Duncan, Ferguson, Godfrey, and Sproul: Questions and Answers #3

you got a lot of questions we probably won't get to the mall so let's get started we had a number of questions asked 30 40 times and I'm gonna try to front-load those one of them was this let me just read a representative question yeah this is regard to something dr. MacArthur said if I am to isolate my cells from sinners myself from sinners because bad company corrupts good morals how then and I'm am I to be the salt in light of the world how will I lead to others of Christ where do I draw the line one question said it doesn't make me a Pharisee if all I do is preach at people and don't mingle among them so who wants to kind of help people think through how to handle that looking by the way you are my default person group I was informed that last night I'm not sure whether dr. MacArthur meant that he would totally isolate himself or attempt to totally isolate himself from sinners but the point of Psalm 1 is that one does not find ones at home this would the people of this world those people who are not in union with Christ and so you're thinking you're living is derived from God's Word your place of at homeless is with God's people and though we are in the world the place where we feel at home is not with the world considered as a system and ethical system in opposition to God but we are at home with the people of God we're the outposts of heaven in this world and so when we find ourselves more at home with the world than we find ourselves at home with God's people then probably something is wrong now the question then is how do i how do i discern rightly are there things that jesus could do in terms of reaching out to people that i shouldn't do because he was sinned less than i am not sinful all right no i am not sinned less my wife's here so I can't try to pass that on I can say this Rick particularly during the time that I played a lot of golf and spent a lot of time club with the guys most of most of whom were not believers I would frequently you know get a lot of banter and you know I write my books in the men's grill room of the club and the guys that came in off the golf course and see me over there writing and let's say praise the Lord hallelujah you know and they just ripped me to death and and yet anytime they had a problem they would seek me out want to talk to me about it and then what I would get from them all the time was they say you know or see we feel like you're just one of the guys you're one of us you you don't seem to us to be like a preacher and and we're so comfortable around you that we feel like we can approach you about anything and all of that stuff and they were trying to heap praise on me but what they were telling me was I was way too much like them much too much much more than I should have been and I think that's what John was saying is that when we when we surround ourselves with the things of this world without that sinlessness as a shield it's so easy for us to embrace the things of this world that are lethal to us let's use it really had a lot of questions on this I do want to just explore it a little bit let's take that an extreme example Wow evangelism should we go into strip joints in order to evangelize people in that kind of business is there a problem with believe enough I think that's the kind of question people are asking though because they'll say well Jesus went in there or he didn't go in a strip joint but well but Jesus had dinner with with as he was saying the mafioso and he had I'm a married man if I were reclining a table and a woman wet my feet with perfume my wife might be distressed so what I should and so she should be wrecked the first week I was in Holland doing my graduate work the guys the other Americans who had been there before he took me on the quick tour of downtown Amsterdam at night they said you got to see this place and they're driving around through the outer sides for boardwalk district the you know the greatest red-light district in the world or the worst if you want to speak of it and I remember the first time I saw that I saw on a bridge over one of the canals a woman wearing a bonnet and a long dress talking to some of the women of the night and I said who is that and they said well she's from the legatus house from the Salvation Army and their mission is to reach out to these women who were lost and you know when I saw that I was so moved and I felt so full of compassion towards the women I thought what a what must her lives be like when I first saw that exercise in mass decadence my heart was moved to pity really was and I admired these women from the Salvation Army who were ministering to him then I was there for a long time and studying and my wife was with me and then she had to come home early because she was going to have our son you know she was ready to deliver and I was staying over there by myself and I was riding into the train or into school every day in the train and coming back and I would have to walk past the outer sighs former wall in order to get to the station and my wife has gone about a week and I noticed I had a different view of those women so by the end of six weeks I think what I did I took just enough money to get me into the city and back home so flee from that temptation I mean I just say wait a minute you know sometimes you have to tie yourself to the mast and I think that's what John was talking about you know it's like the old story the alcoholic who parked his horse in front of the bar the saloon everyday was just a matter of time before he walked in the door and we have to be aware of our own frailties at this point I think that was Johnson clearly it was just as I'm listening to you it strikes me that we