The King's Hall - Theological Minimalism, Cultural Syncretism, & Antinomianism

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.

00:00:30.900 We'll also be signing the first 1,000 copies, so pick yours up today.

00:00:43.780 Over the last 600 years in England, the British nobility have constructed some of the most beautiful country estates imaginable.

00:00:52.140 Grand houses and all the styles of classical and Victorian architecture

00:00:56.060 surrounded with enormous estates,

00:00:58.680 sometimes tens of thousands of acres on rolling green hills,

00:01:02.920 wooded groves, beautiful rivers and ponds,

00:01:05.280 and all the wildlife you'd expect on such a property.

00:01:08.440 To keep these estates intact,

00:01:10.460 the families followed the law of primogeniture

00:01:12.700 in which the firstborn male would inherit the entirety of the estate

00:01:16.140 rather than dividing it amongst all the children.

00:01:19.440 These estates, enormously costly affairs,

00:01:22.320 often full of magnificent art collections

00:01:24.360 and dozens of full-time servants,

00:01:26.740 were funded largely through the income

00:01:28.600 of the surrounding land,

00:01:30.400 which would be profitably farmed by tenant families.

00:01:33.800 Some of these estates can still be seen today,

00:01:35.820 such as Windsor Castle, Hampton Court Palace,

00:01:38.800 Blenheim Place, Chatsworth House in Derbyshire,

00:01:41.320 of Pride and Prejudice fame,

00:01:42.900 or Highclere Castle,

00:01:44.400 the real setting for the fictional TV series Downton Abbey.

00:01:48.020 I remember visiting some of these castles and manors as a lad of about eight or nine

00:01:51.860 when my family was stationed in London for my dad's officer exchange service with the

00:01:56.720 Royal Air Force.

00:01:57.860 They are unbelievably stunning places to visit.

00:02:01.720 But most of them, in fact, probably at this point, the vast majority are long demolished,

00:02:08.240 land parceled out, and gone.

00:02:11.020 So what happened?

00:02:12.540 Well, lots of things happened.

00:02:13.540 After World War II, for example, to attempt to rebuild its destroyed and debt-crippled government,

00:02:19.160 the Brits raised inheritance taxes, called estate duty, to 60%, then 80%,

00:02:24.160 even hitting an all-time high of about 85% in the late 60s.

00:02:28.900 This meant that fathers couldn't pass these estates on to their eldest male heirs

00:02:33.060 without also passing on a tax bill that was often in the tens of millions of pounds.

00:02:38.520 But many of them were destroyed long before that.

00:02:41.060 You can see how it might happen, right?

00:02:42.280 and unwise son inherits the land

00:02:44.340 and gets himself in money troubles

00:02:45.740 with gambling or women

00:02:47.180 or unwise business dealings

00:02:48.880 and thinks to himself,

00:02:50.320 oh, just sell a few hundred acres

00:02:52.120 on the outskirts of the estate

00:02:53.640 that will more than cover the bills.

00:02:56.160 And after all, it's the house that really matters.

00:02:58.900 I don't know why he was cockney.

00:03:00.220 He'd probably have a better accent than that.

00:03:01.400 Anyway, cockneys don't have money, I thought.

00:03:03.620 They don't have no...

00:03:04.620 I thought they were more like gypsies.

00:03:05.420 They don't got no money.

00:03:05.940 Sorry, I just ruined your cold open.

00:03:07.340 Anyway, we'll continue to call it open.

00:03:09.180 Slowly, little by little,

00:03:10.920 generation by generation, the grand estates were whittled down from these magnificent 10,000 acre

00:03:17.160 glorious estates to grand houses sitting on small islands of land. And then ultimately with even the

00:03:23.940 houses being demolished. And here's the problem that led to even the houses falling to ruin.

00:03:29.080 It's the land's income could no longer support the house. So it had to be sold, demolished,

00:03:34.600 or fall to ruin. Small compromises, small retreats, little by little can eat away the

00:03:42.120 grandest of estates. And the Christian faith is like that. Oh, they're attacking the doctrine

00:03:47.320 of marriage? No big deal. It's justification by faith alone that really matters. What? They're

00:03:51.980 coming for the doctrine of creation ex nihilo? Well, we can give that up, can't we? Why fight

00:03:56.880 there? After all, as long as they believe that Christ rose from the dead, what's the harm in

00:04:01.960 sprinkling a little bit of evolution into our theology. It's this folly that has so often

00:04:07.160 sold away the heart of the Christian faith, the heart of the inheritance of faith, leaving nothing

00:04:12.420 but the derelict ruins of something that was once grand and glorious at the center, surrounded by

00:04:18.160 hostile forces and soon to fall. If we're to build the new Christendom, we must retake the outlying

00:04:24.980 lands. The King's Hall podcast exists to make self-ruled men rule well and win the world.

00:04:31.960 Well, I'm Brian Silve. I'm here with my friends, Dan Burkholder, Eric Kahn.

00:04:40.480 And today we are continuing the work to which we intend to put our hand in this first season

00:04:45.740 of the King's Hall, which is the work of new Christendom, of building this great cathedral

00:04:51.060 of Christendom. And as you know, if you've been following along with us here in this first season,

00:04:55.960 that work has to begin by clearing our job site of all sorts of evangelical shanty towns and

00:05:03.720 shoddy workmanship that has been thrown up over the last few centuries. Things that will need to

00:05:09.500 go if this new cathedral of this new Christendom cathedral rather is to go up. Today, we'll be

00:05:16.460 talking about another one of those strip malls that needs to be dismantled. And this is another

00:05:21.020 one, surprise, surprise, that really came to a zenith in the 20th century, so fairly

00:05:26.160 recently, and that is theological minimalism along with its attendant cultural syncretism

00:05:33.300 and antinomianism.

00:05:34.940 So to understand what we mean and why these must go, we really have to understand something

00:05:40.480 about the rise of fundamentalism in the evangelical movement of the early 20th century and beyond,

00:05:47.580 and then some of the fundamentalist strategy that went along with it.

00:05:51.020 The church at this time was faced with a growing challenge from higher critical theological

00:05:57.740 liberalism. This is a theological liberalism that had really been growing up out of the

00:06:01.360 enlightenment and, well, we could call it the endarkenment, and the secularism that was

00:06:07.540 running rampant all across continental Europe, England, and America. And this was challenging

00:06:13.620 really everything about the Christian faith from the historicity of the resurrection to the

00:06:17.340 inerrancy of scripture to the doctrine of salvation. It's basically shorning Christianity

00:06:22.700 of all of its supernaturality. So in one example, the theological liberalism of the famous Tübingen

00:06:28.780 school, which was a school of liberal German New Testament theologians founded by F.C. Bauer,

00:06:34.600 they applied Hegelian philosophy to New Testament study, which applying Hegelian philosophy to

00:06:39.840 anything is always a bad idea. Like those Hegelians. That's right, Dan. So for those who

00:06:46.200 don't know what hegelian philosophy is maybe you could really simply you've got you know thesis

00:06:52.640 antithesis synthesis this is an oversimplification but where uh they would believe that history that

00:06:58.260 arriving at philosophical truth often happens through this war of ideas between a thesis

00:07:03.180 than an antithesis and the truth is found in a synthesis between the two so they did that

00:07:08.100 with the New Testament, essentially, and so they discovered, of course, a division in the early

00:07:16.920 church between the followers of Peter, the Petrine school, and the Pauline school of theology,

00:07:22.780 that basically there were these warring factions within early Christianity between Paul's theology

00:07:27.280 and Peter's theology, and that the New Testament didn't really come to its final synthesis until

00:07:32.600 a hundred years in, the second century sometime, melding these two schools into a composite

00:07:37.720 it, along with all sorts of other foundational attacks. The tubing in school was whack,

00:07:41.920 but they were prototypical of lots of liberalism. A lot of this kind of nonsense that it's still

00:07:47.280 going on today, but it was really in vogue at this time, coming into the 20th century,

00:07:53.020 end of the 19th century. And so against this pressure, you might put yourself in the shoes

00:07:57.920 of the faithful church at that time and say, like, what should we do? Because obviously the

00:08:02.580 church needs to fight against this poisonous theological liberalism. Because if you don't,

00:08:06.960 if you just let that go, like, what do you have left? You have a Christianity that's not even

00:08:12.940 worth the name. It's got no supernaturalness to it, supernaturality. It's just naturalist

00:08:19.160 humans coming up with theological and philosophical ideas, inventing the myth of

00:08:26.940 Jesus against the historic Jesus. This was a lot of what was in the air and the zeitgeist at that

00:08:32.520 time. So against this theological liberalism, the early 20th century saw a rise of what we

00:08:38.920 now call fundamentalism within the evangelical church. There's much more that we could say

00:08:43.280 about fundamentalism than I will write at this moment, and probably even than we will in this

00:08:47.660 episode. But some of its core tenets are important to understand, right? Basically, and in a narrow

00:08:53.840 sense, fundamentalism responded to the attacks of liberalism by identifying and defending what

00:08:59.120 they saw as the most fundamental aspects of the Christian faith. Dan, I think you had a list of

00:09:04.220 five things that they sort of identified as pillars, right? Yeah. So fundamentalism, the

00:09:09.300 movement came from a series of booklets that were printed from 1910 to 1915. And in them, they

00:09:14.940 defended what they saw as five pillars of the historic Orthodox faith. That's like the five

00:09:20.260 core pillars. And probably in reaction to what was happening at the time. But the first was

00:09:26.840 inerrancy. The second was defense of the biblical miracles. Then the third one was the substitutionary

00:09:33.640 atonement, then virgin birth, and then the resurrection of Christ. So those were the

00:09:38.380 five things that they defended in these booklets. And you'd have this broad coalition growing up

