The NXR Podcast - September 20, 2022


THEOLOGY APPLIED - Cornelius Van Til Vs. Thomas Aquinas ｜ Why Many Reject Postmil & Theonomy ｜ with John White


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11,822

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1

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Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, Pastor Joel Webbin is joined by Dr. James White to discuss why so many Reformed Baptists reject postmillennialism and theonomy. They discuss the influence of Thomas Aquinas and his influence on the writings and teachings of Cornelius Van Til.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
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Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
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00:00:00.000 Hey guys, real quick, before we get started, I have a small request.
00:00:03.420 If you've been blessed by our content and you like this show,
00:00:06.420 would you take just a brief moment and leave us a five-star review?
00:00:09.760 This is quite possibly the most effective thing that you can do
00:00:12.860 to ensure that this content gets out to as many people as possible. Thanks.
00:00:18.200 All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.
00:00:20.900 I am your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries.
00:00:24.080 And in this episode of Theology Applied, I was very privileged to have
00:00:27.640 as a special guest, John White. Not James White. We've had him before. We'll have him again. But
00:00:32.720 this is John White. And the reason why I'm having him on the show is to talk about our subject
00:00:37.740 matter at hand, which is as follows. Cornelius Van Til versus Thomas Aquinas. Why so many reject
00:00:47.240 Post Mill and Theonomy? John White and myself both are confident that there is a clear correlation
00:00:55.860 between the recent rise, especially among Reformed Baptists, in their affinity with the
00:01:01.440 writings and teachings and metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas, and a disenchantment and rejection
00:01:10.300 of postmillennialism and theonomy. So John tweeted this out a while ago, and I've used it as the
00:01:17.880 description for this episode. He said, why the talk lately about Thomas Aquinas? It's because
00:01:24.120 theonomy and postmillennialism are rooted in the authority of the Bible to govern all of man's
00:01:29.800 activities. Aquinas held a very different view that has deeply influenced Western theological
00:01:36.140 thought. The flashpoint, put down Aquinas and learn about Cornelius Van Til. That's the focus
00:01:44.260 of this episode. We're going to draw, make it plain and visible. This is why people are excited
00:01:49.640 about Aquinas? Because they don't want to be theonomic. They don't want to be post-millennial.
00:01:56.760 They don't want to practically apply the scripture as the authority, not just for matters of
00:02:03.300 salvation, but matters of life. All scripture is God-breathed. It's for life and godliness,
00:02:10.820 so that the man of God may be equipped to get to heaven. No, for every good work, every civil good
00:02:17.580 work, every familial good work, every academic good work, every vocational and economic good
00:02:24.620 work.
00:02:25.200 That's what scripture teaches, the sufficiency of scripture.
00:02:28.460 The question that it begs is this, what is scripture sufficient for?
00:02:33.160 John and I, and working from the writings of Cornelius Van Til, we believe scripture
00:02:38.940 is sufficient for everything, for all of life, not just spiritual matters, but life here
00:02:45.980 And now on this physical earth, we believe that God's word speaks to that.
00:02:51.400 And it does so with authority.
00:02:54.560 Tune in now.
00:02:55.360 Big news.
00:02:56.500 Really big news.
00:02:58.500 Our next Right Response Conference is in the works.
00:03:01.760 We've got a number of things already lined up and organized.
00:03:05.100 This is what we've got so far.
00:03:06.960 The whole conference, three days long on post-millennialism and theonomy.
00:03:11.500 And the speakers, Dr. James White, Dr. Joseph Boot, Gary DeMar, and of course, yours truly, Pastor Joel Webin.
00:03:20.840 We've got a great lineup.
00:03:22.740 We've got great topics.
00:03:24.180 If you want to find out dates and location and registration and anything else, go and visit our website, rightresponseconference.com.
00:03:34.780 Rightresponseconference.com.
00:03:36.940 Applying God's word to every aspect of life.
00:03:40.460 This is Theology Applied.
00:03:47.080 Let's go ahead and jump into our topic for today.
00:03:49.560 The reason why I asked you on the show is because you retweeted an announcement for
00:03:55.860 a conference that we're going to be holding with Right Response Ministries.
00:03:58.820 It's going to be next year, May 5th through the 7th in Georgetown, Texas, that's Central
00:04:02.760 Texas, with Dr. Joseph Boot, Dr. Gary DeMar, and Dr. James White, and myself, and we are
00:04:09.720 focusing exclusively the subject matter for this conference on theonomy and post-millennialism,
00:04:15.600 and there's been a lot of positive response to this conference, and of course there's been a
00:04:20.400 lot of negative response, both from Presbyterians and Reformed Baptists, but you insightfully
00:04:25.960 nailed down a correlation that a lot of the guys who aren't excited about a conference that focuses
00:04:32.900 on post-millennialism and theonomy also, um, I'm sure it's unrelated, uh, but also happened to be
00:04:39.160 really, uh, infatuated with a guy named Thomas Aquinas. Help us out with that.
00:04:45.700 I meant to go back and reread that tweet before I came on today and I didn't. Could you, do you
00:04:49.500 have it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me, um, let me see. Um, I, I copy and pasted it. So if you give me
00:04:58.680 about 15 seconds i should be able to find here here we go not even good not even 15 seconds here
00:05:04.400 we go um why the talk lately about thomas aquinas it's because theonomy and post-millennialism are
00:05:10.820 rooted in the authority of the bible to govern all of man's activities aquinas held a very different
00:05:17.720 view that has deeply influenced western theological thought the flashpoint put down
00:05:24.140 Aquinas and learn about Cornelius Van Til. Okay, yeah, good. Thanks. Appreciate that, Joel.
00:05:32.420 Yeah, you know, theonomy and postmillennialism both hinge to a very large degree on your view
00:05:41.420 of the scripture. And your view of the scripture hinges very heavily on your epistemology and your
00:05:51.100 understanding of logic and reason and their relationship. You know, in Van Til, his apologetic
00:06:00.280 is about what is the ultimate basis of our authority, what authorizes our belief, and
00:06:11.860 You're absolutely right. It comes down to our hermeneutic. It comes down to our epistemology.
00:06:16.180 How do we know what we know? And, and it really comes down, I think, to the sufficiency of
00:06:20.840 scripture because the idea of Aquinas is, although there are some good things and helpful things from
00:06:26.400 Aquinas, it's important that we remember that he was thoroughly Roman Catholic. He puts a large
00:06:31.840 emphasis on tradition as an equal stream in terms of authority to the scripture. So we, as Protestants,
00:06:38.540 we value church history. A lot of Protestants have lost their way because they don't see church
00:06:43.100 history as an authority at all. When we affirm Sola Scriptura, we are not saying the Scripture
00:06:47.780 is the only authority. We're saying the Scripture is the highest authority and the only infallible
00:06:52.240 authority. We know there are other authorities because Scripture itself tells us that there
00:06:56.700 are other authorities, but Scripture alone is the highest authority and the only infallible
00:07:01.080 authority. So, church tradition, church history is an authority. It's a great authority, but it's
00:07:06.020 subservient to the Scripture. It errs. Church history errs. It's not an infallible authority,
00:07:11.260 and it is not an equal stream of authority to the Bible.
00:07:15.000 And Aquinas, you know, as a Roman Catholic,
00:07:17.680 the early Roman Catholic puts a massive emphasis on church tradition
00:07:22.420 and the oral tradition of the Roman Catholic Church.
00:07:26.320 But in addition to that, Aquinas, when it came to his doctrine of God
00:07:30.060 and understanding theology proper and the nature of God
00:07:32.780 and the essence of God, the attributes of God,
00:07:34.860 all these things, Aquinas relied heavily,
00:07:37.360 not just on church tradition, but on a specific set of metaphysics from my understanding that
00:07:44.520 were derived from Plato and Aristotle. And so the issue is these things can be helpful,
00:07:51.740 but when we start getting into the weeds of saying, you can't know God from the scripture
00:07:57.200 alone, the scripture in and of itself is not sufficient for knowing the Trinity or not
00:08:03.340 sufficient for knowing God. You must have the scripture plus tradition, the scripture plus
00:08:11.600 Plato, the scripture plus Aristotle, the scripture plus Aquinas. And that mindset of saying it must
00:08:22.460 be the scripture plus this other thing, I think is even though talking about Aquinas and doctrine
00:08:28.260 of God seems unrelated to post-millennialism and theonomy. The principle undergirding all of it
00:08:35.060 is ultimately, I think, a subtle attack against Sola Scriptura. And if we hold a Sola Scriptura,
00:08:43.380 then we believe that proper Trinitarian doctrine is possible by the grace of God and the illumination
00:08:51.180 of the Holy Spirit apart from Aquinas. And we also, if we hold a Sola Scriptura, we see that
00:08:57.300 Well, we have a hopeful eschatology and a view that we are called to disciple the nations and that all people, including the civil magistrate, is subject to the lordship of Christ and should legislate, not according to some John Lockean natural law, but according to divine law.