tend to think in terms of obedience and disobedience but we don't think in terms of wisdom and folly very much and we're called to be wise in how we do things the another question that came up many times was if Jesus was able to be in our world in a sinless state well then was he really tempted in a meaningful sense and if he was not like us in that he was not capable of sin well then how can he really sympathize with us in what we go through I have to again I'll tell me to shut up right good.you but that was one of the tiny little points that I disagreed with my brother John MacArthur on you know when he went back to the old statements of Augustan on the passe Pocari and the non plus a non Pocari and all of that sort of stuff that describes the state of our souls before the fall and after the fall and we say that Adam before the fall had the passe Pocari and the pulsing non Pocari the ability to sin and/or the ability not to sin after the fall Agustin says those of us who are fallen have the non Paul saying non Pocari it's impossible for us not to sin in heaven we'll have the non passe Pocari the impossibility to sin and then the question of theologians fight about and even among reformed theologians is well what was Jesus condition and and John took the position that Jesus had the non passe Pocari I don't believe that I believe that as the new Adam that the touching his human nature Jesus Christ had to have the passe Pocari or the and the passe non Pocari the same way the first Adam did or he wasn't really the new Adam nor would his temptations and his triumph over those temptations be real I think that he was subject to every temptation but he just wasn't in the state of bondage to sin or in being enslaved sin well some argue well since the human nature was perfectly united to the divine nature that's what made it impossible for him to sin because the divine nature made it impossible but I think that borders on the setting view of the Incarnation so you would argue that Jesus was able to sit in his fully human nature yes but he overcame that because of his perfect holiness yes now it's got a panel but you all agree that Jesus was really tempted in every meaningful way that we are and in every type of internally not internally you know James tells us beware we said we're not tempted from outside but we're temptations arise from the flashes when Jesus didn't have any of that kind of stuff but he was exposed to genuine temptation i Rick let me take the answer a different direction okay yes I believe that Jesus was truly tempted I might answer the question a little bit differently but I think the significance of the of the issue about the nature of Jesus temptations to focus on is that Jesus certainly did not have concupiscence like we have we have a tendency to sin you now must define I'm defining it is that we do not have an internal tendency we have an internal tendency to sin Jesus did not have that internal tendency to sin that tendency to sin is sin itself it inclines to sin that is of sin but Rome says that has not sinned we say it inclines a sin you know and and it is sin and you already have a disposition to sin you're already a sinner and that is the hook that we have to guard against just like RC was talking about and we could we could give numerous examples of how we have to guard against that I think the interesting thing is to contemplate how Jesus in the world as a sinless man internally and externally would have been constantly 24/7 oppressed by the sinfulness of his environment if you had ever seen a situation of degradation and been overwhelmed by the experience of it and if you could realize Jesus in every waking conscious moment being assaulted by that sense of oppression even though there was no sin in him no inclination of sin in him you will never suggest that Jesus doesn't really understand you in your temptations when he experiences this grotesque oppression because of the degradation in the moral decadence of the world around him constantly assailing his soul so would you agree it's often explained this way that not only does Jesus know all that we know about temptation he knows much more about it because he never gives in and has it alleviated the way that we do would you agree with that statement and so Jesus is able to sympathize with us because he knows the pain as it were of temptation it's a helpful answer to people I'm realizing I have to ask dr. Ferguson direct questions to get them involved and so I'm now going to do that dr. Ferguson if God is simple and the Trinity and its attributes all console are all are all concentrated in one how does God the Father pour his wrath on God the son on the cross you follow the question yes I follow the question I actually thought I didn't have a microphone so I was sitting up here quite happily and then then dear ligand who's about twice as intelligent as I had said you're sitting on up I'm glad we heard nothing from you the thing I admire about him is his discernment I asked me the question again yes it's a simple question if God is simple and the Trinity and it and its attributes are all concentrated in one how does God and we had a number of questions wrestling with this from one angle or another how does God the Father pour his wrath on God the Sun on the cross other questions said what is going on with the Trinity right while Jesus is forsaken and what does the question goes on and says I've heard Archie preach that the reason darkness falls on the crucifixion is because God the Father turns his back on God the Son how is that possible if God is simple and so forth hey just hold on to me in case I lose the point here because there are several things in this question the first thing let me just done pick the