Fifty Years of Theological Battles

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - Happy Monday, as we get back after it here on the podcast.

00:00:07.600 | Pastor John, I know one of the things

00:00:09.120 | that you really enjoy is answering questions

00:00:12.900 | in front of students, open floor Q&As.

00:00:16.320 | You've been doing this for over 50 years

00:00:18.760 | and still at it, currently investing your time

00:00:21.920 | into the lives and students at Bethlehem College and Seminary.

00:00:25.560 | This time with students is built into your schedule now

00:00:28.240 | and recently in that context with BCS students,

00:00:31.840 | you had a chance to walk through the theological battles

00:00:34.600 | that you have fought over the decades.

00:00:37.660 | And I was wondering, looking back on those battles,

00:00:40.000 | if you could reshare what you said in private

00:00:43.500 | with us here on APJ.

00:00:45.360 | Can you rehearse those battles decade by decade?

00:00:48.120 | And if you could, tell us what points you were trying

00:00:51.680 | to make in rehearsing this history with the students.

00:00:55.120 | - As part of my happy responsibilities

00:00:58.960 | as Chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary,

00:01:01.720 | I regularly participate in what we call table talk,

00:01:06.240 | where the students gather to eat their lunch

00:01:09.140 | and ask questions of the leaders, and I'm one of those,

00:01:14.140 | related to life, related to ministry,

00:01:16.800 | how it relates to the issues of our day.

00:01:20.500 | And I generally begin those sessions with some thoughts

00:01:24.080 | off my front burner, just to prime the pump of questions

00:01:27.800 | and throw it open to whatever the students

00:01:29.600 | want to talk about.

00:01:30.880 | So a few weeks ago, I tried to make this point

00:01:34.040 | in my introductory comments.

00:01:35.980 | I said something like, "Since the issues

00:01:39.280 | that you will be facing," looking at the students,

00:01:42.620 | "that you'll be facing in 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now,

00:01:47.620 | you'll be my age in 50 years.

00:01:53.200 | Since those issues that you'll be facing

00:01:55.440 | are utterly unpredictable, and in some cases, unimaginable,

00:02:00.440 | your best preparation right now in your teens

00:02:05.440 | and 20s and 30s is to gain the spiritual

00:02:10.440 | and intellectual abilities to interpret God's

00:02:15.480 | never-changing word in scripture,

00:02:18.640 | according to its true God-intended meaning,

00:02:22.200 | which will never leave you speechless."

00:02:25.400 | Never.

00:02:26.240 | "But always provide the profoundest wisdom

00:02:30.320 | for every new challenge, none of which takes God off guard."

00:02:35.320 | So that was my main point to try to get across to them.

00:02:38.800 | And then to drive the point home,

00:02:40.760 | I gave them a glimpse into the controversies

00:02:45.600 | of the last 50 years of my life.

00:02:48.280 | - Wow.

00:02:49.120 | - Precious, the Bible has become as an absolutely sure

00:02:54.120 | compass for staying the course of truth and wisdom,

00:02:59.080 | and as an anchor to keep me from being driven about

00:03:03.560 | by every wind of doctrine, and as a treasure chest

00:03:08.480 | of holy joy that satisfies so deeply

00:03:13.480 | that I'm not sucked in to the seductive pleasures

00:03:19.200 | that on the surface change from era to era.

00:03:23.400 | They don't really change, but the form changes.

00:03:27.240 | So here's part of the glimpse that I gave them

00:03:29.520 | into my 50-year history of dealing with unexpected issues.

00:03:34.520 | But let me say at the outset that I'm not gonna focus

00:03:39.120 | on race and abortion as one of those issues

00:03:45.440 | because they're just pervasive.

00:03:49.440 | I mean, for the last decades of my life,

00:03:52.240 | I have lived every decade with issues of race

00:03:55.960 | that need to be addressed, and issues of abortion

00:03:58.920 | that need to be addressed.

00:04:00.480 | So understand those are huge issues,

00:04:02.960 | and that I don't mention them in the list

00:04:04.840 | doesn't mean they're absent, it means they're everywhere.

00:04:06.640 | - Yeah.

00:04:07.520 | - So in the 1960s, I was coming to terms

00:04:10.800 | with the controversy surrounding fresh historical arguments

00:04:15.520 | for the factual resurrection of Jesus Christ.

00:04:18.360 | Daniel Fuller's "Easter Faith in History"

00:04:21.040 | had been published in 1965.

00:04:23.200 | Wolfhard Pannenberg was making waves

00:04:26.560 | by his 1968 book "Revelation as History,"

00:04:30.800 | where he argued that the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth

00:04:33.800 | was an historical event as real

00:04:37.440 | as you're getting out of bed this morning,

00:04:40.240 | which in German, but money in circles in the '60s

00:04:43.240 | was absolutely radical.

