Mohler, Nichols, Sproul, and Thomas: Questions & Answers

dr. Sproul welcome back to Pennsylvania oh it's great to be back in Pennsylvania what a wonderful state I came back so that we could make Pennsylvania great again many many of the folks here don't realize how often you are checking on Pittsburgh news and particularly some of the sporting teams in the Pittsburgh area regularly as a feature on your phone as you find out what's happening and that's on the other side of the stage Chris yep it's a long state that's right yeah we've had a wonderful conference so far dr. Sproul and looking at the dawn of the reformation and dr. Thomas was preaching on Christ this morning and mark 13:32 question comes saying that Jesus said no man knows the day or the hour concerning the second coming not even the Son of Man my question is does he know now what do you looking at me for that jerk well I was alluding I was alluding to the the issue of a pollen Arianism a teaching that denied that Jesus had a human mind a human rationality that the Lagos took the part of the rational Faculty of the human Jesus and and that meant and and it's a default I think in a lot of current Christianity that we default into saying of course Jesus knows X Y or Z because because he's got because he is he is omniscient and I think that it's important to understand that in the Incarnation Jesus took a a reasonable soul he grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and with men and that he continues even in his glorified state he continues to have a human mind I I can't fully know or understand what depths of knowledge that that glorified human mind has right now but but there is no there is no absolute reason to suggest that in his current human mind he knows the date of the second coming now it's that information that has been given to him in his glorified state I don't know but there is no absolute reason so he can he continues to have a human mind even in his present condition that grows and advances and learns and plums the depths and is in awe of his divine mind why are you looking at me that's exactly right we don't have any idea now whether he knows it and if he didn't know it it would be because the divine nature communicated the knowledge to him the whole point is in the historic debate we had this problem with Rome and then later with the Lutheran community with the doctrine of the communicati alidium Otto Hahn so I got there I got the Latin out of that we're done with that which was the concept which he goes back you know - I was Aquinas when he was dealing with that very taxed and he was puzzled and said well Jesus says he doesn't know that can't be he's the son of God he's got to know and this was just an accommodation to his audience because there's this concept of the communication of attributes from the divine to the human nature where the divine attribute of essence was communicated to the human nature of Jesus which was part of the Orthodox view of the Roman Catholic Church was that part was taken over by Luther which is where I'm basically critical of Luther in his deficient Christology at this point because he bought into that which was a clear violation of the ecumenical council of chalcedon where they said with the four negatives were the two natures you have very homo Verdes truly man truly God the two two natures are without mixture confusion division or separation semicolon each nature retaining its own attributes and one of the attributes of the human nature is the limitation of knowledge and so if you get this idea that the divine nature does it's one thing for the divine nature to communicate information from the divine to the human it's another thing for the human the divine nature to communicate attributes and we would say that the attribute of emissions isn't in communicable attribute so everything that Derek said is absolutely sound and right orthodoxson you passed biblical what does it mean when we say that Christ had a reasonable soul that the understanding of of soullessness in the 17th century this is a statement that comes from the Westminster Confession and catechisms but but the understanding of soullessness is having to do in part with the Faculty of of reasoning more than more than a Greek idea that you that you have a soul or that you possess a soul that you're that one of the one of the ways in which we reflect the image of God is is knowledge our reasoning faculty and that and that in part constitutes our soullessness we understand the atonement but why does it take blood to atone for sin couldn't it be some other substance anybody who wants to jump in well this questions effectively raised and answered in Scripture and it long before Christ with the blood atonement you find in the Old Testament we're told without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin and we are told that it is because the life is in the blood so the irreducible essence of life is the blood so the matter of life and death is made visible in the blood that is one of the reasons why the sacrificial system in the Old Testament was such a graphic demonstration of where sin leads it leads to death and in the book of Hebrews we are told that although sacrifices of all those animals was by the old the cleansing of the external it could not lead to their salvation it did hold back the wrath of God but it is the shed blood of Jesus as our substitutionary Savior who shed his blood for us and shed the blood that the Darracq so hopefully is demonstrated to us the scripture reveals to been human blood blood like your blood and my blood but he being not only fully man but also fully God shed that blood having lived a sinless life having fulfilled all the requirements the righteous requirements of the law and so you can ask hypothetically could it have been anything else but that is just as ridiculous as