LARSON: Well, the Q&A time is something -- particularly
for you first-time attendees -- that we really enjoy doing with all of our guest speakers,
our teachers, that have gathered here. And, it's an informal time of discussion and
back and forth. These are questions that you've written and
submitted. There is no way that we can get to all that
you've provided to us, but we try and be as judicious as possible with the time allotted
to us. And would you join me in welcoming first-time
to the platform today, Dr. Sproul, Dr. MacArthur, and Dr. Mohler, and Dr. Lawson. We'll, we're going to jump right in, but Dr.
Sproul, Dr. Mohler, Dr. Lawson, Dr. MacArthur, it's so good for you all to be here with us. I'm very grateful for you making this journey. Dr. MacArthur, we know that you had a wonderful
conference last week at the Shepherds' Conference. Can you tell, just the folks there, just,
tell them a little bit about how many people came and from how many different countries? MACARTHUR: Thank you, Chris. We had about 5,000 plus about 1,100 of our
church volunteers, so 6,000 or so people running around campus from about 70 nations of the
world. It was amazing. It was being translated on campus as well
as livestream into multiple languages, because there were different language speakers on
the campus. Just a tremendous opportunity. The theme was 'We Preach Christ.' There were, by the time we hit Sunday, 17
separate preaching services, and every one of them exalted Christ. It was just a -- we all felt like we had gone
to the Mount of Transfiguration, and we wanted to build booths and live there. LARSON: So you've gone from glory to glory
now, at Ligonier. Right? Yes. MACARTHUR: Glory to glory, yeah. No, no, this is just -- this is the lateral move. LARSON: Alright. We're going to jump right in. Not directed to any one particular
teacher today, but, "How do you explain the term 'Reformed' to a person unfamiliar with
Reformed teaching?" LAWSON: Well, I think when we say 'Reformed'
we simply mean biblical. That we have come back to the Bible, and allow
the Bible to frame our doctrine, and, of course, Dr. Sproul has an entire book on what is Reformed
theology, and he has five hallmarks of Reformed theology. I would say certainly the foundation is the
authority of Scripture alone and the highest pinnacle is the glory of God above all things,
and it was a recovery -- or Reformed truth is the purity of the gospel: How sinful man
can be right with holy God. And, as well as, as what we heard today earlier
from Dr. Ferguson, a restoration of the purity of worship in spirit and in truth. Certainly the five 'solas' and the five points
of the doctrines of grace are certainly in that mix as well. So when I think of Reformed, in essence, God
formed the truth, and then the truth became deformed by false teachers, or tradition and
ecclesiastical hierarchy became the authority and Reformed is to simply bring it back to
where God formed it. So, man, by his failure to properly teach
the Bible deformed it and the Reformers simply put it back to the form as God had originally
given it. LARSON: "Is our heart still deceitful above
all things and desperately sick after we are born again?" Referencing Jeremiah 17:9? MOHLER: I think the answer has to be yes
and no. I mean, first of all we understand immediately
why the unregenerate heart is desperately wicked and beyond our understanding. That's how we can understand and interpret
the headlines around us. Frankly, that's how we can understand the
mirror in front of us. It is the knowledge of a depravity, the heart
as the seat of sin. And so we can thoroughly understand that in
terms of the unregenerate heart. It has to be affirmed comprehensively. Desperately wicked. Who can understand it? Deceitful. But even as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ
-- and remember a part of the New covenant is being promised a new heart. So, in one sense the answer is no. It's not the same heart. This is a heart that has been converted. It's a heart that is regenerated. It's new. It's a new heart. But sanctification's a process. Justification's punctiliar. Sanctification is a process and sanctification's
not an end unto itself. Our sanctification's only completed in our
glorification and that is yet to come. It's accomplished in Christ, as Paul makes
clear in Romans chapter 8, but applied to us it's something for which we are still waiting,
and so our heart can still deceive us, and we as Christians, perhaps as a sign of maturity,
not of immaturity, understand, that at times we can't explain our own heart. But those who have a new heart in Christ know
that we are to guard against our heart leading us astray and instead to lean into Jesus and
to obey Christ and to obey His Word. So there's a distinction, but I think, in
