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father we do thank you again for this opportunity to be together to be in your word to learn from your Holy Spirit we pray that he would indeed guide our thoughts and our conversation as we seek
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to know you better to know our Lord Jesus Christ better to know ourselves better as we are uh revealed our nature is revealed
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in your word and your Plan of Salvation that we might get a deeper appreciation of what you have done from your love and mercy to save a
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people for your name we pray that our time together would bring glory to you as it brings edification to each of us for we ask in Jesus name
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amen so we begin a new session um biblical Theology and it's been an unusually long break since we
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finished the first session of Leviticus one of the reasons for that is as I as I got into studying biblical theology um I I realize that there is no consistent
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definition of what Biblical theology is I had an idea of what it is and I approached it that way only to find out that there are many other ideas of what
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it is it's a relatively recent curriculum in Academia about 200 250 years uh although the um
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the practice goes back at least to the Reformation um but I have grown more and more convinced since Seminary that it is an
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underappreciated uh necessity for the church and sadly very underappreciated in the seminaries so we're going to dig through it the first few sessions are
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going to be talking about what Biblical theology is but the really the the thrust of it is learning how to read our
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Bibles learning what God has done in the self-disclosure of himself and of his purpose in his word and that seems like
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it's should be fairly obvious but I think if you've been a Believer for any length of time you know that there are vastly different views of how to read the Bible and even what parts of the
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Bible we ought to read that came about as early as the second century in the Christian era when marcion decided that you don't need to read the Old Testament at all and the New Testament you only
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need to read the Epistles of Paul and the rest of it you can just forget now we have dispensationalism that does essentially the same thing okay so we have a lot of different views one of the
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views I'm going to share a story that I've shared many times but some of you are relatively new so you haven't heard it um but years ago many years ago the church supported uh um um I use the word
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missionary um uh guardedly and Loosely in its broadest sense okay but we supported a missionary who worked for Wickliffe Bible translators now you're
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probably familiar with who John Wickliffe was um translated the Latin Vulgate into uh English um back in the um 14th century right yeah yeah because
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he was dug up and burned in the yeah Council constants okay so that's how you date when they were dug up and burned if they were dug up and burned you need to read them because that's a good thing
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um it's really somewhat ironic that that organization calls itself wickliff Bible translators the missionary we were supporting when we first came to
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Fellowship Bible Church um back in 1989 had been in um the Amazon area working among a tribe known as the Ain
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Indians the philosophy was not actually John Wick Cliff's it was actually um Martin note uh 1950s 60s liberal um but
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the idea was that God so loves the world that he wants his word to be translated in every single dialect and so he wants his word to be
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translated into cultures that do not have a written language and so much of the time is spent creating an alphabet and then a
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vocabulary and a grammar in order to then translate the Bible into that new language okay 25 years was spent and the end result and
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this is really rather remarkable considering what they were doing but they translated the new test
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Testament and that is considered to be the Bible for much of modern professing Christianity my thought being a very practically minded engineer was um this is Brazil teach them Portuguese you can
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hand a Bible to them and actually use it to teach them Portuguese and then they can also get a job in the Brazilian culture because Portuguese is the language of Brazil um and you could do that probably in 25 months instead of 25
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years Armenian M though doesn't think that way Armenian Armenian ISM thinks especially in the modern culture that what we've got to do is show incredible
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sacrificial Love by spending a great deal of time with people in their own culture but the reality is throughout that period of time and I
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don't know what the life expectancy is of the appin Indians but generally the the tribal people of the Amazon don't have you know vast long
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life expectancy for the majority of that time these people did not have the word of God so the the the end result is is very much delayed when by the grace of
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God and the work of others like John Wickliffe we can have it pretty much immediately so that started me thinking about this whole concept of you know you have the other experience of of in the
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hotel rooms where you know you open up the drawer because you always open up the drawers don't you come on I'm not the only one there might be money there might be money there might be something valuable in there and there's nothing but a Gideon's Bible and often times
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that Bible is the New Testament and Psalms and if you think there's a recent development I was reading um this fellow George Wright um it's a
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British uh a serologist archaeologist um but but an Old Testament expert and as far as I could tell a Believer uh but a