asking could there have been some other cosmos could there been some other divine disposition towards everything that's ridiculous speculation there is no remission of sins without the shedding of blood for the life is in the blood and it wasn't just a wound if Jesus would have scratched his finger on a nail there'd be blood that wasn't enough what it meant is his life had to be given when Jesus and the Gospels just to make that point the Gospels make clear that he was he was bled even after he was already dead in incense in terms of the execution just to make that very point they they left him bloodless when Jesus took on the scope of the world's sin past present and future why was only three days sufficient for him to be dead because of the decision of God the Father to accept this as being enough he was satisfied he was placated by that timeframe he he actually he had to die and when he debt and death it was finished the atonement was made and there's not anything that says that he had to be eternally dead he only had to be you think of Princess Bride almost dead he was totally dead and even Billy Crystal couldn't bring him back to life but but he didn't have to be his his human body didn't have to be dead for eternally it's what the father required and what the father would be satisfied with and the father was obviously satisfied with with that extent can add one thing to that the father said that the son's body would not suffer corruption so he was dead demonstrably three days dead but his body was not allowed to suffer corruption I am a Roman Catholic not me I am a Roman Catholic and my question is about Sola scriptura and the authority of the church I have a hard time believing that the Bible teaches Sola scriptura since the reformers were fallible sinners how can I trust their view on Sola scriptura because they are the ones that articulated Sola scriptura and they excluded themselves from that infallibility they recognized that they themselves were fallible and and they did not believe that the Church created the infallible scripture or that the church was the basis of the authority for the infallible scripture yes the church went through a series of councils in which they finally declared the Bible to be authoritative and binding as one of the two sources of divine special revelation at that time but when when the church made the decision the decision it was very important that the word that they used was race if a moose that is the church said we receive the Scriptures as the Word of God there's a big difference between creating the Scriptures as the Word of God or being the authority that that is that by which the Scriptures is authorized no they were bowing before it and recognizing it and that was a good recognition and it was the same human recognition that the Reformers gave to sacred scriptures saying this is the apostolic word this is the inspired Word and it alone has the authority to bind the conscience with respect to the truth of God's work I think this is a very helpful question that highlights to me one of the most important books of Luther or his writings it's a work he called on the council's in the church and I think it brings some great clarity to the Reformers on Sola scriptura they were talking about Sola scriptura they were talking about Authority which is clearly lodged in Scripture itself it's thus says the Lord it's the it's the Apostles speaking on their apostolic authority not on their own accord and that's what they were very clear to mean but what they did not mean and I think sometimes in contemporary evangelicalism or sometimes a false accusation lodged at the Reformers is they're there for the Reformers just simply dismissed and brushed away fifteen centuries of the church and that's just simply not true they were very clear on the point of authority but in his work on the council's in the church Luther made the case that there is there is a healthy tradition and that the Holy Spirit is not a unique gift to the Reformers nor is he a unique gift to us in the 21st century but has been a gift to the church as the church's tried to understand the Scriptures and then bring those scriptures to bear and the exigencies of the day so it's important doctrine it's also important that we get it right in terms of how Luther stressed it it's it's about the authority it does not mean therefore we can just dismiss church history and Luther and the reforms we ought to the issue was whether it was a source of special revelation at the fourth session of the Council of Trent in the middle of the sixteenth century the church declared that the truth of God was found in Scripture at and tradition there was the main ambiguity there because two of the priests that were delegates there at the Council of Trent protested the original formula and the original formula was part team partum that is that God's special revelation resides partly in Scripture and partly in tradition in one sense we could say that that the truth of God as we see it is found in the Bible and in our confessions but they're not the confessions aren't the source and so there's this protest at the time in the 16th century two men Vinicio and nevermind protested them say that that would destroy na Chianti was the other guy they destroyed the the sufficiency and uniqueness of scripture and then war broke out and the final draft said at rather than part to import them and the question is was that simply a stylistic difference or was it a studied ambiguity did they leave the question unsettled but whatever the question was in who Monty Gaynor is in the recent of 20th century in the fort 1940s made it specifically clear that the church declared two separate sources of special revelation and when we're talking about Sola scriptura what what the Reformers were saying is that it's only in Scripture that we have the