some sense, the answer to that has to be yes and no, but thanks be to God the final verdict
is no. LARSON: "How should I share the gospel when
it could cost me my job?" MACARTHUR: Well, I can jump in while they're
just kind of giving me a little pause here. I think you want to honor God. You want to be faithful to the gospel, but
you don't want to be foolish. You want to be responsible. You want to take the long view and not the
short view. You have a responsibility to provide for your
family. If you don't do that you're worse than an
infidel. You also have a responsibility, and this is
explicit both in Colossians and Ephesians, that you're submit yourself to your master,
whoever your boss is, whoever is over you. You don't overturn that submission. You don't run roughshod over that submission
in some ill-conceived effort to fulfill the Great Commission. I think you want to be as wise as you can
be, and as submissive as you can be. And I would just encourage you to make those
kinds of opportunities sort of dependent on the Lord opening a door for you on a personal
level. If you ask the Lord to give you opportunity,
I'm sure that that opportunity may arise, but I think it's irresponsible for you to
overthrow your other Christian responsibilities and duties as somebody who's employed by someone,
gainfully employed, taking their money and their resources with the expectation that
you're going to perform according to the, you know, whatever the standard of that organization
is, and reserve the opportunity to communicate the gospel for those times when it's right
and the door is sensibly opened. And again, you should be helped along with
this by realizing that the Lord again will draw His own. He will draw His own to Him and He will find
someone to communicate the gospel to them. You just want to be the one ready and eager
when that door is opened in a responsible and gracious way to exercise that privilege. LARSON: "Often I hear the phrase, 'God loves you,' proclaimed to a group of people, which may include both Christians and non-Christians. Is this biblical to say that phrase to just
anyone?" SPROUL: Well, when we look at the concept
of the love of God in Scripture we see distinctions that have to be made. Historically and theologically we distinguish
among three types of divine love. There is the love of benevolence, where God
has a kind spirit to the whole world and His benevolent will, His benevolent love falls
on everybody. But there's also the sense in which the Bible
-- the love of God is defined in terms of God's beneficence. That is, that's not just simply what His attitude
is towards the world, but how He displays that goodness universally. The rain falls upon the just, as well as on
the unjust, and so that universal dimension of the love of God is manifest. But usually when we're talking about the love
of God in popular language, what really is -- what we're talking about is what we call
God's love of complacency. And that term, 'the love of complacency,'
is not used in the way in which we use the term complacency in our age, in our culture. Our term of complacency means smugness, self-satisfaction. That sort of thing. But rather when the Scriptures indicate the
love of complacency, it's that special love that God has for His Son and all of those
who are in His Son and who are adopted into His family. And if we talk about the love of God and His
terms of the love of complacency, and talk about it universally, that's blasphemy, because
God does not love the whole world in the love of complacency. The fact the Scriptures tell us that there
are many ways in which God is at enmity with the world. He hates the world. He hates those who are swift to shed blood,
and we have to take that into account. When I hear preachers stand up and say that
God loves everybody unconditionally, I want to scream and say, "Wait a minute, then why
does He call us to repent? Why does He call us to come to the cross? Why does He call us to come to Christ? If God loves everybody unconditionally then
you can do whatever you want and believe whatever you think, and -- but that's just not true,
that God loves us -- He's placed an absolute condition by which He requires. He doesn't just invite people to come to His
Son, He commands all men everywhere to repent of their sins and to come to Christ, and if
you want to enjoy the love of complacency, you have to be in Christ. LARSON: "What does it mean when we confess
that Jesus has a reasonable soul?" SPROUL: When we say that Jesus has a reasonable
we simply mean by that that touching His human nature He is a duality. He's body and soul as all human beings are,
and that that soul is rational and that -- and when we talk about -- in that sense the term
'soul' is virtually interchangeable with the word 'mind,' and God has created us in our