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mid 20th century believer which meant he's somewhat liberal but he's talking in in this first section about how uh the Chinese missionary effort at that
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time had completely and and self-consciously given up on the Old Testament that they were working only and again self-consciously they were working only with the New Testament and
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they they actually had a I guess a theological basis for that that was that was somewhat dispensational of course but that the author here he's saying that this is kind kind of an attitude
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that's actually pervasive in the western church now this book was published in 1952 so this is not something new he says and
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says and evidence is the widely spread distribution of the New Testament and Psalms as the real Christian Canon okay now I don't know why the
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Psalms except that they're they're supposedly words of comfort except the imprecatory Psalms imprecatory Psalms you know that I mean why the Psalms why not Proverbs if if what you're
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interested in is the Christian message there's the New Testament because that's all that really matters the New Testament and then we want to give some words of comfort or some moral guidance
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why not why not the New Testament and Proverbs so what what is the logic behind the New Testament and the Psalms well there is a logic behind at least the New Testament and that is the logic
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of marcian of marcian that is we don't need the Old Testament anymore we can do it with the old we can do it with the New Testament and the Old Testament if we want to read it you know it's it's neat
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history um but we really don't need to so thinking about that whole concept it seemed to me that that we we
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read we're taught to read our Bibles in in several ways but but two of them two analogies someone hands you Charles Dickens Bleak
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Dickens Bleak House and says just read the last seven chapters or or Pride and Prejudice you know just read the last quarter of the book okay um is it going to mean
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anything to you now by the way the New Testament is only about 25 a little less than 25% of the entire Bible so it's only the last quarter of all that God has
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revealed to us and we talk about the Canon of scripture because that's a very important concept not universally agreed upon either but you you take a book and
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you say well yeah I read the last few chapters and I didn't really like it that's one way of reading it okay that's one way of reading wrongly a novel another way uh that and that would
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be the way that many Christians view the Old Testament relative to the new or the Bible relative to the new they tend to equate the Bible and the New Testament
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as being coextensive and the Old Testament of course is what it's the Bible of the Jews and we still with the influence of dispensationalism and dispensationalism and now political
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now political Christianity we still associate the Old Testament with Jewish people it it's still valid right for them not for us so it's like God
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actually has according to dispensationalism he has a parallel plan and path going here one for us Gentiles that's the New Testament and one for the Jews well that's the Old Testament so
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we've made a dichotomy in the scriptures but you know every one of you if you brought your Bible what do you have in your Bible well you have weights and measures and you have uh you know the
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genealogy now you have an Old Testament and you have a new testament right so we don't we don't generally publish our Bibles except wickliff for some reason
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we don't publish our B we don't go out and buy a Bible and just buy the New Testament so there's something in our mind that says yeah and I read through the Bible programs they take us through the Old Testament though to be
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honest we may wonder why as we're reading through some of the more difficult books Ezekiel for example job um it it may be interesting to know that
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Ezekiel and Daniel uh were not largely accepted as canonical for quite a long time by the Jews okay so um you know that make you
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feel better if you're reading it and don't understand what you're reading uh but but Ezekiel was to the old test to the Hebrews what Revelation was to the church weird I don't know what to do
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with this and so the rabbis did what the Christian fathers did and that is they argued whether or not it was indeed canonical so the whole process of Canon I think is is also very important the
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other way that uh we might read a book let's say it's Bleak House I don't know if any of you read red BL Bleak House or um or okay Pride and Prejudice that's probably more familiar okay let's say
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okay you're going to I'm going to give you this pride and pre what I want you to do is I just want you to read every page on which Mr Darcy is dealt with okay now at the end of it you'll know
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everything there is to know about Mr Darcy you won't know any of it in context okay does that make sense is that is that how you read a novel now
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don't get me wrong I'm not suggesting that the is a novel I'm talking about ways that we read and we don't read that way except we do read the Bible that way
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in fact we can buy Bibles that do it for us and tell us where to look if we're if we're bereaved or if we're impoverished or if we're sick or if we're happy right
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we got all the pages to deal with or if we're systematic theologians we read all the pages that deal with justification right or all the things deal with
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deal with eschatology you know or as we were talking in Sunday school you know the day of the Lord we'll just read all about when Mr Darcy comes back right now not meant to be Blasphemous
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but you know it's silly that we would read the Bible that way but in fact that is how the church treats the Bible one of those two ways we either read the last quarter and that's what applies to
