Dale Partridge - Real Christianity #139： Vital Lessons From Church History with Dustin Benge and Dale Partridge

00:00:00.000 Welcome to a special edition of Real Christianity.

00:00:09.320 I'm your host, Dale Partridge, and over the past several months, I've had the privilege

00:00:13.240 of interviewing 12 of the top theologians of our time.

00:00:16.560 We discuss everything from apologetics and church history to the biblical family and

00:00:20.880 standing firm on sound doctrine.

00:00:22.760 The objective of this series was to strengthen the theology of listeners and give them the

00:00:27.060 tools they need to boldly proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. So listen up, focus in, and prepare

00:00:32.960 your mind for volume one of The Theologian Series. In this episode of The Theologian Series, I

00:00:40.660 interview Dr. Dustin Benj about why all Christians should study church history. Dr. Benj is the

00:00:46.640 provost and professor of church history and preaching at Union School of Theology in the

00:00:50.840 United Kingdom. Dustin and I became friends over social media through his incredibly powerful

00:00:56.240 Twitter feed that's just filled with punchy, bold one-liners that just make you want to shout amen

00:01:02.000 when you're looking at your phone or your computer. Dr. Benj is the author of several

00:01:05.920 books and is the host of the Walking Worthy podcast. In our interview, Dustin and I are

00:01:10.320 going to be discussing why Christians must seek to have a working knowledge of church history

00:01:15.680 and how having this knowledge can protect themselves and their families against false

00:01:19.840 doctrine and bad theology. So guys, grab your Bible and sharpen your pencil because it's time

00:01:24.760 to tune in to another powerful episode of The Theologian Series.

00:01:34.120 Welcome to The Theologian Series, Dr. Dustin Bench.

00:01:38.760 Hi, Dale. It's so nice to be with you today. Thank you so much for the kind invitation to join you.

00:01:46.320 Yeah, I'm excited to have this conversation about church history. It is so critical.

00:01:51.460 You and I, even before interviewing or this interview, we're talking about church history.

00:01:55.700 We could probably go on for hours.

00:01:57.940 It's so important for Christians to know so that they can have a strong relationship with God.

00:02:04.280 They can guard themselves against heresy.

00:02:06.780 They can fix themselves upon sound doctrine and theology.

00:02:11.920 I want to talk to you, Dustin, about this.

00:02:13.740 we live in a time where the church at large just avoids the field of church history. Now,

00:02:22.520 the seminary world doesn't, but the church in general does. In fact, I'd say many modern

00:02:28.300 Christians can't tell you much about the Acts Church or the early church fathers or the Middle

00:02:34.420 Ages or the Reformation, the Puritans, the Great Awakening, the Revivalists, right? There's just 0.77

00:02:40.720 an absence that is sensed among the modern church. Can you tell us why church history

00:02:49.040 is something that we should all as Christians be eager to study?

00:02:55.040 Well, that's such a large question. Through the years, I've met so many people in the church,

00:03:03.360 just like you have described. I've even met some that want to completely detach themselves

00:03:10.280 from history altogether, just believing that they perhaps have a better way to do things

00:03:17.060 in our modern and technologically advanced culture.

00:03:21.780 However, that's so impossible to do.

00:03:25.460 It's impossible to separate ourselves from church history.

00:03:29.580 And if I could, just in thinking about this, let me mention a few things to consider, really

00:03:37.900 just to kind of pinpoint, if you will, why Christians should study church history and

00:03:43.040 the importance of it and really the vitality that it can have in our lives and thinking

00:03:48.360 in our Christian walk. First of all, I would say, Dale, history has meaning. Like it or not,

00:03:57.300 each one of us are historical beings. That is, we are living in history. I remember a quote by

00:04:05.940 Cicero, who said or who observed that history regulates our lives. And I've often thought

00:04:14.020 about that and think that he's right. In other words, no one is able to escape the effects of

00:04:20.920 history. Government, politics, economy, art, literature, all the rest of it, it has the

00:04:28.420 essence of shaping the current culture that we're in. So we are products at the moment of what is

00:04:35.820 happened in the past to us. So we interact with history every single day, especially now that we

00:04:44.480 are living in the UK. When I travel to the campus of Union School of Theology every day, I travel

00:04:51.740 over roads that were built by the Romans. And it's fascinating to do that. So I'm interacting

00:04:58.540 with a bit of history every day. So for the Christian community, to know history is vital

00:05:06.320 because ultimately history is the stage upon which God plays out the redemptive history of

00:05:16.400 his son. So at the beginning is the fall from the garden, and then at the end is the last judgment,

00:05:24.080 And in between is the most crucial event of all, the entry of the eternal God into time as a man, Jesus Christ, the incarnate word.