first thing and that's the use of the word wrath strictly speaking wrath is not an attribute of God for something to be an attribute of God technically it has got to be something that God exercises before all worlds and he does not exercise Roth before all worlds so it would be more appropriate to say that the wrath of God is is like a side effect as Ligon actually he actually said this very explicitly in his address on Thursday it seems last year but it was only Thursday night but but the wrath of God is really the manifestation of the holiness of God in the context of the sinfulness of man so so within the Trinitarian fellowship that holiness is expressed among the members of the Trinity but not wrath so that that's the first layer I think we've got to unpack the second layer that we can unpack is this that with respect to the father and the son that holiness is expressed in an ongoing way you know we are all on the platform Calvinists and we all I imagine believe the so-called extra Calvinists acum that even while he was in the manger that the Sun was in the bosom of the Father and he was upholding the universe so when he was on the cross the interchange of holy disposition an attitude from father to son was exercised in an ongoing way that holiness could not have been expressed in the form of Roth unless the son had assumed our humanity and so the wrath of God was poured out on the cross is not Roth directed to the deity of Christ it's rather directed to Christ as mediator Christ as God man time out there he going to my lecture again I only got one more lecture okay you guys keep one together so that when he sweaty just ignore him from Sunday look after grandpa here when when he's on the cross in many of these things we are we are we are on a knife edge between orthodoxy and heresy because we've no analogy to this but when he's on the cross as the son of god the god man having assumed our human nature and now bearing our sin it's as the person of the son of god who has assumed our human nature that he bears our judgment so you're gonna take it and sounds way with why the god man is this your address he could he was a fit recipient of God's wrath on our sins because he was man but he could endure it because he was God is that partly what you're saying it goes on to say again it's the whole issue of my God my God why has forsaken me given perichoresis given the mutual indwelling of the three persons of the Trinity on an ontological level I hope that's helpful very the how can the Father forsake the son I'll be happy to mr. dent in my lecture in the meantime grandpa's supposed to be quiet well let me just pass that burden on to your lecture then and ask you a question RC is it true that you now publicly hold a post tribulation of you that I do what I was told to ask you this is it true that you now publicly hold a post tribulation of you a post tribulation of you of what I believe the return of our Lord Jesus all the returner of the raptures is this post-trib rapture question I'll just let you answer it the way you want to well is it true that I publicly now hold to a post tribulation return or rapture probably raptures yes yes that's usually when you're using the pre and post do you think II when post-millennial know about tribulation here okay well the suggestion the suggestion that I now hold hold to it tell us what now means as I said are you being that or are you becoming at our scene well it suggests some kind of shift in my thinking you know doesn't it and also it suggests that like I'm coming out of the closet because the next time I believe in the pre-tribulation rapture will be the first time I believe in a pre-tribulation rapture I mean that was one of the first thing when I first year I was a Christian like I've read the Bible of course but I couldn't get enough Christian literature to read and I used to go to this little bookstore in town and can devour everything and it was I didn't know it was dispensational because I didn't know what dispensationalism was and they had this trilogy by Watson on the return of Christ which was a precursor of the Left Behind series you know and it all boiled around this so-called pre-tribulation rapture and I remember I thought to myself self what's this so I got a book by Harry Ironside his commentary on the second Thessalonians and and and and the cephalonian correspondence in which he gave the classical case for the pre-tribulation rapture you know with the restrainer and all of that business being taken out of the world and that can well a the first speculative thing is that the restrainer is is the Holy Spirit - that it when the restrainer stops restraining is taken out of the world the only way can take the Holy Spirit out of the world would be to take the church out of the world because if we contained him in a box yeah and all of that you all you really if you want to take the Holy Spirit out of the world altogether you got to take everybody out of the world because nobody lives except through the fire'll Holy Ghost in one sense but anyway I had no training in theology had not had a course in logic yet not a course in hermeneutics but already as a novice Christian reading this I said were it what is this stuff how does somebody get there from here and since that time I've been you know in all my years of studying the scripture I'm still trying to find a verse one just one that supports a pre-tribulation rapture in a war in a world that came from now saying I'm going against the grain here because you know the whole world is caught up in this pre-tribulation rapture idea it's a very popular idea it means we search doesn't have to suffer we're not don't worry about this stuff away we go and all of that but let me just say if