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us or we read every page that has to do with a particular topic and then we know everything about that topic but we don't don't know anything about that topic in context because God did not give us just
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25% of the scriptures and he did not give us an index or a table of contents so it it seems very clear that what he did give us he intends for us to
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read now to reinforce that and this is a statement of the obvious what was the Bible for the apostles the Hebrew Bible right
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the Old Testament what we now call the Old Testament they refer to it as Holy Scripture the writings that could not fail that's what Jesus said they cannot be wrong they cannot fail you know we
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tend to think you know when we read 2 Timothy 3:16 did Paul know when he was writing that verse to Timothy of course did did he label it verse 16 no um did he know that he was
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writing inspired writing inspired scripture was he aware of that he gives no indication in fact the indication that we do have that what Paul wrote was
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scripture actually comes from Peter in his second letter but did Peter know when he was writing that that he was writing scripture I think it's safe to say that when Paul said all scripture is God
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breathed all scripture is profitable he was referring to the scriptures of the Hebrews which actually at the time was not a closed Cannon there was some significant
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disagreement as as I said Ezekiel Daniel uh several other uh books were uh debated as to whether or not they belonged in the Canon the word Canon
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wasn't used until about the 2 Century into the third Century by the church but the concept of Canon goes back well into the first century probably the first century before Christ so the whole idea
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of a body of literature that is inspired is not a Christian concept it was ALS it was a Jewish concept before it was a
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Christian concept so that when when the apostles brought the gospel forth they did so in the context of a
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Canon of Canon of scripture that they repeatedly either explicitly quoted clearly alluded to or
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implicitly as an echo you can still hear the Old Testament in their writings the number of quotations or clear Illusions
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in the New Testament of the Old Testament has been numbered in the thousands of of actual references again some of them are very clear um and we
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also notice that some of them and you may have noticed this I hope you've noticed this some of them don't seem quite right for example in Matthew when we read so
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that it might be fulfilled meaning it's this is a prophecy out of Egypt I shall call my son well then you go back to I think it's Hosea 11 and you read it and
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you think that's not a Messianic prophecy at all so what's going on here when you when you read what the New Testament writers do with the Old Testament you realize
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that they're using either either um Sanctified imagination or license a clear or a simple reading of the Old
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Testament text does not always equate with the New Testament reference have you ever encountered that I mean is everybody I'm not saying anything heretical here I think it's an
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experience that we've all had which tells us okay I'm not reading the Old Testament like the apostles did which probably means that I'm not
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reading the Old Testament correctly they were able to find the entire gospel not only in Jesus Christ but in Jesus Christ as a fulfillment
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Paul says that he was crucified according to the scriptures and he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures and all of the writers of the New Testament do that as it is written
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that it might be fulfilled according to the scriptures and again sometimes we read those scriptures in the Old Testament and we don't quite quite connect the dots the way they're connecting the dots
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and yet we have the anointing within us and have no need of any to teach us we have the same Holy Spirit in us as was in them though we believe that in matters
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of Faith they were rendered inherent we're not but it's not a different Holy Spirit it was different giftedness for a purpose I don't think and I've said this
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before I don't think Paul's shopping list was list was inherent okay I mean he might have forgotten the tomatoes he was a human being I don't think he wrote many other letters that we don't have we know at
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least two to the Corinthians that are referred to in our two letters to the Corinthians that don't seem to refer to either of our two there was a letter to the Lans that was circulated with the letter
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to the Ephesians and to the Colossians and it was supposed to be read as a circular and encyclical around Asia Minor don't have that letter do we say that if that letter
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were found it would be infallible I I wouldn't personally but that's a canonical discussion so we have to talk about canonic to say why is it
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that we think the Canon of scripture is closed and if some archaeologist unearths Paul's letter epistle to the Lans we're like nope we're not going to
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we're not going to make a three- ring binder out of our Bibles so they read the Old Testament in a certain a certain way and I think it's it's kind of
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cutting to the punchline to say that that certain way was Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection that event which I refer to
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as the Christ event which really goes from the Incarnation to the Ascension it's kind of a shorthand way of saying the work of Jesus Christ here on Earth that work was obviously moment
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but it but it reoriented the thinking of believing Jews toward their own holy
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scriptures should we not think of the Old Testament as they did anybody should we not read the Old Testament as they