00:05:36.720 And so within that timeline, we see God who is undoubtedly active in history.

00:05:44.020 So history has meaning because it has been planned and it has been structured by God.

00:05:53.520 So that's something that we as Christians need to know.

00:05:56.080 History has meaning because we are connected to it, like it or not.

00:06:02.040 We can also, secondly, I would say, learn from the past.

00:06:05.760 This is one of the more obvious reasons for studying church history, to learn from the mistakes of the past.

00:06:13.880 We all know the famous proverb, he who does not remember the past is doomed to repeat it.

00:06:20.340 So, for example, we can study the nuances of the ancient history Arianism to help us combat the heretical views maintained by modern day Jehovah's Witnesses, for instance.

00:06:36.680 So the thoughts and the writings of those within church history serve the church today if only we are willing to learn from them.

00:06:47.800 being yeah i think yeah i'm sorry go ahead no i say i think this is so key i mean it's just

00:06:53.820 we can't escape i think that's true is that it's so formative whether we want to admit it or not

00:07:01.580 i love that point that you made there dustin is that it's it's such a critical recognition

00:07:07.880 that it's shaping us now, and it's inescapable.

00:07:15.260 And the point that you made of Arianism, right?

00:07:20.240 A lot of people might be thinking about, you know, what's going on in World War II?

00:07:24.240 Why are you talking about that?

00:07:25.280 Versus the difference of, no, we're talking about early church

00:07:30.100 and the view of Trinitarian theology and understanding that, yeah,

00:07:36.080 that the enemy has only a few heresies that he uses over and over again,

00:07:42.700 wrapping them up in different packages.

00:07:44.880 And when you know church history,

00:07:46.520 you can see these repetitions and you go,

00:07:49.320 oh,

00:07:49.480 that's,

00:07:49.900 that's just been done before.

00:07:51.960 And there's been a church council that's pushed that away before.

00:07:55.000 And,

00:07:55.420 and,

00:07:56.420 but if you're unaware,

00:07:57.420 uh,

00:07:58.800 then you're,

00:07:59.600 you're,

00:08:00.120 um,

00:08:00.660 not as effective and you could be deceived in the midst of it.

00:08:04.280 So I just love those points.

00:08:06.080 Yeah, I would also say, Dale, that being a historian, and I'm still young, we are young, and so I don't think of myself as a historian as such, but being a historian, enjoying history, studying history, throughout the years, it has really built a sense of humility within me.

00:08:26.460 And I think that's another reason why Christians should know history and study history, because the study of church history informs us about our predecessors in the faith.

00:08:38.700 That is, those who have helped shape our Christian communities, our churches, our ministries, and really thus making us who we are as people.

00:08:49.960 And so studying church history builds humility into our lives.

00:08:55.740 It builds modesty into our lives.

00:08:58.620 And therefore, I think ultimately it has a sanctifying influence upon us because it provides for us a map for the Christian life.

00:09:09.020 It's a map based on the countless faithful men and women that have gone before us.

00:09:16.340 Now, of course, the Bible provides the basic map for the Christian life, but the thought of other Christians down through the ages can help illumine and even illustrate what is contained in the scripture.

00:09:31.840 And so if I did not have church history to go back and read these faithful writings, there are many things perhaps that I would not arrive at myself.

00:09:42.420 And so it does build a sense of humility in me recognizing that there is a vast tradition of God working upon the minds and within the pens of those who have gone before me.

00:09:58.680 Yeah, that's a huge point right there, Dustin, is that you're saying when we have this kind of autonomous view and we don't realize that there's a history around us.

00:10:11.240 I remember watching a video of Paul Washer giving a tour of his library, and he walks

00:10:19.080 up to a section of his shelf, and it's all great confessions of faith, and he says he

00:10:28.160 was angry when he read them the first time because he had been trying for so many months

00:10:37.000 or so many years trying to understand some of the truths that men had already clarified.

00:10:49.600 And he was so frustrated that he spent years trying to understand concepts that were so

00:10:55.940 simplified in this one statement, and he had never read it.

00:11:00.740 And he was, again, just this idea of being detached from the pens of church history, that there are men that have come before, that if we could stand on the shoulders of theologians who were standing on the shoulders of theologians, and to think that we would operate without that wonderful gift is just strange.

00:11:26.580 Well, it's quite odd, isn't it, that we would just ignore really models for imitation.

00:11:34.360 I think that's another thing that just kind of pops into my mind as a reason to study church history is ultimately history provides models of imitation.

