bend over backwards to be gracious
49:35
Speaker 3: and in engaging with people who don't know some of
49:38
Speaker 3: the things that the Lord in His mercy has shown
49:41
Speaker 3: to us in the Word.
49:42
Speaker 4: And so we want to adorn the.
49:43
Speaker 1: Way we talk with people.
49:45
Speaker 3: It should show in our attitude, our love and concern
49:48
Speaker 3: for them, because our concern is ultimately the truth of God.
49:52
Speaker 6: Just to add to that, perspicuity is an important reality
49:57
Speaker 6: to consider, the perspicuity of Scripture, the.
49:59
Speaker 7: Clarity of Scripture.
50:00
Speaker 6: And I think this question poses something that we're all
50:02
Speaker 6: going to have to face in a postmodern world, where
50:06
Speaker 6: truth and the clarity of truth is not the concern,
50:10
Speaker 6: but it's where everybody sort of has the right to
50:12
Speaker 6: their own opinion, and that's going to be exalted to
50:15
Speaker 6: the detriment of the truth.
50:19
Speaker 2: I had a question here. I think it came partly
50:21
Speaker 2: out of the pre-conference. I think, Ligon, you'd mentioned that
50:25
Speaker 2: people were going to Eastern Orthodoxy.
50:29
Speaker 1: Can someone, I have a question here. Actually, I had
50:30
Speaker 1: two or three questions.
50:32
Speaker 2: Asking, can someone quickly summarize what are the chief errors?
50:36
Speaker 2: What are the features of Eastern Orthodox theology that we
50:40
Speaker 2: think are erroneous?
50:46
Speaker 3: Well, to go along the lines of the way John
50:50
Speaker 3: took our last question, the first thing would be in
50:52
Speaker 3: the doctrine of salvation. You have a system of salvation
50:56
Speaker 3: which is essentially similar to Roman Catholicism in terms of
51:00
Speaker 3: the function of the sacraments. Basically, there are only two
51:03
Speaker 3: systems of salvation in Christian There's either a sacerdotal system
51:08
Speaker 3: which depends upon the dispensation of the sacraments by the church,
51:11
Speaker 3: and there's an evangelical system which acknowledges the work of
51:14
Speaker 3: the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer or
51:18
Speaker 3: in the life of the sinner, drawing that sinner to Christ,
51:22
Speaker 3: uniting him to Christ by faith. And the evangelical and
51:26
Speaker 3: the sacerdotal systems are the two great alternatives within the
51:30
Speaker 3: stream of historic Christianity. And Eastern Orthodoxy clearly fits in
51:35
Speaker 3: the category of sacerdotalism, salvation through the sacramental system. There
51:40
Speaker 3: are other odd beliefs in Orthodoxy. Some branches of Orthodoxy
51:44
Speaker 3: today still stress the idea of theosis or deification, which
51:49
Speaker 3: is a bizarre... R.C. made an allusion to it earlier on.
51:53
Speaker 3: It's a bizarre... of the Bible's teaching on sanctification and glorification,
51:58
Speaker 3: which is very central to the Eastern Orthodox theology. It
52:01
Speaker 3: has been since the Hesychast movement in the 14th century,
52:04
Speaker 3: where they went back and they misread basically some 5th
52:07
Speaker 3: to 8th century Eastern Orthodox theologians. Maybe the best evangelical
52:13
Speaker 3: scholar of Eastern Orthodoxy today is Gerald Bray and is
52:17
Speaker 3: outstanding in his critique of the Eastern system. But if
52:21
Speaker 3: you wanted to get a quick taste of what Eastern
52:23
Speaker 3: Orthodoxy believes, you could pick up Timothy Ware, who is
52:27
Speaker 3: an Eastern Orthodox bishop from Oxford, England, and look at
52:32
Speaker 3: his book, The Orthodox Church, and just read the doctrinal section,
52:35
Speaker 3: and you'd get a quick overview of Eastern Orthodoxy. It's very,
52:38
Speaker 3: very different from a Protestant evangelical view of salvation.
52:44
Speaker 1: Now, when we talk about Roman.