00:09:17.240 We don't just submit to natural law, although I'm okay with natural law insofar if we're saying natural law is synonymous with the moral law of God, which I believe it is.
00:09:27.340 I believe natural law in its proper definition would include all 10 of the commandments.
00:09:32.040 But this idea of we need this extra thing, whether it's John Locke on the theonomy and post-millennial side, or whether it's Aquinas on the doctrine of God side, we're saying scripture plus something.
00:09:43.560 And what we're doing in that, rejecting theonomy, rejecting postmillennialism, saying we need natural law, this extra thing.
00:09:51.240 We're pretending as though God didn't write a book, but he did.
00:09:55.380 God wrote a book.
00:09:56.760 Yeah.
00:09:57.120 Well, I should have guessed and realized, Joel, that you would jump off of that tweet.
00:10:03.280 And that makes perfect sense.
00:10:04.660 Thank you.
00:10:05.060 Let me take another swing at that question of, you know, why am I saying that postmillennialism and theonomy have the same root and that it has to do with our view of Scripture and how Van Til's view of Scripture is different than Aquinas?
00:10:22.400 And so what I'll do there to start is the relationship between theonomy and postmillennialism.
00:10:30.600 That's kind of the first step in the thinking.
00:10:32.720 Then we can talk about Aquinas and Van Til.
00:10:35.060 You know, Lorraine Bettner wrote a good book back in the mid-1900s called Millennialism, and he surveys the different sort of schools of thought around postmillennialism.
00:10:48.760 There were, you know, sort of roughly, I guess, three categories.
00:10:54.360 There was the view of folks like Jonathan Edwards, who were very optimistic, and they saw the progress of the gospel in the earth, and they thought, hey, this is happening.
00:11:05.580 I think Edwards was quoted as saying, you know, hey, within 100 years, most of the world could be Christian.
00:11:11.160 And he saw the progress of the gospel, the fruit of it, and so forth.
00:11:16.180 A second category would be somebody like Benjamin Warfield, B.B. Warfield at Princeton Theological Seminary, who believed that the gospel of Jesus Christ was the most reasonable or the most rational form of belief, and therefore that it would triumph because of that.
00:11:33.560 That would be sort of the motive force that would produce a post-millennial outcome in the world.
00:11:43.520 And both of those two schools are without going and doing a hermeneutic and looking at the scriptures, right?
00:11:49.000 What do the prophets and the Psalms say and what's our covenant theology and so forth and all that?
00:11:53.460 And that's part of it as well.
00:11:55.580 But you could kind of loosely group the Edwards optimism, the Warfield rationality.
00:12:01.580 rationality, it's the most rational because it's true kind of idea. And there's a lot of folks that
00:12:06.000 are still kind of in that camp today. What's interesting is that with Rush Dooney, his first
00:12:15.320 book was about Cornelius Van Til, and his life's work stands on Van Til, on his epistemology,
00:12:23.340 um on his apologetic he he he his his work was an extension logically in very many ways
00:12:30.440 of van till it was taking that presuppositional notion and bonds in the same thing from my
00:12:36.900 understanding is taking the presuppositional notion and then applying it to the world of
00:12:41.460 apologetics as well as uh the civil realm and ethics yeah that's exactly right into academics
00:12:47.800 as well. And so, by Van Til's view of scripture, and then Rushdini extended this, and North
00:12:59.120 extended this, the view and idea that were governed by the book, nobody, Aquinas believes
00:13:08.640 Romans 1 Revelation, Van Til believes Romans 1 Revelation, but it's a question of what they
00:13:14.520 do with that. For Aquinas, it was that man is a neutral investigator, and he has God-given reason,
00:13:21.960 and he'll explore the creation, and that truth will lead him towards true, good conclusions.
00:13:28.000 Van Til said, no, Romans 1 teaches that we need to look at believing man and unbelieving man.
00:13:33.620 They're two very different ways that they are going to reason. The believer wants to worship 0.61
00:13:40.360 and serve the creator. The unbeliever is beholding the same revelation in the creation,
00:13:46.520 but he suppresses it. He doesn't want it to be true. He is in rebellion against God. And so, 0.99
00:13:53.340 that then controls the way that he investigates the creation, the conclusions that he comes to,
00:13:59.380 the creationists and the evolutionists look at the same data and reach vastly different conclusions.
00:14:04.540 Right. He has a bias or a presupposition. And so does the Christian. We have a presupposition.
00:14:10.600 Yeah. That's right. The most basic presupposition, and this is where Bantill, the most basic
00:14:18.140 presupposition that any human being has is the God of the Bible or not the God of the Bible,
00:14:24.940 right? And so, all of our reasoning and logic and categories and everything else is going to jump
00:14:30.920 off of one of those two. So, in the Vantilian and by extension theonomic view, yes, natural law is
00:14:43.540 there and it's true. I'm like you. I believe it's the whole Decalogue. I believe it's the case laws
00:14:48.340 too. I think it is a full revelation, but we are marred by sin and don't see it. And God in His
00:14:55.620 wisdom and to fulfill his purpose, gave us revelation of himself a second time in writing
00:15:03.160 in a much more objective form and said, here, I'm going to govern this way. This is a tool for you
00:15:10.020 to grow in holiness and to disciple the nations. And so, from that theonomic perspective, suddenly
00:15:20.120 we have something out of God's law in the way that God tells us that he governs the world.
00:15:27.080 In Genesis 12, 3, one of God's promises to Abraham as a covenant keeper was that I will
00:15:35.280 bless those who bless you and I will curse those who curse you, right? So, that's a giant,
00:15:42.520 big dividing line right down through the middle of humanity right there in the Abrahamic covenant,
00:15:47.740 which I understand the old and the new to be the outworking of God's covenant with Abraham.
00:15:52.300 Most Reformed theologians, I think, would agree with that.
00:15:55.480 But they take the second part of Genesis 12.3 that says all nations will be blessed through you.
00:16:00.120 They like that, but they don't do anything with Genesis 12.3a, which says I will curse those who curse you.
00:16:06.180 I'll bless those who bless you.
00:16:07.540 Or in the theonomic view, Deuteronomy 28, for instance, is this just a particular thing that God did with old covenant Israel?
00:16:17.740 Or is this the way that God blesses and curses and governs nations?
00:16:22.620 In Proverbs, it says righteousness exalts a nation, and the Psalms is full and the prophets are full.
00:16:28.720 God condemned Sodom and Gomorrah for violations of Leviticus 19.
00:16:34.160 You know, you read it right there.
00:16:35.580 He says, don't commit these sins. 0.93
00:16:37.620 These are the sins that Sodom and Gomorrah, or excuse me, Canaan. 0.98
00:16:41.540 These are the sins that Canaan committed, and I'm judging them for it. 0.99
00:16:45.880 And it's Leviticus 19. 1.00
00:16:47.020 It's the sexual Leviticus 18, the sexuality laws of Leviticus 18. 0.56
00:16:52.140 In addition to that, what Rushney would say was in the case of Sodom that that their perversion and homosexuality, sodomy came out of another sin, namely idleness, that they were idle. 0.82
00:17:04.080 You know, it talks about how they were arrogant and proud and prosperous, but in that prosperity 0.76
00:17:08.660 that they became idle, that they began to coast rather than being productive and producing
00:17:14.100 and working and exercising Christ-like dominion.
00:17:17.700 And in their idleness, it gave birth to all kinds of perversion.
00:17:20.760 So God's judging them for arrogance.
00:17:22.320 He's judging them for idleness.
00:17:24.740 He's judging them for a lack of generosity.
00:17:27.840 He's judging them also for various kinds of perversion.
00:17:32.400 And we see that very clearly in terms of sodomy. That's one of the chief things that God judges them for. So he doesn't just judge them for, for instance, he doesn't just judge them for murder. It's not just like Nineveh, the violence of our hands, the king specifies.
