The King's Hall - Listener Inquiries： Reforming Ogden, Baptism, & More

00:00:00.000 Hey guys, Brian here with a big announcement from New Christendom Press.

00:00:03.860 Possibly our most important book yet is now available for pre-order.

00:00:08.300 It's called The Longhouse, How Feminism Conquered the West and Made Us All Miserable.

00:00:13.400 And in it, Eric and I take you through the dark history of feminism,

00:00:17.240 what it's done to everything from politics to church life to the economy,

00:00:21.220 and what to do about it.

00:00:23.040 Pre-order it today at newchristendompress.com slash longhouse.

00:00:26.600 and as a thank you for pre-ordering you'll get 10 off automatically we'll also be signing the

00:00:32.200 first thousand copies so pick yours up today welcome back to the king's hall we've got a

00:00:40.960 little bit of a different episode here before we jump in if you're new here weird that you're

00:00:46.440 listening to this episode first i'm actually not new here but uh eric khan say hi to the guests

00:00:52.260 Welcome to the King's Hall

00:00:54.320 What is

00:00:56.220 Dresden

00:00:57.900 Bunk's shoulder

00:00:59.640 Say hi to the guests

00:01:01.620 I wish people could see

00:01:04.840 The look on Dan's face

00:01:06.460 So even before this show Dan

00:01:08.320 You and I were getting warmed up

00:01:09.700 We had a spirited conversation

00:01:11.540 We may or may not have gotten in a little tiff

00:01:14.420 The thing is

00:01:15.620 Dan got in a tiff I didn't

00:01:17.720 Oh

00:01:18.180 It's continuing

00:01:21.220 Dan, it's a joke.

00:01:24.620 I can't decide whether I'm going to quit the King's Hall

00:01:27.580 or if I'm just going to fire you guys.

00:01:29.840 Well, you're the president.

00:01:31.160 Brian, I will pay you $10,000 to vote with me to fire Eric.

00:01:36.860 Eric is worth more than $10,000 to me.

00:01:39.840 But $15,000?

00:01:41.140 Done.

00:01:41.700 I'm just kidding.

00:01:42.780 I'm just kidding.

00:01:43.460 There's only one right way, Dan, to settle this, and that's fisticuffs.

00:01:46.360 Brian, what is happening?

00:01:47.320 You would have to punch up.

00:01:48.840 It's really to a disadvantage.

00:01:49.580 Gentlemen, everybody.

00:01:51.220 Everybody, welcome back.

00:01:53.140 Sometimes in the King's Hall, sparks fly.

00:01:55.400 Sometimes there's misunderstandings.

00:01:57.080 Because we're kings.

00:01:57.880 We have swords.

00:01:58.600 Kings get over it.

00:01:59.960 Kings answer listener questions.

00:02:02.040 Yes.

00:02:02.520 And that's what we're doing today.

00:02:04.240 Here in the King's Hall, we decided that, you know, we get quite a few questions from

00:02:08.500 all of the various media.

00:02:10.400 Media.

00:02:11.260 Media already is plural.

00:02:13.300 It's plural of medium.

00:02:14.640 Yeah, you learned that.

00:02:15.480 As we discovered last week.

00:02:16.060 You learned that, yeah.

00:02:16.740 I learned that from Eric Khan last week.

00:02:18.080 so from all of our various channels we get lots of questions through uh over the weeks and and we

00:02:24.400 realized that we were dumb we should do a q a episode we should take some of these questions

00:02:29.040 so we put out a call on our signal group our patreon signal group we put out a call on the

00:02:34.200 twitter and we said what questions do you guys have from the first season so far of the king's

00:02:40.920 hall we figured this would be a way to get figure out how you guys are reacting to what we're saying

00:02:45.780 what we've maybe been unclear about, where we can get even more practical.

00:02:51.760 And so we're going to be going through some of these questions and doing our best to answer

00:02:55.640 them. Some of them, I'm going to be honest with you, I don't think are 100% serious. For example,

00:03:01.600 J. Chase Davis asked, biblical inseam length for shorts on men. Your thoughts?

00:03:08.720 Yeah, I think it should be probably between, I'd say nine inches above the knee. So whatever it

00:03:14.960 Because if you've seen South Africans or Rhodesians in shorts, 0.99

00:03:18.900 I think anything longer than that is actually sinful. 1.00

00:03:21.500 Inappropriate.

00:03:22.140 It's actually sinful.

00:03:23.060 Wow, okay.

00:03:23.900 It's rebellion against God.

00:03:24.820 So this is an example of the kind of content that we're going to be bringing to you.

00:03:30.280 Today, someone also asked,

00:03:31.700 why does Brian Sauve have a premium Pornhub account?

00:03:34.580 That was Nancy Morris.

00:03:36.700 And answer, Nancy, I actually don't.

00:03:42.620 So I apologize.

00:03:44.080 thank you for your question yeah thank you for your honest question wasn't loaded at all uh

00:03:49.800 musculus also asked why are you gay to which thomas jefferson responded who says i'm gay

00:03:55.160 and i love the internet i screenshotted that so thank you thank you thank you gentlemen but uh

00:04:00.680 let's get into some real real questions here uh and the first question from brian of alexandria

00:04:07.800 on twitter he asked tell us the story of the journey of reformation your church has gone on

00:04:13.660 you guys speak often of all the changes over the last years and any advice you have for pastors

00:04:19.440 who are trying to shepherd in similar ways and directions. So I thought maybe Dan,

00:04:25.300 actually, I think this is a good question for me. Yeah, that's a good point. Eric,

00:04:31.180 the main reformation was Eric Kahn moved here at one point and that just changed everything.

00:04:36.420 Yeah. What did that look like for our church and any advice for pastors even specifically,

00:04:43.340 we're trying to shepherd in similar ways. Oh man, how far back do you go? All right. Exactly.

00:04:48.460 Once upon a time in a land of mountains and snow under the stars. No, I'm just kidding.

00:04:55.560 It's like the new cold open. Yeah. So our church has undergone quite the transformation. So when

00:05:01.320 Brian took over as the primary teaching pastor some years ago, long time ago now, the church

00:05:09.320 was actually a calvary chapel church so brian it just turned 13 yeah 13 and a half well you say

00:05:15.080 that but it was like 20 so i mean it really wasn't technically i was 25 at this point oh okay or no

00:05:22.200 24 i was gonna be 25 in two months yeah you want to tell the story no i'm just kidding uh i don't

00:05:27.520 so brian brian took over the church uh the primary as a primary teaching pastor of the church

00:05:33.160 and we were a calvary chapel so charismatic dispensational uh arminian to some degree

00:05:40.840 and uh brian was teaching verse by verse serial expositional preaching great great uh we love that

00:05:50.140 you know type of preaching yeah through the book of genesis gets to the end of genesis

00:05:54.140 and joseph says to his brothers what you meant for evil god meant for good and from that point on

00:06:02.400 the dominoes started to fall. Brian led the elder team into Calvinism. I was mostly there. A lot of

00:06:10.420 us were mostly there because of the young, restless, and reform movement anyway. And my

00:06:16.900 influence is growing up with John Piper, the church that I grew up in. I was just 90 miles

00:06:22.020 from Bethlehem Baptist Church. Just for people who are wondering, because I actually wasn't

00:06:27.260 familiar with this what is calvary's i guess default position with calvinism hostile okay

00:06:36.360 yeah yeah yeah typically and and i can't speak for them where they are now okay because we left

00:06:43.540 a long time ago i had just heard maybe like 10 years ago i had heard a calvary pastors

00:06:48.980 more or less equated with heresy so i didn't know if that was indicative of you know broader

00:06:55.300 movement or if it was just you had a divide there was a debate even around that time basically

00:07:01.760 you're in the midst of the wire the young restless reformed movement and there's this big debate

00:07:06.540 should calvary chapel be calvinist friendly or calvinist free like do we want to kick them all

00:07:12.420 out or we want to be friendly to them even even like we're not going to have them as pastors but

00:07:16.080 for example and this is funny that this was the controversy i remember it there was a big

00:07:22.160 controversy that Costa Mesa was going to invite Ed Stetzer to speak at a conference and he's a

00:07:28.340 Calvinist which is really funny like he was way too he was too much yeah too much oh wow so there

00:07:34.920 was a big debate but generally not not pleased very dispensational very um very hostile to the

00:07:43.420 term probably Calvinist or Arminian to be honest they would say more like we're not either are

00:07:49.240 Are they, and I'm sorry to interrupt Dan's story, but are they no creed but the Bible folks?

