(upbeat music) - Happy Monday, as we get back after it here on the podcast. Pastor John, I know one of the things that you really enjoy is answering questions in front of students, open floor Q&As. You've been doing this for over 50 years and still at it, currently investing your time into the lives and students at Bethlehem College and Seminary.

This time with students is built into your schedule now and recently in that context with BCS students, you had a chance to walk through the theological battles that you have fought over the decades. And I was wondering, looking back on those battles, if you could reshare what you said in private with us here on APJ.

Can you rehearse those battles decade by decade? And if you could, tell us what points you were trying to make in rehearsing this history with the students. - As part of my happy responsibilities as Chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary, I regularly participate in what we call table talk, where the students gather to eat their lunch and ask questions of the leaders, and I'm one of those, related to life, related to ministry, how it relates to the issues of our day.

And I generally begin those sessions with some thoughts off my front burner, just to prime the pump of questions and throw it open to whatever the students want to talk about. So a few weeks ago, I tried to make this point in my introductory comments. I said something like, "Since the issues that you will be facing," looking at the students, "that you'll be facing in 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now, you'll be my age in 50 years.

Since those issues that you'll be facing are utterly unpredictable, and in some cases, unimaginable, your best preparation right now in your teens and 20s and 30s is to gain the spiritual and intellectual abilities to interpret God's never-changing word in scripture, according to its true God-intended meaning, which will never leave you speechless." Never.

"But always provide the profoundest wisdom for every new challenge, none of which takes God off guard." So that was my main point to try to get across to them. And then to drive the point home, I gave them a glimpse into the controversies of the last 50 years of my life.

- Wow. - Precious, the Bible has become as an absolutely sure compass for staying the course of truth and wisdom, and as an anchor to keep me from being driven about by every wind of doctrine, and as a treasure chest of holy joy that satisfies so deeply that I'm not sucked in to the seductive pleasures that on the surface change from era to era.

They don't really change, but the form changes. So here's part of the glimpse that I gave them into my 50-year history of dealing with unexpected issues. But let me say at the outset that I'm not gonna focus on race and abortion as one of those issues because they're just pervasive.

I mean, for the last decades of my life, I have lived every decade with issues of race that need to be addressed, and issues of abortion that need to be addressed. So understand those are huge issues, and that I don't mention them in the list doesn't mean they're absent, it means they're everywhere.

- Yeah. - So in the 1960s, I was coming to terms with the controversy surrounding fresh historical arguments for the factual resurrection of Jesus Christ. Daniel Fuller's "Easter Faith in History" had been published in 1965. Wolfhard Pannenberg was making waves by his 1968 book "Revelation as History," where he argued that the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth was an historical event as real as you're getting out of bed this morning, which in German, but money in circles in the '60s was absolutely radical.

He was one of the teachers I had, by the way, at the University of Munich in the '70s. Hand in glove with the controversy was the whole issue of the modern methodology of critical biblical scholarship. In 1966, George Ladd published "The New Testament and Criticism," where he tried to sort out what was usable in so-called higher criticism and what was contradictory to the inspired nature of scripture.

And those were crucial days for me, crucial, like crux, like crossroads, and how I thank God in the ways I could have gone that he held on to me for his glory and for his word. Then came the 1970s and three huge issues. In 1970, Hal Lindsey published "The Late Great Planet Earth." By 1999, that book had sold 35 million copies.

- Wow. - In it, he virtually predicted the second coming by 1988. I don't know how that book stays in print unless they adjusted it. And he popularized the pre-tribulational rapture view of the second coming. And I wrote a paper in response to this, and it became very personal because my father and I locked horns over this, and there's nobody I loved more than my father, and I didn't want to alienate him.

And we got along pretty well, although that book brought a lot of stuff to the fore. 1975, Paul Jewett published "Man as Male and Female," in which he said that when Paul instructed only men to teach and have authority in the church, he simply made a mistake. Paul just made a mistake.

- Wow. - And allowed his rabbinical background to silence his radical Christian newness. And from then on to this very day, I knew that's an issue I'll never be able to get away from because there's more critical things going on there, more reasons to be concerned than just one.