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did know the um I think you have to I think you have to understand the
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New Testament then the Old Testament and then the New Testament deeper in other words I would not suggest starting with the Old Testament necessarily I would not a new believer
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for example but it wouldn't be long after that when the Old Testament would be part of the study because what is being revealed in the New Testament will very quickly descend
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into either moralism or dogmatics in other words I know how to live or I know what to believe it is neither of those
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primarily so um and and we don't have a new testament except as flowed out of the revelation of God in the Old Testament
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now that's not something that everybody agrees with okay there have been many in the last 2,000 years who think that the disciples essentially started from
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get I don't know where that's from fine because you were an apostle so it's harder to say read scriptures they did don't understand okay that's fair and many
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people make that argument that we should not expect to read the Old Testament the way the apostles did because the apostles were the apostles okay well we're not the only
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ones who they were not the only ones who read the Old Testament that way the post-apostolic fathers also read the Old Testament that way many of of them of
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course another argument is well they were Jews and so we really can't expect Gentiles to be able to read the Old Testament the way Jews did that does not stand to reason actually your your nationality does does
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not dictate how well you read something it's now in English and most of the quotes of the New Testament from the Old Testament were from the
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Greek Old Testament just specific Jus taugh them about old test
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and I would yeah exactly but that's a very big other than he taught them directly yes but even having taught them directly we have that famous interview on the road to
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Emmas y'all don't get it do you and starting with Moses and the prophets he took them through again I'm sure and said these things must happen that the
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son of man must be glorified so yes he did but the evidence we do have is that while he was doing it and even after he had done it they didn't get
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it he even said I have many more things to tell you but you can't handle it yet and what did he promise in that same breath the Holy Spirit so the question is do we have the same
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Holy Spirit they did and the answer is I hope so because there's only one and if you do not have the spirit of Christ you are none of his right so there's no
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distinction between an apostle and a disciple in terms of the anointing that is within you there should be no distinction in your ability by virtue of
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prayer and the spirit's guidance that we might understand the old Testament through the New Testament but in the manner that the New Testament writers understood it if we're
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understanding the Old I I'll put it this way if we're understanding the Old Testament differently than they are or they did how can we say we're
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right if we do Accord them a greater status and a more direct intercourse with Jesus and maybe a extra dose of the Holy Spirit
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Holy Spirit that just means that the way they understood it was the way it ought to be understood which means we ought to understand it in the same way analogously it's is as Paul says
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imitate me as I imitate Christ so that's that's kind of the thrust of the class is understanding and I'm going to say understanding the understanding the Bible the way those who read the Hebrew
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scriptures and through the finished work of Jesus Christ wrote the Christian scriptures meaning the apostles that that group of men who were graciously
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charged with being the link between the two covenants the old Covenant and the new okay I'm not saying that we read the Bible the way Moses understood it or the
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way Isaiah understood it because they their knowledge was limited their place as as the writer of Hebrews said God was speak speaking at that time in many
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parts and many portions through the prophets right but now he has spoken through his through his son and he spoke through his son through
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his Apostles and what we have now is the cannon of both the new and the Old Testament the
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thoughts so um and please do interrupt raise your hand I I want to make sure that it's um it's clear what it is that we're trying to do once again I am not saying the Bible is a novel it's not a novel but I will say
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that it is a grand narrative I won't say it's an epic because epic has you know they have dwarves running a 100 miles you it's not our idea of Epic is like Lord of the
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Rings it's not an epic in that sense it's it's not any particular type of literature is actually many different
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types of types of literature it is a Unity but has incredible diversity it refers to itself
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often including in the Old Testament so Malachi will speak of Moses so that you know the the the reflection of the
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of the psalmist on The Exodus for example that that's something that it means that the scripture is actually self-
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inuitive it reflects upon itself as you read it it's not just chapter after chapter every chapter being some new revelation it doesn't work that way it's
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it's more like living history which never completely though it sometimes tries it never completely loses contact
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with its own past does does that make sense so sense so um the psalmist says by the unfolding of
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Thy word you bring light or in your light we see light so that those kind of verses tell us that there is a there's a way in