00:07:55.000 Or do they assent to any creeds?

00:07:56.700 I'm sure you get all flavors because they claim not to be a denomination, but they have like doctrinal standards.

00:08:01.860 So you're going to find variations throughout.

00:08:04.880 So anyway, from the point of reforming, you know, at that point, many dominoes fell as far as theological convictions to lead to where we are now.

00:08:17.440 The difficult part, though, was leading people through these changes.

00:08:23.500 And so a lot of the people that were attending the church

00:08:27.960 did not have the same theological convictions that we did.

00:08:31.660 And so they had joined a different church, and now it was different.

00:08:37.060 This is the hard part about changing a church,

00:08:39.920 is that you have people that they signed up.

00:08:42.780 There's no membership in Calvary Chapel, but they're members of the church.

00:08:46.060 and the doctrinal standards of the church

00:08:49.180 and the teaching all changed.

00:08:51.660 And so we had many, many years of turnover in the church

00:08:57.100 and have since essentially replanted,

00:09:02.080 I mean, an entire new church,

00:09:04.700 an entirely new church in that time.

00:09:06.500 So there are very few people that are still here

00:09:09.040 from the original church.

00:09:09.940 That's really, it's very difficult work.

00:09:12.520 It's very hard on leadership and on the sheep.

00:09:15.200 to make changes. Any changes at all are very difficult. You know, you hear the trope about

00:09:20.860 like arguing over the carpet color. Well, that's, I mean, that's a real thing. Anytime there's

00:09:25.180 change, people have to be shepherded through that. And ultimately most people decided that

00:09:30.540 they weren't going to follow us on that. And part of that as well is you have to be aware as a

00:09:35.100 leader of your, of your capital that every time you're asking somebody to follow you somewhere

00:09:40.860 that they are not, you're asking them to follow you because they're not there yet. You're saying

00:09:44.420 come over here with me. Trust me. Yeah. You're, you're asking, you're taking a withdrawal out of

00:09:48.840 a bank account. You're writing a check. And, and the thing is, if you don't have enough money in

00:09:53.480 the account, it bounces. And so, I mean, you can be sympathetic with people who left over the years

00:10:00.120 because I'm 24, 25, 26, 27. Some left better than others, but. Yeah, there was sin for sure,

00:10:04.720 for sure. And, and there's been lessons learned for, for us as well. But a lot of those people

00:10:11.500 were like, yeah, I don't trust this pastor. I don't trust these guys. I don't believe this.

00:10:17.400 I think some tips, you do want to make sure that you're right. I mean, obviously. You want to make

00:10:25.820 sure that you're biblically convinced, that you're prepared to argue for the position that you believe

00:10:31.000 is biblical. Let's say you're like, we're going to get rid of kids ministry and family integrate,

00:10:35.400 which we think you should do. You're going to write a check. Well, think about all the different 1.00

00:10:41.120 ways that you can communicate about that that you can win you're trying to win the people

00:10:45.020 and so it's really not that hard to win an argument once you figure out that you do have

00:10:50.320 the high ground on some of these things um but it is really really difficult to win the person

00:10:55.720 that's the hard part because you can give the most sound theological biblical scriptural you

00:11:01.840 know backing for your argument and they're just they just don't like you i mean or or whatever

00:11:06.720 it is, if you don't win their heart. And so as far as advice, this is a daunting task and it is

00:11:13.740 genuinely very difficult and it is very noble work to do the work of reformation in a church

00:11:18.360 that already exists. But do not overestimate your ability to be able to convince anybody of anything.

00:11:25.220 Correct. And I mean, I don't mean to sound like a downer, but try to change somebody's mind on

00:11:30.460 some of these theological things is very, very difficult. Yep. Yep. I think one of the things

00:11:37.220 that, that I noticed in, in coming here too, though, is that you guys had, first of all,

00:11:41.600 each other and then eventually work to create an elder board that was united. Yeah. Correct me if

00:11:50.340 I'm wrong. I'm curious your thoughts. One of the mistakes I see a lot of pastors make is they may

00:11:55.280 not even be the lead pastor in their church. And they're like, oh yeah, I'm going to reform this

00:11:59.560 church and like they don't have any support from leadership maybe like one person in the church

00:12:04.900 sort of like if you're going to sail the sea the winds also have to be right like some things have

00:12:11.180 to go your way how big of a thing was it to like brian to have dan helping push with you because

00:12:19.580 you guys were going the same direction yeah it wouldn't have worked without without dan without

00:12:25.040 you know don't blame me it's all it's all dan's fault it's all dan's fault no it it did

00:12:32.940 require having people on your side even though we said we like the whole church turned over for the

00:12:38.820 most part or that was a process of several years so you can weather that only if you have people

00:12:46.780 with you and only if the church is continuing to function and be and do what a church is supposed

00:12:50.560 to be and do i'm not saying like we dropped a bomb everybody left the next week and then we

00:12:54.120 just said, well, here we are. No, it was, we were pastoring people through this whole thing.

00:12:58.040 Not all of it was about, there's the normal pastoral stuff going on. But if not for the fact,

00:13:04.120 the first thing I told the elder team actually was, I'm convinced of this doctrine. I'd like

00:13:09.500 to discuss it with you guys. And if you can refute it and show that I'm incorrect, I will,

00:13:15.120 of course, change my mind. I'll go back. I'll retreat and say I was wrong. But

00:13:19.720 they also said, I'll leave if you'd like me to. If the elders say that, you know, we're not that

00:13:29.700 church, we're not willing to consider that, I would have willingly stepped down and said,

00:13:35.660 that's fine. I can't preach in good conscience here because I'm convinced that I can't preach

00:13:39.500 through whole books of the Bible. And then like every time something related to soteriology comes

00:13:45.480 up, be like, and I'm going to recuse myself from this text kind of wouldn't work. Yeah. So I think

00:13:52.620 it's important, like to your point, Eric, that you're, you have to be willing to admit when you

00:13:58.980 shouldn't try to reform something and when you should actually peaceably separate and go somewhere

00:14:06.020 else. Even if you're the pastor, like if you look at your church and our church had a tumultuous

00:14:12.280 in short history before this. Okay. If it was a different story and we were, and I was the fifth

00:14:17.400 generation pastor in a long line of Calvary chapels with a well-established everybody's

00:14:22.740 Calvary chapel, it would have been actually probably sinful of me to come in there and

00:14:27.060 blow the thing up over something like that. It'd be, I mean, if you're in an SBC church, 0.59

00:14:31.460 it's always been an SBC church. And all of a sudden you're like, I would like to be a

00:14:36.720 confessionally Westminster Confession Church. You should just go. You should just go. I mean,

00:14:42.520 you should really just leave. It's not fair to that church that's been built by multiple

00:14:47.400 generations of people. It was, and honestly, it was an unusual circumstance in our church.

00:14:53.080 I'll say that. Unusual circumstance due to our region, the demographics of our region in terms

00:15:00.440 of its Christian population, the history of our church, the planting pastor having disqualified

00:15:05.480 himself from ministry early on, leaving a pretty tumultuous lot of new converts who weren't like

00:15:11.460 Calvary Chapel to the core. They were new converts who just happened to be saved in the midst of this

00:15:16.060 work. And then just a lot of, a ton of our people were Calvinists too already. Like a good, a good

00:15:23.780 number of them were Calvinists because of the influence of people like Mark Driscoll. So I would

00:15:29.000 say for a lot of guys, you should be very, very slow to try to, especially to the degree that you

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00:16:18.340 Was there a point, Dan, where you, because like Brian's saying, you know,

00:16:22.840 you wouldn't normally counsel somebody to go through that much change in that short a time

00:16:27.580 yeah but there can be reasons that it's a you know a good idea to do so was there a point when

00:16:32.600 you just realized look we we're having a lot of change we just need to you know we realize where

00:16:39.700 we're going we just need to hit that mark i think recently even we're talking about that with being

00:16:44.560 dual practice yeah between credo and and we're going to get there too yeah so again the rate

00:16:51.280 of change yeah the pace of change is really important so so like brian was saying you have

00:16:56.160 a certain amount of like capital in your account trust with the people and anytime that you have

00:17:03.180 a change you're you're withdrawing on that account and it is important to have a slower uh pace and

00:17:09.760 looking back having the benefit of hindsight there are some things where i would have moved

00:17:14.920 slower and some things i would have gone faster absolutely moving yeah uh because of convictions

