God's Glory Over All Kingdoms With Dr. David VanDrunen
Dr. David VanDrunen is at The Babylon Bee to talk about how we all need the Gospel, we are living in Babylon, and how Christians should use their brains to engage with politics, culture, and theology. What does it mean for Christians if we are living in Babylon? Should Christians be calling for Christian Nationalism? Dr. David VanDrunen is an ordained minister in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and a professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics at Westminster Seminary California. If you are looking for a confessionally reformed place to prepare for ministry, check out Westminster Seminary California: https://wscal.edu/ This episode is brought to you by Alliance Defending Freedom. Jack Phillips is back in court and ADF is standing with him. Learn more at: http://adflegal.org/Jack Become a premium subscriber: https://babylonbee.com/plans?utm_source=Libsyn&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=description Listen to more Babylon Bee content with Bee Radio: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUu5jt0fuiT55J2KDStJwLw The Official The Babylon Bee Store: https://shop.babylonbee.com/ Follow The Babylon Bee Podcast: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thebabylonbeepodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/babylonbeepod Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheBabylonBeePodcast
You see lots of people that are arguing, Christians even, that are arguing about, you know, we need to have a Christian government.
We need Christian nationalism.
And they'll even write books with Christian nationalism as the title.
And I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on that.
This seems to be kind of like a newer movement maybe, or maybe it's old ideas that are coming up again.
But Christian nationalism, is it good?
I don't think so.
No.
And now it's time for another interview on the Babylon B Podcast.
Welcome to the Babylon Bee Interview Show.
This is Dan.
I'm Sam.
And this is Dr. David Van Drunen.
We're so glad to have you.
You are a doctor of theology.
If someone had, not a physical pain, but if someone had the pain of guilt over sin, feeling like they've sinned too much and that God could never forgive or accept them, or if someone had the malady of feeling like they didn't need God, they were already righteous, what would be your prescription as a doctor of theology?
Well, to the first person, I might point them to Paul, the apostle, who said, I'm the worst of sinners, chief of sinners.
And yet he was the great preacher of God's free grace, of justification through Christ's work.
So if Paul could be saved, who persecuted and approved of the killing of Christians, then I'm sure any of your listeners could be saved.
If others think that they don't need forgiveness, you know, I might point them to something else that Paul said, that there is no one who is good, no not one, and that by our own works we can't be right with God.
And, you know, if we just compare ourselves to other people, it's not that hard to find people that don't seem as bad as we ourselves are.
But when we think about when we think about who God is, and if we're really honest about our own hearts, about our own thoughts, our own desires, we think about all the things we say every day that are unedifying and that cut other people down, it doesn't take much to see that we're all broken people.
That's why I turn on the news.
I'm always like, well, I'm better than that guy.
It's worth something.
Yeah.
So you are at Westminster Seminary, Southern California, which is kind of like the Hogwarts for Reformed Christianity.
I've not heard that before.
So what do you do there?
And what is it like at Westminster?
What goes on there?
Yeah, I've been there since 2001.
So this is 22nd year there for me.
I am a professor of systematic theology and Christian ethics.
So systematic theology refers to trying to think about the teaching of God's word, of theological truth, but in an orderly way, in a way that understands God's word as a whole and that tries to show the connections between different parts of Christian theology.
And then Christian ethics, that's probably a term more familiar to people.
I teach about the life we're called to live in the Lord Jesus Christ.
So we who are, as we were talking about before, we're not saved because of our own works.
We're saved only by faith in Christ.
But we are called to live holy lives before God, and the Spirit is transforming us to be such a people.
And so, well, there are plenty of difficulties and challenges of living the Christian life in this world.
And so those are the two things that I teach.
You asked me what it's like there.
It was just last week.
It was at a class break in the morning.
Of course, here in Southern California, it's been a little cold and wet recently.
By Southern California standards, cold and wet.
And I was stepping out and just we were stepping out into the sun.
It felt really good.
And the student looked around and said, it is so beautiful here.
And he was referring to the fact that we kind of see mountains like 360 around the seminary.