00:04:46.000 | He was one of the teachers I had, by the way,

00:04:47.960 | at the University of Munich in the '70s.

00:04:51.360 | Hand in glove with the controversy was the whole issue

00:04:56.360 | of the modern methodology of critical biblical scholarship.

00:05:00.600 | In 1966, George Ladd published "The New Testament

00:05:04.800 | and Criticism," where he tried to sort out

00:05:08.440 | what was usable in so-called higher criticism

00:05:12.200 | and what was contradictory

00:05:14.640 | to the inspired nature of scripture.

00:05:17.160 | And those were crucial days for me,

00:05:19.720 | crucial, like crux, like crossroads,

00:05:23.320 | and how I thank God in the ways I could have gone

00:05:27.800 | that he held on to me for his glory and for his word.

00:05:32.760 | Then came the 1970s and three huge issues.

00:05:36.280 | In 1970, Hal Lindsey published "The Late Great Planet Earth."

00:05:40.920 | By 1999, that book had sold 35 million copies.

00:05:45.520 | - Wow.

00:05:46.560 | - In it, he virtually predicted the second coming by 1988.

00:05:50.960 | I don't know how that book stays in print

00:05:52.200 | unless they adjusted it.

00:05:54.240 | And he popularized the pre-tribulational rapture view

00:05:59.120 | of the second coming.

00:06:00.520 | And I wrote a paper in response to this,

00:06:02.960 | and it became very personal because my father and I

00:06:05.800 | locked horns over this,

00:06:07.720 | and there's nobody I loved more than my father,

00:06:10.080 | and I didn't want to alienate him.

00:06:11.360 | And we got along pretty well,

00:06:12.960 | although that book brought a lot of stuff to the fore.

00:06:16.280 | 1975, Paul Jewett published "Man as Male and Female,"

00:06:21.280 | in which he said that when Paul instructed only men

00:06:26.720 | to teach and have authority in the church,

00:06:29.000 | he simply made a mistake.

00:06:30.480 | Paul just made a mistake. - Wow.

00:06:31.960 | - And allowed his rabbinical background

00:06:34.560 | to silence his radical Christian newness.

00:06:38.200 | And from then on to this very day,

00:06:40.280 | I knew that's an issue I'll never be able to get away from

00:06:43.720 | because there's more critical things going on there,

00:06:46.640 | more reasons to be concerned than just one.

00:06:49.640 | 1976, Harold Linzell published "The Battle for the Bible"

00:06:54.640 | and brought to public awareness

00:06:56.400 | how many Christian institutions were sliding away

00:06:59.880 | from commitment to the inerrancy of scripture.

00:07:02.720 | In 1978, the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy

00:07:07.240 | produced "The Chicago Statement on Inerrancy,"

00:07:10.080 | and I wrote a review of Linzell's book,

00:07:13.040 | and I'm very happy with what happened in Chicago,

00:07:16.400 | and I'm happy to sign on

00:07:17.600 | to "The Chicago Statement on Inerrancy."

00:07:21.200 | 1980s, two controversies stand out.

00:07:23.960 | Professor of philosophy Thomas Talbot and I

00:07:27.800 | went back and forth with articles in "The Reform Journal"

00:07:31.320 | over the sovereignty of God in Romans 9.

00:07:34.680 | I think titles were like, "How Does a Sovereign God Love?"

00:07:38.240 | I published a book on Romans 9

00:07:41.360 | called "The Justification of God,"

00:07:43.440 | which focused on Romans 9, 1 to 23.

00:07:48.440 | And so the understanding of God's sovereignty in history

00:07:52.480 | and in salvation dominated the early 1980s.

00:07:58.200 | Near the end of the decade,

00:08:00.040 | the missiological controversy

00:08:03.480 | surrounding the new language of unreached people groups

00:08:07.400 | and whether that was a biblical way to think or not

00:08:10.520 | was a huge issue for me.

00:08:12.200 | Does the Great Commission focus on reaching

00:08:14.840 | as many individuals as possible,

00:08:16.720 | which is what I had thought,

00:08:18.560 | or on reaching all the ethno-linguistic groups in the world?

00:08:24.720 | Then much of the 1990s was dominated by open theism.

00:08:28.520 | Does God have an exhaustive foreknowledge of the future?

00:08:34.440 | Open theism said, "No, he doesn't."

00:08:37.320 | And its chief spokesman was and is right here

00:08:41.320 | in the Twin Cities as a pastor.