00:17:22.220 you know uh in in especially the liturgy and things like yeah but but the the point is

00:17:27.960 anytime you're leading anything even your family something like that and you're you're going to

00:17:33.520 make these changes it one of the worst ways that you can lead unless you're talking about like

00:17:39.080 wholesale repentance you were in unrepentant sin and you need to turn to righteousness i just mean

00:17:44.380 like in management especially in the direction of leadership is to just change everything all

00:17:49.580 at the same time you're almost guaranteed to really screw things up you know nobody says like

00:17:55.600 oh you're uh you're 500 pound morbidly obese person with all of these diseases you know what

00:18:00.800 you should do is not take any medication you should fast and start trying to do a marathon 0.99

00:18:05.660 like that'd be really dumb you should try to run a marathon tomorrow yeah yeah so we'll die so

00:18:10.700 there you go yeah the pace of change is really important um but like like brian said our 0.84

00:18:16.660 situation is not normal yeah it wasn't because our church was so new and there was so much

00:18:22.180 turnover already because of the disqualification of the the planting pastor who had a very strong

00:18:27.920 personality very strong uh orating uh rhetorical gifts yes and and so he attracted a lot of people

00:18:34.800 because of his personality and his giftings yeah and then when he was disqualified and removed

00:18:39.820 uh a lot of people left anyway because they wanted him back you know and so you had you

00:18:45.360 didn't have stable foundations anyway and so so it wasn't a healthy church when when brian took over

00:18:51.500 because the guy who had uh been part of the succession plan uh ultimately didn't want to

00:18:57.280 be the lead pastor and left to do missions so anyway it was it's just a really messy story

00:19:02.500 Yeah. And I wouldn't wish it on anybody. And some of those previous pastors actually ended

00:19:07.820 up calling me and being like, we wouldn't have left you in charge if we had known that you were

00:19:11.940 going to make the church Calvinist. And I was like, well, you probably shouldn't have committed

00:19:17.000 adultery. I mean, at that point, it's kind of that sort of situation. So there comes a point,

00:19:23.160 I identify strongly with pastor Doug Wilson in his story of, they were a kind of a normal

00:19:28.440 Baptist church. And he was, from what I understand, he was the guy with the guitar.

00:19:32.800 Like he led worship. And then for whatever reason, the pastor kind of said, I'm out,

00:19:38.180 good luck. And then he was the last guy standing. And like subsequently over the years became

00:19:43.480 a Calvinist and post-millennialist, you know, became, and all these different things he became

00:19:49.240 and the church went with him. And I can't think of many other examples other than Christ church

00:19:54.440 and our church that have had that progression because both circumstances started with something

00:19:59.720 crazy and not ideal. And a lot of what you see in the mainstream is actually the opposite

00:20:05.040 direction. Like churches are changing, but they're drifting. They're drifting towards wokeness. Yeah.

00:20:09.220 And here we are saying like institutional rot. So you do, you have to, if you're going to do any

00:20:15.240 sort of reform work, the Lord will provide this over the years if you stick it out, but you have

00:20:19.600 to have a spine, you have to have a thick skin. You have to be willing to hear people that loved

00:20:23.860 you 10 minutes ago say, I don't respect you. You're a cult leader. Yes. You've ruined the 0.83

00:20:29.200 church. And, and not just like this is used to be in the past. I mean, this was like just this week,

00:20:34.440 Dan, Dan told me about someone who had left our church and said, yeah, one of their main things

00:20:38.560 was they don't respect you. And I was like, okay, all right. And that's, that was only part of the

00:20:44.180 three hour conversation. So you got to get used to these things. So it's like, you have to have

00:20:49.060 spine. You have to have a target and you have to read the situation. Don't try to be the maverick

00:20:55.440 guy that's like going in and blowing up a church that is basically healthy and established in its

00:21:01.200 doctrine. And you're in there and you're just like a guy that's swinging a hammer. Well, I mean,

00:21:07.720 on the one hand, you're probably not going to accomplish much anyway, but you're probably

00:21:12.940 actually being illegitimate. You wouldn't want somebody to come into your church that's a

00:21:17.660 staff, like let's say our church, someone came in and they said, this church needs to become

00:21:21.820 Arminian. We'd be like, no. Scram. We'd say no. So related to this, a question we got many times

00:21:33.180 when we called for questions was, and this is specifically from KR Occidental Localist. He said,

00:21:40.620 I want the story of how each of you moved from Baptist to Presbyterian theology. I don't think

00:21:45.880 I've ever heard any of you tell your story. Maybe the process of how refuge transitioned from 1689

00:21:51.200 to CREC. We're not actually in the CREC, but I get what they mean because we have a dual practice.

00:21:55.520 CREC allows multiple confessions. And he says, no, this isn't just nosiness. This is personally

00:22:01.120 relevant to me and my wife, to which Matt Carabini said, I concur, but actually I do want to hear out

00:22:09.340 of nosiness so um eric well because we were all baptists yeah so i actually i went to the southern

00:22:18.660 baptist theological seminary uh in louisville kentucky and uh was talking about this recently

00:22:25.320 on twitter a lot of reason i got into reform theology and the old reformers uh you know old

00:22:30.380 dead puritans and stuff like that was because of john piper um his preaching he it was expositional

00:22:35.720 obviously had reformed tinges to it is what i would say now yeah um so i went to southern

00:22:42.420 seminary not really understanding those categories um and just in the process of being there got

00:22:48.280 exposed to i what i would say is like actual reformed theology but also reformed ecclesiology

00:22:55.920 so one of the things i started to realize that was if if like i was at the time if i was a reformed

00:23:01.800 baptist i was basically adopting reform soteriology but not ecclesiology which can be done obviously

00:23:09.620 there are good good brothers who do that um what i became increasingly uncomfortable with in my own

00:23:15.680 life were um really looking at okay my soteriology is here but all these guys that i love shared very

00:23:23.360 very different views on the church and how the church you know including like worship and what

00:23:29.400 should be going on in the church.

00:23:31.760 So I started reading that, and like many people,

00:23:35.960 like if you're switching from Arminianism to Calvinism

00:23:39.280 or Baptist to Presbyterian, this is a process, right?

00:23:44.220 So we were really wrestling with issues.

00:23:46.780 One of the things that got me, though, was we were in a Baptist church,

00:23:51.980 and I'm reading all this covenant theology,

00:23:55.000 and my oldest son is like three and a half maybe,

00:23:58.500 and we're taking communion and he reaches for the communion tray and he says to me daddy why don't

00:24:08.320 you know why not me i said well you you've got to you've got to be a christian and he said i believe

00:24:14.200 in jesus i believe jesus died for my sins you know in a three-year-old kind of way and that really

00:24:19.700 got me thinking like what do we do about these kids because at southern we weren't just you know

00:24:26.560 there's a lot of Reformed Baptists now, even the guys in our church, like they're typically

00:24:31.440 baptizing pretty young. And they're also very comfortable with, even before I was a paedo

00:24:39.300 Baptist, I was, you would, you would hear me preach. People would say, are you a Presbyterian?

00:24:45.200 Because I would preach very strongly about the inclusion of our children in this visible church

00:24:52.140 thing and that Paul says that they're holy and, you know, they are in a, there's a different

00:24:57.440 category seemingly that they are in than the children of pagans. And at that time I explained

00:25:06.840 it in more of a, through a more of a Baptistic way, but I mean, I was saying a lot of the same

00:25:11.920 thing because I thought those were clear to me in scripture, but go ahead. Yeah. So that really

00:25:16.340 got me thinking about children, the covenant, what do we do with these issues? And I know people

00:25:23.060 have gotten upset with me for saying this, but I feel like when I was in the Baptist camp, 0.75

00:25:28.660 we always tended to straw man Presbyterians. So even in seminar, I remember asking a professor,

00:25:36.140 I said, so what is the Presbyterian view on this? And they would say things like,

00:25:41.100 well they believe that baptism is baptismal regeneration and you're like well actually and

00:25:46.820 now i look back and i'm like that that's really not a fair that's not the presbyterian view no

00:25:53.020 that's not a fair assessment of of what the presbyterian view is at all so anyway i started

00:25:58.180 looking into this um by god's providence i i found uh community pres in louisville bill smith was

00:26:04.640 there he's pastoring he's now in the crc in illinois carbondale and i think it was so helpful

00:26:10.000 for me because bill had been i think in the sbc he was baptist and he had made the transition

00:26:15.420 so he was really helpful in answering a lot of questions being patient the issue that sealed it