image. God Himself is a rational being, and God has
planted within the soul or mind of every creature that He has made the capacity for reasonable
discourse and thinking. And I know we live in a time that is one of
the most anti-rational and anti-intellectual periods of the history of the church. Not that people are opposed to academics or
science -- people love academic pursuits and investigation, scientific inquiry. But it's anti the mind. Anti being rational. People think that Aristotle, for example,
invented logic. Aristotle didn't invent logic. God did, and that what Aristotle, I mean,
Aristotle no more invented logic than Columbus invented America. He discovered it. He found it. And you know, the late Christian philosopher
-- not Van Til, but the other one, Gordon Clark. When he exegetes John 1 "In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God," and so on. It's "En arche, ein ho logos." And actually Gordon Clark interpreted that,
or translated it. "In the beginning was logic, and logic was
with God, and logic was God, in the sense that the -- that rationality has it's foundation
in the divine mind itself, and that that rationality is a communicable attribute of God that in
His creatures we also have the capacity for reasonable thinking. MACARTHUR: But don't you think also it's
also trying to say that He was not a human shell with only a divine mind? SPROUL: He had a human mind. MACARTHUR: He had a human mind. SPROUL: Right, with the all the limitations
of human thinking. MACARTHUR: Right, right. SPROUL: That in touching His human nature
He was not omniscient. Touching His divine nature He was absolutely
omniscient, but we can't separate those, but we must distinguish them or all kinds of mischief
takes place. MACARTHUR: Fully God, fully man, with all
the reasonableness of man. SPROUL: Well, I prefer truly God and truly
man, because it can be confused, and when you say that Jesus was fully God and fully
man, if you mean by that, that that one person was absolutely, totally God, and that's all,
then you'd be denying His own humanity. Or if you say He was fully man, then there's
no room for His deity. That's why we like to say 'Vera Homo, Vera
Deus.' Truly God, truly man. You're with me on that. MACARTHUR: That's what I meant. That's what I meant. SPROUL: I knew that's what you meant. Why, Johnny Mac, do you always make
me have to define what you meant? LAWSON: John, he's corrected me in a Q&A on
this very point before, so I -- LARSON: Dr. MacArthur, you spoke in your 2016
Shepherds' Conference message about clergy malpractice. Can you tell us what you meant by that? MACARTHUR: What year is this? Yeah, any failure on the part of a pastor,
an under-shepherd of Christ to lead His church in a way that is not sound in doctrine and
practice, is in itself a form of clergy malpractice. Clergy malpractice. I went through a clergy malpractice lawsuit
that lasted 10 years. Ended up in the United States Supreme Court,
and the Supreme Court ruled in our favor. That was a legal experience of what the courts
called clergy malpractice, and they exonerated us from the accusation that we had committed
clergy malpractice, by preaching about sin and judgment, which they said -- the plaintiff
said, had exacerbated someone's precondition to feeling guilty that led to that person's
suicide, so that we were responsible for his suicide. The lawsuit went for ten years. It went through all kinds of courts. I gave testimony on the stand and courts,
it went to appellate courts. It went all the way to the US Supreme Court. That is the opposite of clergy malpractice. That is doing what you must do which is to
declare the truth in preaching and in practice. That you have to be faithful to the Word of
God, and, I mean, where would you even begin to catalog all of the clergy malpractice going
on all over the place today. Bad theology and bad practice combined together,
it is pandemic. LARSON: This person writes in and says, "I'm
an eighth grade teacher in Christian school. How can I best prepare students as they head
to public schools to defend and live their faith out, 1 Peter 3:15?" MOHLER: That is a really sweet question, and
there has to be a special crown for anyone teaching 13-year olds in the school. That's just magnificent, and for a teacher
to have this godly concern about how to prepare those students, knowing they're on the threshold
of something really big. Aristotle's been quoted once. I'll go back to him. Aristotle, I'll paraphrase here, basically
said there're two points. He's speaking of men, who are the boys who
are his students. He said there're two times to get a boys'
attention and that is between the ages of one to five, and then between the ages of
fifteen to twenty. After that he's a lost cause, said Aristotle. But you understand that those are two very