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which scripture reveals itself and unfolds itself to our understanding through the holy spirit so I'm going to submit to you
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that we can all understand the scriptures better than we do and we can understand the New Testament better by understanding the Old Testament better and doing that by seeking to understand
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the Old Testament the way the apostles understood the Old Testament does anybody object to that those statements you think
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differ way I think in in both Testaments you have representations of of the of the genre for example you have Chronicles in the Old Testament and you
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have the gospels and the book of Acts in the new they're not exhaustive okay they they didn't have every single thing that the apostles did and in fact the Acts of the Apostles
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really only is a misnomer because there's only really two Apostles you know Peter and then Paul it's clearly I mean John you know they're there yes but very quickly early on it's Peter and
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then it's Paul PA right so you know you can see that as a historian Luke had a purpose he wasn't trying to be comprehensive and Universal and covering
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everything the early church did but neither did the chronicler okay so those those are similar um you don't have much in the way of law in the New Testament the
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pentet took um mainly because it was already given and that's that's an important facet that it didn't disappear Christ did not abolish the law
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so the law still formed a substratum of Jewish thought even as Christian you have Epistles that's a new one you don't really have letters in the Old Testament
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I can't think of any I mean some some people might think that the the prophets are themselves kind of letters to the people and in a sense they are um but not in the same sense as the Epistles of
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the of the New Testament you also have apocalyptic you have Ezekiel you have Daniel you have parts of Zechariah and you have Revelation so I would say
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that being that the apostles were Jewish and they were led by The Same Spirit who inspired the Old Testament writers there are
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similarities I think the differences come out in the fact that the subject matter is now completed that they're looking at it from a from a perspective of
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fulfillment whereas all of the Old Testament writers were looking prospectively the New Testament writers are now looking retrospectively Yuri I
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find it interesting that the New Testament the apostles had old testament which was their vernacular and now we have translations
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so yeah tons of these and THS yeah yeah in the Old Testament it's it's these and THS in the New Testament it's it's you that is an I've I've noticed that I have the nasb the
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have longer than the Zars right right yes yeah Jesus gave high five to the disciples right yeah
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there is that there is that modernization of the new testament which betrays again our attitude toward the Old Testament as really being
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Antiquated and things that are Antiquated are neat to look at in a museum or if you have some antiques at home you put them in a case and shut the door right you don't handle them and I
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do think there's a there's an attitude that is pervasive and if not conscious it's powerfully subconscious that the Old Testament is antiquarian literature
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and I and I think that's an interesting point I do use the new American Standard and I often wonder why the these and the THS um you know so that but I think that
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I think Yuri is right it betrays that itude so when we when we come to the Bible I I would say it is the the phrase that I'm going to
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us the Arc of Revelation the trajectory of God's disclosure of disclosure of himself and through disclosing himself he's disclosing everything
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else he's disclosing man and creation and more individually he's disclosing each and every one of us okay
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um I can't remember exactly how Calvin put it in his institutes but basically saying that in in a reciprocal way to know ourselves we must come to
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know God and then as we come to know God we know God more as we know more of ourselves it's it's a he we are His Image so that when we look at ourselves
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we are looking in a mirror at the Divine image Paul uses that language so I'm not making that up he says that we are being changed from glory to
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glory it doesn't mean that we're gods don't get me wrong it doesn't mean that there's a spark of divinity there's no more spark of divinity than there is a source of light in the Moon it is
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entirely reflective but it can be awfully bright okay so that analogy has been used throughout the ages I think it's very valid that when we contemplate and
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reflect on God's revelation of himself we are also reflecting on God's revelation of revelation of ourselves and also of his creation it
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it's all a comprehensive whole even though it has been given to us progressively over 2,000 years 1500 years so it wasn't given all at once and
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that's something that that needs to be discussed why was it not given all at once um you know was Moses less able to handle it than than Isaiah or David or
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you know no Moses was he he spoke with God face to face face right so there was no no deficiency
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in Moses so we're looking at the purpose and plan of God and determining to reveal himself over Millennia but also to reveal himself in
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a manner that is woven into human history and particularly the history of a people the Old Testament people of God Israel and then from from
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that through the grafting in of Believers the New Testament people the church and God is still doing that that that has been his plan from before