00:26:21.780 i'm reading two thousand generations but the issue that sealed it for me was okay so i'd been

00:26:27.960 in these baptist churches and like we would not commune an infant baptized person okay like you

00:26:35.280 cannot be a member of our church you have a table illegitimate baptism like it's absolute

00:26:39.980 you know we're dividing over that issue sure and i said to bill i said well i don't know i don't

00:26:47.640 think i'm a a paedo baptist at this point i know you probably won't let me be a member at your

00:26:53.620 church and he looked at me funny and he was like basically starts repeating the creed and the

00:26:59.400 nicene creed he said do you believe these things i was like yeah i believe all that he's like welcome

00:27:03.720 you know welcome to the lord's table welcome to membership like you can't be an elder

00:27:10.120 sure um you can't be a teaching elder um but i that that changed things for me because i thought

00:27:17.220 it was the first time i'd ever heard somebody say yeah we shouldn't excommunicate people for

00:27:22.660 their view on baptism is what that amounted to anyway uh long story short we continued digging

00:27:28.740 reading um all my kids were baptized we were practicing uh paido paido communion eventually

00:27:35.900 as well it's pretty natural that that that leads you into the crec um which we had been part of

00:27:43.080 that's that's what i was doing pastoral ministry work and and then uh now here yep yep daniel what

00:27:50.960 about you dan you're gonna tell the whole story huh you however however you feel led let's go

00:27:56.740 back to our calvary chapel dan how do you feel led okay no no that's yeah you're not being led

00:28:02.820 by the spirit i actually brought it so far yeah you know it's it out of all of the things that

00:28:10.660 that brian and i have argued over nothing have we argued over more than covenant theology yeah

00:28:18.520 as it relates to baptism i mean for years and years and hours and we would take competing

00:28:26.080 positions uh as naturally would occur between brian and i as we argue yeah we we can't come to

00:28:31.920 an agreement right away we have must fight it's this is how this is how it's done yeah you got

00:28:37.460 a test of you guys see can i defend this view anthony calls this the agon right you have to

00:28:43.460 wrestle and fight with ideas yeah and how can you do that other than saying tell me why i'm wrong

00:28:50.180 yeah and i'm going to tell you why you're wrong and we're probably not going to agree at the end

00:28:55.180 of three hours but over some time you do start to i think test and prove out different arguments

00:29:01.400 and and disprove other ones yeah so i mean the story is quite messy simply because it took so

00:29:07.460 many years three years probably to come to these convictions completely enough to the point where

00:29:14.360 you're like no i must act on them um and it all is introduced from covenant theology and the nature

00:29:21.260 of the covenants, you know, and how they operate. And so, I mean, that was, that was really the,

00:29:26.560 the entry into, into, uh, pedo-baptism, you know, it's just the nature of the covenants.

00:29:33.820 Then there's also some things like, um, you know, reading, um, the distinctiveness of Baptist

00:29:38.840 covenant theology, who wrote that? Pascal Denault, a book originally written in French

00:29:43.360 since translated to English in multiple editions. And it's one of the better books that you can

00:29:48.280 read. It's a good book. To understand a critique of paedo-baptist Presbyterian covenant theology

00:29:55.000 over against a particular Baptist covenant theology. Yeah. And so one of the strongest

00:30:01.940 arguments, I think, from that book against paedo-baptism was the argument that what is the

00:30:08.620 newness of the new covenant? How does one enter the new covenant and it is by new birth? And so

00:30:14.260 when I read that, I'm like, okay, I'm satisfied for a time. And then I kept chewing on it and

00:30:17.580 chewing on. I'm like, but there are some passages that don't seem to talk like that. They don't

00:30:23.060 seem to talk like that, especially the apostasy passages seem to be particularly troublesome.

00:30:27.520 And I know there's a, you know, 1689ers that like, I respect you guys. I don't, I don't have 1.00

00:30:33.080 any. All of the things we're going to bring up, Renahan or Dr. White or Pascal Danal,

00:30:40.180 or a lot of you guys could come up with very compelling, biblically coherent answers to,

00:30:46.080 and I understand that there's a reason that this is still a debate welcome and come to the table

00:30:50.540 yeah we love you we're not um you know we're not we are really not I'm answering this question we

00:30:55.440 got it a lot we're not interested in an intramural fight and I think you'll see that by the end and

00:31:00.380 how we describe where our church is right now but I would just interject one of the reasons that

00:31:04.900 I think we have been friends with and appreciate what was going on in the CREC of course I was in

00:31:10.080 it for a long time um is because we could say look yeah you have two camps both brothers love you

00:31:17.000 yeah welcome we don't think this is an issue to divide our churches over right and and you're

00:31:24.280 christians we're christians these are both orthodox positions yes yeah sorry dan we both i interrupt

00:31:29.940 you then eric interrupted you and now yeah start talking so i can interrupt you again

00:31:34.920 you know what's really funny is i saw multiple comments about that and i

00:31:39.180 didn't even notice it's just normal amongst our conversations but anyway

00:31:43.200 so there i was saying like there are certain problem passages or passages that are problematic

00:31:48.440 for that view and again i'm sure that there's scholars that could give an answer that would

00:31:52.920 be satisfying to them it wasn't to me uh and that's particularly like john 15 yeah where he

00:31:59.460 You know, Jesus is saying, he who abides in me will bear much fruit.

00:32:04.920 And if anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers and the branches are gathered and thrown into the fire and burned.

00:32:13.460 And so thinking about that, like there are branches that are grafted into this vine, which is Christ.

00:32:19.660 They're connected to Christ somehow and they don't produce fruit.

00:32:24.340 And so they're thrown away.

00:32:25.980 They're broken off.

00:32:27.240 Right.

00:32:27.720 And so just in Dan, really simple, not a professional scholarly theologian, I look at that and just the sniff test, like the blue collar, like, huh, what does that mean?

00:32:39.080 Well, it seems like there are people that are part of the covenant.

00:32:42.040 They're connected to Christ in some way.

00:32:43.520 And I would say they are in the new covenant in some way.

00:32:47.160 They're not regenerate, though, so they don't produce fruit.

00:32:50.220 And that is ultimately proved out when you have a branch and you're like, where's the fruit?

00:32:54.600 This is a grapevine.

00:32:55.900 There's no fruit.

00:32:56.680 it gets cut off or broken off and it gets thrown away into the fire damnation and so there are

00:33:01.940 people that are connected to the to the vine in some way that apostatize and then they're thrown

00:33:07.840 into the fire and so i read that and i'm like i don't think that the new birth and new covenant

00:33:13.100 is quite as clean as you're making it and so ultimately that was like the the the thing that

00:33:18.840 was keeping me a baptist a credo baptist and when i started looking at some of these apostasy

00:33:25.960 passages ultimately i had to say i don't think that that's a very good argument and so that was

00:33:31.580 just one of the linchpins amongst years of thought and discussion and reading it's not something that

00:33:36.780 i came to quickly it's not like i i watched uh doug wilson something on youtube and was like a

00:33:42.740 video i now i'm going to baptize my children yep no no these these decisions because especially

00:33:50.360 because i'm not a free agent right i'm not just like a guy coming to a church you know that has

00:33:56.220 a family i have hundreds of people that i'm responsible for leading and so these decisions

00:34:01.860 have a lot of gravity yep especially when you've changed your mind before going back to the first

00:34:06.100 question when you've had to change your mind before in leading people through that the cost

00:34:10.680 is unbelievably high yes you know people will hate you they will malign your character yeah they will

00:34:16.860 start competing churches that exist as the we're not them church yeah sure and there are gossip

00:34:23.500 mills that exist because of a lot of these things and so i i just preface that as saying like we

00:34:29.800 don't make these decisions flippantly no we do not so yeah what about you brian very similar

00:34:36.860 very similar um veggie tales a lot of veggie tales um god is bigger than the boogeyman i mean

00:34:42.560 for real for real no cap uh fr fr dance this is why we need video dan's shaking his head

00:34:47.940 i don't want you to say that beard is wagging i'm waking my beard he's like no okay so a few

00:34:53.460 things i was convinced of a presbyterian form of government before i was convinced of presbyterian

00:35:00.880 covenant theology that is true um yes we had long as a church permitted or received people who were

00:35:09.820 not just paedo-baptists, but had only received baptism as an infant into membership and communion

00:35:16.460 at our church. We'd already done that. We've long had a population or a percentage of the

00:35:22.060 congregation then that have been Presbyterians. Sometimes multiple like third generation

00:35:26.980 Presbyterians, we've always been Presbyterian, sometimes new Presbyterians, sometimes people

00:35:31.360 who weren't and then they became them during their stay at our church. That should also give

00:35:35.440 you an idea of the pulse of the presbyterian church in utah yeah yeah so you look in utah

00:35:41.080 again people who aren't in our context won't fully get if you are anything reformed at all

00:35:47.460 any kind of confessionally reformed whether london baptist westminster anything you're you

00:35:55.000 have very few options right you're going to look around and then when you start to get into some

00:35:59.160 issues where some london confessors are much closer to some westminster confessors around

00:36:04.220 other issues like patriarchy, how to engage the culture, Christian education. So there's a London

00:36:11.120 confessing church close to ours that is utterly unlike us, even though we overlap in a lot of our

00:36:17.740 confessional theology pretty directly, because they would anathematize what we say about education

00:36:23.260 or say that it's absolutely binding conscience, it's wicked, it's legalism, it's, you know,

00:36:27.260 I'm a cult leader, all these things on paper, we overlap 80 plus percent. And, um, but they,

00:36:34.080 they hate our guts. So if you're somebody who leans on a lot of these issues, our way and

00:36:39.200 you're pressed or, and you're even now, let's say you're 1689 confessor, you don't like that.