formative periods. You know, the period from one to five is when
a child learns his or her place in the world. Identity and leaves with the world picture. A world picture. The Germans were good at making these words
very clear. But when a child leaves high school, he or
she has a worldview. Those are two different things. The difference is the complex analytical capacity
that comes in adolescence. The ability to understand one mind among other
minds. To understand that what this child has received
from mom and dad is not exactly what everyone else receives from their mom and dad. What they receive from the preacher is not
what others are hearing. There are alternative worldviews. So, I would simply say that there's an offensive
and a defensive play here. Both of them are very important. Offensively, we need to help students when
they're 13 to understand how to judge other truth claims and worldviews, because they're
going to be inundated with them by the unchanging authority of God's Word. Build in them in so far as there is your possibility
and instinct to turn to the Word of God and to trust the Word of God. There's no way you can comprehensively prepare
them for all the intellectual challenges they're going to face, but you can at least model
for them what it means to trust in Scripture and to know that there is a way of understanding
all truth that is accountable to God. And then defensive, it's very important. Their hearts. It's not just their minds, it's their hearts,
and you know, to talk to a 13 year-old, and let them know a battle for their minds in
ensuing but also a battle for their hearts. And, so the defensive play is not only as
you pray for them and not only is you teach them, but also just to help them to understand
your joy in Christ, because there're all kinds of competing affections that are going to
be presented to them very, very quickly. Let your affection for Christ be something
that they remember. LARSON: "How would you counsel a wife of Reformed
faith married to a staunch Roman Catholic, particularly as it relates to teaching their
two children the true Word of God and raising them to know, love, and serve God?" MACARTHUR: Well, I guess I live in that world
a lot, because Southern California's so many Hispanic people there, and it's very common. And even some people from Asia, who have been
raised as Catholics -- we see a spouse coming to Christ, and that is a very, very common
kind of experience. And it takes all kinds of forms. Sometimes they shut them out of the church. They won't allow them to come. They won't allow them to read the Bible in
the house. They won't allow them to communicate the gospel
openly to the kids. In other cases, they're indifferent, and that
takes different form in just about every single case that you work with. But again, the balance is, you know, 1 Peter,
you win your unbelieving husband by being a submissive wife, but at the same time, you
also have a higher standard than that, as the apostles said, when they told them to
stop preaching, "Who do we obey, you or God?" You know, I have to -- I must obey God, but
you've got to demonstrate, I think, as a spouse that your obedience to God makes you a better
wife to him in every area and every way, and a better mother in every way. I think that's what has to be demonstrated. Not that you're some kind of an antagonist
in the family, and that's the balance, and that takes some of the gentleness of the Holy
Spirit to do. At the same time that you give honor to the
husband, and teach your children to respect the husband, because that's an ordered home
and that's necessary if they're going to any place in life and the future that provides
any kind of success for them. But at the same time, behind that you've got
to communicate the need to pray for this unconverted husband, because the issue here is, you know,
we love daddy, but he needs Jesus Christ, and while he may resist the wife's pleas,
I think that the pleas of the children, and the prayers of the children are pretty powerful
influences. So that's kind of the general instruction
that we would give to people in that situation, although they're very different in each case. LARSON: "Act 17:27 refers to mankind seeking
God and finding Him, but other passages state that man cannot seek God. With the rise of seeker churches, how should
we understand biblically 'seeking God?'" SPROUL: Well, when you talk about Acts 17
and Paul at the Areopagus, and he talks about quoting some of the pagan poets and everything,
and talks about people groping after God. They have the statute to the unknown god,
and in one sense they're seeking Him. On the other sense, when you're talking didactically
when the apostle spells it out specifically, what the natural human condition is, quoting
the psalm, and adding to with the fullness of it, the Apostle Paul makes it very clear