00:09:43.020 around fundamentalism, Presbyterians, Baptists, within the evangelical movement that was at this

00:09:48.660 point, I mean, evangelicalism is a few hundred years older, at least in its roots, than

00:09:53.340 fundamentalism but you have this almost ecumenical movement then coming together basically saying

00:09:58.940 let's fight against this liberalism by reasserting the truth and essential nature of these core

00:10:08.180 doctrines right and and maybe as you hear that list you're like it sounds like you guys are

00:10:12.680 about to criticize this what are you against the resurrection so so like the first question really

00:10:19.540 guess is what is what's the danger with this kind of fundamentalism you know obviously we're not

00:10:27.800 liberals we're we agree with all of those with those conclusions so what's the danger maybe even

00:10:32.940 a danger that the original fundamentalists didn't intend you know they didn't intend for their their

00:10:39.160 their movement to go here but but i think there are some dangers there what do you guys see what's

00:10:43.620 the problem? What should we be aware of and on the lookout for? Yeah. I'm going to assume that

00:10:49.640 this movement, the fundamentalist movement was not like an attempt to truncate Christianity to just

00:10:55.660 a few tenants of the faith to say like, this is actually the only spot where we're going to

00:11:01.220 defend. I'm assuming that they just picked where the battle was hot at the time. But what ended up

00:11:07.260 happening is there there's no discussion on creation on the return of christ um on any of

00:11:14.900 these other anthropology yeah anthropology which is our battle today ecclesia tons of issues i mean

00:11:21.940 apparently people don't even know what a woman is so i mean we've got a lot of battlefields that

00:11:27.240 we're fighting right now that that wasn't the battlefield of the time yeah but what what ended

00:11:33.980 up happening is when you truncate Christianity to like, what is the bare essentials that we can

00:11:38.960 agree on? And this happens in ecumenical councils as well. If you get a bunch of different denominations

00:11:43.940 together and they're, you know, you're like, what, what can we actually agree on? You're going to

00:11:48.420 have very little ground that you can actually agree on. And then you're like, well, we'll stand

00:11:51.980 on these things. And then everything else goes by the wayside. Well, you can see if you're not

00:11:56.240 willing to defend creation, what's going to happen in the church. Right. And you're going to get

00:12:02.000 syncretism which we're going to talk about yeah more so so that's i think what happened with that

00:12:08.280 fundamentalist you lose creation what do you lose along with that like well all of a sudden if

00:12:12.880 genesis is a mythology yeah original sin becomes really questionable actual adam actual eve you

00:12:19.120 know just before this one of the theological liberal streams uh in the 19th century was the

00:12:26.660 early uh temperance and um shoot what's the movement it was the social gospel movement

00:12:33.180 yeah it was the uh the women temperance christian women's temperance union yeah was like the first

00:12:40.700 feminist movement uh in reaction to some of the social things that were going on at the time

00:12:45.840 but their leaders at the time denied some of the creation accounts because of the subjugation of

00:12:53.240 of eve being made from the leftovers of adam from his rib which wasn't even needed and so they're

00:12:59.340 like yeah that's actually garbage you know so that was some of the the reactions they're like

00:13:03.920 wait a minute you're cutting out portions of the creation account you know yeah and so inerrancy

00:13:09.540 of scripture became important yeah you know at that time but yeah you lose a whole bunch when

00:13:13.600 you lose something like creation yeah yeah even pertaining to today so i was talking to rich lusk

00:13:19.020 about this, but, you know, he said the problem with, you know, people thought for a long time,

00:13:22.960 it was really a ploy by the enemy, I think, because for a long time people said, what does

00:13:27.440 it matter if we're creation or evolution? And then 30 years later, they're like, you know,

00:13:32.060 well, guess what? Sexuality and marriage is all in Genesis one through three. And they're going,

00:13:36.300 well, that's not history. So it actually does become, I think, a strategy for the enemy. When

00:13:41.840 you were, Dan, you were talking about these fundamentals. I think one of the things that

00:13:45.940 can work against christians i think of like the french you know and that's brian that's your

00:13:50.340 heritage come on yeah that's right vraiment vraiment i don't know i don't know what that

00:13:53.980 means well verily truly verily uh-huh french canadian very smart sounding uh so is trudeau

00:13:59.560 by the way uh canadian wait so is joan of arc don't know if you've heard of her born on my

00:14:05.280 birthday january 6th wow that's an interesting day you know who else was born reportedly on

00:14:10.700 your birthday i do dan the lord jesus christ according to the orthodox church is that really

00:14:15.920 that's when they celebrate christmas yep so that's people pretty soon people are going to be tweeting

00:14:20.820 about this episode next week like brian's claimed deity because you know he's claiming equality with

00:14:25.920 the with the with christ or something that's going to be the tweet next week hopefully then you have

00:14:29.780 the cult leader shirts already made that's right the cult leader and then you guys get the i'm with

00:14:33.660 the cult leader shirts that's right if you're a deity i'm out like you're a terrible deity you

00:14:39.160 You know what? Good news. You can still be in.

00:14:42.280 I have decreed

00:14:43.400 that you can. 100%. What were we talking about?

00:14:45.340 We were talking about the French and the

00:14:46.660 Oh, the French-Canadians.

00:14:49.000 That's right, Eric. Continue.

00:14:50.620 There's actually a profound point here, Dan.

00:14:52.880 So I think the French

00:14:54.920 are invaded by the Germans in World War I.

00:14:57.520 So what do the French do? They build

00:14:58.900 the Maginot line.

00:15:00.700 So what's interesting about the Maginot line is they're like,

00:15:02.800 well, if we build this giant wall that's defensive,

00:15:05.080 then they can't invade.

00:15:06.920 And so what do the Germans do? They just go around it.

00:15:09.160 like the French didn't think of that.

00:15:12.520 You just go around the line.

00:15:14.040 We're going to build a wall.

00:15:15.460 We're going to build a wall.

00:15:16.220 It's going to be the best wall.

00:15:17.920 We need to build a wall, and it has to be built quickly.

00:15:22.580 And the Germans are like, we're going to go around the wall.

00:15:24.320 We're going to make Mexico pay for it.

00:15:26.180 We're going to make Mexico pay.

00:15:27.360 So I think a similar thing happens, right?

00:15:30.060 In today's church, what is going on is people in the conservative circles are saying,

00:15:37.240 look we need to defend justification by faith right that's a big issue we're going to fight

00:15:41.140 on that issue but you know what feminism isn't gospel centrality that's not the center of the

00:15:46.520 gospel right so what we end up saying and i think this is where we're going with all of this yeah

00:15:50.440 that doesn't matter feminism doesn't matter sexuality anthropology doesn't matter because

00:15:55.960 it's not supposedly one of these central uh theological you know items but what i would say

00:16:01.240 too about those, those doctrines. Where do you get the idea that only these things are important?

00:16:08.220 Yeah. Yeah. Surely they're central to Christianity, but how is sexuality not? That would be my

00:16:12.400 question. Right. Yeah. That's a great question because the danger of the fundamentalism,

00:16:18.220 what we're saying, if I could just summarize, is that fundamentalism in boiling down

00:16:25.480 the faith against attack saying, well, where are we being attacked? Hey, hang on. These are

00:16:31.180 really core aspects of Christianity. If you deny these, you lose Christianity as a distinct

00:16:36.260 system of doctrine and dogmatics. And so we're going to respond to that by setting up these

00:16:41.840 pillars and saying, hey, everybody, sound the trumpet, Presbyterians, Baptists, everybody come

00:16:48.300 far and wide and let's defend the faith here against these attacks, against these anti-supernaturalist

00:16:54.480 attacks. And like Dan said, they didn't mean for this to happen, but what ended up happening

00:17:00.940 like undeniably over the next hundred years is that what well all of those doctrinal positions

00:17:08.420 on the outlying skirts of the emperor of the empire of christ's empire ended up getting

00:17:13.640 abandoned and not not defended so then all of a sudden you find out though and i think this is

00:17:18.980 where you're getting it you find out that those aren't actually secondary things no like it turns

00:17:24.000 out that it's pretty dang important that you get it right what a human being is what a man is what

00:17:29.740 a woman is, the Christian doctrine of sexuality. It actually turns out that if you deny any of

00:17:36.320 these things functionally in your doctrine, like let's say that you end up with some sort of

00:17:40.880 revoiced sort of theology or even more liberal than that, you know, some sort of gay affirming

00:17:45.220 theology. Do you really have Christianity left, even if you also affirm justification by grace

00:17:51.160 alone through faith alone? No. And in fact, what a lot of those people will do as a cover,

00:17:55.540 as a sort of Trojan horse is, you know, they will say Amy Byrd, Beth Moore for the longest time.

00:18:01.140 No, I'm a conservative. No, I'm a conservative. I'm a member in good standing. Right. And even

00:18:04.300 now there's the center left SBC guys who are like, no, we affirm the Baptist faith and message.

00:18:10.180 Therefore, CRT doesn't exist. Right. Which is absolutely nonsensical because the faith and

00:18:15.320 message doesn't address CRT. Yeah. But the idea is if, well, as long as you hold to these

00:18:19.840 fundamental issues, then anything else goes. And that's simply not the case. Yeah. I think a lot

00:18:24.160 of this has roots in the Lutheran pietistic movement in the 17th century. How do you like

00:18:29.020 that transition? Wow, that was good, man. Just own it with confidence. Own it. And so you get,

00:18:33.820 I think with the fundamentalist movement, you had a group of churches that were like, no,

00:18:37.780 we're going to fight back where the fighting is hottest. Like, go, go get them. You don't have

00:18:41.880 anyone guarding your flanks though, because of this pietistic movement. Rich really was,

00:18:46.100 like I said, started in the 17th century. And this isn't the teachings of Martin Luther. It just came

00:18:52.660 from the Lutheran church and kind of split out Lutherans don't like that their names associated

00:18:58.320 with this. Yeah. But essentially there was a group of folks that were sick of fighting because you

00:19:04.240 got to think during the reformation, Catholic to Protestant, Protestant to Protestant, you know,

00:19:09.660 there's a lot of fighting. And so they're like, we, we don't want the fighting anymore. And when

00:19:13.940 we say fighting, we don't just mean like, uh, bickering in the reformed pub about baptism.