00:36:44.820 I baptize babies or sprinkle, but you're going to be like, huh, there's not a ton of options.

00:36:51.800 You might end up at our church. So it's the best of bad options, right? That's what we,

00:36:56.380 That's what we aim to be.

00:36:57.980 We aim to be the best of the worst.

00:37:00.080 The best of the worst.

00:37:02.140 Dan should be in charge of the church marketing.

00:37:04.660 We're the best of the worst.

00:37:05.620 No, looking at our demographic matters, and it does affect things, we would go with reformers and we would receive Roman Catholic infant baptism for purposes of membership, that kind of thing. 0.94

00:37:20.220 So we've always been somewhat strange as a Baptist church.

00:37:23.240 we've always taken exception from the the language of the 1689 with respect to the mode

00:37:30.920 where i again before i became a paedo baptist i had already been convinced by various passages

00:37:37.760 of scripture that immersion was not the only permissible mode of baptism but that immersion

00:37:44.280 pouring or sprinkling were all valid modes of water baptism fire hose yeah fire hose oh boy

00:37:50.860 COVID squirt gun. You know, not sure about that. But no, really though, I had become convinced of

00:37:57.920 that from just looking at the nature of the word. We're baptized, washing. We're not immersing a

00:38:04.040 couch. There's no clear like verse in the scriptures that demand immersion. As much as

00:38:10.260 I've read the arguments, I'm just not convinced by them. So dominoes fall there, you know, very

00:38:15.800 much convinced of that kind of Denaltian federalism, that London Baptist and 1689

00:38:23.080 federalism view, had some critiques about some issues with, you know, classic like,

00:38:31.180 is the new covenant mixed or unmixed? As Dan said, can you be in the new covenant in any sense

00:38:37.260 and not be regenerate and elect? And I think, again, like I know our Baptist brothers have

00:38:45.740 answers to these. I don't want them to think we're straw menning them. To me, it's utterly clear that

00:38:50.160 you can be in the new covenant in some sense. Externally. Externally. With respect to its

00:38:56.960 external administration, not be elect, not be regenerate, be broken off. And the reason I say

00:39:01.580 that is, again, John 15, the branches aren't duct taped to the vine. They don't just appear

00:39:06.480 to be connected to the vine. They have to be broken off in Jesus' vernacular. I'm not going

00:39:13.120 way out on a limb here in interpreting the, cause sometimes you can take a symbolic language and

00:39:21.020 like press it way further than it's meant to. But I don't think, I think you're understanding it

00:39:25.720 precisely. If you say Jesus is talking about different types of branches, all connected to

00:39:29.540 the same thing. I look at the Hebrew apostasy passages and to steal from pastor Douglas Wilson,

00:39:36.520 I don't think the apostasy warnings are like beware of cliff signs in the middle of Kansas.

00:39:41.040 and that's actually uh you know in baptist theology that was one of the the other things

00:39:46.160 that i didn't mention like tom schreiner i think was teaching at the time that like these are

00:39:50.740 hypothetical warnings it's like a cliff sign but there aren't actually any cliffs it is a means of

00:39:56.120 god's preservation of his saints but you can't actually and i i am just not persuaded of that

00:40:02.740 view some of these guys and there's more like again this was years and hours of conversation

00:40:09.660 so it wasn't any one pastor any one book it wasn't any in fact i read quite a few of the

00:40:15.080 presbyterian books early on and i was like i'm not convinced by these well that was actually

00:40:20.100 one of the early things for me and there's great writers on both sides of this issue but i read

00:40:25.120 sean wright's book on baptism yeah believers baptism as a baptist and i read it and i was like

00:40:31.160 i don't know i'm not really buying this like i was a baptist a fully convinced baptist i read that

00:40:37.340 and that was one of the first things that kind of sent me saying yeah i want to see the other

00:40:41.220 side of this and here's another one so last week i tweeted that my children were holy

00:40:44.620 from the moment of their existence their conception that because they were children

00:40:49.580 of believers they were holy in a way that muslim children hindu children etc were not i ended up

00:40:54.460 deleting that tweet guys not because i disagree with it but because since the modesty thing

00:40:58.960 i've never had so many libs trying to cancel me and at one point i was like we have had a lot going

00:41:04.480 on in the church pastorally. And so I didn't have time for the blocking and the whatnot. So I just,

00:41:10.340 I was like, I'm not going to deal with this. I'm just going to delete it so that they can't keep

00:41:13.800 tagging me in it. And I saw that Dr. White had addressed it on the dividing line. I've never

00:41:17.840 listened to an episode of the dividing line. I have not listened to this one either, but from

00:41:22.580 my understanding from, you know, other people listening to it, Dr. White seems to think that

00:41:27.720 I was talking about some kind of baptismal regeneration or not even baptismal, I guess,

00:41:32.740 but as if they were holy in the sense they're justified, they're elect, they're regenerate,

00:41:38.160 which is not what I meant. I meant what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7, 14, that the children of one

00:41:44.820 or more believers are holy. And I understand that Dr. White takes the position of the legitimacy

00:41:51.920 view of that passage, which is a common and fine view of the passage. There are arguments in its

00:41:58.120 favor. If I didn't hold the view I hold it, that would be the second in line view. In my

00:42:03.200 understanding, I think it's the second strongest interpretation of that passage where I fall away

00:42:09.240 from it. Again, first loser, the first loser. No, exactly. You're not first. I'm not convinced by 0.99

00:42:13.880 it, but again, where I, where I disagree with that interpretation is again, a reason, one of

00:42:21.220 the same connected reasons why I ended up embracing a Presbyterian view of the covenants.

00:42:27.940 And it is because I think it does violence to the passage to say, as Dr. White did on Twitter, that what Paul is saying means that the children of Muslims are holy in the same way he's saying the children of believers are holy, in that if their marriage is legitimate, they're not bastards, they're born in a legitimate marriage, then they're holy.

00:42:52.100 And to me, I think that that does violence to the text.

00:42:55.660 I think that Paul is quite clear that he's saying something that is peculiar to Christian

00:43:00.460 believers because they are believers.

00:43:03.200 And the thing I think he's saying is that they are holy in that they are a part of the

00:43:08.100 external administration of the covenant.

00:43:10.560 In the same way that if you were born in the covenant nation in the Old Testament, you

00:43:14.740 were a part of the holy nation.

00:43:16.520 You were corporately holy.

00:43:18.800 You belong to that body.

00:43:20.360 You needed new birth.

00:43:21.320 You need a regeneration, as our children do.

00:43:23.740 What I'm talking about, guys, is classic Westminsterian, Presbyterian covenant theology.

00:43:28.320 Yeah, you see the same thing in 1 Corinthians chapter 10.

00:43:31.380 Like, read the book as a cohesive unit.

00:43:34.700 They all passed through the sea.

00:43:36.680 They even drank from the rock that was Christ.

00:43:39.260 Yeah, they were baptized.

00:43:40.720 And God was not pleased with most of them.

00:43:43.160 Yeah.

00:43:45.080 For the project of this season to be successful, the project of seeing a new Christendom built,

00:43:50.480 There will need to be thousands and thousands of Christian men and women

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00:44:50.420 So I think a lot of us share similar root reasons.