there was any question about where I stood on that I don't think there is now i mean i'm publicly saying that i'm not i don't believe in a pre-tribulation rapture is that clear enough yeah yeah okay dr. Godfrey is trying to hide out so let me just go to you where was Jesus between the crucifixion and the resurrection you look you've rested up this whole time in the game I I'm a church historian well they're asking you a historical question I'd like to say a few words about the immutability of God in its relation to Amy Semple McPherson well you know on that earlier point Amy supplement Pearson tried preaching in vaudeville shows it was sort of part of this question of how are you in the world and not of it it didn't work well so you can cross that off the list where was Jesus the crucifixion in the resurrection his body was with in the grave and his spirit was with the father because when he died he said father into thy hands I commend my spirit that's just a humble church historians answer I'm sure the system additions can't confuse us on this point okay that the so you're saying his body was lying in the grave his spirit was with the father now I had a number of questions about first Peter 3:19 that he went to hot Aysen he preached the spirits in Hell what to make of that I answered my question dr. thrall what do you now believe about that well you know we talk about all the unity and agreement that we have among ourselves and you know we rarely do we disagree and there you know to be to talk about this little statement that little statement one of the speakers makes you get picky and all that I mean but my buddy John said the other night about about Jesus he says well you know we know he went to hell and he cited this passage and and I wanted to say to John I said that passage doesn't say that Jesus went to hell now you get 10 commentaries on that passage in Peter and you'll find 10 different explanations for us what what it says is that Jesus the same Jesus who died for our sins and was raised by the Holy Ghost by the same power of the Holy Spirit it's the same power by which he visited this spirits in prison right now three little assumptions that are made when people come to that text one that these the spirits mean dead people as if the only time the Bible speaks of spirits is of people who had once been alive and now are dead you know the spirits of just men made perfect that it is used in that way in the Bible obviously but that's not the only way the Bible is usual effect you know like I say to myself how many people were at our conference and I'll say no I can't believe it there were 4,000 or so souls there well I don't mean that this was the zombie Jamboree you know although that could be true how that could be true so the assumption is spirit means dead person which isn't necessarily so the second assumption there is that the spirits that the prison refers to hell now that image is used of Hell they won't come out until they've paid the uttermost farthing and so on and so there's legitimate reason to draw from the text the implication that we're talking about Jesus making a visitation to those captive in hell this is the Roman Catholic view that the census ought Infernus and so on and that he went on the preaching mission to release the captives from Hell who were there from the Old Testament they're from the limbus of the fought limbo and the limbus of the father and so on but at the same time there is the other use of this term prisoners in the New Testament that is specifically linked to the work of Jesus by the power of the Holy Ghost if you go back to his inaugural address and where he says quoting from Isaiah the Spirit of the Lord is upon me and he has anointed me to do what to preach release to the prisoners to set the captives free which is what he accomplishes in his world so maybe all Peter is saying here is that the same spirit by which Jesus ministered to captive spirits during his entire earthly ministry is the spirit that raised him from the dead there's no necessity in that text to come the conclusion that Jesus went to hell and certainly if he did go to hell on some kind of relief mission it wasn't during the period of his death and his resurrection because Bob's had it right you know his spirit is in heaven and his body is in the grave that's why that's why he could say to the thief on the cross I will see you to stay in Paris and the waste people get around that is with busts by substituting a strange punctuation they say well Jesus what what that how way we're supposed to read that since there are no commas in the Greek is that it Jesus is saying I sang unto you today that is the timeframe in which I'm making this utterance you will be with me in paradise but doesn't mean that today is the time that you will be they're with me okay now here you have the Lord of glory gasping for breath wasting words telling a man that the day in which he's speaking to him is that particular day I think staggers the imagination well now in my church let me ask my other guys in my church we weekly confess he was crucified died and was buried and he descended into hell yes what do we mean when we say that dr. Duncan well again there's been a diversity in the reformed tradition on that particular view Calvin emphasized Christ's experience of the descent into hell in the receiving of the anatomy of the Father on the cross our larger catechism interprets the descent into hell in terms of remaining under the power of death for three days and that gives you the two broad categories there is a Christus Victor view of the descent into hell clause in the Apostles Creed sort of a Protestant version of the de census that I believe that the distinguished gentleman immediately