We're very blessed to have a very beautiful location.
And it's all master's students.
And so we have about two-thirds of our students are in our Masters of Divinity program, which is studying primarily to be pastors or in other sorts of ministry work.
We have some MA programs for other students.
And we work students pretty hard.
They have to learn Greek and Hebrew and go through a pretty rigorous theological education.
But it's really, it's geared not just for knowledge for its own sake, but for the sake of the church, for the sake of God's people, and to try to equip them to be faithful servants.
So we think that a really good theological education is very, very helpful for that.
And maybe the last, if I just say one thing, we're all in person.
So I think it's a great thing.
You know, there are some things you can learn by remote learning.
And sometimes, as we learned a few years ago, you're forced to do some remote teaching and learning.
But we've sort of doubled down on the whole in-person thing.
And we think this is the best way to learn theology and prepare for Christ service.
You're holding the line on residential in-person education.
And again, it's not a hard sell when you're located in sunny Southern California.
Now, y'all are in Escondido.
And little did I know, I got to participate in a little trilogy of interviews.
We had on Dr. R. Scott Clark.
We had on the theocast guys who I consider to be grandfathered into the Escondido crowd.
What can you tell us about the theological distinctives of the Escondido guys?
I know there's you, Dr. R. Scott Clark, Michael Horton, and others.
What are the common threads among the faculty?
Well, I think the common thread is all the faculty, I would say, are confessionally Reformed.
And so we all embrace the historical Reformed confessions and catechisms.
And we've come from different places and we have some different opinions on different things, but we are united in our theology as expressed in those historical Reformed confessions.
Even more important, I would say, we are united around the scriptures.
And we believe scripture is the word of God.
And that what we are all called to be doing in the various fields in which we teach is we're servants of God's Word and we want to help our students to become servants of God's word.
So, you know, I think we are, to me, that's what identifies us.
And I think there are a lot of people that obviously want to slot people into different schools and movements.
And for the most part, I don't think we really want to play that kind of game.
We just want to be Bible-believing Reformed Christians who are preaching the gospel of Christ and helping people understand and live that.
So y'all are independent-minded.
Each of the faculty has a degree of discretion.
You, I know, are an ordained Presbyterian minister.
I know you're a Calvinist.
Why aren't you a preordained minister?
Well, I suppose in a sense I was, but it wasn't recognized until, you know, about 25 years ago.
I was really blessed devotionally by your book, God's Glory Alone.
And I was particularly struck by the last two chapters, which, I mean, it went from a very lofty, elevated place to some very practical implications.
You talked about distraction and you talked about narcissism.
Can you expound on those?
And I mean, the book came out in 2015.
It's 2023 now.
Is it still relevant?
Well, thank you for those kind words.
It was a fun book to write.
I was asked to write that, you know, to participate in that series, but not something I had been planning on doing.
But, you know, there are worse things in the world than to be asked to write a book on God's glory.
So, yeah, it's right.
I tried in those final chapters to try to deal with some issues, to think about what it means to live in the light of the glory of God and distraction.
Boy, yeah, if anything, that just keeps becoming more of a problem.
And now I have to remember why did I even bring up that issue?
I think I was talking about some of the importance of prayer and worship and the fact that we really need to be able to be focused on the Lord.
And distraction is such a huge issue.
We are, there are just so many temptations to have our mind flitting around and our eyes wandering.
And we know that these things, we now know that these things affect our brains.
I mean, our brains become different when we are not in the practice of focusing and giving our attention to things.
And yeah, that just keeps becoming more and more of a problem.
And we're just not able to learn as well.
And so I think if we are going to be, if we are going to be faithful Christians, we need to be worshiping and praying and growing Christians.
And without a measure of attention, that's really hard.
And you just think about how hard it can be.
It can be a challenge for me.
I have to admit that.
I think it's probably a challenge for all Christians.
You know, you get on your knees to pray or you go to church on Sunday and worship.
It's so easy to start thinking about other things.