00:17:48.800 It's not just Genesis 9, right? Which is a lot of folks for their for their civil polity or their political theology. They want to jump entirely off of Genesis 9 and they won't include anything from the old covenant. Whereas Leviticus 18, God tells the Israelites, don't do these things that I've just given you here from Mount Sinai as part of the old covenant. Don't do those because those are the reasons that I'm judging Canaan that you're about to go in and destroy and so forth.
00:18:17.600 Um, and so out of, out of God's law, out of the, the, the scriptures, we get this picture
00:18:25.520 of how God governs, uh, the nations, how he governs the course of history.
00:18:32.220 And, uh, you know, Gary North wrote a lot of good on this and, and some other theonomic
00:18:37.740 authors as well, but, but where I'm driving towards there, Joel is a third category of,
00:18:43.080 postmillennialism, right? I mentioned Edwards and Warfield. The third category, North called it
00:18:49.380 covenantal postmillennialism, covenantal in the jumping off that Vantilian idea that all men and
00:18:56.180 all nations are either covenant breakers or covenant keepers, and that God will bless
00:19:00.920 covenant obedience, right? That all men are in God's law is an implicit covenant with all men
00:19:07.980 and with all nations. And so, all men are either covenant keepers, covenant breakers, all nations,
00:19:13.080 and that God will bless obedience, and he will curse disobedience, right? So, this comes along
00:19:18.280 as a covenantal sort of understructure that supports, and God says, here's how, yes,
00:19:25.080 post-millennialism, yes, the wonderful promises of the Psalms and the prophets that we see of the
00:19:32.120 unfolding of God's people discipling the nations, but covenantally, here's part of how that's going
00:19:37.480 to unfold. God blesses obedience, curses disobedience, and the disobedient become
00:19:43.700 disenfranchised over time, according to God's law, and the righteous come into greater prosperity
00:19:51.300 and greater authority and so forth. So, I would call that kind of a third category, and that's
00:19:56.860 where theonomy and post-millennialism meet, I think, is in this idea of blessing and cursing
00:20:07.300 and that God's covenant law that we get to read out of the scriptures rules over all men,
00:20:14.320 all nations, all institutions. And so theonomy and post-millennialism very tightly linked at the hip
00:20:24.400 in that regard. Without theonomy, without the view of scripture that the theonomists held,
00:20:30.100 and that pretty much Van Til held as well, you're back to like a B.B. Warfield or a Jonathan Edwards
00:20:37.960 kind of general optimism, but no information about how God actually is governing the nations
00:20:44.880 and how history itself is going to covenantally unfold. So, that's kind of the first piece of that
00:20:53.000 tweet was the the linkage between theonomy and and post-millennialism the the the second part of it
00:20:59.880 is how is that view that that was just roughly articulated how does that differ from aquinas's
00:21:09.080 view right his his view of the scripture and his view of the world um and i i could i could perhaps
00:21:17.560 maybe jump in now to that part of it a little bit. Yeah, okay. So, with Aquinas, maybe a good
00:21:24.800 place to start with him is his view of the scriptures. Right up front in his best-known
00:21:31.640 work, you know, you can find PDFs of this online. You don't even have to go to a library. You can
00:21:37.140 look up Summa Theologica PDF, and in his, you know, first question, kind of seminally for the
00:21:44.520 whole work. In his first question, the question is, do we still need the scriptures? And that's
00:21:52.560 a little bit of a strange question for a Christian philosopher and theologian to be asking. I think
00:21:58.560 we'll get to in a minute, it tells you a little bit about what was going on in Europe. And at that
00:22:04.320 time, there was a Greek revival taking place, tremendous optimism about man and his reason and
00:22:10.840 so forth, the Greek works having been rediscovered in the 9 and 10 hundreds. But he asked that
00:22:17.240 question, do we still need the scriptures? And his answer is, yes, we do still need the scriptures
00:22:24.400 for salvation and for the mysteries related to salvation. And so, if you think about it,
00:22:32.180 he, he, he kind of, well, he says, but for everything other than salvation, let me say
00:22:40.220 it this way, two concentric circles. One, the first concentric circle is, is life on earth,
00:22:45.540 right? It's, it's academics, it's government. It's all the stuff that we do as human beings
00:22:51.580 on the earth is the inner concentric circle. And for that, man's senses and, and God given
00:22:59.240 reason are sufficient, right? Because, hey, we've got Romans 1, and man can discover the truth of
00:23:06.920 how to do life on earth using his senses and his God-given reason. Now, the second concentric
00:23:14.860 circle outside of man's five senses and reason is the mysteries of salvation, right? And so,
00:23:21.640 to be saved, to be a saved person, I need the scripture to illuminate to me things that are
00:23:29.700 beyond reason, beyond the capability of reason. So, for instance, I can't reason, my reason can't
00:23:36.960 grasp or comprehend how Jesus could have two natures, be both God and man and they not be
00:23:42.540 mixed, or that God is three persons and he's one God. My reason can't grasp that. So, I need the
00:23:49.660 scripture to tell me the things that are going to be by faith rather than by reason. And so,
00:23:55.460 I need that faith for salvation. So, that's where Aquinas is coming from in terms of scripture.
00:24:02.220 He does not delineate between the believer and the unbeliever in terms of how they reason,
00:24:10.980 right, in terms of how they operate. For him, man was man, generic man. And again, 0.56
00:24:17.240 And he's jumping off of kind of that Greek view of the world, where my reason is my great gift, and that's my great ability.
00:24:26.700 He didn't think of man as either covenant breaker or covenant keeper.
00:24:30.760 He didn't think about man as suppressing the truth of God, whereas the believer wants to glorify God.
00:24:37.480 If I can interject for just a thing, he's not affirming what the scripture says about man's reason and the ways that it is tarnished and affected by the curse of sin.
00:24:47.240 So he's looking at man as though Genesis 3 never happened.
00:24:52.000 So that's the first problem is he doesn't, he's thinking that man's intellect and his
00:24:56.960 conscience and his reason are unaffected by sin, that man is in this neutral state.
00:25:03.840 So he thinks it's simply a matter of the intellect rather than seeing what Romans 1 teaches
00:25:09.260 plainly, which is that man's fundamental problem is not intellectual, but rather moral, that
00:25:14.420 man doesn't want to submit to God. And therefore, man will do whatever it takes to do logical
00:25:20.880 gymnastics in order to come up with a reason for not submitting to God. So it's not that
00:25:25.100 what we often think is that we think, you know, man can't reason to God, therefore he rebels.
00:25:34.000 God has somehow failed to provide enough evidence for himself. And therefore, man cannot see God.
00:25:41.260 And therefore, because man doesn't know God, he rebels against God.
00:25:44.980 But Romans 1 teaches precisely the opposite, is that God has plainly revealed himself by
00:25:49.440 what he has made.
00:25:50.680 And this is sufficient.
00:25:51.900 This natural revelation is sufficient revelation for man to worship God, to not be an idolater,
00:25:58.660 to know the triune God and to worship him according to what God requires.
00:26:03.460 His eternal power and divine nature have been clear.
00:26:06.360 So not all of God's attributes, we don't see the gospel in natural revelation, but
00:26:10.240 natural revelation is sufficient not to save, but it is sufficient to condemn. And it's sufficient
00:26:14.920 to justly condemn, which implies that it's sufficient. Natural revelation reveals enough
00:26:21.420 for man to know what God requires of him. What does God require of you, oh man? You know,
00:26:28.540 Micah 6a, that you do justly and that you would see God's standard of justice. So we would say
00:26:35.220 that it's not that God has failed in providing sufficient evidence. And because God has failed,
00:26:41.480 man therefore cannot reason to God. And because he can't reason to God, he therefore rebels
00:26:45.340 against God. We would say Romans 1 teaches precisely the opposite. God has sufficiently
00:26:49.900 provided enough natural revelation, plus Romans 2, not just what God has on the outside by creation,
00:26:56.540 natural revelation, but natural law written on the, in the biblical sense of natural law,
00:27:00.600 written on the hearts of men, his conscience, his own conscience testifies against him.