to my left has actually commented on this view perhaps I'm good now in the past with dr. Ferguson where he descended into hell what a what are we confessing when we say that oh when I say that I think I I think I'm taking Calvin's view and and interpreting it as an interpretation of the significance of his death so that personally I wouldn't relate the clause he descended into hell when we use the Apostles Creed in relationship to the Peter passage I would I would have the interpretation of the Peter passage is but Clause of the creek I mean historically I wonder if there's something polemic going on there there's a there's a heresy being denied there along the lines of docetism that he really died it was a real death he entered into death and there's a good argument for that by the way I'm Bob I'm sure you know this better than I do but they'll oftentimes you you hear people say that the dissensus clause in the agreed is is actually the the Roman the medieval Roman doctrine of the harrowing of hell and and J&D Kelly in his early Christian Creed's makes a good argument to say that that's not the origin of it and it is indeed and and he does said it clause to affirm the full humanity of Christ and that the earliest extant copies of the Apostles Creed did not included which is part of why they think it might have been an anti heretical never tell he said it this what dr. first have said but Calvin said you would say the Creed like this suffered under Pontius Pilate descended into hell I mean crucified descended into hell dead and buried the descent into hell is on the cross and that the ends on the cross with to testify you know it is finished when it's finished it's finished there there's no future so there's one view that says the he descended into hell is the hell he experienced for our sins on the cross dr. Godfrey what is the other view that that that that is mainly held by people today is that the the main view I think it's probably the main view amongst reformed people it's the view enshrined in the Heidelberg catechism following Calvin which is the catechism used by all rightly ordered churches but but what Calvin argued was that the order in the Apostles Creed should not be taken chronologically but should be taken in terms of the increasing suffering and humiliation of the Savior so that the profoundest point of humiliation was is suffering the wrath of God against sin on the cross which is a descent into hell and so it's it's progressively talking about the the pouring out of the of suffering upon Christ so Calvin said it's not chronological I don't think Calvin's view is probably a very good interpretation of the Creed as the ancient church intended it and I have to grant that probably the Westminster larger catechism is closer to the ancient view which is that what we're saying there is that he really died it was a very old ad and he descended into the grave I mean she'll is that complicated concept that in part means that descending the grave being really dead and buried two views are not usually exclusive it really boils down to what you think the meaning of the clause in the Creed means you can hold both of those things without without so you may think either one safely dr. Ferguson we had a lot of questions about middle knowledge and could you in 10 words or less succinctly in exhaustively with examples you you would do that much better than I thought I'll give you 30 words then now what is middle knowledge again well it was a significant in the in its simplest form its middle because it stands between two aspects of the knowledge of God the necessary knowledge of God that is that's necessary to just because he's God and the knowledge that God has of what he is determining to do in between that it's the view that God knows every possible thing that every possible creature can freely do without the influence of predetermination in any and every possible world and that's why I call it I mean it's a magnified view of boris spassky God knows every conceivable move there can be an every conceivable chessboard that could ever conceivably be created in every conceivable configuration now knowing all that and all the moves that are going to be freely made without divine predetermination without divine foreordination without divine predestination since he knows all that he knows all things and what he does is says he fingers the one world of all possible worlds and he says that's the world and what I was trying to say yesterday is that given the way that is set up the completely undetermined actions in a libertarian world it is actually logically impossible for God to know which world he is actually creating by is aware fingering the world and saying let that one start so it's it's an until the idea that he knows all things without plea determining all things which is what middle knowledge is really all about and it's become immensely popular actually became immensely popular among philosophers about twenty years ago who had no idea that they were rehashing a theology from the Middle Ages and from the counter-reformation period in the problem as among many problems is when it denies God's predetermine espect of it but it also places him in contingency towards us is that not true oh yes he I mean he is he is ultimately the open God right because he cannot know what world he's creating so everything is a total surprise so his sovereignty is not pre determining he's just so much more skillful than we are that he wins is that doctors for wants to get in there two words winged boiled down to the difference between the Orthodox view of foreknowledge and omniscience and middle knowledge and that's these words if you say to God God what's going to happen tomorrow afternoon at five