00:11:44.680 We read Hebrews 11, for instance, and how the writer of Hebrews uses the history of God's faithful people in the Old Covenant to encourage his own readers to run the race of faith.

00:12:02.500 So the writer of Hebrews is using, in essence, church history to say to his modern day readers, these are examples that you need to follow.

00:12:12.560 These are examples that you need to imitate. And so he wants them to draw encouragement and to press on in the faith and obedience towards the final goal of the certainty that we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.

00:12:31.380 And we lose the essence of that understanding when we neglect the history that has come before us.

00:12:39.920 Amen.

00:12:40.860 Amen.

00:12:41.400 I think about the idea, I forgot who talked about it, but the idea of a pictograph of

00:12:48.700 faith of you're in a rowboat and you're facing backwards, you're going forwards, but you're

00:12:54.740 not facing the way you're going, but you're looking backwards like in a rowboat and you're

00:12:58.840 pushing yourself forward.

00:12:59.660 And the reason you can go forward is because you're looking backwards, meaning that you

00:13:03.280 have a trust in what's unknown because you can look behind you of what is known.

00:13:11.380 And I see history like that in the church.

00:13:14.060 I see what the Lord has done within brothers and sisters of old.

00:13:19.440 And I get to watch and go, well, this is in alignment with scripture.

00:13:24.500 This is what the Lord has done throughout church history.

00:13:27.540 This is what he will likely do with me.

00:13:30.280 Meaning that I don't have to think of myself as, again, autonomous or abstract.

00:13:36.740 I'm within the church.

00:13:38.480 I'm one of God's children.

00:13:39.680 And I get to look at the other historical circumstances and outcomes of his other children

00:13:45.640 that would, again, strengthen my confidence and understanding of how he might deal with me.

00:13:53.240 And that's been very helpful.

00:13:55.180 You know, we should move on to this next question because we could just keep talking forever on this.

00:14:01.480 But, you know, Dustin, many modern Christians, they're just attracted to these modern churches.

00:14:09.300 But these modern churches, as we were just talking about, can feel detached from church history, not just in their newness, but just in the way that they're preaching.

00:14:19.720 They're writing their own statements of faith as if, again, they're the first Christians on earth.

00:14:27.640 They have no denominational heritage, not necessarily that, I'm not saying that we need that, 0.84

00:14:33.640 but I'm saying they're just not connected to the main rivers or the main streams of historical Christianity.

00:14:39.840 There's no clear commitment to historical theology, meaning that they're in a sense of incongruent theological convictions.

00:14:49.720 And so my question is, why is it important for modern churches, corporately, really to attach

00:14:57.480 themselves to Christian history? I mean, how can we really encourage pastors to

00:15:06.860 place themselves in the Christian family tree? What's the value there of doing that as a church?

00:15:13.940 well first i would say that no church is created in a vacuum no church is an island as it were

00:15:22.740 that's the complete antithesis of how the church was founded in the book of acts

00:15:27.640 there's no way dale to faithfully preach and teach the bible without looking from our modern context

00:15:37.160 into the past. After all, when you open the Bible, you're not only opening God's Word and God's

00:15:45.260 revelation to us, but the Bible is in and of itself a book of God's history. And so to purposefully

00:15:54.780 detach ourselves from Christian history is essentially impossible. It's important for

00:16:02.440 pastors to emphasize history and our forebears, to demonstrate that the Christian life was not

00:16:08.960 meant to be lived in isolation from the greater context of God's history of redemption. I mean,

00:16:17.060 let's think about it for a moment. Even to say our God is the father of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob

00:16:24.340 is to place ourselves within the context of a history, that is, the history of Israel,

00:16:32.720 what God did through his people in Israel, how eventually the Messiah came forth, lived a sinless

00:16:38.880 life, died a substitutionary death, rose from the dead, and ascended back to God. All of this,

00:16:46.960 of course, is the message of the gospel, which is also a message of history. So at no point can

00:16:55.400 the church avoid history or think that they have a better or more modern way of doing things.