52:45
Speaker 2: Catholics, we'll often stress that in an official way, the
52:49
Speaker 2: Roman Catholic Church anathematized the gospel.
52:52
Speaker 1: Has something like that happened in Eastern Orthodoxy?
52:55
Speaker 4: It's not that all the same. Eastern Orthodoxy doesn't have
52:59
Speaker 4: their Council of Trent, in which they've anathematized justification by
53:03
Speaker 4: faith alone. But in a sense, they remain somewhat Olympian
53:07
Speaker 4: and aloof from the issues of the Protestant Reformation. But
53:11
Speaker 4: I've never seen a doctrinal statement from an Eastern Orthodox
53:15
Speaker 4: person who didn't deny justification by faith alone. It just
53:19
Speaker 4: is totally against the grain of the sacerdotalism which Ligon
53:24
Speaker 4: was speaking here a moment ago. One of the other things, though, too,
53:27
Speaker 4: you'll find among particularly contemporary many Eastern Orthodox folks, you
53:34
Speaker 4: mentioned the bishop who wrote his book in this doctrinal statement,
53:38
Speaker 4: usually not a very big book because Eastern Orthodoxy characteristically
53:43
Speaker 4: is not all that focused on and interested in doctrine.
53:48
Speaker 4: It's more the liturgy, and that's what makes them attractive
53:51
Speaker 4: to so many people because we've had such a stripping
53:54
Speaker 4: of the aesthetic dimension of worship from evangelicalism that beauty
54:00
Speaker 4: has been vanquished from our churches and from our worship,
54:04
Speaker 4: and a lot of people hunger and thirst for the
54:08
Speaker 4: richness of an aesthetic approach to the majesty of God,
54:13
Speaker 4: which they find in Eastern Orthodox churches.
54:19
Speaker 2: And then when evangelical churches lose their doctrine and then
54:22
Speaker 2: have no beauty, well, you might as well have beauty.
54:25
Speaker 4: Yes.
54:26
Speaker 6: I just happened to attend an Eastern Orthodox service in Moscow.
54:32
Speaker 1: Are they using your books?
54:33
Speaker 7: They are not. They are not.
54:36
Speaker 6: I don't think they would use any books. There wasn't
54:39
Speaker 6: a book table. There wasn't a track table. There wasn't
54:42
Speaker 6: a document in the place. There wasn't a sermon. Nobody preached.
54:45
Speaker 6: There was chanting and more chanting and more chanting and
54:49
Speaker 6: walking in circles through little doors in the back screen
54:53
Speaker 6: and going around and coming through and wandering. I know
54:56
Speaker 6: because I was standing there next to some little old
54:58
Speaker 6: ladies and I kept having to move.
55:00
Speaker 7: It was like waves.
55:01
Speaker 6: You moved when the flow came behind you and the
55:04
Speaker 6: endless lighting of candles at the expense of the people.
55:08
Speaker 6: And they would come around, I noticed, and extinguish them
55:10
Speaker 6: when they were only half burnt so they'd have to
55:12
Speaker 6: go buy another one. It went on for an hour.
55:15
Speaker 6: No one said anything. No teaching, no preaching, which supports
55:20
Speaker 6: the idea that there's essentially no theology.
55:22
Speaker 7: This is sacerdotalism plus nothing.
55:29
Speaker 2: R.C., how do you respond to someone who says the
55:33
Speaker 2: self-existent eternal being is the universe since matter cannot be
55:38
Speaker 2: created or destroyed?
55:40
Speaker 1: That's scientific approach. Yeah.