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scripture began to be written and after it has the cannon has closed that God is revealing himself in and through
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history but we can't simply go to the newspaper and interpret the person and the will of God people try that that is doomed to failure we have his Revelation
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and to the best of our ability with the wisdom that we ask for James says the wisdom that God gives we can begin to understand God's purpose even as we reflect on history on
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what has happened and then by extension what will happen so that that's that's the concept The Arc of Revelation is is to look at the Bible as a comprehensive
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whole and in in a sense to remove the division old and new now you're going to hear throughout the class that at times I'm going to Advocate the division and at times I'm
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going to Advocate no division it's like the chapters and verses they are simp they are certainly helpful are they not but not always
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they're not always correct are they okay um you know is there significance in the fact that the 12 Minor Prophets constituted one book of
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the Hebrew Bible because they were written on one scroll but they were counted we count 39 Old Testament Old Testament books the Jews counted either 22 or 24
38:18
depending on whether they appended Ruth to judges um or Esther to Nehemiah or Lamentations to Jeremiah okay and getting such a low number is because 12
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of them are just one book okay so is there a significance to the fact were they were they inspired in doing that or were they any more inspired in doing that than whoever came up with the
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versification of the of the Bible was inspired in doing that we take a lot of things for granted don't we I mean what would we do without John 3:16 the church would just fall apart if
38:53
we didn't have John 3116 well when John wrote 3:16 it wasn't 3:16 right it wasn't anything so are we not putting a little bit too much weight on things that were not
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inspired and maybe so unconsciously making divisions in our mind as we read see when a when an author does write a story whether it's a
39:17
textbook a fiction or non-fiction there is a purpose behind the chapter divisions and even really
39:28
the paragraphs but when you write a letter do you make the same distinctions especially if you're trying to save to save Papyrus okay you know and and so we
39:41
sometimes we're we're um employing a a hermeneutic of hermeneutic of reading that is not Guided by the scripture itself but by artificial AIDs
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that have been given to us like chapter and verse or Old Testament New Testament whoever did
40:04
that you you'll never find Paul referring to the scriptures as the Old Testament I don't exactly know when that
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came about um I do know that some of the oldest codices do have a division between the Hebrew scriptures and the Christian scriptures and some of them
40:27
have the Apocrypha that is recognized by the Catholic church but was not recognized by the second temple Jews and we'll talk about that when we talk about
40:37
Canon so there's a lot of moving Parts okay we we tend to take our Bible for granted and that's not necessarily a good thing we tend to read it as if we
40:48
know what we're doing but I would I would argue from from my experience that that's not a safe assumption and I'm going to use another analogy and that is as teaching
40:59
homeschooling and then with the Milton Academy um well really I I realized this when I went to college there is a tacid assumption in the in Academia that human
41:12
beings naturally know how to take notes no they don't and over the course of the years occasionally I taught a note-taking
41:23
class and I know I've shared this story some of you have heard this before but I would start the class by talking about the the the the art of note taking but while I was talking I would write on the
41:35
board Mary had a little lamb his fleece was white as snow and everywhere that Mary went the lamb was sure to go or the other version where Mary had a little more um but then
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I stopped and I I asked the students what do you have in your notebooks right now Mary had a little lamb his fleece was what does that have to do with no taking you you didn't record anything I
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said but because I wrote something on the board you wrote it in your you know so it kind of proved the point that you don't know what you're doing and and it it didn't okay and I think that the same
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thing analogously is true we think somehow that we know how to read the Bible why do we think that why do we think that oh because we have the Holy Spirit well uh it would be nice if we
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were so Sanctified so quickly but in fact we're fact we're not two things the Bible or the scriptures were read
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out loud and the person didn't stop and say that
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just and you're kind of like out to see you don't know where you are and that's I think that's a good feel because most not but most people on KJ
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it's like it's like sem sem sem sem period yeah I I I I wouldn't argue with the the benefit of of reading just a reader's
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version without the chapter and verse divisions I also think that there's a great deal of of profit by the chapters and verses um I I don't think they were
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in inspired and we've we've said in teaching that we don't you know we don't think this was done correctly that you know that this particular chapter Vision division doesn't really work um the last few verses of Isaiah 52 belong in Isaiah
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53 okay so just they just do I mean you can tell you wonder what the fellow was smoking when he made that division just not right some of them are more subtle
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but um one of the major questions I've mentioned this many times that we're we're living in an age that was massively impacted in the Western World
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by the enlightenment of the 17th or the 18th and 19th century primarily the 18th that gave rise to liberalism within Christianity in the 19th
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century from that liberalism we have the higher criticism textual criticism form criticism the Bible was something that was studied as a laborat and it was criticized
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and it was divided and dissected and there was no devotion or faith in the in the process at all it was seeking to be purely scientific and