00:17:02.740 And then for the reasons that I mentioned before, history is meant to demonstrate to God's people

00:17:08.540 that we are not traveling the Christian road alone, but that we have a rich heritage from

00:17:16.000 which to learn in order to provide a proper map for us to follow. So no church can open the Bible,

00:17:24.880 faithfully proclaim the Bible, faithfully proclaim God's revelation to man through Christ,

00:17:30.940 which is the gospel, and avoid history. Because that message must be planted in time and space

00:17:39.800 and history in order to be validated. Yeah, I think this is so true. And, you know,

00:17:47.520 we need to recognize, I believe, as Christians and as pastors, the Lord's theological clarifying

00:17:55.820 that has occurred, especially, you know, over the past 2,000 years, right? Obviously, there was a

00:18:03.340 huge theological clarifying moment when Christ came. And so, you know, God's making clear all

00:18:09.900 of the prophetic promises that were coming. And then over the last 2000 years, I always think

00:18:15.560 about it took a long time for theological clarity to occur because nobody had a copy of the

00:18:23.660 scriptures to study, to scrutinize, to have discussions about. The fact that Augustine had

00:18:30.640 the Bible that he had, how many other individuals could he really have deep theological discourse

00:18:38.000 over that document that he had? I mean, not many. And so, you know, people wonder why it took so

00:18:45.160 many centuries for certain theological conclusions to really take root. Well, it's like there was

00:18:51.160 such a huge amount of time before we, we didn't have the printing press until, you know, the 1500s

00:18:56.900 or some argue a little earlier in a sense, but we didn't have multiple copies of the Bible for

00:19:01.940 scrutiny, for discussion, for discourse. And so that's why the boom of the Reformation creates

00:19:08.740 this beautiful mass of theological clarity because all these people have a Bible now and they can

00:19:16.880 read it in their language and they can discuss it. And you have this Puritan movement of just

00:19:22.280 huge amounts of writing and clarity and confessional statements that come out of the church.

00:19:29.760 And for me, I've just realized, one, I'm not saying that we ever make confessions elevated

00:19:37.580 higher than the scriptures, but these confessions as a church, being a confessional church,

00:19:42.180 meaning that, hey, we align with this statement of faith, the 1689 London Baptist Confession of

00:19:47.120 faith. Hey, that's a confession that we can stand behind. Is it tit for tat 99 or 100% of everything

00:19:54.560 you agree with? Maybe not. But generally speaking, we can align with that statement of faith or the

00:19:59.180 Westminster Confession of Faith. And I just see so many churches now, Dustin, that are me, my Bible,

00:20:05.000 and I. They're just, we grabbed our Bible and we're going to start our new version of Christianity

00:20:11.480 detached from this church history. And I go, why? Why? You're missing out on the rich,

00:20:20.940 clarified truths, and you're going to make the same mistakes,

00:20:24.340 and they already are making the same mistakes that they don't even see because they don't know.

00:20:29.000 Well, so many churches just aren't interested in that theological clarity, are they?

00:20:34.460 We have a better way.

00:20:36.800 We have a more intellectually advanced way.

00:20:39.540 We're not into antiquarian thought.

00:20:42.560 We're not into reading antiques.

00:20:46.300 We see them as dusty figures in the past that have nothing to teach us in our modern context.

00:20:53.960 And so it's the changing of the language that we use. 0.52

00:20:58.600 We're not interested in historically how you define a Christian because we put on the glasses of modern day culture in order to define a Christian.

00:21:08.680 And so instead of seeing the Bible through a historical, theological, clear lens, they rather put on the lens of culture and view the Bible, which always, always leads to error.

00:21:24.260 Yeah, I think about Dr. MacArthur, who's done such a great job of every time I listen to his

00:21:30.760 sermons, I feel like he takes me into the world of the Bible. When he talks about even church

00:21:37.560 history, he might talk about Augustine. I feel like I'm there in Rome with Augustine, and I'm

00:21:43.960 being brought in to the scriptures instead of projecting my modern view, which is what you're

00:21:50.560 talking about on the scriptures? Well, it's a completely different worldview, isn't it? The

00:21:56.040 view of the modern church is that Christ makes much of us, and the view of the doctrinal,

00:22:05.240 biblical, theologically grounded, clear church, that is the church of the scripture, the church

00:22:11.100 of the Bible, is that we make much of God. And so it's a complete antithesis. The mission is 0.85

00:22:18.580 different. The gospel is different. The message is different. The preaching is different. And

00:22:26.200 eventually, which is what we have at the moment rising up, we just begin to see different

00:22:32.400 definitions of the gospel come forward. Yeah, when I first got into church history a few years ago,

00:22:39.540 I remember having a sense of discovering who I am in all the right ways.

00:22:48.560 in terms of I remember having this sense of feeling home

00:22:57.060 that I finally found that there is a scarlet thread

00:23:03.360 or a bloodline back to Christ of the biblical church

00:23:09.780 and that I am not alone

00:23:13.060 and I don't have to be this lone wolf theologian

00:23:17.020 that's inventing my own theology in a vacuum.

00:23:21.820 That I actually found out that men that came before me

00:23:26.400 have already established clarity to such an extreme

00:23:31.660 that I don't need to spend the thousands of hours.