00:19:18.380 like they were literally killing each other that was like that was like every day though

00:19:23.100 you know was was and they were killing each other and i mean it was it was that you know

00:19:28.220 temperature was was high yeah as far as conflict goes yeah so there was that and there was a knee

00:19:33.640 jerked reaction away from what is this false distinction of head and heart you know like

00:19:39.260 yeah oh man there's so much fighting about theology and being precise in these areas of

00:19:45.100 knowledge. And so it ended up being corrected towards more emotion, which, which you can see

00:19:50.520 then it's not very hard to draw a fairly straight line from Lutheran pietism to the first great

00:19:57.160 awakening, who was, I mean, John Wesley was heavily influenced by this Lutheran pietistic

00:20:03.360 movement. Um, and he developed this whole Wesleyan perfectionism sort of thing where you can be

00:20:09.280 sanctified on this side of eternity. If you just follow his method, there you go. The Methodist

00:20:14.560 church and into emotionalism and revivalism. But you see during that time, there's such a

00:20:21.520 de-emphasis against theological precision and against debate and fighting back against some

00:20:28.900 of these ideas. And it becomes more about the emotions that a person is feeling, even at the

00:20:34.920 point where there were certain churches, I think I said this before, that you could not be a member

00:20:39.120 of unless you had a radical conversion experience. Like that was how you were, that was the gauge in

00:20:44.500 what you were measured by, was not your profession of faith, just on espousing the truths of

00:20:50.740 scripture and of the gospel, but of your actual conversion, emotional conversion experience.

00:20:56.740 And so then you zoom out even further and you get to where we are today, where you have this whole

00:21:03.640 massive movement of Christianity that has been influenced by don't fight, be nice,

00:21:09.920 have good feelings and good thoughts. You, Jesus, and maybe the Holy Spirit. That's all that

00:21:15.700 matters, not politics. You know what's interesting during that movement, because the scriptures

00:21:20.360 became so much more readily available because of the printing press, you know, you had to go to

00:21:25.620 worship. They would actually chain their Bibles up, not because nobody could read them, but because

00:21:31.240 they were worth as much as a house because they had to be handwritten or there was special printing

00:21:36.520 processes. And so now people had their Bibles during this movement and individualistic faith

00:21:41.840 became a lot more important and it became anti-institutional to where the corporate

00:21:46.740 gathering of the church was not any longer where worship happened, but it was actually in like

00:21:51.720 small groups. And it became more important about what you thought about the scriptures than what

00:21:57.700 was said covenantally or in, in worship. I know I just took us on a big tangent, but you can see

00:22:03.740 then in the in the early 20th century and to where we are now where you'd get a group of guys who are

00:22:10.220 like no we're going to push back against this thing and they're going to narrow the focus to

00:22:14.840 the these to where the battle is hottest and there's nobody guarding the flanks because nobody

00:22:19.600 else wants to fight and they just let those things go eventually yeah well isn't it i want to ask

00:22:24.800 this question but isn't it just like the knee-jerk reaction today uh if there's a an issue what do we

00:22:30.560 do we have a conference we get the biggest celebrities we write a statement you know the

00:22:34.980 whatever city statement yeah we sign the statement it's usually about things that we can all get

00:22:40.040 together on so there's that but there's also like you think about gospel tracks today and i remember

00:22:45.460 the the whole movement when i was in college kind of the campus crusade for christ thing was

00:22:49.580 what's the people would always ask this what's the least amount of information i could tell

00:22:54.660 somebody for them to be saved yeah so my question is do you think those two things are connected

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00:23:32.780 at advertising at newchristendompress.com. Yeah, absolutely. I think that they're innately

00:23:43.760 connected in the sense that you can't have one for long without the other showing up. It's like,

00:23:49.480 can you have theological minimalism for long without ending up with cultural syncretism

00:23:55.420 and antinomianism? And I think the answer is no, because what you end up doing is you basically

00:24:01.960 end up making something like secondary doctrine. First of all, you do that triage and you say,

00:24:07.120 well, here's primary, secondary, tertiary doctrines. And that can be a helpful way of

00:24:12.000 thinking, like to think through doctrines that way, I think can be helpful as a framework.

00:24:16.900 But once you relegate secondary doctrine to the equivalent of optional accessories to the

00:24:22.700 christian faith and that that's what that question does yeah you you end up actually saying

00:24:28.580 functionally at least that that doctrine isn't that important right it's not that important like

00:24:34.520 can can you be saved and and not know anything about like christian view of the household or

00:24:41.140 sexuality well sure yeah like a new convert you're gonna live a pretty immature life right thing

00:24:47.080 it's a pretty bare but yeah so when we're talking about building the new christendom building culture

00:24:52.540 I mean, inherently in that question,

00:24:53.920 we're talking about how do we build something big, robust, beautiful?

00:24:57.160 Yeah.

00:24:57.680 It's the complete opposite.

00:24:59.420 Yeah, it's like the illustration that comes to mind for me

00:25:02.660 and the whole time I was thinking about this episode,

00:25:05.400 I was thinking about that scene or really the whole setup in the third book

00:25:10.040 in The Lord of the Rings, The Return of the King,

00:25:11.420 where you've got Denethor, who's the steward of Gondor,

00:25:14.560 and he's charged with defending the empire, Gondor,

00:25:18.100 until the king comes back,

00:25:19.980 which has been, you know, generations and generations without a king.

00:25:22.680 Obviously, we know that Aragorn is going to come take the throne.

00:25:26.740 But basically, over Denethor's rule as steward, he's failed in his rule.

00:25:32.920 Why?

00:25:33.600 Well, one of the ways that he's failed is because he's failed to defend the outer defenses of the realm.

00:25:40.060 So you have these, it's clear in the book that there are these great walls and defensive fortifications

00:25:45.240 on the fields surrounding the inner city

00:25:48.680 that had been very strong fortifications

00:25:51.660 that you could put some garrisons of men there

00:25:54.260 and they could defend against attack from the east,

00:25:56.240 from Rordor.

00:25:57.120 You had Osgiliath.

00:25:58.300 You had the garrison at this city on the river

00:26:00.220 that was an important strategic place.

00:26:02.680 And for multiple reasons,

00:26:04.920 Denethor failing and his rule being key,

00:26:07.500 the men of Gondor had failed to defend these outer positions.

00:26:11.100 And so ultimately, when the enemy came, they all had to fall back into the city and just allow the whole thing to be overrun.

00:26:20.440 And there's a sense in which you could think, well, isn't that good because the city is the important thing?

00:26:25.700 The city is like in the cold open.

00:26:27.260 Isn't the house in the middle of the 5000 acre estate the important thing?

00:26:31.060 And yes, however, you can't have that city long function if you don't defend the outer perimeters.

00:26:39.440 You can't long keep the estate together

00:26:41.160 if you don't keep the lands and keep them fruitful.

00:26:43.680 Christianity is like that.

00:26:45.700 Obviously, if you have corruption at the heart of the empire,

00:26:49.840 if you lose the heart of the Christian doctrine,

00:26:53.060 for example, if you'd start denying that Christ rose bodily from the grave

00:26:57.140 and that we're justified by grace,

00:26:59.420 well then, yeah, who cares what you do with your anthropology,

00:27:02.000 sexuality, all these other things?

00:27:03.380 It doesn't matter.

00:27:04.300 But there's another opposite error where you can say,

00:27:08.200 yeah, well, who cares about how your household is run or human sexuality or whatnot,

00:27:12.700 as long as we keep that inner thing defended. But the problem is that the inner thing doesn't last

00:27:18.040 long. The heart of the Christian faith doesn't last long if the rest of the body is being eaten

00:27:24.100 away by corruption, right? Like a Christian who says, a new convert who comes to the faith and

00:27:30.620 they don't know anything about human sexuality or about the household or about all these other

00:27:33.860 important things, they ought not long remain like that, right? They can't just be like,

00:27:39.960 oh, you know, someone gets saved and they're living with their boyfriend or their girlfriend,

00:27:43.820 or they're just like, you know, a serial adulterer and then just continue in those things.

00:27:48.880 Well, no, they need to be instructed in all of Christ for all of life, right? You can't just

00:27:54.200 leave, you can't just leave these, you know, oh, those are secondary. We're not going to worry too

00:27:59.540 much about those because it's too much of a burden. Yeah, that's exactly right. One of the

00:28:02.900 things it reminds me of uh pastoring in a small town we had a town of about 2 000 people and we

00:28:08.900 had 12 churches um so it kind of shows you there were some they were all at one time they were all

00:28:15.460 like members of the same church you know so there was a lot of splitting going on but one of the

00:28:19.960 things that they would do is they built a church alliance and so i see the same thing happening

00:28:25.540 with fundamentalism now with the gospel coalition just different entities uh fulfilling the same

00:28:31.040 role but what they tried to do was band together and when they banded together they had to create

00:28:36.440 what what i call lcd christianity like the lowest common denominator yep yep right so dan that's my

00:28:43.620 term you can take it to the bank actually you can't because it's trademark i'm not gonna use it

00:28:47.300 don't worry trademark i'm gonna steal it good i'm actually tweeting it out right now while we're

00:28:51.980 still recording so i can claim to it before the episode comes out love it but you see the problem

00:28:57.080 becomes like you want to have solidarity and you want to have unity yeah so what you do is you

00:29:02.240 water down the doctrine and you think you're building an alliance but what we found and this

00:29:06.240 so this is like the practical thing a it's not creating mature people in your churches yeah to

00:29:11.240 have a minimalistic view but it's actually also not culturally effective which is the thing it

00:29:16.860 was designed to be and to do right it's really funny that you say i mean that's my exact experience

00:29:24.000 And so this is the error I think you see in modern examples, like take Andy Stanley, for example, where he's doing that lowest common denominator thing where he's like, his tweet the other day, something about how it's not the, the Christian faith doesn't rise or fall on the truth of 66 books, but on the one event of the resurrection of Christ.