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objective along with this was the the deification of human reason which disallowed the miraculous and it disallowed as well the
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intervention of God in the Affairs of creation so all of this is happening in the western world and you know honestly it it it it makes the hair in the back
45:01
of my neck stand up when I hear Christians talk about our saintly founding fathers they were not saintly I'm not sure many of them were
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actually regenerate men okay and their views of views of Christianity should have been considered heretical except for the age in which they lived they lived in the height of
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the um the um uh the Republic of reason they they were a worldwide a worldwide Cosmopolitan brain elevating philosophy
45:36
and human rationalism over Revelation so that's that's the product that that impacted the church massively even in the early 20th century when a group of
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of conservative Christians tried to to retrench um and they they published a series of articles that became known as the fundamental
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the fundamental and they themselves became known as fundamentalists okay now that word has changed meaning since then but at the time it meant those who believed in the
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fundamental doctrines of Christianity the non-negotiables the non-negotiables okay but they were right they were fighting a rear guard action they were losing pathetically and the vast majority of
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churches in Europe and then in the United States in North America have sloughed off into meaningless purposeless liberalism and that's where they remain and in fact probably I'm
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going to throw out a number you could probably go into 80% of the churches in Greenville On Any Given Sunday and not hear a wit about biblical Christianity so all of this has happened
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and this is the world in which we live and we're raising our children um we're we're not going to be turn we're not going to be turning back the clock to some H Kion age of the of the
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reformers or the English Puritans none of those ages were as glorious as later writers make them you can just read their own writings and listen to their
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lament at the state of the church in their day okay you can go all the way back to Corinthians right so you go back to time when they were still the apostles were still living and there was still corruption
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and uh deceit and deception in the church so I'm not I'm not suggesting that there was a good old day I'm just trying to say this is the world in which we live and what it has done to the
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Bible has um permeated modern Evangelical Christianity so that even if you pull a a conservative commentary off the
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shelf they'll they'll talk about whether or not Paul wrote Ephesians and Colossians now Colossians now nobody nobody in the 17th century and
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before Ever Raised that question you won't find anybody Catholic or Protestant whoever said I don't know if Paul wrote Ephesians but you know I think it was a pseudo Paul because it
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sounds a lot like Paul but we know it wasn't Paul because we know that's product of the Enlightenment okay it's really the deification of human reason
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and particularly the reason of the particular humans who are pontificating about whether or not Paul or how many Isaiah were there how many Isaiah can you fit on the head of a pin um you know there there's Isaiah there's trto Isaiah
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you know finally in the 20th century the second half of the 20th century even these liberal Scholars realized this is kind of counterproductive we're destroying our
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own matter of study and some of these people did profess to be Believers and so they started looking at you know what what really matters is the
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cannon we have now I'm not going to agree with them I'm just saying this is the evolution of stupidity um it comes back around and we start to write about how good the redactors were to make
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these multiple different documents look like one book isn't that amazing it's almost miraculous but we don't believe in those so that it almost seems like
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there's one Isaiah that we know there's at least three you read them okay you are really idiots and this is Academia these are Scholars but they came to the
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realization and this is kind of the modern thrust of biblical theology the realization that we have a cannon of scripture that has been recognized as
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authoritative by the Jewish community and then the Christian Community for Millennia without wondering how many Isaiah there were or whether or not
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Moses wrote all of the penet we know he didn't probably write about his own death okay but you know things happen um heard
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of things being published postumus but not written postumus uh you know but but then the conservatives they they get all up in arms and say well you can't you can't doubt anything about the Bible so
50:10
there's this anti-intellectualism that now comes into it and you have to Simply say that you know we take it by faith well yes we do but does that mean we don't wrestle
50:22
with the difficult Parts you know does that mean we stop thinking because if we stop thinking we stop learning and we're just spoonfed and and honestly the vast
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majority of evangelicals are indeed spoonfed and what they're being fed is not healthy it's not nutritious and many of you have experienced this in other churches I hope you never experienced it
50:45
here but that is indicative that we have we have failed in our handling of God's word and the New Testament tells us that
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we are are to study to be skilled as a skilled Craftsman able to rightly handle the word of truth that's a charge that okay yes it's given to pastors First
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Timothy is a pastoral letter or is that in second Timothy anyhow I think it's in second Timothy but does it only apply to pastors and we've talked about that
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before we'll talk about it again in this course what is our responsibility as Believers are we not to be like the bereans and study the scriptures our eles so that we are not