00:23:37.960 I can look at their work and make a decision.

00:23:40.960 I could seek the scriptures and evaluate and examine these truths to one another.

00:23:46.000 it was such a help and such an identity shift in terms of not just my identity in Christ,

00:23:55.400 but more specifically, my identity as a believer in connection with all the other believers

00:24:00.280 throughout history. And so I just love that. That's been such an important part. Dustin,

00:24:07.280 when you begin to study church history, you quickly notice that it's a study of God's people

00:24:15.260 or it's God's history through people. And you begin to learn of men like Polycarp. Man, I remember

00:24:23.540 reading the martyrdom of Polycarp and just being blown away and encouraged. We hear about Augustine 0.99

00:24:29.560 and Luther and women like Joan of Arc and Lady Jane Grey and the story of Lady Jane Grey's Bible

00:24:35.160 and Susanna Wesley. And why should modern Christians be familiar with these significant

00:24:41.500 characters throughout church history? What's the importance of that, of studying the biographical

00:24:47.800 side of God's people? That's a great question. You and I both love Charles Spurgeon, and Spurgeon

00:24:55.800 is so quotable, the great Baptist preacher of the last century. He once said, it seems odd that

00:25:03.820 certain men who talk so much of what the Holy Spirit reveals to themselves should think of so

00:25:12.220 little of what he has revealed to others. And I've always found that is so striking

00:25:18.620 in our approach to church history. There's many reasons we tend to dismiss great figures of the

00:25:27.200 past. And we've talked about some of those reasons. We know better. We're more culturally

00:25:32.500 advanced. We're more sophisticated. We have more education. We're in greater cultured times and so

00:25:39.240 on. But these great men and women throughout history are actually a portrait of the fruit

00:25:46.500 of the Holy Spirit's teaching activity as they sought to understand the scripture.

00:25:54.320 One of the great historian and lover of the Puritans, J.I. Packer, said, of course,

00:26:00.180 they're not infallible in their understanding of the scriptures, but neither should they be

00:26:07.160 neglected. That is, we don't at all, Dale, place the teaching of men and women in the past

00:26:13.400 on the same level as Holy Scripture, but we can and do learn from them, as we've said,

00:26:21.260 their insights, their mistakes, their character, their courage, their boldness, and even their errors.

00:26:32.640 And so on a personal note, there's nothing quite so wonderful for me to read the biography of

00:26:39.460 somebody like Augustine, Martin Luther, Jonathan Edwards, Martin Lloyd-Jones, someone else,

00:26:44.920 and see God use them in their own context because these biographical accounts actually encourage me

00:26:53.820 that, hey, God is still working and God is still using fallible men and women for his glory and

00:27:04.960 his purposes. I think that's the whole reason the Holy Spirit decided to put Hebrews 11 in the 0.99

00:27:11.640 scripture because every person he outlines in Hebrews 11 are great consummate sinners.

00:27:20.140 And what it does is it encourages us, hey, there's a chance for me. I'm fallible. I'm in error most of

00:27:29.100 the time. I don't have it all put together. I don't have it all figured out, but God is still

00:27:35.040 working and he can work in me and so for instance if we didn't have martin luther would we know as

00:27:43.920 much about justification by faith alone as we currently do if we didn't have somebody like

00:27:50.640 jonathan edwards would we know as much about joy as we currently do if we didn't have john owen

00:27:57.680 the great Puritan at Oxford? Would we know as much about how that we should mortify sin as we do?

00:28:06.680 And I could go on and on. And perhaps we would know those things. But the point is that God led

00:28:12.280 these faithful believers into the depths of his word, not only for their context, but for future

00:28:20.380 generations to know, to cherish, and adore Christ more. That's what they do, Dale. They just make me

00:28:29.180 love Jesus more. And that's how God has used so many of these figures in my own life.

00:28:36.260 Yeah, I mean, this is what you're saying. And that quote, I'm going to have to get a copy of

00:28:40.680 that quote from Spurgeon, because that, again, as Spurgeon does, he basically puts to words

00:28:46.460 everything you're thinking, but you don't know how to say. And the reality is, yes, we look so

00:28:53.660 highly at our own illumination of the spirit, our own, you know, the Lord reveals something so

00:29:00.860 beautiful in the scriptures to us. And we put it on a pedestal in our hearts and our life.