And obviously, it's by God's grace that he needs to set our mind upon the things that are above and to find our greatest joy in the Lord.
But we're not helping ourselves when we live lives of distraction.
We're turning ourselves into the kind of people who can't focus, and that's really dangerous.
Well, I was just going to say narcissism.
I mean, you would mention, you brought that up, and that is another thing of our own age is there's so much invitation and encouragement to be promoting ourselves.
And it seems to me that one of the things that we just should not be doing as Christians is self-promotion.
We are called to be humble servants of each other, humble servants of the Lord.
And you think about Matthew 6, that it's not just that we shouldn't go and blow the trumpet before us when we do good works, you remember this, but we should not even let our one hand know what the other hand is doing.
And so in this age in which there's so much encouragement to how are we going to brand ourselves and to rebrand ourselves?
And what sort of image are we trying to project?
That is just, it seems to me, so counter to what we're called to be in the Lord Jesus Christ.
If we're to seek the glory of God above all, if we recognize that he alone deserves praise and honor, the idea that we are constantly seeking honor for ourselves, attention for ourselves, it just seems so contrary.
Christian life.
You alluded to Colossians 3.
Set your mind on things above where Christ is rather than on things of the earth.
There are infinite distractions, and the world is moving towards video.
Video is in a lot of ways the future.
Short form video, even more so.
If Jesus were here today, how many followers do you think he would have on social media?
The bigger question is, would he be on social media?
Ah.
What is your answer?
I'm a little biased, but I say no.
But he could reach so many more people.
No, he could.
Yes.
So maybe he would.
I'm not taking a dogmatic answer on that.
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But, you know, I'm sort of half joking, half serious.
I do think that there are lots and lots of temptations in social media.
It doesn't make it inherently wrong.
Jesus was without sin, so presumably if he was doing social media, he would do it in a perfectly righteous way.
So maybe that's fine.
But I think for myself, and I think this is probably true for a lot of other Christians, that it's better for us to be very, try to be very self-controlled about the use of social media.
I was just listening to some preaching recently where he was commenting on, the preacher was commenting on just the very humble, the very humble way that Jesus came.
And like he was just kind of like an itinerant preacher.
He was just wandering around with his small group of followers.
Very humble means.
He wasn't like taking over the government or seeking positions of power within the religion of the day, but he was just very humble.
And like when he came into Jerusalem, he was riding on a donkey.
You know, it's just very fulfilling prophecy, but it was just like, this is how he decided to come.
It's just this humble way.
And I think we have that backwards a lot of ways.
We're always trying to build up big megachurches.
We're trying to, you know, have big giant crusades and rallies and project an image of a certain way of doing things.
This is how we look at it.
Like, this is what we think is going to work.
And Jesus came very humbly.
That's exactly right.
And as you said, Zachariah 9 prophesied he would come humbly riding on a donkey, and that's exactly what he did.
Then you also think Matthew 11, where he calls himself gentle and humble.
And that's one of the ways that he identified himself.
He's the humble Messiah.
And alluding to Philippians 2, right, there it says, Christ humbled himself unto death.
And the whole point, it's so interesting.
I mean, that text in Philippians 2 is, it's one of the richest Christological texts.
I mean, it's when I teach my Christology class, I feel like I'm constantly referring back to that text.
And yet, Paul didn't begin that discussion for the purpose of giving a Christological discussion.
He gave it to explain the commands he gives at the beginning of Philippians 2, which is about seeking unity, about agreeing with one another.
And he says, in humility, count others better than yourself.
And that's what provokes Paul's Christological Beautiful song there in verses what, six through 11.
But it's, yeah, you think about Christ who was by nature God, and yet he takes the form of a servant.
He humbles himself.
If that's Christ, I mean, what about us?
I mean, it's not as if any of us are starting from a high position, a high and lofty position.
So, again, yeah, and era, Mark 10.
Oh, Mark 10, 45.
Yeah, right.
I mean, the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve.
And that, again, Jesus saying this is, you know, the leaders of the Gentiles, they try to lord it over each other, but it shouldn't be that way among us.