00:44:53.760 A lot of it has to do with the status of children as something different from the children of pagans.

00:45:01.400 I've always, I've always objected, even when I was a particular Baptist,

00:45:06.620 in the strongest terms would object to the statement that our children are vipers and diapers,

00:45:12.200 or that our children, literally, people were arguing with me last week.

00:45:15.800 They're like, no, our children are pagans.

00:45:17.980 They're heathens.

00:45:19.720 And I just think that biblically, the biblical authors would say that's nonsense.

00:45:24.340 I don't believe that's the case.

00:45:25.120 I also think it's, and I feel like I can say this having been a Baptist in those camps,

00:45:31.440 I think most of those people are just heinously inconsistent too.

00:45:35.020 That was kind of my feeling was like, you don't actually treat your kid like a pagan.

00:45:38.440 Yeah, and that was part of the litmus test.

00:45:40.760 when, when somebody, when somebody came to me, uh, you know, we're, we're making this transition

00:45:45.020 in the church and they're like, well, I just, I just don't see how you could get there.

00:45:49.440 They're not convinced. Like I'm not going to do a debate with James White, you know, style with,

00:45:53.900 with the congregant that's sitting across from me who just hears like regular teaching. He reads

00:45:58.480 his Bible every day. Yeah. The, the thing that's most convincing to the, to them, I'm not trying

00:46:02.960 to change their mind necessarily in the moment. I'm just trying to show them, Hey, this is,

00:46:06.560 this is how I think about it. And it has to do with a lot of what you said. You don't treat

00:46:11.620 your child like you do the short-haired butch lesbian at work. You're teaching your children 1.00

00:46:19.060 how to pray. You're teaching them how to worship. You're teaching them to memorize scripture.

00:46:22.500 You're teaching them to obey the scriptures.

00:46:24.200 Absolutely.

00:46:25.060 And when they do, so there were a few guys at Southern Seminary, I remember Don Whitney

00:46:28.240 saying this. Don was trying to be consistent because he recognized that there was inconsistency.

00:46:33.560 So Don said, when my children pray, I teach them to pray,

00:46:37.400 and when they finish, I tell them, God did not hear you. 0.99

00:46:40.920 You're a pagan. 1.00

00:46:41.260 See, I think that man is a monster. 0.99

00:46:43.100 I think that's actually a wicked thing. 0.99

00:46:45.020 If that's what he said.

00:46:46.540 Yeah, and I don't think, again, we're not strong many of you Baptists.

00:46:49.460 I know most of you wouldn't say anything like that.

00:46:51.500 But I think that picture's like...

00:46:53.540 But it's an example of the tension that I resolve biblically

00:46:58.020 by seeing this continuity of status between the Old and the New Covenant,

00:47:03.620 this continuity of category, continuity of typology,

00:47:06.880 a continuity that I think would have required some serious explanation

00:47:11.360 in the New Testament that this feature had changed

00:47:14.800 and what I think would have resulted in serious argument

00:47:19.800 early in the church history that we would have record of

00:47:22.860 when they changed from the apostolic teaching of immersion baptism

00:47:26.080 for professors only to infant baptism,

00:47:30.620 I think we would see a record of debate

00:47:32.560 in the early church,

00:47:34.260 in the first five centuries of the church

00:47:35.840 that is absent from the record.

00:47:38.360 Argument from silence, I totally understand.

00:47:40.660 Argument from silence.

00:47:41.320 There is no such thing

00:47:43.020 as a legitimate argument from silence.

00:47:45.380 We heard that once.

00:47:46.620 And it's actually not true.

00:47:47.720 An argument from silence is a probabilistic argument.

00:47:50.140 So it has, by its nature,

00:47:51.540 it's not saying that it proves deductively

00:47:53.240 that something is true.

00:47:54.060 But it just says it's more likely than not that this silence is explained by this fact.

00:48:00.080 It's up for debate, but it's just one brick.

00:48:03.180 I'm just going to say there's more evidence for the existence of dragons

00:48:06.980 than there is for the debate of baptism.

00:48:09.400 Dragons are 100% real.

00:48:11.080 I mean, Psalm 91.

00:48:13.220 Dragons.

00:48:14.120 For example.

00:48:15.140 Right there.

00:48:15.740 One of the things that I wanted to say that I thought was cool is we're talking about two views on baptism.

00:48:22.140 And again, we've been on both sides of it.

00:48:24.860 One thing I think is cool in our church is the ability to talk about these things in a non-hostile way. 0.99

00:48:30.960 I'm going to kill you. 0.99

00:48:31.820 Yeah. 1.00

00:48:32.260 Or like, I still have Baptist friends in my life who are like trying to stick me in the side with a dagger. 0.99

00:48:38.200 They're like, I would never let my daughter marry your son because he is infant baptized and therefore a pagan.

00:48:44.440 Like they'll say things like that.

00:48:45.540 And I'm like, okay, dude, chill.

00:48:46.720 so overall i know there's been a lot of hubbub the cross politics stuff blah blah blah overall

00:48:52.440 i would say this on this issue we're brothers lighten up francis we like guys let's just

00:49:00.400 lighten up yeah we love each other guess what's going to happen in same team same team and

00:49:05.860 everybody in our church gets along what's going to happen this sunday in our church we're going

00:49:10.180 to baptize three christians who are christians by profession we're going to immerse them your

00:49:16.360 parents are credo-baptists we're going to baptize three other it's actually funny it's the same

00:49:21.700 number we're going to baptize three other children this will be like the third time we've done this

00:49:25.400 yeah whose parents are pedo-baptists and uh we're going to get along and at the end of that no one's

00:49:32.740 mouth will be frothed as a church we're going to stand and we're going to charge them for you

00:49:35.820 christ died for you and we're going to give them the congregational charge we're going to love one

00:49:39.560 another um and we're going to agree here's the point that i think is most important the thing

00:49:44.900 I'm more convinced of than any other aspect in this debate is that we should get along. Because

00:49:50.220 I can step into the particular Baptist framework. I can answer the problem passages from their

00:49:57.460 perspective, all the passages we brought up. I can give what used to be to me a persuasive response

00:50:04.120 and remains persuasive to many Christians. They can say, on the regulative principle,

00:50:10.140 there is no command to baptize infants. Therefore, you cannot require me to baptize infants. And I

00:50:15.160 would say, sure. Okay. I love you. I think what you're saying is Christian theology. We disagree

00:50:21.160 about some of these things. These are in the weeds things. And I can now, of course, I'm convinced by

00:50:26.580 the view, obviously, I can step into the Presbyterian covenant theological framework and I

00:50:30.740 can answer the problem passages that a particular Baptist would bring to me persuasively and

00:50:36.980 obviously to many. Where I really strongly react is, and this is, to be fair, more common

00:50:46.220 from particular Baptists, just because of the nature of their view. I really strongly have a

00:50:52.360 problem with the idea that there basically was very little actual baptism for maybe a thousand

00:51:00.960 years. I think that's a very difficult position to sustain in a non-restorationist manner.

00:51:06.980 Yeah. So I have, I have a real problem with barring the table from John Calvin

00:51:15.520 or barring him membership. And obviously even as a particular Baptist had that reaction because we

00:51:22.060 allowed infant baptized Presbyterians in membership. So this has clearly been an area

00:51:28.260 where we never were fully 1689. To be fair, someone's going to say you weren't 1689. You

00:51:32.980 took exception on these two key areas. I'm like, we did on mode of baptism. We still baptized by

00:51:38.440 immersion and we would never have performed an infant baptism. But so again, like I love Tom

00:51:45.900 Askell. I love my particular Baptist brothers and sisters. I don't think that they are guilty of

00:51:53.540 many of the errors of revivalism and individualism that have been shot through

00:51:59.280 popular or evangelical baptist culture that have been you know of i'm talking about pop arminian

00:52:05.580 dominant sbc culture i would not accuse my particular baptist brothers of those errors like

00:52:12.920 no i don't thought he's such a winsome guy i know you'd see his twitter and you'd think 0.50

00:52:18.420 the guy's a real jerk people really do actually i think have a wildly inaccurate um view of what

00:52:24.640 i'm like you're just too serrated edge for me even when i read my twitter i go back and i'm like 0.99

00:52:29.880 i don't feel like most of this is hammer stuff anyway you're way more of a hammer than me

00:52:36.060 what other tool is there both of you guys both of you guys are just really sweet man

00:52:40.860 yeah we are sweet i'm the sweet song list of ogden according to the carpenter king of maine so