00:29:06.600 Sometimes for many people, it defines their life, that the Lord revealed this to me in the scriptures

00:29:11.900 one day I was reading and this changed everything for me. Yet we don't look at those same experiences

00:29:20.920 as equal value in others in the church, those other believers and brothers and sisters who

00:29:28.000 have had equal illumination moments of clarity and have actually brought those things to pen

00:29:36.100 and ink, and revealed them in such sufficient language that you can examine them against

00:29:42.980 the scriptures, and you go, wow, you have this, again, this confirmation of the Spirit

00:29:50.480 across so many different believers that go, that is right.

00:29:54.700 That's an amazing, clarified doctrine of justification, Luther.

00:29:59.760 This is amazing.

00:30:01.060 And to appreciate those things is so valuable, especially if the brother or sister is fruitful and sanctified, right?

00:30:08.100 I think about when I read the Valley of Vision, right?

00:30:12.260 This is, if you guys aren't familiar with it, it's a prayer journal of great Puritan prayers.

00:30:19.480 And the Valley of Vision, when I read those prayers, one, I just go, I cannot believe the maturity of these individuals, the prayers they're praying.

00:30:29.660 But it makes me trust what they're writing.

00:30:34.400 It makes me trust what else they wrote.

00:30:38.480 And I just want to encourage us all to, yeah, not shove off church history and go, I'm going to figure it out on my own.

00:30:45.400 I was a part of a church who did that.

00:30:48.580 And we were detached.

00:30:50.320 And no one was ever as smart as we were.

00:30:54.680 And it was really dangerous.

00:30:56.480 When I cracked into the golden box of Puritan work, it changed my life in terms of bringing

00:31:04.660 that clarity.

00:31:05.480 So I love that, that clarity that you brought there, Dustin.

00:31:13.200 150 years ago, Dustin, the sources of information were very limited in comparison today.

00:31:20.640 I think I read an article once that was talking about, you know, the amount of content that we read in a day is what most people would read or would read over a year in terms of just the scroll or the content that was at least presented to us.

00:31:36.640 We're just inundated with content.

00:31:40.240 And as a result, the false teaching and heretical theology at that time had fewer ways to be passed along.

00:31:48.800 But today, in the information age, with social media, podcasts, sermons, abundance of books, just one click on Amazon, documentaries, movies, see, the average Christian is bombarded with an opportunity to hear many false ideas and bad theology on a weekly, if not a daily basis.

00:32:09.080 And so how can a grasp of church history and historical theology help these modern

00:32:17.300 Christians identify what's not true, to refute it, and actually present the truth in response?

00:32:26.120 Ecclesiastes 1.9 says, there is nothing new under the sun. And that's such a good verse 0.93

00:32:35.020 for the context of the conversation here.

00:32:38.080 In other words, when I hear of new theology or new revelation,

00:32:46.740 I automatically become extremely skeptical about the belief system,

00:32:55.340 the theology, the biblical understanding of that particular individual.

00:33:00.180 Young men love to stand in the pulpits today and talk about their new theology.

00:33:07.160 But church history teaches us that as believers, we need to hold tightly to that one single redemptive thread that God has woven throughout church history.

00:33:21.120 We must be committed not to the new faith, but to the faith once delivered to all the saints.

00:33:28.480 And that is a historical faith. Over and over throughout Paul's epistles, for instance, Paul warns the church to stay close to that faith, to preach that one faith, to follow that one path.

00:33:46.300 We are in a long line of godly men and women, and good students of church history are able

00:33:55.160 to go back into the past and examine the confessions of faith and sermons and councils

00:34:01.260 and creeds and all of the rest of it, seeing how they match up to the teaching of Scripture

00:34:07.520 and then use that as a rubric over which to examine every aspect of teaching today

00:34:17.680 in order to determine the validity of that teaching.

00:34:23.120 Dale, most heresies today are just repackaged from the past.

00:34:28.900 There's no heresy that I can think of at the moment that has just been invented in the past 50 years.

00:34:36.720 nine times out of 10, as it were, you can go back in church history and find that heresy

00:34:42.960 appearing somewhere, though today it may be cloaked in different language. Most heresies

00:34:49.820 are just repackaged. And so our enemy has always led people in the same direction of falsehood.

00:34:57.020 It may be packaged differently, but it's essentially the same. We know this only if

00:35:05.100 we know church history. You have to go back to the past in order to identify and refute false

00:35:14.180 teaching. And so that means we have to be very familiar with the writings of the past, the

00:35:21.060 preaching of the past, the history of the past, and the events of the past in order to know,

00:35:28.060 hey, this is not new. There's nothing new under the sun. This is an old heresy repackaged in

00:35:37.160 different language. I need to avoid that. And the only way to do that is to know church history.