00:29:44.680 So he's always talking about that.

00:29:46.600 Like, I don't care if people in my church believe that, you know, that the flood of Noah's day.

00:29:51.900 False dilemma.

00:29:52.480 Yeah.

00:29:53.040 It's stupid, though, because it's like, yeah, all we care about is the resurrection of this

00:29:57.520 one Jesus who, if the flood didn't happen, is a liar.

00:30:02.140 Why would I care about the resurrection of a liar?

00:30:05.540 You know, Jesus affirms the truth of the Old Testament scriptures on multiple occasions.

00:30:11.640 So Andy Stanley does this with his unhitching the Old Testament.

00:30:16.140 Did you know that you could be signaling your Christian resistance to the gods of this age,

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00:31:28.560 And now on with the show.

00:31:31.360 William Lane Craig is another example.

00:31:33.980 I've literally heard William Lane Craig for, you know, years ago.

00:31:37.220 I remember I was on a thing where I listened to tons of William Lane Craig debates and read a lot

00:31:42.540 of philosophy in his kind of genre, like that Kalam cosmological argument. And it's not that

00:31:52.360 all of that is worthless or anything like that, but I literally remember watching debates with

00:31:55.940 William Lane Craig against atheists where the debate topic would be, is it reasonable or is

00:32:03.440 the statement God exists reasonable, right? And they'd be in the cross-examination phase of the

00:32:09.500 debate, and his opponent, the atheist, would start bringing up stuff about the Old Testament, like,

00:32:14.200 oh, what about the Canaanites going in, or what about, you know, Israel slaughtering all the

00:32:18.740 Canaanites and God commanding genocide, William Lane Craig. And he'd be like, oh, oh, hey,

00:32:22.700 maybe you've misunderstood. Hang on. My argument wasn't that the God of the Bible exists. My

00:32:29.520 argument was more modest than that. My argument was that it's reasonable to believe that there's

00:32:33.560 a monotheistic eternal God, but the God I've argued for is consistent with, you know, Islam,

00:32:39.000 Judaism, Christianity, some forms of Hinduism. And he would like do this slippery thing in order to

00:32:44.400 not have to defend the Bible, like not have to defend the old Testament and the sticky portions,

00:32:48.800 in his opinion. I don't think they're sticky at all. Canaanites totally needed to kill him.

00:32:51.760 You know, he's like, he didn't have to defend those anymore. Cause he had like retreated to

00:32:56.100 this inner keep. It's the same thing. But the problem is, you said it, Eric, it doesn't produce

00:33:02.400 an actually fruitful Christian culture on the other side or Christian community or even Christian.

00:33:09.580 No, no. And I think that's the thing, you know, we've said in past episodes, we're not pragmatists.

00:33:15.820 However, you do have to go back historically and look and say, like, who were the people who were

00:33:19.680 really effective at transforming their culture? Yeah. And you're never going to find people who

00:33:24.480 were theological minimalists who were really effective at transforming the culture. In fact,

00:33:30.040 you know, this is sort of one of the things you go back to the great commission, Matthew 28.

00:33:34.580 Again, our command is not to teach them as little as humanly possible that they may believe and be

00:33:38.900 sort of disciples. Teach them the bare minimum that they might be converted. Right. We never

00:33:43.060 have that. It's in fact, even as pastors and elders, we're called to teach the whole counsel

00:33:48.140 of God. Yeah. So from cover to cover, start to finish, we want to grow people who are mature

00:33:54.660 in all the scriptures. Yes. So I think this idea that you would even be aiming at a minimum is

00:33:59.940 flawed. Yeah. Dan, I want to ask you though, practically and pastorally, you obviously,

00:34:06.880 I would think have dealt with this issue at very practical levels, no? Yeah. So I think one thing

00:34:12.800 that has been really helpful as i've grown as a christian is the uh being a confessional christian

00:34:20.100 having the confessions of the faith no creed but the bible dan and that and and also what you just

00:34:27.720 is that is that not what you were that was not what i was going for okay oh man no like uh reading

00:34:34.580 the westminster very helpful yes my kids catechism is probably more helpful for me at this point than

00:34:41.660 it is for them but but having uh historic foundations that are very robust that aren't

00:34:48.420 especially not explicitly dealing with just the the hot points of today yeah uh has been really

00:34:56.560 helpful and that's actually when we're preparing for these episodes and anytime i'm looking at

00:35:01.760 reading something i'm like the last hundred years forget about it real sad i really want to read

00:35:08.020 something way older yeah real sad so yeah i've been reading don quixote i'm almost done i'm

00:35:14.020 almost done don quixote of la mancha the windmills passing docenea of toboso anyway um so all that

00:35:23.680 to say these having having these confessions uh i think is one one area that you can definitely

00:35:32.200 guard against um just being focused on some of these very minimalistic areas of the faith also

00:35:38.600 when you're when you're counseling this is the thing with being a pastor where you're actively

00:35:43.040 counseling the sheep you're not talking about inerrancy like most of the time right you use

00:35:49.720 inerrancy like that's the assumed foundation yep but they're asking questions like sexuality yeah

00:35:55.400 sexuality what do i do yeah headship i don't know how i should operate in my home i'm a christian

00:36:01.420 husband, what do I do? Yeah. Yeah. You, you know, the Bible says that I should leave an

00:36:05.660 inheritance to my grandkids. How do I do that? What are some good principles? So anyway, you

00:36:10.920 have to have range. It's, it's like, and I don't want to interrupt you for long heartbeat. Think

00:36:16.300 about these core doctrines, like the heart of the individual that goes out, you're dead. But why is

00:36:23.840 the heart pumping so that the body can do everything the body's supposed to do out to the

00:36:29.440 fingernails fingers seem pretty secondary if you're if you're freezing to death you're like

00:36:33.700 well i can lose a finger but every other day they're pretty important exactly exactly it

00:36:39.600 actually reminds me uh i think it was spurgeon talking about bunion but he said of john bunion

00:36:44.980 he said prick him anywhere and he bleeds biblene yeah and so brian i've heard you use the expression

00:36:50.660 we want theology to come out of our fingertips yeah we want it to show up in the way that our

00:36:56.300 wives cut potatoes. We want it to show up in our worship, obviously. We want it to show up in the

00:37:02.140 way that we cut wood for our wood-making business. It should show up everywhere. Why is this theology

00:37:08.200 out of the fingertips? Why is that so important? What does that mean? Yeah. Well, it's like,

00:37:12.180 there's a great book that was written on this very subject of our episode today. It was The

00:37:16.140 Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism by Carl F.H. Henry. And it's basically talking about

00:37:21.160 this, how theological minimalism, good-hearted theological minimalism, led to cultural syncretism

00:37:26.260 and other issues. He said Calvin felt that the Hebrew Christian tradition historically involved

00:37:31.740 in articulate statement, not only of the dogmatics, he's talking about the dogmatic

00:37:36.400 systematic theology, but of the social implications of redemption. And I think his point that he's

00:37:42.480 getting at is apt, and it's exactly what you're talking about, that you don't actually believe

00:37:47.120 something until you live in light of it. So here's the thing. You don't actually believe

00:37:52.540 in justification by grace alone through faith alone until you forgive your spouse of some

00:37:57.880 serious sin when they confess it to you and ask for forgiveness, right? You don't actually believe

00:38:02.940 in the, and this is straight Paul. Like when Paul says, or James, as you have been forgiven,

00:38:09.340 so you also must forgive. Paul says to the Colossians until that doctrine of the grace of

00:38:15.820 God comes out my fingertips. I don't believe it. I'm just like the servant that was forgiven

00:38:20.580 10 million dollar debt and then goes and shakes my brother down for 50 bucks. Yeah. And it's going

00:38:25.140 to show up in that, you know, that family quarrel, like that's where you're going to have to forgive

00:38:29.400 others as you've been forgiven in Christ. That's right. Yeah. So one of the arguments that we have

00:38:33.320 then is, is cultural or theological minimalism. So just boiling down the Christian faith to a few

00:38:40.020 core tenants, what little do I need to believe in order to be considered a Christian will lead to

00:38:45.860 other bad things like cultural syncretism, which seems like a big word. I'm very pleased

00:38:52.200 that I was able to pronounce it. I think I pronounced it. What do you mean by cultural

00:38:57.020 syncretism? This is a great question. And it's at the heart of this issue because so here's what

00:39:02.620 we're claiming with that claim that theological minimalism leads inevitably to cultural syncretism.

