In this episode of Theology Applied, Pastor Joel Webber sits down with his good friend, Dr. Jared Longshore, a Presbyterian, Westminster Affirming Pastor, to talk about the growing unity between Reformed Baptist and Reformed Presbyterian brothers and sisters in the Lord. They discuss the need for God's standard to be enforced by the civil magistrate in our civil affairs as a society, theonomy, and the differences in our views of the covenants.
00:11:11.280It is a one-way stream and I am 1689, but it's a one-way stream and the Presbyterians
00:11:16.580are upstream, so to speak, to where it's like, okay, we hold this position and we can
00:11:21.380accommodate that and and it but it doesn't which is why you have you know like someone like mark
00:11:26.100dever that won't serve lig and duncan the lord's supper in his service um you know it because of
00:11:30.920his baptist you know what i mean like that's a commonly known position yeah yeah that's the that
00:11:37.220is the deal and both people are being consistent in their their outflows of the theological
00:11:42.580structures you know so right and uh man this is like when it uh this was a weird uh it was a
00:11:50.300personal anecdote but you know i was raised in a southern baptist church and i said in my follow-up
00:11:57.680you know look guys not only was i baptist like 10 minutes ago but i was um i used to be an american
00:12:05.360like the american baptist variety not the second london covenantal variety i said i still get a
00:12:12.020pancreas to do an altar call sometime in the bed. I think everyone loves this American Baptist
00:12:21.780culture. Everybody's got an American Baptist grandmother. And there's so many beautiful
00:12:30.460things about it. Gospel straight up the middle things about it. And when the shift happened,
00:12:37.360And, you know, the covenantal catastrophe of things shifting around, it was weird because it was more, it was this weird opening up of, like, I love my Baptist brothers just as much as I did when I was a Baptist, if not more.
00:13:02.340and appreciate their consistency and appreciate the fight.
00:13:08.000So that was a weird shift when it happens.
00:13:12.240And some of it is just looking at Baptist identity,
00:13:15.840even as, you know, they're sons of the Separatist Puritans.0.93
00:13:20.000That's what the real Reformed Baptists are.0.86
00:13:22.820And, you know, you have this fight in Baptist world0.76
00:13:24.560between the Anabaptists of the Reformation
00:13:27.220and then the sons of the Puritans in England
00:13:57.900And they do this in order to keep a pure church, regenerate church membership.
00:14:02.620And I think I read somewhere, this is early 1600s, when you have the first Reformed Baptist church, you might say, particular Baptist church there in England.
00:14:12.920But I think I read somewhere that Jeremiah Burroughs, the Puritan Jeremiah Burroughs, Peter Baptist, blessed those who went to do it.
00:14:22.900I can't remember where, but I remember just coming across it at some point.
00:14:25.440And I thought, well, that's an awesome moment of unity.
00:14:27.900And there's still a ton of community, but the impulse of that, of the Reformed Baptists really is like, hey, we can't baptize these infants because we're bringing them into the church.0.91
00:14:38.340And if we bring unregenerate people into the church, we're going to pollute the church.0.95
00:14:42.400And the church is the pillar and buttress of the truth.
00:14:47.860And so to be in that camp and think that way, I understand what Reformed Baptist brothers that know what they're thinking about, how they would think about what happened when I came.
00:15:01.600like oh you just stepped from the separatist puritan position um to more of a puritan within
00:15:09.920the church tradition and that feels like a um a corruption of the church which is eventually going
00:15:17.920to erode the gospel being preached on earth but it's weird because when you make that shift
00:18:40.120But they're right to point out that there's a difference between the ministry out here in Moscow and what you're getting kind of by and large in American Presbyterianism.