55:43
Speaker 4: Well, it's yet to be shown that matter can't be
55:45
Speaker 4: created or destroyed. Once they find the living God, they'll
55:48
Speaker 4: know that that's not the true principle. But very quickly,
55:53
Speaker 4: I mean, this is a common thing. Most opposite views
56:00
Speaker 4: to Christian theism and creationism are based on some kind
56:04
Speaker 4: of doctrine of self-creation, creation out of nothing. The opposite
56:08
Speaker 4: is the pure materialist who says matter and energy have
56:13
Speaker 4: already existed. So we don't need to appeal to some
56:16
Speaker 4: transcendent being outside the realm of the material universe to
56:22
Speaker 4: account for the universe as we know it. Now, if
56:27
Speaker 4: you look at each individual, individuated data bit of that
56:32
Speaker 4: material universe, such as this microphone, you know that it
56:37
Speaker 4: manifests the attribute of mutation, mutability, contingency, And so no
56:44
Speaker 4: one is going to argue that the microphone is the
56:47
Speaker 4: eternal self-existent being. But usually what they'll say is that
56:52
Speaker 4: there is some core, some pulsating core as yet undiscovered
56:59
Speaker 4: within the universe that is self-existent and eternal and from
57:04
Speaker 4: which all other material reality derives. And what I say
57:10
Speaker 4: at that point to the materialists is that you've just
57:14
Speaker 4: affirmed the existence of a transcendent, self-existent, eternal being. And
57:20
Speaker 4: I say, no, we don't believe He's transcendent. He's part
57:23
Speaker 4: of the universe. It's this unknown pulsating core within the universe.
57:29
Speaker 4: And I said, let me understand something. When we're talking
57:32
Speaker 4: about transcendent being, we're not talking geography. We're not talking
57:38
Speaker 4: about where God lives. We're talking ontology. if there is
57:44
Speaker 4: something with, quote, you say, within the universe that is
57:49
Speaker 4: ontologically different from everything else in the universe, and that
57:53
Speaker 4: it alone is eternal and self-existing, okay, then you're doing
57:58
Speaker 4: a very nice job of describing what I've been pleading
58:01
Speaker 4: for all along, a self-existent eternal being. And that's where
58:05
Speaker 4: you start. You have to have a self-existent eternal being
58:09
Speaker 4: And if there's one part of the universe that's self-existent
58:13
Speaker 4: and eternal, and another part from which this microphone is
58:19
Speaker 4: derived that is not eternal and not self-existent is contingent,
58:24
Speaker 4: then you have to make a distinction ontologically between the
58:29
Speaker 4: source and this. And that's what we mean by God.
58:35
Speaker 2: All right, let's just wrap it up right now. Let
58:37
Speaker 2: me just do one more brief question, then we'll finish.
58:40
Speaker 4: Dr.
58:40
Speaker 2: MacArthur has to run. I became a Christian, then strayed badly.
58:45
Speaker 2: I now desire to repent and follow Jesus, but I'm
58:48
Speaker 2: haunted by Hebrews 6 that says it is impossible to
58:52
Speaker 2: repent if I have known the Lord and fallen away.
58:56
Speaker 2: How can I know that I am able to be
58:58
Speaker 2: received again and forgiven?
59:01
Speaker 1: Who wants to take that? And that'll be our last question.
59:06
Speaker 4: We may have three different views of that sitting up there.
59:09
Speaker 2: Well without exegeting Hebrews 6 in detail because there are
59:11
Speaker 2: different views but how can I know that if I
59:14
Speaker 2: profess faith in Christ I fell away badly But now I.
59:19
Speaker 1: Want to be forgiven. I want to turn to Christ.
59:21
Speaker 1: How can I? Will He receive me? And how can
59:23
Speaker 1: I know?
59:23
Speaker 4: This is one of those consistent promises that we were
59:25
Speaker 4: talking about, God, that if you confess your sin, God
59:28
Speaker 4: is faithful and just to forgive your sin and to
59:30
Speaker 4: cleanse you from all unrighteousness. And if you've had a
59:33
Speaker 4: temporary falling away, okay, maybe you weren't ever really truly
59:38
Speaker 4: converted in the first place, or maybe you were converted
59:41
Speaker 4: and you went into a very serious and radical fall,
59:43
Speaker 4: but not a full and final fall. You haven't committed
59:46
Speaker 4: the unforgivable sins. If you repent and you're concerned about it,
59:49
Speaker 4: you get on your face before God, we have God's
59:52
Speaker 4: guarantee that he will forgive you. It's that simple.
59:56
Speaker 1: The promise of God's word.
59:58
Speaker 4: Yes. Amen.
59:59
Speaker 1: Well, that concludes this question and answer. We'll have one
1:00:01
Speaker 1: tomorrow as well.