00:39:07.900 Human beings, the way that God created us, we must follow, obey, and worship some God

00:39:14.820 in everything we do. We were created to worship. And so that means that in every aspect of our

00:39:20.320 humanity, we're continually being conformed to the image of some God's pattern or ideal,

00:39:25.820 his law, his definition of the good, true, and beautiful. In the way that I pursue being a

00:39:30.380 husband, a father, a son, a daughter, a churchman, I'm either pursuing that in obedience to God's

00:39:38.380 design for that thing or some other God's design for that thing. So if as the Christian church,

00:39:44.820 you basically, whether you do it intentionally and explicitly or just by, you know, tacit

00:39:50.820 affirmation, make it seem like only these core doctrines, only believing and affirming, saying,

00:39:56.940 I, yes, I believe that justification is by grace alone through faith alone. I believe that,

00:40:01.320 you know, the resurrection was a historical fact. If you make it sound like the faith is all about

00:40:07.580 that, and then you will make it sound like, okay, to be a Christian, what do you need to do?

00:40:12.060 you just need to believe that. Okay, well, now you're a Christian. Here's the problem.

00:40:16.400 Those people in your church are still human beings. So they're still going to go out into

00:40:21.800 the rest of their life and have to figure out what to do in those areas of life.

00:40:26.860 And so if you've given into this theological minimalism, it's not like they're just going

00:40:32.200 to go live their lives neutrally. They're going to go and live their lives out on the edges of

00:40:37.160 the realm, like out in their work and their vocation and their money and inheritance and

00:40:41.300 sexuality and family and husbanding and all of that, they're going to do it in obedience to

00:40:47.460 some standard of good, true, and beautiful there. So if you're not actively teaching a man,

00:40:54.060 a Christian man, how to be a Christian man out to the edges of his life, like every aspect of

00:41:02.240 what it means to be a man, he's still going to go figure out what to do and what he's going to

00:41:08.260 ultimately end up doing if you don't teach him to obey all Christ commanded in his masculinity

00:41:12.320 and in his self is that he's going to syncretize his Christian faith with some other way of being.

00:41:19.420 Right. Does that make sense? Yeah. So I know, Eric, you've pastored for a long time and you've

00:41:24.400 had a lot of experience with cultural syncretism. What sorts of things have you seen in your

00:41:30.280 experience where this has taken root? Yeah. One of the things that I've talked a lot about is

00:41:34.860 what I call expositional cowardice. And I think it can come from a lot of these movements.

00:41:40.000 So I went to the Southern Baptist Seminary and I went there in the early 2000s. I was very

00:41:45.820 happy, proud to be there. It was one of the few seminaries that was defending truth.

00:41:51.860 And one of the things they were most proud of was the inerrancy debates that Moeller had

00:41:56.560 steered the seminary back to conservatism and to faithfulness to scripture. And I left really

00:42:01.980 before CRT got there, I think. And so that sort of crashed down. And well, I guess, why do I bring

00:42:09.300 that up? We were taught to preach a certain way on those issues. Inerrancy, you know, the pastor

00:42:15.340 is somebody who is well theologically educated, all of that, expositional preaching, all the

00:42:20.660 things that you would expect to find in a conservative reformed, well, Baptist, kind of

00:42:24.820 Baptist-y reformed seminary. But what's happened is because those guys, a lot of them didn't go out

00:42:30.740 and preach on the actual issues happening in the culture,

00:42:34.180 what would happen is, you know,

00:42:36.100 I would realize that while my people were reading People magazine

00:42:39.400 and learning how to interact with their spouse from that,

00:42:41.580 like no joke.

00:42:42.360 Yeah.

00:42:42.780 Like literally, I went to prayer meetings

00:42:45.740 and I remember somebody saying at a prayer meeting,

00:42:47.700 and I've heard this story from other people about soap operas,

00:42:50.500 but people would come in and be like,

00:42:52.300 oh man, I just need you to pray for Harry Styles.

00:42:55.240 He's had a bad breakup.

00:42:56.780 And I was like, I'm not even kidding.

00:42:59.360 Why are you gay?

00:43:00.740 Why are you...

00:43:02.220 Where is this?

00:43:02.880 Harry Styles?

00:43:04.060 Come on.

00:43:04.500 You are gay.

00:43:05.020 Yes.

00:43:05.440 Who's Harry Styles?

00:43:06.400 Should I call you Mr.?

00:43:07.400 Why are you gay?

00:43:08.580 If I had a...

00:43:09.200 Harry Styles, by the way, he's the one...

00:43:10.960 He was like a British pop star, but now he...

00:43:12.920 He was in Dunkirk, but he's the one who's wearing dresses and singing on stage.

00:43:18.680 Like, super gay.

00:43:19.580 You're straighter for not knowing who he is.

00:43:21.280 Yeah, you actually are.

00:43:22.760 He's not the black rapper guy, I'm guessing.

00:43:24.780 No, no, no, no, no.

00:43:25.620 Because he's...

00:43:26.200 That guy...

00:43:26.620 You know what?

00:43:27.040 Never mind.

00:43:27.460 We're not going to dumpster dive.

00:43:28.620 He's a white British guy.

00:43:29.000 That's right.

00:43:29.320 Oh, okay.

00:43:29.580 white British guy. Gotcha. My point being what I realized was, uh, and I think if pastors did

00:43:35.660 more shepherding and more pastoral care, that would really help a lot of the preaching. Cause

00:43:39.900 you would start to realize what the issues of the day are. And it really was about things like,

00:43:44.800 okay, well, you know, Dan would say like, what trough are you eating at? Yeah. You know,

00:43:48.880 where are your people eating every day? And, um, and it's not even like Christian media,

00:43:53.580 it's just straight garbage. I was talking to the hairdresser the other day and, um, I don't

00:43:59.560 know this what yeah no just listen now this is an example of it talking to the hairdresser

00:44:05.100 and the hairdresser says to me just out of the blue she goes you know what's strange

00:44:09.060 she said i i know you're a pastor at a church and so i just you know you get weird questions

00:44:14.580 she said uh the disney movie red nope okay so it's this woke new movie i haven't watched it but

00:44:21.120 you know very very woke and um she goes yeah it's really crazy she goes you know i put it on for my

00:44:27.360 kid and my kid watches it and listens to it like just all the time every day multiple times a day

00:44:31.660 and she goes I think they're being indoctrinated and now it was a light bulb moment so that's what

00:44:38.300 I'm saying like pastorally you have to compete with that and you know I bring up the hairdresser

00:44:43.100 story because a barber I guess is the proper term here that Dan's probably making the face

00:44:48.340 it sounds better if you say barber yeah yeah but it reminds me of Luther right the letter to his

00:44:53.500 barber was it i i am i actually don't know yes go ahead so he he wrote like this theological paper

00:45:00.300 i think it was to his barber you know i can look that one up but it was basically like theology

00:45:04.900 applied and on fire for the guy in the street yeah and that's what you've got to be thinking

00:45:09.340 about you got to be thinking about what your people are actually facing on a daily basis

00:45:13.200 my my barber is not dealing with atonement no generally not that's not what's going on there

00:45:21.200 They're dealing with, you know, subtle forms of sexual perversion.

00:45:25.480 Yeah.

00:45:25.680 And so you have historically in the church, two ditches, right?

00:45:30.480 So with the fundamentalist movement, you had core doctrines had really important.

00:45:36.280 These doctrines are really important.

00:45:37.900 That's right.

00:45:38.300 And kind of letting anything else fall to the wayside, which would be like applied theology,

00:45:43.040 I would say.

00:45:43.920 Yeah.

00:45:44.120 And then at other times in history, like the temperance movement.

00:45:48.060 Social gospel.

00:45:49.140 Yeah.

00:45:49.320 Social gospel.

00:45:50.460 Yeah.

00:45:50.560 the holiness movement, you have like essentially throw out doctrine because the manner of living

00:45:57.140 or the applied theology is the only thing that matters. And usually that means I'm going to tell

00:46:01.180 you how to live because it's convenient for me or something like that, my preferences.

00:46:05.980 And what we're advocating for is actually, well, neither of those, but both of those.

00:46:12.000 So it's a strong theological maximalism. Yeah. And we're going to, and we're going to

00:46:18.240 positively unpack exactly that in the next episode. I think it's funny. You just almost

00:46:23.440 said exactly. So on page 22 of the uneasy conscience of modern fundamentalism,

00:46:29.440 Carl F.H. Henry makes that exact point about social gospel because he also talks about the

00:46:34.260 social gospel. He talks about how fundamentalism was reacting to both the social gospel and

00:46:38.140 liberalism. But he says that in revolting against the social gospel, they seemed also to revolt

00:46:45.060 against the christian social imperative so you end up with people trying to fight the social

00:46:49.780 gospel where it's like you know just different this would be like critical race theory with it's

00:46:55.140 like a today's version of the social gospel yes you know we're gonna fix racism and we're gonna

00:47:00.160 fix ethnic hostility and we're gonna do it with critical race theory and christians are like yeah

00:47:08.960 okay so then i won't talk about it because we're going to talk about the next episode i guess don't

00:47:13.680 Don't cut our feet out, man.

00:47:14.880 But no, the thing is, I just wanted to make sure that it didn't sound like we're saying

00:47:18.380 actually, you know, theology is important.

00:47:21.120 Yeah.

00:47:21.320 Put that off to the side, but we actually have to go and just fire fight.

00:47:25.000 Like that's the goal.

00:47:26.100 Yeah.

00:47:26.440 You know, it's to just, oh, this person's dealing with this.

00:47:28.400 We got to address this.

00:47:29.320 That person.

00:47:30.160 No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

00:47:31.740 There's, there's actually more going on there.

00:47:34.160 You have the theological maximalist position wanting to know who Christ is, who the, who

00:47:40.200 god is and every part of his his creation down to the bottom and then apply it day to day and and

00:47:46.580 part of that is actually starting fires doug wilson and and not just being a firefighter yeah

00:47:52.660 so i just wanted to make that clear yeah that we weren't because it's easy to just say be reactionary

00:47:58.580 and say well critical race theory is happening theological liberalism and so what we need to do

00:48:04.980 is actually do what the pietists did and say,

00:48:08.000 we shouldn't be fighting theological battles necessarily,

00:48:11.200 but we should be just fighting, you know, like applied theology.