that no one -- that's a universal negative -- no one in their natural state seeks after
God. Now, Thomas Aquinas had to answer this question
centuries ago. "Why is it that it seems to us that people
all around us who are not believers in Christ or not Christians, seem to be seeking after
God, when the Apostle says so clearly that no man seeks after God?" And Aquinas answered the question this way,
which I think was a correct answer, he said, "What we observe is people seeking things
that only God can give them." From our perspective we know that the only
way they're ever going to feel relief from their guilt, is if they come to Christ. We know that if they're ever going to find
peace ultimately, it's going to be in Christ. We know that if they're ever going to find
meaning and significance for their existence, it's only going to be in Christ. Without Christ they're without hope. But they are looking all over the place for
the things that only God can give them. That is, the benefits that God gives, while
at the very same time are fleeing with all of their strength and might from Him. From the being of God. So, if you want to have a seeker-sensitive
church, that what that means, biblically, is that you organize and structure your worship
and your church and your program for Christians, because the reason why churches exist in the
first place are not for evangelism. They're for worship and for the gathering
together of the saints, to apply themselves to the study of the Word of God, to prayer,
and to fellowship, and the Lord's Supper, and that sort of thing. Now, the whole church is responsible to do
evangelism, but the purpose of the church itself, in terms of worship, and the gathering
together on the Lord's Day is not to do evangelism. Now, I use evangelism all the time in the
congregation, because I'm very much well aware that there are people who are there that aren't
believers, and so I preach the gospel to them, but if I tailor the program for the unbeliever,
that's totally antithetical to what the New Testament teaches, and what the Word of God
teaches. So, this whole movement of seeker sensitivity
is a pernicious distortion of what God commands and expects. And what it is, is Jim Boice used to say where
the church is trying to be the church -- do the Lord's work in the world's way. And it works. It works, I mean, as far as people will come
in droves if you entertain them, and if you make them feel comfortable and all of that. So, when you talk about seeker sensitivity
-- and what that means historically is that you design consciously, worship for the unbeliever;
that's crazy. MACARTHUR: Just a footnote. Probably the most dramatic illustration of
this is in the book of Acts. The church was born on the day of Pentecost. 3,000 believers are added to the 120 in the
upper room, and they gave themselves to the apostles' doctrine, the breaking of bread,
prayers and fellowship -- that's the church, and the Lord added daily to the church those
that were being saved. They were doing miracles. They were doing miracles, rapid-fire miracles. The healing of the lame man, and other miracles,
and that attracted the people. That was attracting the people to the church. You might say that's a good thing. No, the Lord had to halt to that. The Lord Himself had to stop unbelievers from
rushing into the miracle-producing church, so what He did was kill two people at the
offering. He literally killed publicly Ananias and Sapphira. Ananias there were -- that morning he dropped
dead because he lied to the Holy Spirit about how much money he actually gave off the sale
of a piece of land. Three hours later when his wife showed up
-- I have ambivalence about that. I like a three-hour church service, but I
don't know what she was doing for those three hours. Anyway, when she shows up, the
people come -- the young boys coming in from burying the husband pick her up and bury her. And it says in Acts 5, "None dared join himself
to them." The Lord shut the door in the book of Acts
on unbelievers rushing into the church for the signs and wonders by frightening them
about the holiness of that place. When the church recovers its transcendent
understanding of worship, and when the church becomes devoted to the glory and honor of
God and pursues holiness, it makes the statement that our Lord wants it to make to the world,
and the Lord then will add to the church those that His sovereign will calls. SPROUL: I'm going to just say that that's
my theme for my final message, God-willing, on Saturday, on what the goal of reformation
is, and the purpose of reformation is, and so maybe I shouldn't even bother to -- you're
going to leave before that but I -- you could just preach the thing. MACRTHUR: I'm just glad you agree with me