51:30
deceived now we we will not that those who are deceived I I firmly believe will not be held to the same account as those who do the
51:46
deceiving but by that I do not mean that they will be exonerated especially if that deception was essentially willful through negligence does everybody accept that
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know think comment seems question commentary what this gu
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the what they think absolutely but then I wouldn't go to The Other Extreme and say that I won't listen to anybody either uh absolutely I think there is a dependence on too much especially within the scholarly community on commentaries
52:27
but I also think that commentaries are useful the way I use them is that I I honestly don't think that God's waited 2,000 years to reveal something just to me it's somewhat of a sanity check okay
52:40
uh and that doesn't mean that you know that I go with the majority rule either often times it's not the majority but it's very comforting to hear at least one other person even from 1952 saying the same thing I'm saying about
52:51
publishing the New Testament in the Psalms you know you feel like okay I'm I'm not completely out there we we we didn't always have commentaries but you know the Jews did
53:03
have the the mishna you know they did have the taram they they did have commentaries yeah they go around in circles I'm and I'm going to read some of it to you over the course I mean it's
53:13
kind of funny um what they do have to say especially when you get into konics that's kind of interesting I find it interesting I think there is an overdependence and that leads to h a
53:24
concept that's going to kind of be in the background of this whole study and and that is you've all heard the phrase scholasticism yeah yeah it's right that
53:35
is Mary had get it down um you've all heard of scholasticism Aon as somebody who does a
53:45
lot of writing to tease out thoughts I certainly hope that what is useful in my writing will be useful to my children maybe grandchilden who knows
53:57
um at the same time I would hate it that were all they read or they became dependent upon it so they learned on their own right and I feel the same way about the plum line notes I hope they're
54:08
helpful but they're certainly not infallible they're they they do help guide our thinking but there is as AB pointed out there I think there's a serious danger and not just a danger it
54:19
is a reality especially in reformed Christianity and that is I mentioned scholasticism scholasticism is typically
54:30
associated with medieval Roman Catholicism again the the famous um uh apocryphal statement is you know arguing how many angels will fit on the head of
54:40
a pin okay I don't know that that was ever argued or whether it was a a ludicrous straw man used by the reformers um but what scholasticism is
54:51
is nothing more than the teaching of the schools okay and which means means that there are different views upon a subject and the multiple schools that hold these
55:03
individual views fight each other in print and they make commentaries on commentaries so okay um you can look
55:14
back to second temple Judaism and there was a distinct scholasticism because there was the rabic school of shamai and the rabbi
55:24
School of H and you were in one or the other okay Paul was probably H um probably and I say that because he was taught by gal um you know so that whole
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idea of of getting away from the actual revelation of God and begin to focus on the writings of men on the revelation of God and then later the writings of men
55:47
on the writings of men on the revelation of God you're moving into Evangelical scholasticism okay so this is what you
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and I would argue from my experience in seminary and and just in reading that the reform church in the 21st century is deeply embedded in Evangelical
56:18
scholasticism and they would rather argue about a confession or a Creed than actually present the word of God they'll preach from the Creed they'll have courses on the confession okay they
56:31
won't have a Biblical theology curriculum but they'll have a curriculum on the Westminster Confession there's something wrong with that there's a Reliance now on something that is clearly not canon right not scripture
56:45
and the Holy Spirit that Jesus never promised the holy spirit to guide us through the Westminster Confession or to help us memorize the catechism I know because I did pray that
56:58
[Laughter] would because I had to pass that course okay but it's you know years and years of this it's just when I hear it I think that is nothing more that is nothing
57:10
less than Protestants scholasticism it's not limited to Roman Catholics it wasn't limited to Jews it's a mindset that takes refuge in the the the
57:23
derivative and not the original f you know the re Renaissance ad Fontes go back to the sources yeah but they did and then they started writing commentaries about the sources and then
57:33
they started writing commentaries about the comment this was happening in the liberal Renaissance not just in the church Peter Lombard his sentences became standard textbook in the
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seminaries for centuries what he did was he took a verse of scripture and then he just had sentences from the fathers the post-apostolic fathers the the middle a the popes the councils and it was
57:55
nothing but what other people have written about that verse and that was what they studied and that's what led to the scholasticism of the high Middle Ages which the reformers said that is bunk we
58:06
need to get back to the scriptures and so or zwingley shocked Everybody by standing in the Pulpit his first day opening up to Matthew 1 verse one and preaching from the Bible everybody had a
58:18
coronary ain't nobody done that before but before long we now have I have a three volume commentary on the
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knowledge I haven't read it I just keep it there to remind me of what can happen like this is but we're impacted by that we're we're raised in the churches that
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that have become products Heirs of this this Scholastic tradition and within the reform profession um I think you know CIS reformed Christians are associated
59:01
with dogmatics are we not of not of Doctrine That's The Stereotype of a reformed a calvinist is a doctrinaire
59:11
dogmatic Christian if a Christian at all it's nothing wrong with having your Doctrine correct it's not but having Doctrine correct is not by any means the
59:23
end tip end tip it's it's another one of those situations that you come across all the time which is there's balance between two item what you find in the you know
59:36
you're somewhere between the Scholastics and the Quaker standing up and preaching without having studied at all but if you don't do all of those things in our day
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you're accused of not having rigor yes done the work that you were supposed to right therefore you have no Authority and I think you should do the work I think Paul PA exhorts us to do the work