00:48:14.860 Like just don't do this. Stop doing that.

00:48:17.560 Stop putting that thing there. And you know, that's.

00:48:20.240 Oh yeah. We're just going to throw,

00:48:21.440 we're going to throw out like actual doctrinals because Hey,

00:48:25.000 it doesn't matter if your barber knows the atonement.

00:48:26.760 Well, he needs to know the atonement and he needs to know how to live his life

00:48:31.080 and every, like the point is both.

00:48:33.440 Yes.

00:48:34.020 It needs to be thick.

00:48:35.440 And I would say, and the reason I brought up what I did, Dan,

00:48:38.060 you're absolutely right.

00:48:39.000 I think in reform circles, we're typically strong on, say,

00:48:42.400 the five points of Calvin.

00:48:43.980 Like, people are strong on that.

00:48:45.380 And then you just look at the typical sermon in reformed churches.

00:48:48.940 It's like 47 minutes of doctrine and a minute and a half of throwaway

00:48:55.200 application, which is basically like, yeah, believe Jesus and, you know.

00:48:59.400 That leads us to another point, which I think is really interesting.

00:49:02.600 if you guys are ready to move on from cultural syncretism,

00:49:04.980 which we could talk about a lot.

00:49:06.800 I mean, I've heard Toby Sumter say

00:49:08.880 that the walls of the church are,

00:49:13.300 they have holes in them.

00:49:15.220 They're like a sieve.

00:49:16.660 That's what it is.

00:49:17.340 So culture comes in and out.

00:49:19.100 Anyway, we could talk a lot about that,

00:49:21.560 but antinomianism,

00:49:24.040 that's another thing that we're asserting

00:49:26.560 is that this theological minimalism

00:49:29.300 leads to antinomianism

00:49:31.240 Because, Eric, to piggyback on what you said, a lot of times in the Reformed world, you've got these big brain guys, right?

00:49:38.960 And they've got lots of dusty books that they've read.

00:49:41.700 And as soon as you give an application in a sermon, that's justification by works.

00:49:47.780 That's legalism or that's, you know, whatever it is.

00:49:50.780 It's like guys that can give a 50 minute sermon in detail, going through the doctrine of limited

00:49:56.840 atonement and how it's, and how it makes sense of, and harmonizes all these different passages

00:50:02.760 of scripture, do some intricate historical theology, biblical theology, systematic theology.

00:50:07.800 And then you, after the sermon, you say, pastor, that was a great sermon. I noticed your daughter

00:50:12.740 was in the front row wearing a mini skirt, your thoughts. And he's like, what? Like he gets,

00:50:19.400 the faraway professor look. And you're like, and my point is there's a disconnect somewhere there

00:50:24.760 between his doctrine and his life. Yeah. And that gets back to what we were saying,

00:50:29.220 like the theology coming out of your fingertips. I think, first of all, maybe just define that.

00:50:34.080 What is that? Formal antinomians. And we've experienced this in counseling and in opponents

00:50:41.540 that even have risen up within the church and have criticized, like, you know, for example,

00:50:45.500 I preached a sermon on money once from the Proverbs, and I said almost verbatim something

00:50:52.660 like, one of the ways a Christian answers the wrong use of money is with the right use of money,

00:51:00.420 right? So one of the ways, if you're greedy, the Christian response isn't just to stop being

00:51:07.200 greedy. It's to stop being greedy by using your money rightly, by being generous and wise and

00:51:13.300 saving and working hard. And I, and I had a guy literally, I remember who said Brian's illegal,

00:51:19.560 like brought charges against me. He said, Brian's a legalist. And we were like, okay, well,

00:51:24.020 what's your evidence? Give it, give us some evidence. Do you have anybody else who saw

00:51:27.100 this legalism is the legalism in the room right now with us? And he pulled that sermon out and

00:51:33.100 he quoted that section. He's like, see here, Brian's Brian's a legalist. He just said that,

00:51:37.080 you know, Christians have to use money, use money rightly. The answer to the wrong use of money is

00:51:43.240 the gospel. It's not using money rightly. That's works righteousness. Jesus used money rightly on

00:51:48.140 your behalf. And so I don't have to do that. So legalism can be a formal rejection of the use of

00:51:56.620 the Old Testament law in any sense. Legalism can also be someone who rejects the application of

00:52:03.560 the New Testament moral instruction. Well, you know, Sinclair Ferguson wrote a book, The Whole

00:52:08.740 christ christ which is really good and it's about the marrow controversy and he talks in there about

00:52:15.180 how antinomianism inevitably is legalism yeah they're they're not just polar opposites yeah

00:52:21.180 because you're gonna be ruled by a law yeah so and if you don't use god's law brian you cannot

00:52:26.040 preach about money in that way yeah you cannot tell people to use money rightly yeah which just

00:52:31.720 seems like a i've i violated a law yeah you violated a law yeah which is legalism because

00:52:37.780 i challenge you to find chapter and verse buddy it's interesting too i would also point out that

00:52:43.280 antinomianism is a formal heresy in the church so it's important so the question is are you know

00:52:50.600 today is are people actually practicing it and and if so are we burning people for the it it is

00:52:55.580 actually a heresy burning at the state yeah dan actually said that not me i um but one thing one

00:53:01.100 thing i will add though um this is prominent in elise fitzpatrick paul tripp that's right people

00:53:06.240 like that. Tullian Chavidian was big on this. It was really a Lutheran conception of, you know,

00:53:13.700 Elise would say something that is, I mean, it's bedrock a lot of Lutheran theology. Every time

00:53:19.180 you read the scripture, you're either reading a passage on law or grace. It's law or gospel.

00:53:25.000 And the only function of the law is to kill. So I would talk to, I talked to a Lutheran pastor

00:53:30.400 for a long time who believed this. And I said, do you believe that the law has a purpose to

00:53:35.300 instruct in righteousness? And he said, absolutely not. And I said, so do you believe as a Christian,

00:53:40.760 you can love your neighbor? And he goes, no. And that was never the point.

00:53:46.420 No, your podcast didn't stop working. We're just all dumbstruck.

00:53:49.640 It's just all dumbstruck. So there are really people who believe this in one form or another.

00:53:54.100 Yeah. That's formal. That is a hard antinomianism. But then you get into like Elise Fitzpatrick. I

00:53:59.560 think the book is called Give Them Grace. She says the exact same thing that everywhere in scripture

00:54:04.060 you look, it's either law or gospel. So when we parent, et cetera, it forms us. My point in this

00:54:08.880 is antinomianism has worked its way into the mainstream of crossway popular reform Christendom.

00:54:15.000 Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Antinomianism exists on a spectrum, like a lot of things

00:54:19.240 where you have all the way to formal heretical antinom, where if you actually affirm that

00:54:24.200 statement, by the way, if you deny that the law has any value in instructing the believer in

00:54:28.900 righteousness, you are a heretic. That is heretic. You are actually a heretic because you're

00:54:33.660 And the reason that you are a heretic is because you are, if that is true, the Bible is false.

00:54:40.000 That's correct.

00:54:40.820 If that is true, the Bible is false.

00:54:42.300 Because the scriptures tell us, Old and New Testament,

00:54:44.880 that one of the purposes of the moral instruction in scripture

00:54:48.560 is to instruct the people of God in actual righteous living.

00:54:53.620 We're told, think about the nature of the new covenant even.

00:54:57.180 The promises of the new covenant, Ezekiel 36, 26 and 27, Jeremiah 31, 31.

00:55:02.260 these promises were not just that God would take our sin away from us and take out our heart of

00:55:06.780 stone and give us a heart of flesh, but they go on to say, and write my law on your heart and put

00:55:12.300 my spirit in you and cause you to walk in my ways. So the Christian is actually going to,

00:55:20.000 God is working in us to will and to work for his good pleasure. And what antinomians want to do

00:55:25.620 is any time a pastor or a Christian exhorts somebody, basically reads a passage of scripture

00:55:32.220 that says thou shalt or thou shalt not, and then tells Christians practically, well, ladies,

00:55:38.420 I'm going to give you a good example here. This is one that'll get you canceled today.

00:55:42.140 Ladies, Paul says, wives, see that you respect your husbands. Now what I'm going to do for the

00:55:50.200 next 15 minutes of this sermon is I'm going to practically in detail explain using practical

00:55:56.940 examples from the actual life that you live, what it might look like, A, to disobey that command.

00:56:02.520 Here's the tone of voice you ought not to use. Here are the words you ought not to use. Here's

00:56:05.800 the attitude you ought not to have. Here's the sassiness you ought not to have. And here's what

00:56:09.800 it looks like practically to respect your husband. And now I'm going to explain. So I'm going to give

00:56:15.960 you the doctrine. I'm going to explain it and land it practically. And then I'm going to call you to

00:56:19.360 obedience to it in the name of Jesus.

00:56:21.860 But actually, Brian, Big Evo

00:56:23.320 wants to respond to you.

00:56:25.640 Jesus wants the rose!

00:56:28.160 Jesus wants the rose!

00:56:29.260 Why do you not look amused?

00:56:31.460 Are you not entertained, Dan?

00:56:33.120 No, I'm entertained.

00:56:34.420 So then it comes to, okay, so

00:56:37.120 what you're saying then,

00:56:39.060 what you're saying, Brian,

00:56:40.420 is that you're saved by your

00:56:43.200 righteous living. Are you Federal Vision?

00:56:46.040 Are you saved

00:56:47.380 by your covenant faithfulness? I think you are!