00:18:53.820so um i i've talked to one um one scottish presbyterian which is always dangerous because
00:19:03.980the accent immediately convinces you that they're right doesn't matter what they say
00:19:08.720you know just like you're just dead you're just in trouble um it was very interesting in this
00:19:14.100this um older older brother uh great um theologian all that kind of stuff would actually
00:19:22.300said um he said oh jared the american despedidians have lost their heritage and i was like oh boy so
00:19:33.900um it was interesting for him across the pond to to say um you had a whole bunch of stuff with the
00:19:42.220fv you know let's talk about the fv stuff sure he had a whole bunch of stuff um but it was interesting
00:19:47.260that he said you know though there were certain people in that fb movement he said that we're
00:19:53.820really um pursuing something good and right so i thought that was fascinating it's still
00:20:00.640you know it's still the third rail right now and or at least was i don't know where really
00:20:05.960the conversation lies at the moment but it was very clear to me what do you what do you mean
00:20:10.880the third rail oh the third rail means like like a it's like a lightning rod it's like you touch
00:20:15.820you're right right right it's the dirty word you can throw out there right you know um it would be0.91
00:20:21.340like saying hey all baptists are trans oh you guys oh you guys if you go first you're gonna go out
00:20:28.280feed that kind of thing right um but that was very interesting to me to go okay there was a
00:20:33.840on the covenantal level there was some um there were there are some clear differences between
00:20:41.380kind of a robust historic uh position and the way a lot of people are thinking about it now
00:20:48.220it was interesting like on on this would be an interesting point i was reading um uh it's john
00:20:54.980ball john i found john ball and john owen both talk this way um and you know i want to double
00:21:03.140check but almost positive say i'm 90 that they talk this way about cain being in the covenant
00:21:10.380of grace and you're like whoa okay right so you come from a uh from a reformed baptist position
00:21:19.280especially the 1689 federalist position it's going to talk about the covenant of grace revealed and
00:21:23.420inaugurated right not administered not administered in the old and not administered in abraham
00:21:28.700but then you find these these older presbyterians and i side note you find a lot of nuance in the
00:21:37.480covenantal conversation if you go back and look at the kind of original covenant theologians
00:21:42.520and you find you find more nuance back then than you do now and if you start to talk with nuance
00:21:49.960now and like in our context you can get in big trouble in a hurry like it's a very tense kind
00:21:56.160of conversation people are quick to say you know that you're going to be heretic or you're moving
00:22:01.040toward heresy and i find when i read the older stuff no the guys are articulating it different
00:22:05.540Wex. Nevertheless, that idea that Cain himself was in the Covenant of Grace,
00:22:11.280signaling that not only was the Covenant of Grace revealed back there in Genesis 3.15,
00:22:19.860not only revealed to Adam, but it was actually made with Adam, such that you had the physical
00:22:25.720church. I think I read Owen recently saying, like, before Cain's rebellion was the time when
00:22:31.620the church was truly catholic or truly visible and saying that every like all of humanity was in
00:22:37.660it you're saying john owen said that yeah and that's a pretty fascinating idea just finding
00:22:44.240any way to talk and think like whoa i mean so the whole all humanity was in the church you know
00:22:49.760before cain and then cain's uh exile is a further exile uh so it's a proto excommunication kind of
00:22:57.180that's what's going on with him like the line of like genesis chapter 10 the line of seth and the
00:23:01.900line of king city of man going off and this separate shoot yeah yeah um yeah you got an
00:23:10.360interesting connection there i'm just thinking about his further exile when he wanders the earth
00:23:13.740would be the example of him being exiled from the covenant community um so at any rate that's
00:23:20.700that's some of the interesting thinking that's going on okay i'm there's historic ways of
00:23:26.560thinking about this that's not just saying um that everything started with abraham um and so
00:23:34.440you're you're going to find some differences going on there that are going to inform the way that
00:23:38.440people are thinking about culture the way that people think about various things right i i
00:23:44.980remember having a conversation with ad robles about federal vision stuff and kind of going back
00:23:50.620a little bit five minutes in our conversation like i think you know both of us were able to
00:23:55.500recognize he wouldn't adhere to federal vision. As far as I can tell, I can't, you know, even if I
00:24:00.920wanted to, which I don't, but consistently as a Baptist, but we both were able to recognize,
00:24:06.800I think that like what you said is true, the good intentions, it seems like, and it kind of goes
00:24:11.380back to the whole Baptists are trans, but what we meant was American Baptists and individualism and