on that answer. LARSON: "How would you define a false teacher,
and how much error is allowed before they are considered false?" SPROUL: Vesta's going to be really after me
after this talk -- Q&A, because every time you ask a question I have to ask Al what it
is you said. The one thing I have in common with my mentor
is he was deaf as a doornail and I'm getting there quickly, but my hearing aids interfere
with my breathing, and I have to choose between hearing and breathing. When is a false teacher a false teacher is
when he teaches falsehood. MOHLER: I would just add to that, "Amen." But I think there is in the New Testament
a clear reservation of that not just to one who teaches falsely, but who is uncorrectable,
who resists correction. I mean, Apollos was a false teacher, but when
he was corrected, when he was taught how to preach a better way, how to be more faithful
to Scripture, he was corrected. So there's a difference between a false teaching,
because just about any preacher starting out, especially, is going to teach something that's
false. That's quite different than being, I think,
a false teacher, uncorrected and uncorrectable. And -- SPROUL: And the chief characteristic of his teaching is falsehood. MOHLER: That's right. SPROUL: We all err, make -- Calvin said no
theologian is ever more than 80 percent right, and the problem was we don't know which that
20 percent is of -- and then some of us it's 50 percent. MACARTHUR: But I think we need to say that there
are some absolutely non-negotiable truths that you are false if you deny the Trinity. If you deny the deity of Christ. If you deny His sinless life, substitutionary
death, salvation by grace through faith, the gospel. I mean, that's the drivetrain of truth. Saving truth. Those are not negotiable. You can misunderstand baptism or something
like that, and -- SPROUL: Those we call errors, not heresies. I mean there's a difference between error
and heresy. Heresy is something that strikes at the very
heart of the gospel and of the truth. Yeah. LARSON: Should I just end this before it gets
nasty? SPROUL: This is not fair. I'm outnumbered here. It's hard to be a true teacher. MOHLER: I know what's behind that screen. LARSON: Trying to bring it back in. "In what ways -- in what ways is our current
cultural climate forcing the mushy middle out of the church?" MOHLER: Yeah, that's a great question, and
it kind of goes back to the seeker-sensitive question. We all wanted in on that one, because that's
where we live. But one of the interesting things to note
is that there aren't many new seeker-sensitive churches, because that fit a certain cultural
moment when people were saying to unbelievers, "You can gain a bit of social capital by coming
to join with us. You can -- there's some value added to your
life if you come and join with us. If you just come and be with us, we'll add
meaning and spirituality to your life in a non-threatening way." But in the hardening secularization that we're
now experiencing, people are going to pay social capital to hang around with anyone
who believes the gospel of Jesus Christ. They're going to forfeit social capital. They're going to run a risk for being members
of our churches. There once was a time when -- especially someone,
let's say, a southern town, he wanted to come and he wanted to -- he had his family. He wanted to be able to raise his children. He wanted to be able to sell life insurance. He had to have credibility. Join credibility by -- that is, add credibility
by joining the First Baptist Church. First Presbyterian Church. That was just what people did in an age of
cultural Christianity. Well, now you may fail to become a partner
in your law firm, because you're a member of a Bible-believing, gospel-teaching church. The mushy middle is disappearing because in
a time of hardening -- I'm not going to use the word persecution -- but in a time of hardening
opposition (could well turn into persecution), people are running a risk to hang around with
the likes of us, and the mushy middle is going to disappear in a hurry because the pressures
on both sides are coming real hard. LARSON: "Given the failure of many ecumenical
movements, what can the church do to promote unity without compromising doctrine?" LAWSON: I think it goes back to what Dr. MacArthur
just said on the essentials of the faith. I mean there is common ground in believing
and affirming the Trinity, the deity of Christ, His virgin birth, sinless life, substitutionary
death, bodily resurrection, present enthronement, His soon return, the final judgment, eternality
of heaven and hell. I mean, if you can't come together and agree
on that, then you're really outside the faith. You're not inside. You're outside the faith, and we in a true
catholicity, I mean, we come together in agreement on these gospel truths, and these are things