1976, Harold Linzell published "The Battle for the Bible" and brought to public awareness how many Christian institutions were sliding away from commitment to the inerrancy of scripture. In 1978, the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy produced "The Chicago Statement on Inerrancy," and I wrote a review of Linzell's book, and I'm very happy with what happened in Chicago, and I'm happy to sign on to "The Chicago Statement on Inerrancy." 1980s, two controversies stand out.

Professor of philosophy Thomas Talbot and I went back and forth with articles in "The Reform Journal" over the sovereignty of God in Romans 9. I think titles were like, "How Does a Sovereign God Love?" I published a book on Romans 9 called "The Justification of God," which focused on Romans 9, 1 to 23.

And so the understanding of God's sovereignty in history and in salvation dominated the early 1980s. Near the end of the decade, the missiological controversy surrounding the new language of unreached people groups and whether that was a biblical way to think or not was a huge issue for me. Does the Great Commission focus on reaching as many individuals as possible, which is what I had thought, or on reaching all the ethno-linguistic groups in the world?

Then much of the 1990s was dominated by open theism. Does God have an exhaustive foreknowledge of the future? Open theism said, "No, he doesn't." And its chief spokesman was and is right here in the Twin Cities as a pastor. And so he and I debated back and forth. We had lunch together and I wrote much and other people wrote very good books.

And thankfully, I think open theism was basically marginalized, though it hasn't gone away. In the 2000s, the Emergent Church flourished for a season and then morphed into other things. I don't think it's entirely gone away, but it's not the movement it was. And I took two of those leaders out to lunch one time, just to give our folks a flavor of what we're talking about with the Emergent Church.

And I said to them, "You know, talking to you guys is like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall." To which they responded, "That's not what Jell-O's for." (laughing) That really gives a good flavor of how doctrinally amorphous that movement was. In the 2010s, the doctrine of justification was very controverted and prominent.

And I wrote a whole book, "The Future of Justification, Responding to N.T. Wright." And on the same front, friends of mine were involved relationally in some very difficult conversations called Evangelicals and Catholics Together, which broke some hearts over how good Reform Brothers didn't relate to Catholics in the same way.

Which brings us then, swirling into the last decade with the splintering of evangelicalism because of Trump, the realities of so-called same-sex marriage, the realities of so-called gender transition, vaccination mandates, critical race theory, systemic racism, cancel culture. None of these things can be ignored by a pastor, I think indeed by a thoughtful lay person.

And I've written on virtually all of them. But the point for that table talk, and maybe for this moment in "Ask Pastor John," is if you live long enough, you will be confronted by issues and controversies that are so many and so diverse and sometimes so complex that you cannot possibly predict or specifically prepare for them.

The best way for our students and our listeners to APJ to prepare for faithful, obedient, fruitful ministry in the next 50 years is to know your Bible deeply, thoroughly, confidently, joyfully. Other studies are important, absolutely important. This study of the Bible is essential. If you have gone deep with God by means of a rigorous and accurate understanding of his word, you'll always be relevant and you will never be speechless.

The breadth of theological controversies over the past 50 years makes my head spin. Thank you, Pastor John, for that rundown. And I really can't hear this episode without thinking of your own theological development, Pastor John, and how you arrived at your convictions that you're at now about knowing the Bible deeply.

And it comes from a precious text in Psalm 119. Psalm 119, verses 97 to 100. That text played a huge role in your own theological development while you were in Germany. Specifically, we talked about that season in APJ 1713 in an episode titled "John Piper's Ministry in One Bible Text," looking at that one text.

Psalm 119, verses 97 to 100. Really an essential APJ episode that you can find right now at askpastorjohn.com, APJ 1713. Well, God is happy in himself, amen, and God wants us to be happy in himself, amen. And when you begin to apply biblical categories here, you begin to ask the question, how does God's joy become my joy?

That's our question next time. From a listener in Chicago, I'm your host Tony Reinke. See you Thursday. You You You