00:27:05.480 And so in all those things, man, the reason why he ultimately does not submit to God is not because
00:27:11.900 intellectually there's a deficiency, but rather he creates that intellectual deficiency because
00:27:20.000 he already has a presupposition. He already has a bias. He's made up, his problem is moral. He's
00:27:26.120 already determined that he wants to be his own God. He wants to worship the God of Demas rather 0.80
00:27:31.400 than Theos, the true God. And because of that, he'll do whatever it takes to intentionally
00:27:37.840 and deliberately misinterpret the natural revelation that God has provided to skew it
00:27:44.640 in order to support his moral rebellion. His intellect, his intellectual reason is following
00:27:51.580 suit to his moral rebellion. We would say that's what Romans 1 teaches. In addition to that,
00:27:56.840 just one more thing real quick. You're absolutely right about Aquinas. And one of the problems is
00:28:03.160 that we don't take 2 Timothy 3, verses 16 through 17 seriously. That talks about that all
00:28:09.940 scripture is God-breathed. It's infallible. It's useful for training and equipping. But it says
00:28:14.500 that it may fully equip the man of God so that he'll understand the mysteries of salvation
00:28:19.180 and go to heaven. No. So that he'll be fully equipped for every good work.
00:28:26.360 Every good work.
00:28:27.160 Every good work. So it's not just the good work of accepting Jesus into your heart. It's not just
00:28:33.220 the good work of faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's the good work of ruling righteously,
00:28:39.080 the good work of parenting righteously, the good work of righteous vocation and righteous markets,
00:28:45.060 which I would say are free markets, you know, and that, that, that God actually has in his word,
00:28:51.000 his, that's the question is, is when we talk about the sufficiency of scripture, the, the,
00:28:54.980 the question that's begged is, is sufficient for what? And Aquinas, I think he would, he would say
00:29:01.140 it's sufficient for really just heavenly, spiritual, ethereal, you know, things, but not
00:29:07.000 sufficient for life. It's sufficient for godliness, but not life and godliness. The scripture says
00:29:13.020 life in god and you know bonds him i say life that's a that's a all-encompassing tent like if
00:29:19.160 scripture is sufficient for life it's not just sufficient for eternal life and faith but but
00:29:24.920 human life here on earth in such a way that it glorifies god and lends towards human flourishing
00:29:29.780 that's a that's a big tent yeah and and uh i agree and and aquinas um i don't i'm not trying
00:29:37.500 to use this word in a derogatory way, but he genuflects back to scripture repeatedly, right?
00:29:43.260 Because he believes that scripture says true good things. But it's interesting that in his view,
00:29:55.420 I think in his structure and in his system of thought, and you see this a lot with people who
00:29:59.900 are Aquinas, you know, Thomas-oriented type people today, for them, Scripture has a derived
00:30:09.060 authority or Scripture lacks actual authority in history. Scripture says some true things,
00:30:18.920 but it derives for them from the natural law. In other words, if something in Scripture is true,
00:30:24.960 It's true because it roots back to the natural law.
00:30:30.860 And again, his government of history, you know, in terms of authority in history for ethics, for government, for academics, those two concentric circles is is not just his epistemology, but it's where he vests authority.
00:30:49.220 It is the five senses and human reason are vested with authority for ethics. They're vested with authority for academics. They're vested with authority for civil government. And scripture is only for the mysteries that are beyond reason.
00:31:09.180 And so, then if you stop and think about, well, where does that leave my academics? Where does that leave my view of civil government? Well, you know, we might get some interesting ideas out of scripture, but there's nothing there that's really going to help us authoritatively.
00:31:26.520 in history, temporally speaking, authority is vested in the five senses and human reason,
00:31:33.520 and that that is God's intent, right? That that's what they're saying is that that's God's
00:31:39.060 intent for humanity. And again, they don't differentiate, you know, or quantist in between
00:31:44.800 believer and unbeliever, that that is the intent is for civil government and academics to all be
00:31:50.800 done that way. And, you know, there's massive implications for that. I call it the Greek
00:31:58.840 revival from 1000 to 1300 AD, what was going on, you know, the train, that train was already moving
00:32:05.100 when Aquinas came along, he sort of entered into a situation where this optimistic view of man
00:32:13.660 had already been bubbling and percolating and kindling for a couple of hundred years.
00:32:19.400 The universities began to be founded in Europe around 1100, right? And as they came into being,
00:32:27.740 this concentric circle idea was already fairly well established and percolating. 0.95
00:32:34.640 And that's the view that was really enshrined amazingly by Christians 0.70
00:32:40.060 from the inception of our Western universities. And so, you know, we look at the Renaissance and
00:32:46.560 the Enlightenment as like this veering away from the Christianity of the earlier centuries.
00:32:54.300 But that epistemologically speaking, in terms of, you know, the authority of Scripture or its lack
00:32:59.660 of authority, that train left the station back during the Greek Revival. And the Renaissance
00:33:04.560 and the Enlightenment were just the flowering of that view of the world, right? Because it left
00:33:11.300 the door wide open for unbelieving thought. Nobody was really surprised in the late 1600s
00:33:18.360 when John Locke was formulating views of political theory and civil government that didn't start with
00:33:23.600 the authority of God and then the scriptures. He may have genuflected to God. I know he did
00:33:30.300 from reading it. But practically speaking, his system of thought vests authority in man. And
00:33:37.260 that's where the five senses in human reason ends is now man is the authority and God is in the
00:33:44.620 dark. Right. And with that, speaking of John Locke and natural law, you said a lot of great things,
00:33:49.420 but for our listeners, I just want to back up for a moment. This gets to the heart of Cornelius
00:33:54.360 Van Til. And you see this in the way that, you know, that Bonson further took the thoughts of
00:33:58.740 Van Til and applied it to apologetics. So some of our listeners may be familiar with like classical
00:34:03.980 apologetics versus presuppositional apologetics, you know, or evidential apologetics. So, you know,
00:34:09.540 like when you think of evidential apologetics, you could think of what's Craig, William Lane Craig,
00:34:16.280 you know, would be a guy that a lot of people would recognize. He recently did a debate with
00:34:20.880 James White over Molinism, you know, or even like classical apologetics. You might think of R.C.
00:34:25.280 Sproul. And this is, you know, who was a big fan of Thomas Aquinas, by the way, you know,
00:34:29.360 and that's not a coincidence that he's R.C. Sproul. I loved R.C. Sproul. A lot of his stuff
00:34:35.140 is fantastic. I think his apologetics is one of his weak points. I think that he's wrong about
00:34:39.860 that. He debated, I believe, Greg Bonson over which method of apologetics was more biblically
00:34:45.520 faithful and right. Greg Bonson arguing for presuppositional apologetics and Sproul arguing
00:34:51.220 for classical apologetics. And I think the reason Sproul landed there is because of Aquinas and
00:34:55.620 because of Sproul's background with a lot of education in the realm of philosophy. Certainly
00:35:01.320 he studied theology, but philosophy was what he really, what he focused on in his undergrad. And
00:35:08.460 that kind of set the tone that was really influential for Sproul in his shaping and
00:35:12.520 formation was philosophy. And then later adding on to that, some of the deep theology.
00:35:16.960 So my point is to say, when we talk about presuppositional apologetics, classical or
00:35:21.880 evidential apologetics, a presuppositionalist can make an argument from logic. They can make
00:35:28.860 an argument even from evidential means. What makes them presuppositional is, so if I'm making
00:35:37.000 a logical argument as I'm doing the work of an apologist, what I'm going to do ultimately is
00:35:44.060 I'm going to say, I'm making this logical argument. The reason why I think that this carries water
00:35:48.380 is because you are a logical being. And I know that you're a logical being because the Bible
00:35:53.520 told me so. The Bible tells me so. So what I'm doing is I'm appealing to man's logic,
00:35:59.240 but the bottom of it is not logic, but Bible. Not logic, but Bible. And so we can appeal to
00:36:07.460 other authorities because again, Sola Scriptura doesn't say the Bible is the only authority.
00:36:10.960 it's the highest authority, it's the final authority, it's the bottom. And so we can use
00:36:17.900 some of these other appealing to logic, appealing to these kinds of things, but on the basis,
00:36:23.060 always tying it back into, and I do this, and I did that, and I said this, and I said that,
00:36:28.140 appealing to an authority, a real authority, albeit a lesser authority, but I can do this
00:36:33.900 and know this because the Bible tells me so. But what you're saying with like John Locke,
00:36:39.180 for instance, in natural law, or Aquinas, is what they're doing is, yes, to the untrained eye,
00:36:46.360 if you look at some of these writings, you're going to say, look, they're using scripture.