00:35:46.020 Well, and you can look back about how did the church refute it then? So you can lean heavily

00:35:53.580 on the hard work's done for you in most cases. Now, again, we have a modern context. We might

00:36:02.480 need to accommodate new language, but we can learn how the church reacted. We can learn the

00:36:09.780 defense that occurred on both sides. We can learn how to stand for the truth as a replacement of

00:36:15.860 that heresy. And so I've seen so many individuals miss out on that because they don't know the

00:36:26.140 councils and the confessions. Those two things alone, right? If you just can look back at the

00:36:32.300 church councils, the major church councils throughout church history and the great

00:36:35.840 confessions of faith, you have a pretty good look at what has been presented to the church.

00:36:45.100 And man, I'll tell you, some of the stuff looks really good at first.

00:36:49.280 Not too long ago, I actually had a Bible study.

00:36:53.340 And one of the ways that I was teaching our group that the heresy is not always right

00:37:00.380 on the front of the page in bold letters is for about 10 minutes, I taught and read the

00:37:08.300 Trinity out of the Mormon's definition of the Trinity.

00:37:12.740 and nobody in my 40-person Bible study had caught it until I said, hey guys, I just want to let you

00:37:20.520 know, I said a few statements here that were from the Mormon view of the Trinity and they were

00:37:28.080 heretical. And I was using that to illustrate my point that it's the fine details. And that's what

00:37:34.780 you'll see throughout church history is these heresies that aren't rejected immediately because

00:37:40.580 it takes some time to look at them and you go, wow, that's really close, but it's not right.

00:37:48.040 And the councils and the confessions do a great job with precision. When I read the

00:37:55.040 confession of faith or the Westminster confession, every single word was chosen specifically to

00:38:01.880 convey a specific meaning. And what a helpful tool those things have been so that I can know

00:38:08.760 what the real thing is throughout church history in alignment with the scriptures. I can study the

00:38:14.540 word of God so that when a counterfeit rises up, I can see it. And so I love that perspective,

00:38:21.960 Dustin, that you've had on knowing those truths. Dustin, as we get ready to close out here in a

00:38:28.320 few minutes, if you had to think of some individuals, let's say three of them from

00:38:32.460 church history, which I know is very difficult to do. And you had to study them deeply.

00:38:40.000 Who are those people and why? Well, that's like asking a father to pick his favorite child.

00:38:49.280 It's a really difficult question because there's so many. I go into my office every day

00:38:56.300 on campus or here in my home office, and I'm surrounded by books that cry forth from church

00:39:04.920 history glorious truths that I want to devour. It seems there's something glorious every day,

00:39:13.060 a diamond or a bar of gold that I've missed. But if I were to choose three, they may be quite

00:39:20.420 obvious because I've already mentioned their names, even perhaps a couple times, almost from

00:39:26.440 three different eras of church history, because God throughout church history, it's been interesting

00:39:32.140 how he has emphasized certain things when they needed to be emphasized. And so from three

00:39:39.000 different eras of church history, I would select, first of all, probably Augustine or Augustine as

00:39:45.460 Some know him because he rises to the forefront of our connection with the church fathers.

00:39:52.580 He taught us, for instance, of the supreme authority of scripture, the necessity of the church, what it means to have a real relationship with Christ.

00:40:05.580 So some of those practical, major, primary doctrinal issues, Augustine is really a go-to.

00:40:13.400 And most everyone else I study after him, we would call Augustinian in their theology

00:40:20.080 because he is the ocean from which most all those rivers flow.

00:40:25.840 Secondly, coming to the period of the Reformation, I would probably choose Calvin,

00:40:33.040 perhaps not for the obvious reasons that one would choose Calvin because of his teachings on salvation,

00:40:38.940 even though I'm in agreement with those but more practically I love Calvin's instruction on the

00:40:45.940 Christian life and as a pastor he was preeminently teaching about sanctification and how to live

00:40:55.760 as a Christian believer in the world and his institutes though beautifully theological are

00:41:04.700 basically a roadmap or a handbook for practical Christian living. He's writing this not necessarily

00:41:15.620 for the academy. He's writing this for people in the pews of his church every single Lord's Day,

00:41:22.580 writing copiously on prayer, things like prayer and fighting and dealing with sin in our lives.

00:41:31.340 And so Calvin, because of very practical Christian living.

00:41:36.320 And then third, just post-Puritan era, some would argue, would be probably Jonathan Edwards.

00:41:45.120 I've loved Edwards for years.

00:41:47.880 He's taught me so many things.

00:41:51.220 My PhD was on Jonathan Edwards.