certified divine special revelation of God with the Reformers think that the modern evangelical church gives too little thought to the sacraments dr. Nichols says say yes so so I think he should explain why well it all started a long long time ago when we look at the Reformation we like this structure of the soleus and I think it's a very helpful paradigm to get at the Reformation but I think it was you out of brought out last night that this is a relatively recent paradigm if you were to look at the Reformers themselves Calvin in his essay on the sort of key essay they wrote on why the Reformation why the church need Reformation you'd say it was all driven by worship that fundamentally what drove him was the question of worship I think if you were to dig a little deeper into some of the other reformers you would see that what they were really after was restoring the doctrine of the church and when you look at the the question that they wrestled with and spent a lot of time with it was a question on the true marks of the church and they had to do this prior to the Reformation was no question what's the church was the only one Church in town you're either Roman Catholic or you're apostate a pagan but now we have the Reformers and now we have a question what constitutes the true church and what's the false church and so the Reformers invested a great deal of energy in the true marks of a church Luther originally had - then he had seven then he had nine and then he finally died or he would have had a lot more but they all agreed on to the preaching of the word and the right ordering of the sacraments because these are the ordinary means of grace and these are the institutions that God has initiated in his word and then he promised to bless so likely the Reformers would say something to the effect of we love the emphasis on the SOLAS keep up the good work but we also concerned we were concerned a great deal about the doctrine of the church and we also need to be paying attention to that I feel under so some obligation to speak as the Baptist on the platform this is the point at which I think of the line you know that I went to a prize fight in the hockey game broke out there would be some really interesting discussions to be had amongst us here on this and that's a part of the glory of our camaraderie in the Reformed faith but what I would want to say as a Baptist at this point is given what I was just talking about in terms of a time for conviction given the secularization of the age given the fact we're about to find out where the Christians are about to find out where the Christian churches are one of the ways we're going to know that we have found a church is that the church is obeying Christ our preferred Baptist word is ordinances it's a matter of obedience or disobedience and I think what the Reformers would say is we're not finding very many churches as where are the churches who are obeying Christ and what he has commanded baptism in the Lord's temple and the Lord's Supper the Lord's table and I think that would be a severe word of warning to us a good one should church discipline be considered a mark of a true church the answer is yes so I started that conversation but I want to hear what dr. Thomas has to say as well when we when we look at this we usually credit Knox and the founding of the Kirk the Church of Scotland with making explicit what Calvin had as implicit so for Calvin the right ordering of the sacraments would necessitate church discipline in fact one of the reasons he was kicked out of Geneva in the first place was because of the high view he had of the Lord's table his desire that there be no more than 50 people in the city of Geneva accountable to a pastor what he called the company of pastors and his intention was that every week that pastor would meet with those 50 people now some of these were family units so that then he would see other progressing in the Christian faith and they could go to the Lord's Supper so Calvin had implicit I believe in his true marks of the church church discipline what we see in Knox is raising what is in plus it to the level of explicit in terms of the documents of the founding of the of the Kirk the Church of Scotland and the Belgic confession such that it's not just Scottish Presbyterianism but the larger reform movement that comes to articulate disciplines the fourth mark of necessity or the third mark and at that point I do think that there is sometimes a misunderstanding of Knox's intent when he wrote the books of discipline if you read Knox's books of discipline they're not first and foremost should somebody who commits adultery be ultimately excommunicated if they're in repentance that's that's not the trajectory that's the trajectory people think today when you talk about church discipline but but Knox is talking about church order and church structure so Knox was concerned about elders and deacons and and their responsibilities in in the order and system of the church as much as anything else in church discipline suit it was a much it was a much broader concept than then what what normally is intended by that question today with the Reformation part of the Renaissance and if so how did it relate to the Enlightenment well certainly it was part of the Renaissance in as much as that which preceded the Reformation had some of its roots in the Renaissance you remember in the initial stages of the Reformation the leading Renaissance thinker of the day desiderata rasmus of Rotterdam was in support of luther he had written the satirical book the praise of folly in which he was attacking the corruption of the priests and clergy and so on of the day and then later had a falling out from Lutheran's insofar as that he wrote his diatribe against Luther and Luther responded with bondage of the will at that time and he made the comment he said Erasmus