00:36:50.120 John, Joel, they're using scripture. Yeah, but only certain parts of scripture. They're only
00:36:56.180 using certain parts of scripture, the concentric circles that you're talking about. They're only
00:37:00.080 using a certain part of scripture when it comes to ethics and civil governments and why. That's
00:37:07.080 what you have to get down to so that you say, well, scripture is the authority. Yeah, but why
00:37:10.600 only some of scripture? And that's the answer to that question is, so what's the determining factor?
00:37:16.320 What's the highest? Scripture is an authority in the mind of John Locke, in the mind of Thomas
00:37:21.600 Aquinas. But what is the determining factor for which portions of scripture apply and which
00:37:26.960 portions don't? The higher authority than scripture, which is man's reason. See, what
00:37:32.760 they're doing is they're putting man's logic on the bottom and scripture is being supported by
00:37:37.620 man's reason. So the fundamental foundational authority is not scripture, but man. Man is the
00:37:44.260 sum of all things. And because arguing from man, we then get to determine from the scripture what's
00:37:50.220 useful and what's not, what's applicable and what's not. So even though we're using scripture,
00:37:54.600 and so it looks like we're saying scripture is the authority, the difference is this, it's subtle,
00:37:59.620 But no, you're not saying scripture is the authority.
00:38:02.560 You're saying scripture is an authority and a lesser authority, but the paramount authority
00:38:11.600 is actually man's reason.
00:38:13.480 That is the metric, the authority that determines the winnowing fork that determines which scripture
00:38:21.740 makes the cut and which scripture doesn't.
00:38:24.520 Whereas the presuppositional guy, the Vantillion guy, the Greg Bonson guy, if you just consistently apply that hermeneutic and that epistemology throughout every realm of life, from the way we read the scripture to the way that we argue for the faith and apologetics and defend the faith to markets, to civil government, to ethics, to all these different things, to parenting, to family, to education, academics, all those things.
00:38:51.320 if you just do that across the board, then one of the things you're left with in the simplest terms
00:38:56.500 to try not to confuse our listeners is one of the things you're left with is sola scriptura.
00:39:02.440 I guess I could say it this way. A true commitment to sola scriptura necessarily concludes in a
00:39:08.740 commitment to tota scriptura. And what I mean is that if you really hold to sola scriptura,
00:39:14.500 that the Bible is the highest authority and the only infallible authority, then what you end up
00:39:19.600 with, with a true commitment to Sola Scriptura, is you end up with the whole Bible, and not just
00:39:25.380 pieces of it. Tota Scriptura. Sola Scriptura is a minimizing principle. It makes sure that we don't
00:39:31.060 get anything beyond the Bible. Tota Scriptura is a maximizing principle that makes sure that we get
00:39:36.700 the whole Bible, the whole counsel of God. Not just the red letters, you know, but recognizing
00:39:42.780 that all of Scripture is God-breathed. All of it is Christ speaking. Leviticus is Christ speaking.
00:39:49.600 And I think that total scriptura naturally flows from sola scriptura.
00:39:55.440 If you really believe that the Bible is the bottom, it's the foundational authority, that
00:40:00.180 nothing is propping that up, that authority of the scripture props up every other lesser
00:40:05.380 authority.
00:40:06.420 If you really believe that, that it's the bottom, then you're left with having to, and
00:40:10.980 certainly there's I's to dot and T's to cross.
00:40:14.040 It doesn't mean it's simple or easy, but you're left with the obligation.
00:40:18.720 if if sola scriptura you're left with the obligation of i've got to do something with
00:40:23.000 the whole bible i can't just do something with part of it total scriptura would you agree with
00:40:27.760 that john i do agree with that joel i was sitting there as you were talking thinking of a word
00:40:34.640 for sufficient you mentioned earlier the sufficiency of scripture you mentioned the
00:40:40.380 scripture from first timothy that talks about it equipping man for every good work um the the
00:40:47.820 the sufficiency of scripture is the crux of the debate there between, and Van Til said
00:40:58.140 that the Bible is authoritative about everything of which it speaks, and it speaks about everything,
00:41:05.120 was one of his ways of putting that. And sometimes people say in response, well,
00:41:10.660 what color should my tie be? Or, you know, how do I put together this toy? Or, you know, whatever.
00:41:16.480 And that's not his point. His point is that the ethics of everything that is encountered in the human experience, in the human life, all of the ethics of life, the Bible addresses, and it addresses them authoritatively.
00:41:33.120 And, you know, Van Til, that view is not in any way degrading to the natural law. You said you believe and I believe Romans 1, God reveals himself. It's amazing. He says what can be revealed has been revealed.
00:41:50.120 It's sort of the language there in Romans 1. It's very comprehensive, right? And we know that we are marred by sin and that our ability to comprehend the fullness and the depth of that revelation and the creation is limited by our sin.
00:42:08.780 But we don't in any way need to degrade the natural revelation, but we need to be careful that we don't, the authority of the law and creation as a standalone entity is unquestioned.
00:42:24.460 Instead, it is the ability of man, fallen man, believer or unbeliever, but certainly an unbeliever, to be able to encounter God's revelation in the creation and do justice based on it, right?
00:42:41.320 When he is wanting to suppress that knowledge and live his life in such a way as to justify his rebellion against God.
00:42:51.860 And so, into that picture comes the scripture where God in His wisdom and in His providence
00:43:00.180 says, I gave you my law once, now I'm going to give you my revelation of myself again
00:43:06.100 objectively and in writing.
00:43:08.420 And what I'm giving you, these scriptures are God-breathed and they're sufficient for
00:43:13.220 every good work, right?
00:43:15.140 And they tell us about God, what He really truly is like.
00:43:19.120 We don't have to guess.
00:43:20.120 We don't have to discern it from the creation or from our own consciousness.
00:43:24.280 God tells us objectively, clearly, this is what I am like.
00:43:28.640 And he gives us his commands and his ethics and so forth.
00:43:32.720 So it's just, it's fundamentally a very different view than Aquinas' view, which really sort
00:43:38.960 of booted, booted, in principle at least, boots the scripture out of history and out
00:43:45.120 of temporal uh considerations right whether it's academics or uh you know civil government or or
00:43:53.340 anything like that whereas the intel had the different view that god is bringing the scripture
00:43:57.900 and it is authoritative that's good yeah i i completely agree and i think it's important
00:44:04.160 also for us to keep in mind that in terms of god's revelation to all men uh not speaking of special
00:44:09.800 revelation, but speaking of natural revelation, we don't just have Romans 1, we have Romans 2
00:44:15.200 as well. Romans 2, Paul's making a very clear argument saying that if you go to a Gentile 0.99
00:44:20.540 tribe or nation that has not received an ounce of special revelation, they've never got a prophet,
00:44:25.820 they've never got an evangelist or an apostle or a page of the Torah or anything like that,
00:44:30.520 they're still justly condemned because we could argue it like this. God is just when he judges
00:44:36.480 because man is morally culpable. God would not be a just judge if man wasn't sufficiently
00:44:41.880 responsible, morally responsible. So God is just in his judgment because man is morally responsible
00:44:47.240 and man is morally responsible because he's not ignorant. He's not ignorant because he has
00:44:53.560 knowledge. So it's because man knows, because God has revealed himself, because man knows he's
00:45:00.900 responsible for acting in accordance with what he knows. And because man is responsible when he
00:45:06.340 fails in his responsibility, God can judge him justly. So the judgments of God are just because
00:45:12.220 man is morally responsible. Man is morally responsible because man is knowledgeable.
00:45:17.220 Man is not ignorant. And that's what Romans 1 argues in terms of natural revelation on the
00:45:22.100 outside of man. So outside of man, creation, the stars and the sun and the sky and the world,
00:45:28.120 creation itself testifies to certain things about God. That's natural revelation. But then we also
00:45:33.660 have, it's not just that. We have Romans 2 that says there's something also testifying to all men,
00:45:40.360 not just believers. This is not special revelation for those who are regenerate, but all people
00:45:44.600 without ever receiving even a Bible verse, all people have creation outside of them that is
00:45:50.580 speaking something about God. Psalms talks about the skies, pour out speech. And so there's
00:45:56.380 something outside of man that is speaking from God, a revelation from God, but there's also
00:46:01.260 something on the inside of man, namely his conscience, that man has been created in God's
00:46:07.920 image. And although sin has marred that image, a vestige of the image of God remains. That's why
00:46:14.100 we believe all people, not just Christian people, but all people are image bearers and are worthy
00:46:19.820 of dignity. And we hold to the sanctity of human life because human beings, not just Christian
00:46:26.800 human beings, but all Christian, all human beings, even non-Christians are made in the image of God.