o'clock do you know and he says that depends okay there ain't no that depends in the knowledge of God with boris spassky what are you going to do next depends on what I mean I want maybe this is maybe this is maybe this it maybe this that's middle knowledge maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe that's why middle knowledge is so repugnant to or he knows all the maybes he just doesn't know the part and so this God who predicts things hundreds of years before they happen in precise detail is supposed to be able to do that without controlling events the most famous work you know and in in the history of the last 500 years that kind of spun this into being was by i think he was a franciscan louis de molina and what he was doing and it's quite explicit explicit in the latin title of his book was he was seeking the concord between divine providence which essentially meant divine predestination and human freedom a and it was that drive and we were talking about less than the question/answer session it was that drive to sustain human freedom that was saying we must have freedom without saying well let's start with god's freedom let's eventually essentially it's a way of reducing god's freedom without apparently seeming to reduce his freedom dr. Godfrey wants to add something I have a very important church historical point to make here Molina was a Jesuit not a Francisco I apologize church historians are so useful and if you want if you want to read about middle knowledge and you want to see a good response to de Molina look at Frances turret ins Institutes of a link to theology and watch him take him apart limb from limb so I'm gonna gather that you gentlemen would say instead of us trying to reconcile these things real human responsibility and pollution and full divine sovereignty let's just if we can't comprehend them let's apprehend them and just believe the Lord without trying to make it work out is that what you would suggest RC said yesterday that that he didn't agree with everything Thomas Aquinas said they said a lot of true things and neither he nor I nor any of us agree with everything the Carroll Bart said but he said this about middle knowledge but the Jesuits the jet some of the Jesuits said that they had a they had appearances of the Blessed Virgin Mary to confirm the truth of middle knowledge and bars comment was it would take an appearance of with lesser Virgin Mary to assure me all right the doctrine of little Harley dr. Duncan how does the beauty of God become the standard for Christians engaging in the arts there's a visual and musical what might be the reason in recent history the Christian music artwork movies generally lack excellence in a world that brings us ugliness but the main question is how does the beauty of God become the standard for our artwork that that's actually a hard question and I think there are only two helpful things that I can say quickly the first thing is to say that the fact that God does have the aesthetic quality of beauty inherently he is the standard for the the quality of beauty in this world and it's obvious in the way he's made the world he has not simply made the world functional he's made the world beautiful lets us know that we cannot ignore that in our own mirroring creative activities that's got to be a part of our of our goals in life not to be functional merely and effective and practical and efficient but also to do the work as best as we can as his creatures thinking his thoughts after him being his image being creating beauty in what we do that's the first thing you look like I do I had one question as X several said Rick Warren I think in his new book says that God has no style preferences all art forms that are equal to him respond to that well and that's that the second thing to say is that first of all that's a form of aesthetic relativism the very statement which is a contradiction of what we're affirming about God as an absolute standard of beauty beauty is not ultimately simply in the eye of the beholder whatever differences we may some of us may like Debussy and some of us may not that that may be a perfectly appropriate discretionary decision in terms of style pref but there would be other things that would be outside the pale so there-there is an absolute standard of aesthetics we may have a hard time apprehending it and we may not come to a full agreement on the totality of the qualities of it but there is an absolute standard of esthetics well the second thing to say though is a lot of times people will affirm the beauty of God as an excuse to stamp the imprimatur of their particular view of beauty and then to sort of baptize it as a Christian view and to push that and we need to watch out for that thirdly I do think that there are other their qualities just from our reading of scripture which give us standards which we ought to aim to emulate in in the product of our art etc and so there are things from Christian history from the scriptures and from collective Christian witness that help us know how to navigate some of these things so that's a very hard question to ask answer briefly but those three points would be things that come immediately to mind does anybody want to give some help and discerning how do Christians articulate standards of beauty in the in the arts from a biblical perspective some things to read and to think about Jean Edward Vieth has done a lot of good thinking in this area and his books are quite helpful Ken Myers all God's children and blue suede shoes is a good book to think through this issue musically speaking Augustine's riding on this particularly with respect to the gravitas principle that the that the beautiful with respect to God always communicates the weightiness