00:24:16.220those kinds of things. It seems like, you know, what a lot of these guys were trying to do, for
00:24:20.580one, there's a spectrum within the federal vision guys, you know, Peter Lightheart and Doug wouldn't
00:24:25.040wouldn't see eye to eye on exactly on some of those things. But, um, but it seems like it was
00:24:29.500trying to set up a hedge of protection against a bunch of people who had no assurance of salvation
00:24:33.700that America had become American Christianity had become so in your, you know, your own internal
00:24:42.120identity and, and how much sincerity did I have and the size of our faith rather than the object
00:24:48.400of our faith and personal decision, decisionism, revivalism, these kinds of things and atomistic,
00:24:54.340you know, and, um, such a, um, just no, no view of covenant that I, it was kind of like trying
00:25:01.860to set up some kind of metric, um, for helping people to not spend their entire Christian life
00:25:07.840thinking that they were going to hell. Like there's, there's a standard, there's a metric
00:25:11.540for determining, um, do I belong to Christ or do I know, you know? And, um, and so I think a lot of
00:25:18.060it was, you know, and so I find myself not using the same standards, but I find myself often as a
00:25:25.120Baptist, you know, 1689 pastor. I mean, the bulk I feel like of pastoral counsel is in the realm of
00:25:31.780assurance of salvation. Like at some ways, shape or form, that's what it just about always comes to
00:25:36.900is, you know, wanting to assure a person rightly that they actually have union with Christ and
00:25:46.600that they're doubting that and shoring them up in the gospel, um, to then motivate them in
00:25:52.260repentance and in obedience. And so, um, so to be able to say like, here are some, some objective
00:25:59.420outward, not just inward subjective feelings, but outward signs and seals that a person actually
00:26:06.540belongs to Christ. I think that was a lot of the incentive that I've been able in the little
00:26:11.420brief study and that I've done with looking back on some of the federal vision stuff. I think
00:26:16.540it's, it's likened to that debate with, you know, Doug Wilson and James White, you know, over a Roman
00:26:22.780Catholic baptism. It's just trying to say like, you know, um, does it, does, does the legitimacy,
00:26:29.880the validity of a baptism rest on, on, on that church's faithfulness to the gospel and its
00:26:36.900preaching of the gospel? Uh, the, you know, I mean, because there are, you know, and it's ironically
00:26:42.800Catholics do this, but like there, there have been huge moments in church history where, um,0.99
00:26:48.900an entire, you know, an entire sector of individuals all of a sudden, uh, lose every
00:26:54.140ounce of assurance because this priest baptized this person and this person and this person,
00:26:59.060and then ordained this other priest and he baptized this person. But it turns out that
00:27:03.060this priest, when he was first ordained, you work up the chain. And when this guy, uh, was first
00:27:08.580ordained, they didn't say the words right in his ordination and they missed, missed a word. And so
00:27:12.820his ordination is not valid, which means everyone that he ordained is not, uh, have a valid ordination
00:27:17.980and everyone they baptize therefore does not have a, like, and it, you know, you know, and so trying
00:27:22.880to like how, how much of the legitimacy of, of our baptism and more importantly, our faith, uh,
00:27:29.520have to do with, um, with sincerity and some of these inward things versus these outward objective,
00:27:35.820uh signs and seals um and i feel like that's what it was they were trying to accomplish
00:27:42.120there's a lot of a lack of assurance going on um in the evangelical church today you have some of
00:27:47.640that you have presumption too so you have both of the things operating but the um the the lack
00:27:54.020of assurance thing is a problem and it's interestingly connected to the individualism
00:27:57.340conversation because the what is a person doing that's that's lacking assurance say uh without
00:28:03.160without warrant like they're just it's not like this person is involved in grievous sin
00:28:07.560um but say this person's just thinking you know how can i know that i know that i know
00:28:12.640um i remember hearing like so john piper back in the day say you know don't look in like you can't
00:28:18.540don't there's no center to that onion memory of this great line that's and that's true yeah i
00:28:23.780think it's rutherford for every one look to self take 10 looks to christ so you have you have some
00:28:29.100of that going on but with the with the lack of assurance it's um well it's just kind of me it's
00:28:36.520just i need to i need to look entirely to myself um and it's a it's a selfie kind of thing well
00:28:42.880no you need to look to god and then you need to love the brothers right um right it is it's by
00:28:49.820your fruit you don't know them um so but that's that's a corporate thing like who are my brothers
00:28:56.200Well, love them, care for them. And there's going to be evidence in that. And this is where the covenantal idea comes in again, where we know, all right, I know who my brothers are and I'm going to, I'm going to love them. I'm going to serve them. And as I do, that's going to, that's going to bear fruit.