00:46:31.740 But part of what it means to be an image bearer is that we have a conscience that testifies to
00:46:36.700 the truth of God. So you have two forms of revelation, really. It's not just Romans 1,
00:46:41.260 it's Romans 1 and Romans 2. Romans 1, God is speaking to man outside of him in creation.
00:46:47.540 Romans 2, God is speaking to man inside of him through the conscience, testifying it. And between
00:46:53.520 these two things combined, you, oh man, are without excuse. Man is rendered excuseless. He does not
00:47:01.180 have an apologia. He has no argument to be making against God to say that God is somehow unjust in
00:47:07.180 his judgments because God speaking inside of man, the imago Dei, the conscience, Romans 2, and
00:47:12.700 outside of man, natural revelation, Romans 1, God speaking in both of these ways is sufficient
00:47:20.240 according to God. It is sufficient for man to be knowledgeable, knowledgeable enough to be morally
00:47:26.260 culpable and morally culpable enough to where if he fails in his moral responsibility, God is not
00:47:32.600 judging him harshly, but justly. And so in that, my point is to say Romans 1 and Romans 2, when you
00:47:40.040 add them together, it doesn't just give you the second table of the law. When John Locke and guys
00:47:46.680 like that. And Christians, when they want to define natural law, they want to say natural law 1.00
00:47:51.560 is what governs nations, right? Natural law is what governs nations. You know, the moral law, 0.64
00:47:58.640 all 10 commandments, the Decalogue, that's what governs Christians because it's written on their
00:48:03.140 heart. But natural law governs nations. And essentially, this is the argument, because I
00:48:08.600 don't want there to be any confusion for our listeners. The argument that people are making
00:48:12.400 is that natural law is the second table of the law, meaning natural law is commandments five
00:48:17.860 through 10. That's usually the way that I've heard people articulate. Natural law is, it regards how
00:48:23.480 we should love our neighbor as ourself, the second table of the Decalogue. But the first table of the
00:48:28.040 Decalogue, commandments one through four, have no other gods before me, do not make any graven images,
00:48:32.060 do not take the Lord's name in vain, and remember the Sabbath, keep it holy. This is divine law.
00:48:36.360 This is part of moral law, and that's written on the hearts of Christians, but not unbelievers.
00:48:41.320 But Romans 1 and 2, when you add them together, completely denies that notion.
00:48:47.100 Romans 2 speaks of the second table of the law and our duty towards our fellow man and
00:48:53.760 how our own conscience testifies against us when we do wrong to our fellow man.
00:48:58.000 But Romans 1 doesn't really talk about the second table of the law.
00:49:01.380 Romans 1, I think it includes that, but Romans 1, the explicit examples that the apostle
00:49:06.000 provides have to do with the first table of the law.
00:49:08.680 It has to do with idolatry. 0.90
00:49:09.920 all men non-christian men are without an excuse when it comes to commandment number one two three
00:49:15.680 and four um that that's what paul's saying that they have no excuse with because there's a god
00:49:21.580 in heaven who has revealed himself sufficiently so so when man worships the creation the created
00:49:28.140 things rather than the creator itself that's not uh that's not love for neighbor that's not the
00:49:32.880 second table of the law commandments five through ten no it's not yeah that's commandments one
00:49:37.160 through four. That's the first table of the law. Love the Lord your God with all your heart,
00:49:41.200 with all your soul, and with all your mind. And we could say that's a breach of the first
00:49:46.060 commandment. Idolatry is a breach of the second commandment because you're worshiping created
00:49:49.720 things, which are visible things rather than the invisible God. It's also a breach of the
00:49:54.080 third commandment. It is to take God's name in vain. It's to attribute deity to a created thing
00:50:01.480 that is not God. It's to trivialize the name of God. And I would also argue that even the Sabbath,
00:50:06.600 the fourth commandment, is built into natural revelation, Romans 1. There are pagans who would
00:50:11.680 agree that if you're in agriculture, you do well to work the land for six years and rest it on the
00:50:16.200 seventh. Why? Because God has built a one in seven principle into the fabric of creation itself. And
00:50:22.520 we believe that the Sabbath is not removed by Jesus, who is Lord of the Sabbath, but rather
00:50:26.420 renewed by Jesus from the last day to the first by virtue of his resurrection. And so my point is,
00:50:32.240 Romans 1 gives us the first table of the law. It's not quite this simple, but for the sake of
00:50:36.600 a generalization, Romans 1, natural revelation, God revealing himself by creation outside of man
00:50:44.400 gives us the first table of the law, how to love the Lord our God, commandments one through four.
00:50:49.020 Romans 2, natural law in the way that John Locke would use the phrase natural law,
00:50:55.160 revelation inside the conscience of man gives us the second table of the law, commandments five
00:51:00.020 through 10, how to love our neighbor as ourself. Romans 1 plus Romans 2 gives us moral law,
00:51:06.420 divine law, the full Decalogue. And all of this, Romans 1 and 2, is talking about pagans,
00:51:13.380 not Christians, pagans, saying this is the standard for them. So yeah, I think we should 0.95
00:51:20.360 have Christian nations and Christian governments that publicly identify and pledge their allegiance
00:51:27.580 to the Christian God, the triune God. We cannot have pluralism, which is just a euphemism for 0.81
00:51:33.320 polytheism, which is atheism. No, we cannot have public atheism as our pledge of allegiance as a
00:51:40.240 nation. We must pledge our allegiance in the civil realm publicly to the triune God because
00:51:45.960 he's revealed himself to all people, including non-believers. And this is his law for which he
00:51:52.720 governs the world, not just the Christian church, but the whole world. And that seems like a
00:51:57.860 thoroughly, clear, biblical argument. Anybody who's arguing a watered down, that's your
00:52:05.440 foolproof scotch theonomy that Christians should be drinking. But then you get scotch watered down, 0.93
00:52:12.220 or you get a seven up in scotch, you know, like something poured into it, you know, and that's
00:52:16.740 where you get John Locke and these guys. But to say that John Locke is the standard for robust
00:52:21.800 reform theological thought is i i don't i just don't understand how we get there you know so i
00:52:28.040 don't know do you have any comments or pushback or anything with that john yeah i don't have
00:52:33.160 pushback but i thought of as you were talking psalm 103 verse 18 or 19 that that um you know
00:52:40.360 god's thrown us in heaven and his kingdom rules over all um so it is right and good all men are
00:52:49.720 commanded to obey the Lord, to obey his law. And that, I, you know, I would link the low view of
00:53:03.160 the law and the low view of the scripture, in a sense, you called it kind of scotch and seven up,
00:53:09.680 I think that's kind of, you know, in the history of the West, that's what we see is more and more
00:53:17.180 7-Up going into the drink, right? As we've gone along, as we've gone along. And my argument and
00:53:23.160 position is that the spout of 7-Up was set up back during the Greek revival, when this view
00:53:34.480 of the scripture and this view of man's reason as autonomous and having authority, his five senses
00:53:45.360 and reason that that view was set up and was inherited down the way. It was inherited by
00:53:53.620 the reformers. I like to say that the reformers, they dealt with the optimistic view of man that
00:54:01.460 came out of the Greek revival. They dealt with that optimistic view of man. It was rearing its
00:54:06.280 head in Roman Catholic salvific theology and putting man as the primary actor and mover in
00:54:15.260 his own salvation, sort of a works-based idea. And they dealt with and corrected very thoroughly
00:54:23.220 and wonderfully the view of the optimism about fallen man in the Reformation
00:54:31.260 uh salvifically right in terms of personal salvation they dealt with it but they they
00:54:39.120 have not yet the church has not yet dealt with the implications of this optimistic view of man
00:54:47.140 with respect to it respect where and to civil government um you know i like to say the
00:54:56.180 discipling his church. In the first thousand years, we nailed down the doctrines of God.
00:55:06.180 In the second thousand years, we nailed down the truths of grace and soteriology. And then who
00:55:12.340 knows what will be in the third thousand years. But, you know, the Lord is teaching his people,
00:55:18.140 And what we get to see from the last thousand years of history is the beauty and wonder of the doctrines of grace formulated in the Reformation.