00:41:53.940 but he's taught me and practically demonstrated what it looks like for a Christian believer to

00:42:01.940 have a full-orbed, reformed Christian worldview. In other words, to see everything through the lens

00:42:10.100 of Christ, to see everything through the lens of Scripture, to see everything through the lens

00:42:16.740 of the glory of God. And so I could give many more examples, but those three men particularly

00:42:25.680 have probably helped me the greatest thus far. Very early on, as I was beginning study,

00:42:34.440 just when I went into seminary, I heard Derek Thomas say this. He gave some advice

00:42:41.220 to budding young historians like myself, and he said, throughout your life, you need to pick one.

00:42:49.400 Most people can pick one, maybe two at the most, individuals in church history, and study them as

00:42:58.300 a hobby, and dedicate yourself to those men, one or two at most, and to know everything they said,

00:43:08.560 to read everything they wrote, and to devour everything they said.

00:43:13.680 And I think that's been great advice because I can chase rabbit trails.

00:43:18.760 Oh my goodness, I love Thomas Watson one minute and Thomas Manton the next and John Owen the next

00:43:24.200 and Augustine the next and Martin Luther the next and Richard Baxter the next.

00:43:28.100 And I'm just all over the place and I don't have a full orbed view of anyone.

00:43:32.740 but as a hobby, are you studying one in particular person? Have you dedicated yourself

00:43:40.080 to one in particular person's theology and history and story? And that's always been

00:43:47.020 very good advice for me. Really great advice. I think that's very practical and very useful,

00:43:56.180 right um and i think that i'm as you're saying that i'm trying to evaluate who is this person

00:44:03.080 for me who is the one because you're right i i can get stuck in the my top 10 you know and just

00:44:09.660 go bounce back and forth um and who sits with you as a spiritual mentor from the past that you can

00:44:17.380 and i know so many christians are hungry for uh rich discipleship and what a beautiful history

00:44:24.120 we have to pull that from. Well, Dustin, thank you for joining us on this episode of the Theologian

00:44:31.460 series. I want to make sure that people get a chance to follow you on social media, find out

00:44:37.800 about your ministry, how to get involved in the things that you're doing. I know you had a new

00:44:42.220 book come out. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that before we close out? Well, first of all,

00:44:47.240 let me say, Dale, it's been a privilege to join you. Thank you for the kind invitation extended

00:44:52.040 to be on this series. It's an honor and I'm humbled by it just to talk about these great

00:44:57.220 things that we have a commonality in and an interest in. You can find me on social media,

00:45:04.180 on Twitter specifically, if you just type in my first and last name, there I am.

00:45:10.040 It's not kind of hard to find. I've also recently started a podcast. I'm new kind of to this world,

00:45:18.200 just desiring to give six to ten minute kind of devotional thoughts every Tuesday and Thursday

00:45:24.420 that your listeners can find on walkingworthypodcast.com, as well as various podcast platforms.

00:45:36.940 I'm currently the provost, which is a fancy academic term for something like vice president

00:45:42.660 or chief academic officer at Union School of Theology in South Wales.

00:45:47.240 My wife and I moved to the UK from the United States in July of 2020 in the season of the pandemic,

00:45:55.380 and so it's been quite interesting to adjust here.

00:45:58.620 But most of my work is taking place at Union School of Theology.

00:46:02.640 You can visit our website and look us up there.

00:46:06.480 I'm in various places, articles, and various other things, so perhaps just Google the name if you're interested,

00:46:12.880 and perhaps you'll come across something that I've done or written.

00:46:17.440 Well, awesome, Dustin.

00:46:18.380 It was a great conversation today, and thank you for being with us.

00:46:22.000 And thank you guys for listening to this episode of the Theologian Series

00:46:25.500 hosted by the Real Christianity Podcast.

00:46:27.680 If you guys haven't left a review for our show, we would love that.

00:46:31.440 Those reviews really do help the exposure of the show.

00:46:34.180 On that note, my name is Dale Partridge, and thank you for listening.

00:46:37.580 We'll see you next week.

00:46:38.300 thank you for listening to this special edition of real christianity this podcast is a hundred

00:46:44.840 percent listener supported audio ministry of relearn.org visit relearn.org for a library of

00:46:50.980 theological resources articles podcasts and videos to strengthen your biblical literacy

00:46:55.700 and support your study of god's word for those interested in supporting our ministry you can

00:47:00.380 make a tax-deductible donation at relearn.org forward slash donate again my name is dale

00:47:05.400 Partridge, and we're excited to have you back next week for another episode of Real Christianity.

Dale Partridge - March 31, 2021

Real Christianity #139： Vital Lessons From Church History with Dustin Benge and Dale Partridge

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