00:29:13.600I mentioned this in my follow-up to the cross-politic episode, that I find this happening with all of the social justice stuff.
00:29:26.220So you have these intersectional, you not only have intersectional victim identities, they're intersectional corporate victim identities, right?
00:29:38.100so it's not just something that a person's claiming like i am white or i'm black white's
00:29:42.980not a not one of the victim categories of course i'm black i'm i'm uh whatever lady female gay0.97
00:29:51.100all of that but you're when you buy into one of them trans bad you're bad is trans0.80
00:29:57.060that's a victim category now there are the oppressors that's right absolutely0.95
00:30:06.200Yes. I remember suffering repression. I remember. I still have that memory.
00:30:18.280When somebody claims one of these, my point is they're actually buying into the corporate deal.
00:30:25.560And I think that this is because people are, I wrote something like they're lonely, isolationist, individual expressionists.
00:30:34.400and they want a community they want like a visible community a corporate identity and the
00:30:40.900beauty is we have all of that we covenant christians christians are thinking covenantally
00:30:46.060have that you say well there's your brother um there he's baptized in the triune name and he's
00:30:50.880at the lord's table with you he's in your church like there he is and you have this you have this
00:30:56.540clear line drawn and you you are a part of these people now and i that will help um with the
00:31:04.060person like they don't just have to it's not just a matter of personal soul searching within one's
00:31:08.660own own life look at your fruit you know test yourself to see if you're in the faith amen um
00:31:14.800look at look at the works you're doing but then look around at the brothers and sisters that
00:31:18.720you're with these are your covenant people are you with the covenant people yeah you're with
00:31:22.820the covenant people um and that that corporate identity thing will would leave no room for these
00:31:30.060ridiculous victim identity statuses we put all of the the ones that are real would be put in their
00:31:35.780appropriate place like you your ethnicity is a real kind of thing the ones that don't even exist0.96
00:31:41.880like being trans is not even a thing and it would eradicate those as well as we recover the0.97
00:31:49.140covenantal idea yeah agreed let's talk for a little bit about so you know this is my suspicion
00:31:57.300and I'm sure I'm wrong at some level, but it doesn't seem like you switched over solely because
00:32:04.760you wanted to baptize babies. I think if I had to guess, I think you would say, okay,
00:32:12.300but the covenantal issue is foundational. It may not be the tip of the spear, but it's the bedrock.
00:32:22.620It's the foundational thing that gave me the framework theologically for all these other
00:32:26.500things. But what I'm saying is, um, it doesn't just seem like that's, that's the difference
00:32:31.120between, uh, where you have been in the past in your ministry and where you are now. Um, it seems
00:32:38.000like it's, it's not just baptism, it's theonomy, it's post-millennialism. So it's, it's eschatology.
00:32:43.760It's all these different things. For instance, like just looking at some of the problems in
00:32:47.860the church, I think you would, you know, I think you recently wrote a blog where you said, um,
00:32:52.200yeah, I don't think that the chief and only problem in the church is pragmatism. I think
00:32:59.060it's a lot deeper that like the, your rhetoric has changed and it hasn't just changed on
00:33:03.840to baptize or to not baptize babies. It's, you know, your view, it seems like you've always
00:33:10.680been a guy who believes in, you know, in the use of the law of God, not just as a mirror to reveal
00:33:15.960our need for Christ, but as a lamp unto our feet. But even that has changed in terms of,
00:33:20.680Okay, which laws? And the civil magistrate's obligation to, what obligation do they have?