00:55:28.400 But we are today getting the fruit of view of academics and in our universities today, which are cultural thought leaders of great authority in our society and as well as in civil government. 0.95
00:55:41.960 Those are both places where Christians have been very quiet and progressively quiet over the last three or four hundred years. 0.92
00:55:51.960 years. And I think they have not to stand, apologetic does, to stand on the truth of 1.00
00:56:05.060 our academic disciplines, as well as our starting point for authority in the civil realm. And
00:56:17.000 And it's not an arbitrary type fidelity to Scripture.
00:56:25.640 You know, it's part of the beauty of his apology and all human thought with the God of the Bible.
00:56:32.320 Apart from the God of the Bible as your initial premise for all human thought, nothing will make sense. 0.67
00:56:40.540 Nothing can ultimately make sense in terms of understanding what the world is like and why we're here and meaning, you know, people use words, unbelievers, they will say things and I'll ask them, well, you know, why do you believe that murder is wrong? 0.79
00:56:59.220 Why do you believe that rape is wrong? And so forth. And they'll say they'll give various reasons.
00:57:05.720 You know, well, everybody knows that everybody. What are you, a Nazi? You know, some kind of weird guy.
00:57:09.780 It's like, no, I'm not a weird guy. You just told me what you believed.
00:57:13.120 And I'm asking why you believe it. And what Van Til's apologetic does is it peels that onion for the unbeliever all the way back to his initial basis of belief, his initial what what authorizes him to believe something. 0.58
00:57:28.640 And the unbeliever always will not have any ultimate basis for his own belief other than he thinks so.
00:57:38.320 And we as Christians over the last thousand years have allowed ourselves to move into that way of thinking where we don't start with the God of the Bible and the truth of what the scriptures teach. 0.94
00:57:54.160 we allow ourselves instead to start with the Bible might be true and it might not be true.
00:58:00.500 Van Til, I like, he used to say that you could take a Greek philosopher and he could stand there
00:58:05.980 and be an eyewitness to the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. Stand there and watch the
00:58:12.220 whole thing. And then he rises from the dead and he sees him ascend into heaven. And the Christian
00:58:17.560 turns to the Greek philosopher and says, see, I told you that he was the son of God. And this
00:58:22.880 proves it. And the Greek philosopher would say, well, that's really interesting. That's a new
00:58:28.160 human potentiality that I was unaware of, right? I didn't know that humans could, I didn't know
00:58:33.820 that humans could rise from the dead. Maybe I can rise from the dead. But this business about
00:58:39.820 Jesus being the son of God is absolute nonsense, right? And so, the idea that we're going to start
00:58:46.660 our academics or our government or whatever with the idea that the God of Bible might or not might 1.00
00:58:52.860 not be true, there's always a door out of that room for the unbeliever, always, right? I don't 1.00
00:58:58.040 care if you stand there and witness the resurrection. So, if that's the basis of our
00:59:02.480 authority, if we're coming from the direction that our senses, five senses and logic, like the Greeks
00:59:08.680 and like Aquinas, if that's the basis of our authority to disciple the nations, we're in big
00:59:14.520 trouble, right? Instead, Scripture itself teaches us that His Word is what is living and active,
00:59:21.240 dividing soul and spirit, joint and marrow. You know, throughout the whole course of Scripture,
00:59:26.460 it's that image of the sword. It is God's living and active word that comes out of Jesus's mouth,
00:59:33.140 right? And that governs and that does His work. So, I think that you were alluding and describing
00:59:42.360 the extent of God's law and that all men are under God's law, all Ten Commandments, right?
00:59:52.540 But we've lost that over time as we've begun to think, maybe not in personal salvation,
01:00:00.160 because we got that. We got that nailed down. But beyond that, whether, you know, academics,
01:00:05.540 government, et cetera, culture, we've lost or we have learned to think like unbelievers in a very 0.99
01:00:14.740 large country. And one of the amazing things about Van Til, I remember reading his actual books for 0.91
01:00:20.940 the first time myself. I had read Rush Tooney's book about Van Til first. That was my introduction
01:00:27.080 to him. But as I was reading Christian apologetics and his systematic theology, the thing that struck
01:00:32.920 me. It was kind of like a surreal sort of a thing. It was a mind shift, and it felt really radical.
01:00:38.320 It kept striking me that again and again and again, he just kept assuming that what God said
01:00:46.380 in the Bible was actually true. And he kept rigorously reasoning from that basis to this
01:00:52.800 area, to this area, to this area. And it really, I mean, it was a mental process. I felt like I was
01:00:59.160 being deprogrammed uh as i was reading uh van till and and and and there was joy you know that
01:01:06.260 began to come to me uh you know as i as i read more and more of it uh because it's beautiful
01:01:11.980 it's wonderful christ really is the king of kings he is the lord of lords uh his throne is in heaven
01:01:17.840 but his kingdom rules overall like it says in 103 amen amen brother um yeah people always say you
01:01:25.100 know well jesus said my kingdom is not of this world and i would say yes and amen his kingdom
01:01:28.820 is not of this world, but his kingdom is most certainly in this world. The way that he rules
01:01:35.060 his kingdom is not the way that man, tyrannical man with his faulty reason and sin would rule the
01:01:43.860 world. So Jesus, his kingdom is not of this world. It is of a different nature, but it is in this
01:01:50.020 world. It is not a mere spiritual, ethereal, heavenly kingdom. Jesus, God so loved the world
01:01:57.420 and the world is not going to literally dissolve like snow. God is redeeming and restoring all
01:02:03.060 things in the beloved, in Christ Jesus. And he has set his holy one, his anointed one,
01:02:09.660 he has set him on Zion, on Mount Zion. And the nations rage and they try to break the bonds
01:02:16.680 apart. They try to achieve autonomy, but theonomy is inescapable. And the reality is that everyone
01:02:24.540 is a theonomist. Everybody believes in theos, namos, law. The question is just which God?
01:02:31.840 Is it the God of the Bible, his law? Or is it demos, man as God and their law? Or is it
01:02:38.720 some other God? But there's always a God. Every culture, cultists, worship, every culture,
01:02:44.920 every nation has a God. And that God has a standard of morality. And that morality is
01:02:51.160 legislated through the laws of that nation. All legislation is moral. Neutrality is a myth. And so
01:02:57.720 these are just, I think a lot of Christians are hopping on the post-millennial theonomic train
01:03:03.100 right now, because I think the last two years in terms of God's providence has just opened a lot
01:03:10.740 of eyes, including my own, to the inevitable, inescapable reality of post-millennialism and
01:03:18.820 theonomy, that we're going to have to wrestle with these realities and do something about it.
01:03:25.380 The whole idea of it's not whether, but which, that principle right there has been, I think,
01:03:32.860 one of the clearest lessons over the last two years. It's like, well, I don't want Christendom,
01:03:37.720 you know, I don't want Spanish crusades. And I've been telling people, Christendom on its worst day 1.00
01:03:42.660 can't come close to putting up the number of casualties that secular humanism has.
01:03:46.920 we've been murdering a million children annually for the last half century in this nation i i i
01:03:53.780 think it's i think it's time um to put the final nail in the coffin of secular humanism secular
01:03:59.760 humanism um has uh has been horribly destructive um and so we look at world you know look at these
01:04:08.960 uh these the anecdotical evidence of you know something that happened under constantine or
01:04:14.320 something that happened you know like maybe strict sabbatarian laws with the puritans and
01:04:19.080 you know or these you know like we don't want that do we it's like i don't know do do we want uh 0.99
01:04:25.120 do we want doctors cutting off uh the forearms of 15 year old girls to use it as a as a penis 0.98
01:04:32.080 do we want that yeah i mean it's just it's not whether but which there will be a god there will 0.99
01:04:37.580 be a law. And it's going to be moral. There is no neutrality. And so basically the Christian
01:04:47.620 guy who's a theonomist is just saying, yeah, I think God's law is better. The last thing that
01:04:54.740 I wanted to mention, because I thought it was really good what you said about just the first
01:04:58.920 thousand years. Postmillennialism has helped me so much to just pan out and get a 30,000 foot view.
01:05:04.580 So the first thousand years doctrine of God, and I would maybe even add to that, you know, a doctrine of the word and the doctrine of God, you know, inherent inerrancy of scripture and then theology proper and our view of the Trinity and the hypostatic union, like the things that you were talking about, how can God be three persons and one God, one in essence?