attacked the Pope in his belly I attacked the Pope in his doctrine but the the motto of the Renaissance was at Fontes to the sources and it was a revival of interest in antiquity in ancient philosophy ancient culture a recovery of the philosophies of the Greeks and the principles of law of the Romans and so on but also critical to the Renaissance was the rediscovery of the ancient languages and when you look at the doctor and the issue of justification and part of the problem is this that Luther was devoted to Augustine in his understanding and Calvin quoted agustin more than anybody else and yet Agustin was working with the Latin and and the language of justification that we get the English word justification from the Latin used to RA which means literally to make just and that development was throughout the ages developed the concept of the priority of scientific ation over justification before God will ever declare a person just they have to be made just east of Hikari and then with the linguistic awakening in the 16th century particularly with the new understanding of Greek both Melanchthon and Luther were strong in linguistics and philology and that sort of thing and they understood that the biblical concept of justification based on the key of sunay that greek word did not mean to make just or to make righteous but to declare righteous or declare just and so that had a huge impact on my Reformation then when you go into the Enlightenment the Enlightenment we're certainly not sympathetic to the reformation but there was already a declaration of independence from the church from Rome in the Reformation and you take somebody like Descartes for example who anticipated the Enlightenment but was not one of the members of enlightened us he said the real crisis in the 17th century was this loss of authority before everybody looked to the church as being the singular authority but now the church was divided and so then the question is well who needs God after I mean Descartes was trying to restore Authority and then when you get to the 18th century it was basically the idea that the god height the whole concept of enlightenment off flooring meant that there is no longer necessary to have the god hypothesis to explain the origin of life or the origin of the universe now it wasn't one oolitic not everybody but into that a theistic premise there but that was the dominant motif that in one sense grew out of this 16th century challenged two ecclesiastical authority that challenge went over the edge in the 18th century I think it's important to know where some of this conversation comes from in terms of where we inherit it in 2016 in the 19th century there's a huge debate among Western intellectuals as to the course of how the story of Western civilization was to be told and and so the predominant British model was that the Reformation was a necessary corrective of the Renaissance and yet in the early 20th century the argument especially in in Britain became that the Reformation was the repudiation of the Renaissance so fast forward really really quickly to where we live just this week I published an article about the 40th anniversary of Francis Schaeffer's how should we then live what people don't remember is that that was an answer to something else which was law Kenneth Clarke's series civilization that had massive impact and it's hard to come up with a lord Kenneth Clarke was the official curator of the Kings and later the Queen's art one of the most prestigious persons in British society did this massive BBC series called civilization and in it he made the argument that the Reformation was the repeat iation of the Renaissance and basically that this was this was Cataclysm the Renaissance was the great moment and the Enlightenment finally said it back on track but then you have this interruption of this horrifying dogmatic Reformation and that's when Francis Schaeffer responded by saying no the actual story has to be Stern civilization has to be told differently and and that is that the Renaissance set loose an unbridled autonomous humanism that was already destructive of human values and was only corrected by the Reformation so that the elites the Reformation the way they tell the story is dark ages and again and and Derek you are very helpful with this last night the Dark Ages were dark but not dark in the way moderns like to think of them as dark and and so you know the Dark Ages then you have the Renaissance and then all of a sudden you've got the Reformation and then thanks be to reason you've got the Enlightenment going back we've got to understand that's the reflex of the Western elites I think of this question as a really important question in terms of just looking at Geneva there's two sort of famous sons of Geneva if you will Calvin of course and then the other son who has overshadowed Calvin is jean-jacques rousseau and it strikes me how fundamentally they both devoted a great deal of energy to that question who are we as human beings and they had two entirely different answers and what happened in the Enlightenment is Europe voted to go with Rousseau and you see the consequence of that very poor decision and it just strikes me how those two polar opposites really are raising the fundamental question who are we and how we answer that has everything has all sorts of implications for us so and we see that that in the Enlightenment they answered the question wrongly they went in the wrong direction when was the church born in the Upper Room that New Testament church was born in the Upper Room the Old Testament church was born with Adam when he God condescended to cover his shame and his sin with the outer garments Eve's concur in the middle of the twentieth century the Roman Catholic theologian wrote a an important book called ecclesia mob Abel saying the church was born with Abel with