00:33:28.440Is there this John Locke natural law or is it divine law? So all those kinds of things have
00:33:34.220changed. And I feel like there's a lot of Baptists like myself who are not persuaded of
00:33:39.600pedo-baptism. We're not persuaded of the Westminster view of the covenants, but we are
00:33:43.840very much persuaded that when the enemy comes in like a flood, the Lord raises up a standard
00:33:49.300against him like that we need um we need god's law we need um we need a better standard um and
00:33:58.060there's a lot of guys too who are like flooding in with post-millennialism i i talk to baptists
00:34:03.520all the time like so which one says which one says that we get to fight and says that we we
00:34:08.800have a chance at winning the fight yeah that i believe that one right and they haven't sorted
00:34:14.380out their view of the covenants yet they you know what i mean they haven't sorted out their view of
00:34:18.460baptism, but they're just like, yeah, like I love some of these 1689 Baptist guys, but a lot of them
00:34:25.020are not willing. And so it's like, we've got all these, it's weird, like, because, because it's on
00:34:30.040the Presbyterian side too. And I know you would say, well, that, that, that Presbyterians being
00:34:33.520inconsistent, you know, with, with their covenant theology, but we've got plenty of radical too.
00:34:38.280We've got Westminster Escondido. That's not Baptist. That's Presbyterian. We have pietist
00:34:43.200Presbyterians on the Baptist side. We've got some, some rough and tumble fighting post-millennial0.99
00:34:48.320Baptist. And, and, and maybe we're being inconsistent. But, but we've got some Baptists0.65
00:34:54.480who are willing to fight we've, and we've got some Presbyterians who are absolutely not willing0.51
00:34:58.640to fight. But then on the Baptist side, we also have like this growing, well, like, like this
00:35:05.260growing pietistic reform Baptist expression of, and it seems like if you like trying, if you could
00:35:13.260only ask one question and try to determine, is this, is this Baptist a theonomic post-millennial
00:35:17.980baptist or are they more of a pietistic uh baptist like uh you you can ask them what they
00:35:23.300think about thomas aquinas and get down isn't the kingdom of god amazing yes so wonderful
00:35:30.680yeah different rooms right you were very interesting path there though because you
00:35:37.080are right that covenant is the thing all right so the difference between baptist and and paedo
00:35:43.060is covenant it really like um that's the thing in attendant to covenant is are some of these
00:35:53.460other things like everyone in american evangelicalism now is working through
00:36:00.360issues of standard um you know so the aquinas thing is interestingly a part of that conversation
00:36:06.500um yeah it absolutely because it comes down to sola scriptura aquinas is saying like no we need
00:36:12.600this extra thing. We need Plato's metaphysics and these kinds of, and then you, you bring those
00:36:17.340things in and, and it's like, it's this, I, and I'm not smart enough to get all of it, but you,
00:36:21.600you work down the line and, and that's where you get kind of like your John Lockean natural law.
00:36:27.060That's, that's, that's, that's basically like the, the, the foolproof scotch of divine law,
00:36:34.280the 10 commandments, moral law, but watered down and you get this, whereas I would see natural law
00:36:39.740moral law is synonymous, all 10 commandments written on the heart of man, you know, but that,
00:36:45.220but that's, but it's the Aquinas, it's not even, my concern isn't doctrine of God. And that sounds
00:36:51.100horrible. I care about theology proper and doctrine of God, but I don't, my, my, my concern,
00:36:56.160because I would agree with the doctrine of simplicity and I would agree with the Thomist
00:37:00.180on, on some of these things in terms of ad intra, you know, extra in terms of how God knows himself.
00:37:07.220And I think, you know, we don't know what was in the mind of God 15 minutes before he created the world.
00:37:12.740But I, I would call myself loosely, you know, a classical theism is what I would prescribe to my doctrine of God.
00:37:19.900But these same guys, my concern is these same guys doing this with the doctrine of God also happen to be some of the same guys who, when I announced that I'm going to be doing a conference on postmillennialism and theonomy with James White and Dr. Boot and Gary DeMar, these guys were real upset with me about that.