00:08:43.480 | And so he and I debated back and forth.

00:08:45.920 | We had lunch together and I wrote much

00:08:50.920 | and other people wrote very good books.

00:08:53.480 | And thankfully, I think open theism

00:08:56.160 | was basically marginalized, though it hasn't gone away.

00:09:00.240 | In the 2000s, the Emergent Church flourished for a season

00:09:05.760 | and then morphed into other things.

00:09:08.600 | I don't think it's entirely gone away,

00:09:09.960 | but it's not the movement it was.

00:09:11.880 | And I took two of those leaders out to lunch one time,

00:09:14.680 | just to give our folks a flavor

00:09:16.720 | of what we're talking about with the Emergent Church.

00:09:19.200 | And I said to them, "You know, talking to you guys

00:09:21.320 | is like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall."

00:09:24.440 | To which they responded, "That's not what Jell-O's for."

00:09:28.480 | (laughing)

00:09:30.680 | That really gives a good flavor

00:09:33.880 | of how doctrinally amorphous that movement was.

00:09:38.880 | In the 2010s, the doctrine of justification

00:09:44.040 | was very controverted and prominent.

00:09:47.240 | And I wrote a whole book, "The Future of Justification,

00:09:50.480 | Responding to N.T. Wright."

00:09:51.880 | And on the same front, friends of mine were involved

00:09:56.520 | relationally in some very difficult conversations

00:09:59.920 | called Evangelicals and Catholics Together,

00:10:03.360 | which broke some hearts over how good Reform Brothers

00:10:08.280 | didn't relate to Catholics in the same way.

00:10:11.800 | Which brings us then, swirling into the last decade

00:10:14.880 | with the splintering of evangelicalism because of Trump,

00:10:19.120 | the realities of so-called same-sex marriage,

00:10:22.360 | the realities of so-called gender transition,

00:10:25.400 | vaccination mandates, critical race theory,

00:10:28.120 | systemic racism, cancel culture.

00:10:30.760 | None of these things can be ignored by a pastor,

00:10:34.600 | I think indeed by a thoughtful lay person.

00:10:37.320 | And I've written on virtually all of them.

00:10:40.600 | But the point for that table talk,

00:10:42.960 | and maybe for this moment in "Ask Pastor John,"

00:10:46.920 | is if you live long enough, you will be confronted

00:10:52.680 | by issues and controversies that are so many and so diverse

00:10:58.720 | and sometimes so complex that you cannot possibly predict

00:11:04.280 | or specifically prepare for them.

00:11:07.880 | The best way for our students and our listeners to APJ

00:11:12.880 | to prepare for faithful, obedient, fruitful ministry

00:11:17.720 | in the next 50 years is to know your Bible deeply,

00:11:23.120 | thoroughly, confidently, joyfully.

00:11:27.040 | Other studies are important, absolutely important.

00:11:30.920 | This study of the Bible is essential.

00:11:34.800 | If you have gone deep with God by means of a rigorous

00:11:39.400 | and accurate understanding of his word,

00:11:42.200 | you'll always be relevant and you will never be speechless.

00:11:47.760 | The breadth of theological controversies

00:11:49.600 | over the past 50 years makes my head spin.

00:11:52.440 | Thank you, Pastor John, for that rundown.

00:11:55.280 | And I really can't hear this episode

00:11:58.000 | without thinking of your own theological development,

00:12:00.680 | Pastor John, and how you arrived at your convictions

00:12:03.680 | that you're at now about knowing the Bible deeply.

00:12:07.400 | And it comes from a precious text in Psalm 119.

00:12:09.800 | Psalm 119, verses 97 to 100.

00:12:13.840 | That text played a huge role

00:12:15.320 | in your own theological development

00:12:16.600 | while you were in Germany.

00:12:18.080 | Specifically, we talked about that season in APJ 1713

00:12:22.880 | in an episode titled "John Piper's Ministry

00:12:25.480 | in One Bible Text," looking at that one text.

00:12:29.160 | Psalm 119, verses 97 to 100.

00:12:32.400 | Really an essential APJ episode that you can find right now

00:12:36.080 | at askpastorjohn.com, APJ 1713.

00:12:41.960 | Well, God is happy in himself, amen,

00:12:45.160 | and God wants us to be happy in himself, amen.

00:12:49.200 | And when you begin to apply biblical categories here,

00:12:51.640 | you begin to ask the question,

00:12:53.800 | how does God's joy become my joy?

00:12:59.000 | That's our question next time.

00:13:00.160 | From a listener in Chicago, I'm your host Tony Reinke.

00:13:03.280 | See you Thursday.

00:13:04.880 | You

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Fifty Years of Theological Battles

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