00:56:49.360 weird. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. See, that's the funny thing is that that's what the antinomian wants to

00:56:55.820 do is they want to just immediately reduce your applicational sermon or brotherly exhortation,

00:57:03.620 because this isn't just pastors. This is like our life. When you're a Christian, you actually,

00:57:10.040 your brother, when you answer the question, am I my brother's keeper? The answer is yes,

00:57:15.540 I am my brother's keeper.

00:57:17.700 I am called to exhort him as long as it's called today not to wander,

00:57:22.400 you know, not to let his love grow cold.

00:57:24.960 If anyone's caught in a trespass, you are spiritual.

00:57:26.960 Restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness.

00:57:28.740 Sperm on to love and good works.

00:57:30.240 Yeah, love and good works.

00:57:31.400 So, you know, we are his workmanship.

00:57:34.040 Law, works, law.

00:57:35.960 Ephesians were Christ's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works,

00:57:40.280 which he's laid out before us, that we should walk in them.

00:57:43.280 It's interesting, though, because, Dan, I actually think you bring up a really good point in your mocking jest against Brian, which I appreciate as well.

00:57:50.780 We're all here.

00:57:51.220 Well, you're next.

00:57:51.800 We're all here for the ratio.

00:57:54.700 But one of the things that I really do actually like is we said some things in one of the past shows that were basically bedrock Presbyterianism.

00:58:03.560 Believing that your children are in the covenant is one of them.

00:58:06.900 But one of the things I think that theological minimalism does is that it makes people just helpless and clueless in the culture.

00:58:14.360 So I had people saying to me, well, if you believe your children are in the covenant, that means your federal vision.

00:58:18.900 My immediate thought to that was like my gut reaction was like, this is how far we strayed from an actual reformed Christendom.

00:58:28.900 And another phrase that Brian uses all the time, I think is applicable here, which is reformed Catholicity.

00:58:36.340 Yeah. So I kind of want to know about it.

00:58:39.820 You want to know about reform Catholicity? Because so a lot of the time when we're describing our vision for the Christian faith at the church, we'll say we actually talk about theological minimalism to our church pretty frequently.

00:58:51.700 We say things like, we don't want theological minimalism.

00:58:56.160 We want, and this is the next episode, as we build a more positive case, we're going

00:58:59.860 to build a model for what we'd call instead theological maximalism and cultural maximalism.

00:59:07.540 And the way that I think that you hold that together, let me back up a little bit because

00:59:13.740 there's a danger I think fundamentalism fell into that would explain this better.

00:59:17.320 Think about that moment in the early 20th century.

00:59:19.740 Fundamentalists are coming together against liberalism.

00:59:21.700 And just by the nature of the coalition across evangelicalism, they had Presbyterians and

00:59:28.540 Baptists and all kinds of different people coming together to fight against the liberalism of the

00:59:34.440 day, which is great. Like I'm all for that. But what tended to happen as they did that is that

00:59:41.740 the way they went about that coalition actually kind of ended up with theological minimalism

00:59:47.220 because they sort of asked like, which things do we agree on? What can we all agree on? And

00:59:51.940 one of the reasons they ended up with that list of five tenants wasn't just because those happened

00:59:59.140 to be the things the liberals were attacking. It was also like the, what they could agree on.

01:00:02.940 Yeah. And so I'm firmly of the opinion that the new, the new Christendom that we're trying to

01:00:09.280 build is going to be reformed. It's going to be a, a new Christendom built on reformed Catholicity,

01:00:15.780 meaning that it's going to come out of the great stream of the reformed faith,

01:00:23.200 which finds its expression in lots of different nuances and even theological disagreement across

01:00:29.500 different issues. Like you have reformed Presbyterianism, Congregationalists, Lutherans,

01:00:35.080 certain streams of Anglicans. You've got reformed particular Baptists coming out of this stream and

01:00:40.360 in all sorts of, and they're all developing in lots of different still diversity, still diversity

01:00:45.040 there. But all of those traditions can actually agree on a huge breadth of things, a huge breadth

01:00:54.000 of things, and not just this really like deracinated, very, you know, minimalistic

01:01:01.900 stripped down couple core tenants about like the resurrection of Christ. Like if we're talking

01:01:07.800 about this, this reformed Catholicity, we're talking about a big, broad, powerful river,

01:01:11.680 right? And there's a lot of nuance within it and a lot of different tributaries going in and out,

01:01:16.780 but the central flow of the river within reformed Catholicity is a powerful, powerful river of the

01:01:24.500 Christian faith. So when we say theological minimalism, we're criticizing what I would

01:01:32.560 call more like a Creek, like a trickling Creek there at the middle. And I'm like, you need more

01:01:37.020 than that. You need more than just these five things. You need something bigger, something

01:01:41.340 that actually speaks to all of life. And my conviction is, is that the answer to that is

01:01:47.220 going to be the reformed faith. It's going to be this great big river of confessional reformed

01:01:54.040 Christianity. Yeah. One of the things that we've talked about, and Dan, maybe I get your take on

01:01:58.820 this, but this feeling that we're on the brink of, I don't know if you call it a revival

01:02:06.660 reformation, but one of the things that I find interesting, at least a couple of times

01:02:11.740 a day, a dozen times a week, I have people messaging me who are interested in dominion

01:02:17.700 theology, reform theology, um, guys who you would have never thought.

01:02:22.160 But I think a lot of people in this moment are waking up to, we need to be doing something

01:02:26.440 about the culture. I was talking to a friend who's, you know, hardcore dispensationalist.

01:02:31.960 And he said the other day, he was like, you know, I I'm really interested in dominion theology. And

01:02:37.900 I said, why? And he said, I'm tired of getting my butt kicked. Yeah. It's a loser mentality.

01:02:43.200 It is loser King sitting on the throne. So do you think there's, I do, but do you think there's hope

01:02:48.580 in this moment that people are pushing toward theological maximalism? Yeah. So, so the three

01:02:53.740 of us sitting in a room right now are not by accident. Obviously everything happens according

01:02:58.100 to God's providence, but the products that, that we are, we were not, I mean, this is not by

01:03:02.980 accident, um, that we were formed in this particular moment. I'm not, man, that sounded

01:03:08.740 like all of a sudden we're deities like, like, like Brian, what I'm saying, no, it's more like

01:03:13.760 we were formed, informed by certain teachers and there's a certain movement happening and I'm

01:03:19.460 convinced it's not a revival. It's not a revival. I think it is a reformation. It's reforming

01:03:25.700 something. And I think one of the tenants is going to be reformed Catholicity because one of the,

01:03:31.700 I'm going to get to your question. One of the problems that we've had within the last 500

01:03:37.240 years of church history is hyper schismatic people in the reformed faith. And obviously you

01:03:44.860 You see why, like in the megachurch world or in Acts 29, more loose sort of, you just

01:03:51.100 agree on these very few statements, SBC, sort of the same thing, just a few things that

01:03:56.140 you have to agree on and you're in.

01:03:58.200 You can see why those churches can partner together and why the reformed churches are

01:04:01.880 like, well, we're going to do this PCA, the PCUSA, the, you know, whatever, all these

01:04:08.200 divisions.

01:04:08.980 You look at the Reconstructionist movement with Gary North Rush.

01:04:12.160 that's like like schismatic was like the thing they were good at there was like five versions

01:04:17.000 of it within 10 years yeah it's a gift a lot of the presbyterian denominations a lot of the

01:04:21.660 reform denominations have like 100 000 members 50 000 members and then the spc is like 60 million

01:04:26.560 and i know i used pca pc usa that was terrible because obviously one was like no we want pc usa

01:04:32.740 yeah they might as well be hindu right right they're not christian and so usk so what i what

01:04:38.520 what I'm trying to say is that I think what's happening is you're seeing a

01:04:43.160 rising wave and we're just,

01:04:45.540 you know,

01:04:46.280 some of us are,

01:04:47.580 are just kind of on the tip of this wave where God is going to move.

01:04:50.920 And I think it's going to be the next generation,

01:04:52.460 you know,

01:04:53.220 Lord willing,

01:04:54.000 like we see lots of people come to faith in Christ.

01:04:57.700 Yeah.

01:04:58.100 Lots of people who are like,

01:04:59.760 what in the world is going on right now?

01:05:01.520 I mean,

01:05:01.780 we've got some insane things happening in the world around us at this moment.

01:05:06.760 And I mean,

01:05:07.380 unprecedented to the point where maybe the 1970s, 60s, I think probably World War II

01:05:15.560 is closest to this social upheaval that we've had where people are like, what is going on?

01:05:22.240 I need answers. And I think that this reformed, the reformed faith is going to see a resurgence

01:05:30.840 and a reformation that is going to, you know, have massive change in the next 150 years.

01:05:39.260 And the thing that gives me hope is that you see before Martin Luther in the reformation

01:05:46.260 and you've got Jan Hus, who's like, yeah, I'm not going to listen to the Pope. It's

01:05:51.000 the scriptures alone. And they burn them at the stake, you know, and, and then you've got other

01:05:56.080 men, um, Wycliffe who was, um, translating the Bible and giving it to the people. Uh, you've

01:06:02.040 got lots of men like that before Martin Luther came. And then God uses this one guy and he's a

01:06:08.820 PhD before he even becomes a Christian, which is insane. And it uses this guy to start a movement,

01:06:15.900 you know, and within a hundred years, you have thousands of churches, thousands of churches

01:06:23.900 across Europe. And so it gives me hope. Was that Rob Bell? Why did, I was on a roll, man.