the seriousness of his excellency we recall that the first artisans first people ever mentioned in the Bible being filled with the spirit are the artisans that God endowed to adorn the tabernacle but also Jonathan Edwards and you know Thomas Aquinas probed this and they look for certain objective standards of beauty proportionality coherency harmony complexity those are the sort of things and and for example in our worship today there's this there are the worship war Wars and about music in particular but not just music but with particular with respect to music the debate is not between new music and old music it's between good music and bad music and there is a difference is there a sacred secular aspect to to what extent should music not be the world's music or to what extent should it be I think there is a sense in which there's a difference there's there's a different point and focus of sacred music entertainment versus worship that's but also that well that the purpose of sacred music is to bring us into the realm of the holy into the sacred to communicate the holy not to eclipse the holy and to bring in the familiarity that breeds content I think just from a cultural point of view we can say that the deep in the American soul because we're Adam democratized culture we tend to believe very passionately that everyone's thoughts on every subject are just as good as anyone elses so ministers always experience this ministers having been educated and spending their lives studying the Bible have this crazy notion that maybe they know more about what's in the Bible than people who hardly ever read it but you can't sell that idea in America everybody is an expert in theology everybody's an expert in the Bible and everybody's an expert in music and and one of the things just culturally we have to wrestle with is is that true and should we maybe occasionally even as Americans defer to people actually have some training in music now I'm not going to defer to far that people have training in music they have to be watched like everybody else but we need to get experts in music and expert saying art and experts in theology together to talk about where we're going and where we ought to go and then begin to help all of us acquire better taste in music good music is like good food often you have to acquire a taste for it doesn't come just automatically Harry bleh Meijer makes that very helpfully in a book called where do we stand it was published back in the 80s by servant' books he gave it in a series of lectures in Nashville and and also in Britain he was a student of CS Lewis's and he discusses this issue very helpfully in in not only area of music but in literature and everything the way we grow in the appreciation of true excellence is through deference to Authority and it is through authority that that that a child learns first that Shakespeare is better than Marvel Comics to the child Marvel Comics may be much better than Shakespeare but over time he comes to appreciate through deference to Authority the superior quality of Shakespeare one last question we have to answer it quickly how do I know when it's time to change Church what would cause you to leave your church I see but I got us but before we go I gotta say so about this whole thing because I think one of the great danger one of the greatest dangers of our era is a failure to understand how strong and impact music has on people for good or for bad there's a little book that I wish everybody would read it's a rather heavy book but it's called Dionysius rising which chronicles the work of Richard Wagner you know where vogner as a young man was participating in a political revolution he wanted to overthrow the structures of European government and failed and and saw the futility of the armed revolution then he self-consciously sought about to change the behavioral patterns of people in society by creating a new kind of music using a rarely used modal scale a Phrygian model you know back in Phrygia where they had all those lunatics montanus and the rest of their thing he used the Phrygian scale to compose his music purposefully to provoke a sexual response in the in the response of the year Mad King Ludwig was his first patron who had that kind of sexual response when he first heard vogner's music and another well-known person who had the same kind of sensuous response to listening and music of Wagner was Frederick Nietzsche and it was Nietzsche's book that Hitler passed out to all his henchmen you know and it was bargainers music that became the theme for the 3rd right I mean music is not neutral folks I mean Plato understood that Plato said the kind of music that young people listen to will affect their behavior and if we haven't learned that I don't know where we are and and if you want if you're a serious reader there's a great follow-up book to that called the triumph of vulgarity that was published by Oxford University Press forget the author's name who that shows that rock and roll in many ways is the vulgar democratized form of music that flows out of the kind of romantic pantheism that that vogner tried to teach and it's it's a very alarming story and he as far as I know is not a Christian writer the fellow wrote this triumph of vulgarity but he makes the point how dangerous this kind of music is for anybody who's committed to absolute truth it's a staggeringly thought-provoking case but we're out of time we've got to go thank you gentlemen

Channel: Ligonier Ministries

Views: 29,929

Rating: 4.8723402 out of 5

Keywords: fellowship, Jesus' humanity, The Trinity, eschatology, beauty in worship, God (Deity), orl04

Id: OvRervWT99g

Length: 49min 34sec (2974 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 30 2013