giving the proper sacrifices and the sacrifice of praise to God but when we talk about the New Testament church I believe it was born in the Upper Room when Jesus reinstituted the Passover and changed the liturgy of the Passover when we talked about a new covenant in his blood and then that new covenant was ratified the next day on the cross but the declaration of the New Covenant was first made to the disciples in the upper room but people debate this all the time some say it was Pentecost some say was this some say was that but we know we say upper room last night I quoted and in that sense they're all right last night I quoted Calvin from the Institute 1536 when he said that from creation God has always had his church and there's a sense in which of course that's absolutely true are we experiencing a new kind of Reformation in the evangelical church worldwide in this day and age lot of different directions you could take that where you looking at me for you answered you're the historian yeah we have all kinds of new Reformation is going on and every form simply means to restructure making new forms and evangelicalism and today if we can define it at all as a chameleon and you find all kinds of resurgence --is of interest in personal salvation that in the broadest description may be called evangelical but if you asked me to define in contemporary categories what the term evangelical means I can only throw my hands and despair and say I know I don't know anymore you define terms historically an alum ologists remain bright dictionaries first they look at the original linguistic root for a word then they look at historical usage then they look the final criterion is contemporary usage and that's where the the fuzziness comes in historically evangelicalism means those people who recovered the Evangel the gospel and the cement that held evangelicals together with all kinds of denomination was Sola scriptura Sola Feeny the authority of the Bible and justification by faith alone both of which have been severely challenged among quote evangelicals in our day and so now I don't know what evening chuckle doesn't mean I hardly ever use the term I mean it's less often as I possibly can get away with and it's such a contested term you've got to define what you mean every time you use it but it is indispensable because the larger world around us has no category for non Catholic Protestants who aren't liberals other than evangelical that just leaves that that that's a very expensive category beza helps me here in his ecclesiastical history raised the difference between the need for reform and the need for a reformation I'm paraphrasing him here but what was needed in the sixteenth century was a reformation that required an entire new statement of the faith new Creed's new confessions a reset of the church to correct what was understood to be doctrinal falsehoods that required this comprehensive Restatement basis said the church will always need to come back to this but we would say now we don't want to we don't want to go back and correct the Reformers we we don't need a Reformation in that sense what we need is for confessional Protestantism to be reformed by its own confessions to be corrected by what we want to say with the Reformers going forward and I find that a helpful a helpful distinction to call for our Reformation is to call for a break from in that sense and basis usage there in which case you're saying we've got to have entirely new confessions we've got to we've got to reset the faith that I don't think it's what we're saying we're calling people back to confessional Protestantism the faith of the Reformers which we believe to be the historic Christian faith question comes concerning with concern for the millennial generation pointing out that some have failed to embrace biblical Christianity what are the root causes of this and how should the church respond the gospel doesn't change ever the communication of the gospel always has you up against the fluidity of language and terminology and like but the meaning itself of the gospel is not one thing for Generation X and another thing for Millennials the content of the gospel always remains the same and has to be clarified however and communicated with rigor in every generation but there's nothing about the Millennial Generation and requires a change the content amen to that I think we need to recognize that when we're talking about Millennials let's just leave them alone for a moment they'll go have a latte and do something else while we talk for a moment about them but this is where generationally we've got to be really honest every previous generation including and up through Generation X included an ample provision for cultural Christianity even through Generation X you still gained cultural capital by identifying in some sense as a Christian the spectacular rise of the nuns that is the non-affiliated in oh and es amongst the Millennials is the fact that there is no advantage to cultural Christianity there are wonderfully committed young Millennials otherwise you wouldn't have Reformation Bible College would and have Southern Seminary wouldn't have RTS we wouldn't have Ligonier coming so we should be thankful for that who's missing who's missing are the mildly interested nominal Christians so there's a sense in which we had to say faithful Christians look like faithful Christians no matter whether they got a soul patch or gray hair and they're gonna believe the faith once for all delivered to the Saints and don't write off Millennials as if there are no wonderfully committed consecrated convictional young Millennials look out at thousands of them every day and if they didn't make your heart happy nothing well but who's missing are the nominal and their cultural generational experiences provide no experience no room at all that is to say for