00:52:45.080 yeah well dovetail dovetail dire carpenter king of maine okay next question next question this

00:52:51.980 is somewhat related. I thought this was a very interesting question from Aaron Bear of the

00:52:54.920 Undragoned podcast. He says, in one of the early episodes, you guys lay out a definition of

00:52:59.660 reformed Catholicity. This is a lot of what we're talking about, getting along. This is my comments,

00:53:03.700 getting along across reformed differences, like even baptism stuff. Continuing, he says,

00:53:10.260 a guy you commonly refer back to, and I think you mentioned wanting him to be a guest of some sort,

00:53:15.640 is Esalen. He's referring to Anthony Esalen. So question, what is your justification for promoting

00:53:20.700 reformed catholicity while heavily utilizing a roman catholic i'm doing some interpretation

00:53:27.540 because he uses the acronym rc for reformed catholicity and that also happens to be an

00:53:33.620 acronym for roman catholic but he spelled that out so i'm trying aaron if we got this question

00:53:38.240 wrong feel free to tweet at us but i think i think he's saying what's your justification

00:53:42.960 for promoting reformed catholicity while heavily utilizing a roman catholic to think of it a little

00:53:47.680 more broadly in the face of an increasingly syncretist church how can your vision of

00:53:52.480 reformed catholicity stay faithful when grabbing and promoting ideas from individuals outside the

00:53:56.860 tent of reformed catholicity so my immediate response to this is i don't think all roman

00:54:03.160 catholics are outside the tent of reformed catholicity agree disagree depends what you

00:54:10.280 mean yeah it depends on the guy i mean i think everyone would say it depends on what yeah like

00:54:15.420 is the roman catholic theology former or proper uh heretical in a false gospel which one i think

00:54:23.440 yes like the the doctrine of salvation and trent council of yeah i think it's i think their marian

00:54:30.020 dogma is clearly um heretical um i would say purgatory is a wildly unbiblical fanciful view

00:54:38.480 I think their sacramentology is, which is, I mean, obviously a part of their soteriology

00:54:45.060 because we're talking about infusions of grace through these.

00:54:48.080 I think those are very problematic.

00:54:50.600 I do think there are regenerate people in the Roman Catholic tent. 0.97

00:54:54.920 That's what I would say. 0.91

00:54:55.660 To his point, I mean, it's a fair, they're not reformed.

00:54:59.460 Right, they're not reformed.

00:55:00.020 If I'm reading his RC, I think that's what he means by RC.

00:55:03.480 Yeah, I think so.

00:55:04.400 They're not reformed.

00:55:05.700 But I guess, yeah, so I'm saying they're not reformed.

00:55:07.600 Obviously, they're not reformed.

00:55:08.960 But we would say Peter Lightheart has made this point even that we're trying to bring it all back together.

00:55:16.180 I would love to see the Roman Catholic Church repent and be reunited.

00:55:19.180 Yeah, absolutely. 0.60

00:55:19.780 We're all aiming for that in a non-shallow ecumenicism.

00:55:24.420 So what I think Aaron's getting at is that one of the things that we would criticize is this syncretism

00:55:29.800 where you're taking all these different things and mashing them together

00:55:32.300 in this like lowest common denominator pop faith, pop secular, spiritual ecumenicalism.

00:55:39.340 Absolutely. That's anathema. We want highbrow theology. We want it to be biblical. We want it

00:55:45.900 to be cask strength. All of that's true. And on those things, if Anthony Esalen and us sat down

00:55:51.540 and started talking about Mary, the papal system, soteriology, you would hear us disagreeing

00:55:58.940 with Anthony I'm I mean I'm sure but the things that we tell you guys hey Anthony's really good

00:56:06.040 on this or Esalen's really good on this they're they're not about those doctrines they're about

00:56:12.140 his cultural commentary so I'd appeal to him in the same way that I would appeal to a professor

00:56:17.660 of history who does really good work like to the same way I'd say Paul Johnson has excellent work

00:56:23.100 on American history and I don't know if I actually don't know if Paul Johnson is a Christian or not

00:56:27.020 he probably is, but, or was, I think he's gone. I don't know. But that's the interesting question

00:56:33.420 is, are we allowed to read authors outside of our immediate tradition and find valuable things

00:56:40.560 from them? I think the issue is you have to have discernment. Yes. You have to apply the things

00:56:45.000 that are really good. I mean, I read Pat Buchanan. I think Pat's also Roman Catholic.

00:56:49.000 I think you're right, but I can say it with confidence. I'll look it up.

00:56:52.140 so you know great stuff there as well from pat i'm not gonna not read him just because he's a

00:56:57.340 roman catholic again i mean even with people within the reformed uh catholicity reformed camp

00:57:04.460 uh we would say yeah i mean i i definitely don't agree with you know a lot of things that a lot of

00:57:11.580 people say um social theory you know those sorts of things so i i think we need to get away from

00:57:19.220 this idea that reading a guy and saying this thing about a guy is good is a carte blanche

00:57:24.400 endorsement of everything and if if we had to only endorse people or only you know mention people

00:57:30.940 that we fully endorsed everything yeah i mean that would be almost no one well i mean look at

00:57:36.380 the thing is we'd be saying well lutherans are out baptismal regeneration so are anglicans

00:57:41.380 brandon meeks is out baptismal regeneration so are a lot of the fathers that taught baptismal

00:57:46.580 regeneration of some sort you start looking at that's just one issue and you go yep they're out

00:57:52.440 I mean I guess we can't we can't promote or talk about them and I think that that's a mistake

00:57:58.340 I think it's a mistake also when you fail to recognize that historically if you're going to

00:58:05.580 talk about reformed catholicity in a historic way you're going to have to recognize that the true

00:58:11.080 church and i mean the elect has been intermingled throughout all sorts of problematic systems and

00:58:19.860 groups throughout history and that you know like we we have a classical christian school

00:58:25.060 a huge amount of the classical christian schooling tradition comes from the education of monks

00:58:32.820 and priests of clergy in this, in a lot of ways, Roman Catholic system.

00:58:40.400 It's not until we get to the Reformation that you start to see,

00:58:44.180 and actually I do think that's a good example of where Protestant scholars

00:58:48.780 took and actually corrected some of the errors of Roman Catholicism

00:58:52.340 and ended up saying things like,

00:58:54.200 we should actually educate more people than just clergy and noblemen

00:58:57.220 because of the priesthood of all believers.

00:58:59.400 and that was a doctrinal correction that protestantism brought to the classical tradition

00:59:06.460 and improved it i think we see the fruit of that today in in many ways so i think we'd all

00:59:12.440 probably agree there that we're not saying you should swim the tiber by saying anthony

00:59:19.060 eslin's a guy you should read no i mean just like if we if we recommend like hey you should

00:59:25.160 you should read jordan peterson's uh 12 rules for life it's got some really helpful insights in

00:59:30.100 there i wouldn't take your theological instruction don't become a union no no i mean that's not the

00:59:36.380 goal but you know you you steal wisdom from the uh plunder of the egyptians you know so that's

00:59:41.800 that's how i'd approach a lot of these guys it's really helpful to know the author the time period

00:59:47.080 that it was written the particular uh ditches that they're going to fall into yeah i mean like

00:59:52.380 i was talking to brian the other day about um reading a certain victorian era person and they're

00:59:58.200 like yeah eugenics were actually like a thing at the time so you have to be aware of that rousseau

01:00:02.540 and romanticism yep you know things like that you just have to be aware when you're reading

01:00:06.060 it's it's it's just part of being discerning uh when you're reading these people well i wonder if

01:00:11.440 i could ask there's another question on here yeah and maybe we close with it yeah um because we're

01:00:16.880 at that at that mark uh this is from jordan and he says how do you decide i'm assuming this is a guy

01:00:22.420 sorry if you're a girl uh how do you decide it is a guy okay how do you decide when to cut ties

01:00:27.880 and when to be co-belligerent i'm often surprised who gets praise and who gets criticism maybe i'm

01:00:33.520 reading too much into the criticism though for example mahaney and piper get criticism

01:00:38.260 elon musk gets praise yeah i was actually going to read that one next i thought that was such

01:00:44.020 a good question okay good yeah brilliant minds thinking like and i was also gonna this is funny

01:00:49.260 we didn't plan it i was also gonna say hey guys for our last question oh nice look at us eric

01:00:54.060 we're just we're locked in right now across the king's hall table it's cute pilot and co-pilot

01:00:59.920 stan yeah man so uh yeah what's going on there why why do we you know we've said some things

01:01:07.080 critical of piper with pietism we've said some critical things of mahaney we you know promoted

01:01:13.700 in one of our cold opens we told a story from elon musk and made a positive application from it

01:01:20.200 if i could take a crack at it oh i was yeah i was gonna say silence like yeah i got i got something

01:01:27.100 yeah and then i'll pass it over to dan my the first thing i'll say i'll just keep it very narrow

01:01:31.560 because there's more but would be that in the same way that in jesus parables sometimes he's

01:01:37.960 using examples like the dishonest manager and then draws a positive point from the dishonest

01:01:43.120 manager. That's the category I would put our praise, quote unquote, of Elon Musk, where we're

01:01:49.620 pointing at something that is good and virtuous. He's an image bearer of God. He has a conscience.