01:05:22.900 And then the second member of the Trinity having two natures that are not severed or not divorced, but also no mixture.
01:05:30.740 We just take that for granted.
01:05:32.840 But that took some serious theological work and approximately a thousand years to nail down.
01:05:39.920 And then the last thousand years, you're absolutely right.
01:05:42.160 I mean, we've been, I would say, just the last 20, 30 years, we've seen this rise in reformed soteriology, the doctrines of grace.
01:05:50.780 And I think that in the province of God, that makes sense, you know, in the 500th year anniversary,
01:05:55.680 you know, of Luther and the Reformation.
01:05:57.800 And it's kind of like where it feels like the last 20, 30 years with guys like Paul
01:06:02.200 Washer and MacArthur, you know, and it feels like, you know, in Sproul, like we were kind
01:06:06.660 of rounding out that second millennium of church history in terms of soteriology.
01:06:11.800 So it's like you've got your doctrine of God, doctrine of the word, and you've got
01:06:15.480 your doctrine of salvation.
01:06:17.480 But we really haven't.
01:06:19.120 there's been some some work done guys the scottish reformers protestant resistance theory john knox
01:06:26.720 some of the writings of the puritans it's not like no work has been done on these things
01:06:32.160 but but we really are just stepping into moving from doctrine of god doctrine of the word doctrine
01:06:38.560 of soteriology to adoption of ethics that doctrine of civil government adoption of academics and
01:06:45.680 that's not crazy. You know, it's like, all this sounds crazy and people get squirmish. They're
01:06:51.140 like, there's, there's, this is novel. This is new. Anything new, you know, has, has the potential
01:06:56.220 of being heresy. Um, but I think that, I think that, that, uh, reaction comes from someone who
01:07:02.480 their presupposition, they may not even consciously be aware of it, but their presupposition
01:07:06.620 is that Jesus is going to return in about 15 minutes. That's right. And the world is supposed
01:07:12.060 to get worse until he does. So there's two things. Jesus is returning soon, relatively soon. And
01:07:20.420 he has ordained that things will get worse until he comes. So if that's your mindset, then you
01:07:27.980 don't even, you hear someone saying like, yeah, I think we're still in the early church and that
01:07:34.520 we may have another 10,000 years and it's going to take another thousand. It took a thousand years
01:07:38.500 to iron this out. It's going to take another thousand years to iron that out. We're just
01:07:42.000 getting started. And that just sounds completely foreign to somebody who doesn't have a post
01:07:49.020 millennial optimistic outlook on, on the world. Jesus actually winning the world, saving the
01:07:55.280 world, not universalism, each and every individual being regenerate, but, but that Jesus kingdom
01:08:00.260 of the increase of his kingdom, there will be no end. And that, that he all authority on earth
01:08:05.900 and in heaven, that this stone cut by no human hand is going to crush the kingdoms of this world
01:08:13.320 and then grow into a mountain that fills the earth, a mustard seed that's going to grow into
01:08:17.840 a tree. That kind of, and it all really starts even back with Genesis. Post-millennialism,
01:08:24.080 it's like 1 Corinthians 15, and then understanding partial preterism and reading
01:08:29.900 revelation and light of that, you know, these kinds of texts, uh, second Timothy chapter three,
01:08:34.960 uh, Jonathan Jambres, you know, these men, they will not get very far. Their folly will be plain
01:08:39.760 to all. So their people will go from bad to worse, but they won't be successful. These, 0.50
01:08:44.100 these texts were vital, but, but it's funny, like, as I, as I really studied the scripture,
01:08:49.320 um, my post-millennial eschatology starts all the way with Genesis one. How does, what is the nature
01:08:54.720 of God. How does God work in the world? What's God's MO? You know, like with creation, God created
01:09:01.220 everything cataclysmically and suddenly. No, he did it in a process. Yes, six literal days. I'm
01:09:07.760 not a heretic, so I believe in, you know, six literal 24-hour days, but it still was a process.
01:09:12.800 God didn't just speak one word. He spoke 10 words over six days. And in the same way, God,
01:09:18.240 through a process in creation, doesn't it, you know, or do you think of, so creation is a process.
01:09:24.480 sanctification god doesn't immediately sanctify us he immediately justifies but
01:09:28.840 sanctification is a process and so then to think of eschatology as a process that god is working
01:09:34.520 in the world building towards some glorious end um dispensational premillennialism is this idea
01:09:41.160 of just this cataclysmic sudden boom jesus wins um and we're saying no no how did god create the
01:09:49.500 world how does god sanctify the individual how does christ build his church uh that's the same
01:09:53.960 way that God is saving the world and restoring the world. And so we're just being consistent
01:09:58.280 with the nature of God all the way from Genesis. We're not just looking at Revelation in isolation,
01:10:03.440 but we're starting with Genesis all the way to Revelation. And when you have that post-millennial
01:10:08.400 framework, instead of things must get worse and Jesus is coming soon, it's things will get better
01:10:16.040 and Jesus may tarry for a few thousand years. Then the kind of language that we've been using
01:10:22.900 in this episode about, yeah, we knocked out three doctrines in 2000 years and that's okay.
01:10:28.980 We're right on track. Then it doesn't sound so crazy so far. And so anyways, I want to thank
01:10:34.200 you for coming on the show. Any final thoughts that you want to share? Well, in response to what
01:10:39.360 you were just sharing there, Joel, if I could, the idea that if a young person is in a math class
01:10:46.280 and the goal is to learn math, you know, what should they expect that the teacher is going to
01:10:52.380 give to them? Well, they're going to give them math problems. And if the church, if Jesus is
01:10:58.680 building his church and God is discipling his people toward maturity and the full measure of
01:11:04.380 Christ, like it says in Ephesians 4, then there are going to be problems. You know, people say,
01:11:09.120 well, what about this in the Middle Ages? What about this abuse of power? Well, God is training
01:11:14.220 and teaching his people. You're not going to get every math problem right necessarily on the first
01:11:18.040 try, but it is a process toward maturity that God is discipling His people toward. And I guess
01:11:27.500 one closing thought there that I'll share is Psalm 2 talks about that the rulers of this world want
01:11:36.120 to break off God's chains, the chains of His law, and they're warned. Kiss the sun, lest you be
01:11:41.400 angry, and you perish in the way. God judges. And I don't know if it's a coincidence. It's the
01:11:47.460 second psalm. The second to the last psalm is Psalm 149. And if you put those two together,
01:11:54.260 it's amazing the picture that Psalm 149, there's a picture of the saints of God, the people of God,
01:12:01.740 with the high praises of God in their mouth and the two-edged sword in their hand. And it says
01:12:08.940 that it is there in glory of all God's people to put the chains back on the rulers and the nobles
01:12:17.360 of this world. It's a beautiful picture of, you know, because a lot of times people will say,
01:12:23.000 well, that's going to be Jesus, but that's not us, right? We're not Jesus. And Psalm 149 very
01:12:28.860 clearly teaches that when Jesus said, all authority is mine, therefore you go and disciple
01:12:35.880 the nations, that he was involving us in the discipling of the nations and calling all men
01:12:42.960 to obedience in that beautiful post-millennial vision.
01:12:47.640 Yeah.
01:12:47.960 Amen.
01:12:48.620 Thanks so much for coming on the show.
01:12:50.140 And I hope that our listeners feel encouraged that Christ wins.
01:12:53.660 And the reality is, you know, to be fair, I don't want a straw man in the argument.
01:12:57.560 Every eschatology says that Christ wins.
01:13:00.100 The question is how.
01:13:01.460 The post-millennial says that Christ wins through the church.
01:13:05.420 The pre-millennial says that Christ wins despite a losing church.
01:13:09.780 So both believe that Christ wins, to be fair.
01:13:12.460 But what we're specifically saying is that Christ wins through us.
01:13:16.840 And we believe that.
01:13:18.380 And I believe that that is a hopeful and more importantly, a biblical message.
01:13:22.680 So thanks, John, for coming on the show.
01:13:24.200 God bless you.
01:13:25.420 You bet.
01:13:25.820 God bless you, Joel.
01:13:26.800 Thanks so much for listening.
01:13:27.800 But real quick, before you go, do us a small favor, take a moment, and leave us a five-star
01:13:33.300 review if you enjoyed the show.
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01:13:40.520 to as many people as possible.
01:13:42.680 Thanks so much.