cultural Christianity there's no advantage only disadvantage the only reason you'll identify as a Christian is if you are one and that's quite different then the final thing I want to say on this is that Christian Smith and his team did his marvelous research you're probably familiar with it if not you just have to be I've got no time except to summarize it by saying they did they followed adolescents starting about 20 years ago in the young adulthood and said that when they actually got down to their theology including growing up in many evangelical churches it was moralistic therapeutic deism they simply believe that God wants you to behave and that he wants you to be happy and inauthentic and that he's there and basically he created the world but he's not involved in our individual lives that's interesting hugely interesting worth all day's discussion we don't have it but here's the point Christian Smith then pressed back on where the kids got that idea and he discovered they were taught it by people who thought they were Christians and who thought they were teaching Christianity it's just unfair for any older group of Christians to look at the younger group of Christians and say boy you're missing out on the faithfulness that we had because in all likelihood what unfaithfulness is there can be traced back to us what advice would you give those who wish to share these great Reformation truths with family and friends this seems to be a struggle for many people somebody's getting rough Thanksgiving coming the most important sharing that has to be done this from the bi ble we need a generation of families go backs not just to affirm the doctrine of Scripture but to search deeply for the teaching of Scripture that's what we need to have the mind of Christ and the only way you can find the mind of Christ is is from the Word of God and we really need a serious revolution not just a revival of study of God's Word and let's be like Luther in this respect let's be infectious with our joy and when our relatives are around us who may not share our faith may they at least have to come face-to-face with how joyful is our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and our embrace of and by these truths because sometimes arguments absolutely necessary but sometimes especially in a family context just infectious joy is contagious so what role does our holiness personal sanctification have in our witness to this darkened world well it has the most it has the most important and dominant role to the degree that we live out our faith in Christ's likeness is the degree to which we stamp what we believe with authenticity and to the degree that we don't we are rightly labeled as hypocrites so be holy as I am holy it's what drew me to Christ 45 years ago as a typical Brit brought up in post Second World War Britain I was I'm not sure I was an atheist I just didn't care it made no it made no impact on my life because it just wasn't a part of my life and I bumped into folk who not only believed in Christianity and believed the gospel and believed in what the scripture taught but they were infectiously joyful about it and not and not just and not just interested in winning mind games and arguments but but there was something palpable that that made me say what whatever it is that you've got that I want that and seeing that Jesus likeness in my first year university student colleagues was what drew me in the first place to Christ holiness is an extremely important barometer it was recently dr. Sproul you were talking about Luther's conscience being captive to the Word of God and just pausing there the flipside of holiness of course is recognizing our unholiness and if our conscience is not captive to the Word of God we don't understand our unholiness if our conscience is captive by culture will never fully grasp God's holiness and our unholiness and this idea of even subtly being impacted by our culture is one that I think we need to really wrestle with and take those words that Luther uttered they're at firms to heart is our conscience captive to the Word of God just one word on this we who seek to explain the world theologically and naturally think in terms of worldview we have developed the instinct to think from doctrine to life to think from theology to experience to think from preaching to action we've got to recognize that most of the people in the world think in the opposite direction they actually watch us and make their inferences about what we believe that's why personal holiness is so absolutely crucial of us because we're being watched and our doctrine is being inferred by how we live and that's not wrong it's not enough but it's not wrong the world in his fallenness still has an instinct to watch and see what we believe and we've got to be aware of that we stand upon the principles of truth goodness and beauty and dr. Sproul I know that you're particularly looking forward to an event tomorrow night could you give the folks here just a little advertisement of your enthusiasm for what they'll experience tomorrow night well it's perhaps a little bit of a cliche but I really believe that what you're in store for tomorrow night is a taste of heaven worship like the angels worship beauty with its majesty and the and an expression of the very character of God who is the foundation source of everything beautiful and I can't wait for tomorrow night because some of the most meaningful experiences I've ever had in my whole life have been with respect to these concerts and I travel what any cost that is just to experience them and you are in for a treat if you come to that glory to the Holy One Conference I am convinced to that let's thank our panelists this afternoon you

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Length: 47min 28sec (2848 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 08 2016