01:01:54.740 Even those who do not know the Lord bear witness to the universality of God's morality in his

01:01:59.920 creation by obeying the law without the law, right? So Elon Musk worked really hard, took risk,

01:02:06.360 did manly, courageous things that are not righteous in the sense that they're not unmixed

01:02:12.000 with sin and they're coming from a place of an unregenerate heart so they don't merit favor with

01:02:17.140 god elon musk isn't going to get into heaven because god looks at him and says elon you did

01:02:22.520 really good with that you know spaceship thing so uh come on in right we're not saying that

01:02:28.940 we're using him in a parabolic sort of way in that that instance so pass it over to dan what

01:02:35.160 are your thoughts yeah well i have a couple of thoughts first the subject matter of the podcast

01:02:40.760 is new christendom right the next christendom building christendom and so you're going to be

01:02:45.720 looking at christian leaders christianity in itself are we adopting an elon musk model of

01:02:53.540 is he informing new christendom like no he's not part of the foundations of new christendom

01:02:58.420 just like you said he's a he's a useful example for some you know some of these ideas he's actually 0.98

01:03:03.120 a evil man he is uh it's weird that i brought up eugenics because that's why he has so many kids

01:03:10.140 with so many different women is because he wants his genetics into the human gene pool yeah he's

01:03:16.400 because he thinks pretty highly of himself i mean he is the wealthiest man in the world so anyway i

01:03:20.940 mean it's the guy is actually quite evil so so i i say that this the second thing is you also have

01:03:28.400 spheres of authority so elon musk is he an authority over the church no i mean just like

01:03:36.180 if this was a political podcast if he was uh a head of or had responsibility in the sphere of

01:03:42.300 the state he would receive a lot of criticism yeah because he's going to be the subject matter

01:03:47.440 of what we're looking at and he has certain responsibilities he's just a businessman right

01:03:52.460 now um and so men like um mahaney and piper are going to get criticized because we're the subject

01:04:00.720 matter and the responsibility that they have is in the sphere of the church and so it would make

01:04:05.280 sense that we were going to look at them closer than we would look at elon musk we're not going

01:04:10.080 to take him seriously as far as new christendom like what part does maybe he repents and funds

01:04:16.700 the thing i don't know but but but but he's not even somebody worth taking seriously in this

01:04:22.720 project he could starlink us some better internet so it doesn't take so long to upload the king's

01:04:26.540 hall video to youtube yeah that'd be great elon i mean sure point one of your satellites this way

01:04:33.680 man. Okay. Well, do you have any thoughts? Yeah. So I was thinking of something that Brian said

01:04:39.020 based on the gospels. And again, you know, please don't take this too far. It's not a one-to-one,

01:04:43.020 but you know, we have like a Pharisee and a publican, the publican in Jesus story is like

01:04:48.660 being celebrated for true repentance. And the guy, so Jesus tells these stories that are kind

01:04:53.300 of like, they flip things on their head. So why do I talk about John Piper and pietism so much?

01:04:58.580 because I think that's such a critical issue that we get wrong.

01:05:02.060 I think also people don't hear me often saying positive things.

01:05:05.920 The other day I was talking about how John Piper's preaching on suffering

01:05:09.780 is some of the best preaching I think I've ever heard on a topic. 1.00

01:05:13.400 I still think his pietism stuff has done a lot of damage in the church, 0.97

01:05:18.240 and I don't even think that John Piper is necessarily meaning to do that damage.

01:05:23.320 No, he's very sincere.

01:05:25.120 He's a very sincere guy.

01:05:25.800 He's not a grifter.

01:05:27.100 No, I don't see him that way at all.

01:05:29.680 I've taken, I guess, criticism for criticizing John Piper from some people.

01:05:36.260 Same with CJ Mahaney.

01:05:38.060 I don't know these guys personally.

01:05:39.920 I'm just kind of reporting a lot of the things that we've seen publicly.

01:05:44.960 I think Mahaney came up in Big, Fast, and Famous.

01:05:49.280 And then to Dan's point, it's odd that sometimes,

01:05:54.620 So I'm looking at what are the main issues affecting the church.

01:05:58.320 And what I happen to see is a lot of the main issues,

01:06:01.940 evangelical leaders are getting wrong.

01:06:04.260 And a lot of the main issues, in some ways,

01:06:07.580 people like Jordan Peterson are getting more right than the evangelical establishment.

01:06:13.780 There's a lot of issues like masculinity.

01:06:16.420 I know that he's a Jungian atheist,

01:06:18.520 and that's why it's so sad that Jordan Peterson is better than Russell Moore.

01:06:22.360 so i think sometimes we're using that kind of foil of like and you'd think somebody within the church

01:06:28.900 would have something positive to say on these issues and yet you know in the same way that

01:06:34.120 the gospels do this people on the outside seem to get it people on the inside don't yeah um it's a

01:06:40.200 little bit of that interplay and again i just go back to this you read with discernment we're not

01:06:45.040 endorsing you know jordan peterson and everything that he says yeah i mean obviously we've criticized

01:06:53.320 the the i don't even so some of this comment i don't even think is totally fair like we blasted

01:06:58.800 jordan peterson in the daily wire oh yeah we did i forgot about dave rubin stuff yeah yeah we did

01:07:04.200 so where criticism is due you'll receive it and where praise is due you'll receive it yeah and

01:07:10.160 And all of it's going to be from our assessment with the data we have.

01:07:14.820 And of course, you're free to make arguments that we've gotten this or that wrong.

01:07:21.460 That's what we do all day.

01:07:23.060 I mean, not all day, but I mean, this is like, this is what the work of theology and culture

01:07:27.860 entails is brothers getting together and saying, I think this is true.

01:07:32.940 And someone saying, I don't think that's quite it.

01:07:34.660 And here's why.

01:07:35.380 and you you you work and you sharpen one another and you end up with truth we're not handing this

01:07:41.020 podcast down from on high as the inerrant word of god this is this is our attempts at saying

01:07:46.160 here are some important things we're the end that we're aiming that we think you should aim for and

01:07:50.600 point your your sails into yeah let's build the new christendom and this is what where we think

01:07:55.260 it's gone wrong here's where we think it could be improved we're gonna have more to say through

01:08:00.060 the season and we'd invite your criticisms. We'd invite your conversation and your feedback. So

01:08:07.460 that's going to be about it for this episode, but I think we'll do this again. We've got actually

01:08:12.540 quite a few more really good questions on the list. We're just out of time for today.

01:08:15.940 So expect another one of these episodes in the near future. Lord willing, look at working through

01:08:21.280 some of your questions and cause you guys have had some really good ones that I think particularly

01:08:26.040 some we didn't get to in getting even more blue collar in applying some of the principles that

01:08:32.440 we've been expounding in this season. So keep them coming. We do, of course, want to thank

01:08:38.520 our sponsors for this episode. One of them, actually, I just saw a guy on Twitter tweet,

01:08:43.840 hey, Reformation Heritage Books Bible Worship Study Guide that we've been encouraging you guys

01:08:50.440 to check out this season. They're like, it's the best resource I have on my shelf. And I'm like,

01:08:55.800 you. Amen. So go check them out. Check out Reformation Heritage Books. We have a link

01:09:01.540 in the description of the show. Check out Christendom Bible College for some guys that

01:09:05.460 are doing good work in promoting robust Christian higher education. But thanks for listening. And

01:09:11.740 as always, remember, Winkit Quisa Winkit, he conquers who conquers himself. See you next time.

01:09:25.800 well in case you didn't know we have another king's hall show called the after hours and

01:09:31.360 it's available only to our patrons we have a great time in the after hours i play hype songs

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The King's Hall - August 26, 2022

Listener Inquiries： Reforming Ogden, Baptism, & More

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