And then in Philippians, he is calling for unity.
He's saying to stop arguing.
And he kind of looks at the end and says, you oudia, syntache, get along in the Lord.
The story has a crescendo where these two powerful ladies who are maybe leading factions were factious.
And he tells them, be unified in humility.
That's the example Christ sets you.
I have a question.
Philippians 2.
It's obviously an elegant and lofty passage.
Folks sometimes get tripped up on the kenosis moment.
Go ahead and elaborate because our listeners occasionally will say this is too theological.
How many angels can dance on the head of a pen?
I think the kenosis passage, the dispute or the controversy about it, can be enriching, especially depending on where you land.
Where do you land on Christ emptying himself?
What did that mean?
Yeah, I think what it meant, it's a way to express his humiliation unto death.
So that's what he's talking about.
There have been those who have claimed that this is referring to Christ somehow emptying himself of certain divine attributes or something, giving up his omniscience and knowing all things or his omnipotence or something.
That can't be the case.
That's heretical.
I mean, just to be frank about that, Christ didn't do that.
And he didn't say he emptied himself of something.
He emptied himself.
He is in the form of God.
That's who he is.
And yet he emptied himself.
And then there are these participles that follow explaining what it means for him to empty himself.
He emptied himself by taking the form of a servant.
He'd emptied himself by becoming in the form, he was in the form of God becoming in the form of a man.
And as it goes on to explain that he humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
He emptied himself.
He became nothing.
That's beautiful.
You think about that and he went to the cross.
What did he end with?
He ended his life with, I mean, no water, no clothes, no friends, no justice for our sake, for our salvation.
That's what it means for Christ to empty himself.
And that's beautiful because from that supreme humiliation came supreme exaltation.
The end of that passage, after he, you know, did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped and empties himself, it says, therefore he is raised up the name above every name.
We'll get to politics now.
I mean, speaking of the king of kings now, Lord of lords, yeah, so one of the reasons we wanted to talk to you is because you have written really prominently on what you would call two kingdoms or God's two kingdoms, how we live in both.
How there's the church and then there's also the common kingdom of the world that we live in and the governments that there are.
And one of the big discussions right now, at least in the, you know, permanently online as we are at the Babylon B, when you're doom scrolling on Twitter, you see lots of people that are arguing, Christians even, that are arguing about, you know, we need to have a Christian government.
We need Christian nationalism.
And they'll even write books with Christian nationalism as the title.
And I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on that.
This seems to be kind of like a newer movement, maybe, or maybe it's old ideas that are coming up again.
But Christian nationalism, is it good?
I don't think so.
No.
And I think people can mean different things by these terms.
I mean, nationalism, just as a general term, can mean a lot of different things to different people.
And so, I don't know necessarily who you've been reading and what particular you have in mind, but so I can make some general comments on this.
I mean, it seems to me that, boy, with nationalism, you have I think it can have a generally kind of innocent meaning if you are thinking if for some people nationalism is kind of a claim that the nation state is the best way to kind of organize politically over against empire or something like that.
I'm not sure I can prove that from scripture, but that's at least a plausible claim that one can argue.
And at the same time, I think there are just nationalism.
I mean, I'm tempted to say, if you really want to be a nationalist, just please leave the Christian part out of it.
But just to comment on nationalism for a moment, I think even in the more, I would say, lower level versions of this, I would say that are the best case scenario nationalist ideas, there still is this, there tends to be this strong idea of the identity of a people, that, and there's some sort of a common culture and some deep beliefs that unite us as a people,
as a nation.
And that usually also involves some sort of religious theological conviction about what is it that unites a nation.
It's usually not just economics.
It's usually not just some sort of geopolitical stand in the world, but there's usually deeper things of the spirit involved.
I mean, spirit, not of the Holy Spirit, but of sort of the human spirit.
And I think whenever you start having those conversations, Christians should at least start becoming vigilant because I don't think we want to ask too much of our nations.