01:06:31.200 I was on a roll. John Calvin. John Calvin. Say his name. John Calvin. John Calvin was one of the

01:06:38.020 greatest church planners in history. I mean, the number of churches that were planted from his

01:06:44.860 students in France is absolutely unbelievable. What a great pastor, great man. Named my third

01:06:50.380 born son after him and so i think that you know we're just part of a small part of what's going

01:06:57.420 on just products of this yeah not leaders in it you know there are other men that are that are

01:07:03.700 doing that but lord willing in in the next 50 years we'll see this wave come across christianity

01:07:11.620 because what's happened since covid in 2020 is you saw the great unveiling yeah an apocalypse

01:07:18.460 apocalypse within Christianity to where this is no surprise to anybody that's been paying

01:07:24.900 attention. You had churches that were like, yeah, we're not going to meet. We're not going

01:07:28.380 to worship the holy and living God. We're going to refuse to do that. We're going to listen to

01:07:33.240 the state. Who are you obeying? You're obeying the gods of the state and not the holy and living

01:07:38.640 God. And so you see this great unveiling, this apocalypse has happened. And what's going to be

01:07:44.220 the fallout what's going to be the fallout with this turning away from a lot of the the facade

01:07:49.480 christianity the syncretism the theological minimalism yeah the antinomianism where they're

01:07:55.600 like god's law be damned i'm that's legalism why would you put that on me i think that you're going

01:08:02.680 to see people that want to know the truth they're sick of the lies and the propaganda you don't even

01:08:08.560 know where to go to get truth at this point like what's actually happening in the world they they

01:08:12.640 realized that theological minimalism was not enough. It didn't give them the tools that they

01:08:18.300 needed to navigate their actual lives in the face of this other God that was telling, that was

01:08:24.900 bossing them around, which was the state. I mean, it's been a state at this point. We have ascendant

01:08:29.940 statism that has resulted from rampant autonomous or atomistic individualism. So of course, if you

01:08:37.660 worship a human being as the absolute God of all things. The state is just a human being writ large.

01:08:44.100 You're going to end up worshiping the state. And Christians realize through this apocalyptic event,

01:08:48.180 the unveiling, that's what apocalypse means. It just means to unveil or to reveal. So they realized

01:08:53.500 that their minimalism wasn't enough. They needed a Christian faith that actually told them how to

01:08:58.840 navigate the actual details of their lives. And then what's amazing is that they realized that

01:09:05.640 the scriptures actually were sufficient. The scriptures actually had enough in them.

01:09:09.980 Like the Christian faith is thick enough. It can teach you how to live all of it.

01:09:14.560 Christianity is a totalizing faith. Paul says to Timothy, he says that the scriptures are not

01:09:23.520 only breathed out by God and profitable, but that they can equip the man of God for every good work.

01:09:29.980 Which good work? Every one of them.

01:09:32.040 Everyone. So that means every political good work, every sexual good work, every familiar good work,

01:09:36.120 every human good work, every single aspect of your life. There's never a situation you will

01:09:40.660 find yourself in, according to Paul, where the scriptures will not give you either by direct

01:09:45.380 command or good and necessary consequence, the tools that you need to obey God and do good works

01:09:51.260 in that situation. Theological minimalism functionally denies that. It leaves Christians

01:09:56.780 rootless and ill-equipped to face the real situations of their day.

01:10:03.100 So what I think is going to be the linchpin,

01:10:06.120 and we can save this for a different episode,

01:10:09.140 is obviously the gospel has to be preached.

01:10:12.240 Yeah.

01:10:12.500 We don't disagree with that.

01:10:13.880 The gospel makes new men.

01:10:15.280 New men that believe in the post-mill hope.

01:10:18.040 Boom.

01:10:18.920 That's what I think is going to be the big change.

01:10:21.780 That's what's going to bring the wave

01:10:23.420 is because for the last 150, 150 years,

01:10:28.440 not even that long,

01:10:29.720 dispensational premillennialism

01:10:31.300 has taught Christians to fight to lose.

01:10:36.440 Yeah.

01:10:37.320 To fight to lose

01:10:38.220 and not in accordance with the scriptures.

01:10:40.040 To fight the long defeat.

01:10:41.080 To fight the long defeat.

01:10:42.120 That's right.

01:10:42.760 Yeah, that's right.

01:10:43.540 And the last thing I'll say

01:10:44.800 is we're talking about theological maximalism.

01:10:46.840 What is it for?

01:10:48.000 You know, we talk a lot about fighting the culture,

01:10:49.920 but this is something I was struck by this week

01:10:51.560 by a G.K. Chesterton quote.

01:10:54.440 Ultimately, we're fighting to build a culture.

01:10:56.120 You can't, Doug Wilson said,

01:10:57.240 you can't fight a culture war without a culture.

01:10:59.120 And it was G.K. Chesterton who said,

01:11:01.180 the true soldier fights not because he hates

01:11:03.840 what is in front of him,

01:11:05.320 but because he loves what is behind him.

01:11:07.440 And so, Dan, I think that's so important.

01:11:08.820 You're talking about past generations.

01:11:10.580 When I was thinking about the Christendom

01:11:12.260 that we're building,

01:11:13.320 I was honestly just picturing

01:11:14.780 all of our children's faces.

01:11:16.920 And I was like, it's for them.

01:11:18.440 You know, you have that scene.

01:11:19.860 They're going to be faced, by the way.

01:11:20.640 You have that scene of the Black Gates where Aragorn turns around and he says, for Frodo.

01:11:24.960 For Frodo.

01:11:25.660 In the movie.

01:11:26.480 And literally, it may sound a little cheesy, but I was literally like, this is for Calvin.

01:11:30.800 Yep.

01:11:31.200 And Daphne.

01:11:31.980 And Baron.

01:11:32.640 And Ari.

01:11:33.320 Yep.

01:11:33.720 This is for them.

01:11:34.480 I would die for them.

01:11:35.900 That's the bottom line.

01:11:36.760 Yeah, absolutely.

01:11:37.720 They're going to be so base.

01:11:38.580 My boy came up to me today and I'm wearing our Chop Chop shirt, our Boniface shirt that

01:11:44.500 is like the Boniface Oak.

01:11:45.720 But our designer, for some reason, made the trees dropping down rainbow colored.

01:11:49.300 That's weird.

01:11:50.160 Skittles?

01:11:50.460 Must have been a mistake.

01:11:51.600 I don't know what he's inferring.

01:11:53.720 And a little girl named Harper came up to me and she said,

01:11:57.120 she's one of our St. Brennan students.

01:11:59.080 She said, Pastor Brian, what is that on your shirt?

01:12:02.320 Is that a popsicle?

01:12:04.100 Because the tree looks kind of like one of those rainbow popsicles.

01:12:07.080 And I was like, no, no, it's a, and before I could finish the sentence,

01:12:09.960 my oldest boy, Ari, comes up to me and he goes, it's a gay tree.

01:12:15.220 He's chopping down the gay tree.

01:12:18.620 And I was like, hang on, Ari.

01:12:20.200 Yeah. Yeah. Harper. It's a symbol of one of the false gods that the Lord is going to defeat with

01:12:27.060 his gospel. And he's like, it's a gay tree. So we we're fighting, like we're fighting, building,

01:12:33.100 feasting, doing it all for the sake of the generations, for the generations that are

01:12:39.120 coming out of us for, for we're not fighting out of hatred. We're fighting out of love for what,

01:12:45.220 for God and what he's done for his people, even for our enemies, we want to see them converted.

01:12:50.860 So Jack, talk about it next week. Yes. So next week, we're going to talk about this, that,

01:12:55.560 you know, how can we defend the faith without becoming theological minimalists, schismatics,

01:13:03.140 separatists, syncretists, theological liberals, or even just, you know, minimalistic fundamentalists?

01:13:10.760 How can we do that? And our answer is a theological and cultural maximalism that comes out of an

01:13:17.460 optimistic, reformed Catholicity that is self-consciously in the business of applying

01:13:24.340 all of scripture to all of life, meaning the whole of scripture to the whole domain of human

01:13:30.320 existence, and actually expecting that to work. And as we do so, playing offense, going and

01:13:36.240 attacking the pagan gods because God is putting them under our feet, playing offense. So next

01:13:41.940 week and in our next episode, Lord willing, you'll hear us talk more about that where we'll

01:13:45.740 stop just attacking theological minimalism, but we'll put our money where our mouth is and we'll

01:13:49.920 say, here's what we're trying to build here in Ogden, Utah. Here's what we believe that you

01:13:54.720 should be aiming to build. Here's what we believe you should throw your whole life, all of your

01:13:59.560 strength, all of your time, all of your gifts, every breath that you have into pursuing. So

01:14:05.940 thank you as always for listening to this episode of the King's Hall. If you haven't already, you

01:14:10.020 can follow us on Patreon. We put out an episode every time. There are a special patrons-only

01:14:14.620 episode called After Hours that we believe you'd really enjoy. We're going to hit stop on this

01:14:19.100 recording, and we're going to start recording that one. A little bit more informal, funny,

01:14:23.100 really fun conversation sometimes i do chippewa accents uh or sorry actually ojibway

01:14:29.100 i am part chippewa you know so but they spoke ojibway is like the means of people it's this

01:14:35.800 you know broad coalition of multiple tribes including the chippewa anyway yeah so wow

01:14:40.240 wow this is a really long outro thank you for listening jump on patreon go buy a you know a

01:14:46.660 gay shirt on our website if you haven't already and we will see you next time in the king's hall

01:14:52.040 We'll see you next time.

01:15:22.040 After hours, I play hype songs, which Brian loves.

01:15:24.540 Sometimes we even talk about Brian's cut.

01:15:26.240 We talk about recent news on X and answer listener questions.

01:15:29.440 Overall, it's a great time, so I'd encourage you to head over to patreon.com slash thekingshall

01:15:35.420 if you'd like to support the show and get some extra content.

The King's Hall - April 01, 2022

Theological Minimalism, Cultural Syncretism, & Antinomianism

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