that we would be willing to die for, and if you're not willing to die for these things,
then there's some question, do you really believe these things that are truly essential. And all -- everything in the Bible is important
and everything in the Bible is true, yet there are some things that rise to a higher level
of importance, and every "Truly, truly I say unto you," introduces some of those. And Paul would say, "I delivered to you of
first importance." Those are the things that we can come together
as believers in Christ, but if you can't affirm these, then what Dr. MacArthur's going to preach
on tonight (Galatians 1) -- then the curse of God is upon you. So to me that's where we come together, is
in these fundamental essentials of Christianity that are non-negotiable. I mean, we can't give up one inch on this. MOHLER: Absolutely, and thus you follow though
the history of the Christian church, and those moments like Nicaea, let's remember Nicaea
didn't say, "Here's a good Christology, and here's a bad Christology." Nicaea said, "Here's Christianity and here is ‘Let there be anathema’” – “Let them be anathema.” This is to be identified as heresy. But as you follow that through, I just want
to add to what Steve said, very quickly, that by the time you get to the Reformation we
also learn that we've got to put justification by faith alone in that top tier, such that
without the affirmation -- Luther said the article by which the church stands or falls
-- without justification by faith alone there is no Christianity. There is no gospel. SPROUL: I believe -- I believe the first question,
if I'm not mistaken, was something about what is Reformed theology. What does it mean to be Reformed? And anybody who is Reformed is first of all
catholic, namely that we embrace the classic ecumenical truths of the ecumenical councils,
the Council of Nicea, the Council of Chalcedon, and so on, so that we all share that same
basic structure of Christianity. And you move to the sixteenth century, and
you have the emergence of the concept of evangelicalism, which takes its word from the -- meaning from
the word evangel, or the gospel, and so that was a rallying around the doctrine of justification
by faith alone. So anyone who is Reformed, is also evangelical,
and anyone who is evangelical, is also catholic, but at the time of the Reformation there were
many kinds and brands and varieties of evangelicals. Lutherans, Reformed in Switzerland, and so
on. Episcopalian in England, and you had all these
different branches of Protestantism. But though they had differences among themselves,
they had certain core beliefs: the catholic truths, and then also the two primary affirmations
of which all historic evangelicals agreed on, was one: Justification by faith alone,
Sola Fide. And two: The authority -- absolute authority
of sacred Scriptures, Sola Scriptura. And it's only in recent decades that that
consensus among so-called evangelicals has collapsed, where you can't assume now that
if somebody calls themselves an evangelical believes in justification by faith alone,
or believes in Sola Scriptura. But when you go beyond the broader term evangelical
and even broader term catholic, then you get to the narrow distinctives of Reformed theology,
which, we embrace all of the catholic truths, the evangelical truths. But there's more to that. There're also specific things, like you mentioned
the doctrines of grace and so on. MACARTHUR: Just to -- where I think people
get confused on this is John 17, Jesus' prayer that they may be one, they assume that's a
prayer that hasn't been answered. That is not. That prayer is answered in the forming of
the body of Christ. That is a prayer that all believers would
be one and it's the same list of things as praying believers into heaven, so that is
a done -- that is a reality. We are one. We are the body of Christ. That prayer is answered. That's different then how do Christians get
along with one another. Then you go to Philippians 2 and you talk
about -- come on, you need to get along better with each other by not looking on your own
things, but on the things of others. Don't consider yourself better than anybody
else. That's a whole different issue. There's nothing in the Bible that assumes
that true believers are going to get along well with fake believers. That's not going to happen. The true church is one in Christ. We need to do a better job of loving each
other in the process, but we will never be one with those who hold a false form of Christianity. LARSON: Well, that was our last question for this particular Q&A, and before we adjourn, Dr. MacArthur is going to leave and go to his book signing in just a minute, but the teaching fellows and Dr. Sproul have a special announcement, but would you thank our panelists this afternoon?