00:37:35.820the guys yeah um well i don't want to chase the theonomy and the aquinas train too hard but
00:37:43.840i might i will touch on that but the point i was making is oh you're right you kind of pointed out
00:37:49.100that people are really working through the eschatology thing the law thing the the church
00:37:54.700and the world thing christendom kind of thing um and so you have there's a lot of guys that are
00:37:59.460baptists that are that are working through all that i would want to underscore that you have
00:38:03.260this historically yeah reading murray's uh the puritan hope and um you know praise god there's
00:38:11.040a way you know you can be baptist and post-millennial and um not be convinced of
00:38:16.660paedo-baptism and not be convinced of paedo-covenant theology um that's happened and
00:38:22.120happens now and so that's that's a thing people should i i think there's great there's a there's
00:38:28.240a lot of unity that's happening around people this is this is where i want to go and i signaled
00:38:32.560this in my follow-up to cross-politic there are baptists and pedo-baptists that are thinking
00:38:36.960covenantally um which is good different covenantally but they're both thinking covenantally
00:38:41.480there are baptist pedo-baptists that are thinking either post-millennially or some kind of optimistic
00:38:47.000amillennialism and i think that's that's really good as well there are baptists and pedo-baptists
00:38:52.520that are saying um we're not talking about taking the the um the old testament judicial law and
00:39:01.080dropping it in cold turkey in a modern state it ended that that old testament judicial law
00:39:07.600was abrogated and ended with that with its own uh israelite old covenant administration
00:39:12.680i've said that a bunch of times i think people know that at least where i stand on that i think
00:39:17.360on that what we're saying is that god's law um is actually to form into shape how do we do law now
00:39:25.240we're to pay attention to that and we're even to pay attention to that old testament judicial law
00:39:29.280and see the wisdom of God in it, and then apply it.
00:39:32.900I think there's a lot of, in that mix of the theonomic conversation,
00:39:40.200my buddy Timon Klein here is doing all kinds,
00:39:43.600I mean, just wrote a piece against public atheism.
00:39:46.980Klein has written publicly against theonomy,
00:39:50.220and then has advocated very strongly for saying, like,
00:39:53.880essentially the christian um the christian faith christianity revealed the faith once
00:40:00.120for all delivered to the saints must inform uh any any civilization that's going to be just right
00:40:05.840good true and beautiful like this is this is plain and simple so you have these everyone's
00:40:13.060discovering these kinds of things right now and you referred to my yes those kind of things were
00:40:19.960going on um you know and i didn't i didn't see the connections that um i eventually saw but that
00:40:30.320was it's a very fascinating time to be in kind of reformed evangelical christendom right now
00:40:37.100given the cultural changes that are happening and the way people are starting to think about
00:40:42.420these things right and um i think there's a great amount of unity and i think that that will continue
00:40:48.700to be maintained and fostered, but I do find that you're going to have different approaches to
00:40:54.000dealing with the issue. Take the social justice stuff. I do think there are good and godly men
00:41:03.120that have checked the social justice stuff. They're not woke at all, but they're checking it
00:41:09.540mainly on individual rights and liberties principles. It's mainly the way that people
00:41:18.280are thinking about it and there's other people that are checking it um and saying well yes and
00:41:23.280amen to the fact that we are still individuals we're not denying that um but there's also um
00:41:29.760we're checking it more on the grounds of this is unjust there are corporate identities there's
00:41:37.000principles of restitution that kind of thing but we're checking this on the fact that you're either
00:41:42.020going to have um divine justice true justice or you're going to have man's justice social justice
00:41:49.540early justice they're cutting it along those lines and i think we need to we really need to
00:41:54.820move into that latter um part which is related to a number of the doctrines that you just mentioned
00:42:00.260yep i agree yeah just for our listeners when i say that i am theonomic that it's just like with
00:42:06.100any doctrine there's a wide spectrum of you know and i think people are bothered by the theonomy
00:42:11.300word, because they immediately equate a theonomist with somebody who is lockstep with Rush
00:42:19.640Duny, which by the way, I've been reading a lot of Rush Duny lately, and I think he's