I think we should be getting uncomfortable when nations try to be adjudicating and specifying and advocating the things of the spirit, the deeper things of human meaning and human life.
And then when you tack Christian nationalism onto that, well, that's the idea that somehow it could mean some different things, but it seems that it suggests the idea that Christianity, Christian thinking, Christian profession, a Christian culture is a really important thing of what defines the culture of a nation.
And I think there's really good reason to doubt whether Christianity was the kind of thing meant to unite a nation, to form a nation.
I think in the Old Testament, it's certainly the case that what we might call old covenant religion, the law of Moses was meant to unite a nation, the people of Israel.
But we don't find anything in the New Testament that indicates that Christianity is designed to be uniting a nation together.
In fact, what we seem to find is that gospel is to go out everywhere and to be preached to all people.
And it's actually the church.
Christians are to be united in a church that transcends nations, that isn't attached to a particular nation.
Yeah, I guess at least in the conversations that I've been following, and we've talked to some people at the Babylon Bee, it kind of seems like that idea that we should be a Christian nation kind of comes from this idea of like, look around you.
You see drag queen story hours at public libraries.
Our schools are teaching second graders all about homosexual acts as a positive thing that they should be maybe doing if they identify a certain way.
I think the argument that I've seen from certain people is that there is no such thing as a neutral public sphere, that the government will decide things one way or the other.
And so at least the conversations that I'm seeing kind of seem to be saying, you know, you can't just retreat, that you have to say things publicly, make public stands.
And if you're a Christian, you should be saying the Christian ways is the way that we should be doing things, that we should be making our laws to be moral laws and that they should be informed by our Christianity.
That seems to be the kind of conversation I'm hearing.
I think those sentiments are partly right, but I would also partly dissent from them.
And you might ask, how does the New Testament tell us to understand our own identity in this world, in a new covenant world?
So we're living after the age of Christ, between Christ's ascension and his second coming.
And so what is our identity in this world?
And one of the books that explores that in most detail is 1 Peter.
And in 1 Peter 2, 11, Peter says that we are sojourners and exiles in this world.
And that's a really interesting thing to think about because it takes us back to the Old Testament.
Abraham was sort of the sojourner in the Old Testament.
He lived in other, he was a sojourner because he was on the move.
He wasn't settled.
He lived in other people's cities.
Exile, well, that seems relevant to the Babylon B theme here.
It's pointing us back to exile in Babylon when God's people were called by God.
You might think of the letter in Jeremiah 29, which Jeremiah sent to the exiles, some of the early exiles in Babylon saying, you know, you're some of those, we know some of those early exiles wanted to fight their way out of exile.
And they, Jeremiah says, no, you've got to settle down.
You've got to build your homes, plant your gardens, get married, have kids, pray for the city in which you live, which I mean, and seek the peace of the city, which was Babylon.
It was run by King Nebuchadnezzar, who was in the process of destroying their country.
And by the way, my book, Living in God's Two Kingdoms, my original title for that, what I thought was a great title, was Living in Babylon.
But the publisher didn't think that was a good idea.
That's funny.
So I think that's this is, I'm going to get around to your question.
You see, the New Testament wants us to see our identity in this world, not as those who are running the show.
We're not called to be in charge in this world.
We are to understand ourselves.
We live in the midst of a present evil age, and we are to be sojourners, to see ourselves as sojourners and exiles, because our true citizenship is in heaven, as Philippians 3 says, or Hebrews 13.
Here we have no lasting city.
We are seeking a city to come.
And so I think all of our engagement in this world, whether it be political or other sorts of cultural engagement, I think we have to do it recognizing that we have not been called to be the lords and masters of this present age.
Now, I certainly appreciate a lot of what you were relating from what you're hearing from the Christian nationalist side of things.
Is there such thing as a neutral public well?
Well, no, I don't buy that.
There's no moral neutrality in this world.
One of the things I've written a lot about is the importance of the covenant with Noah after the flood at the end of Genesis 8 and into Genesis 9, where God promises, God says, this is how I am going to govern the world from now until, as long as this world endures.
So basically until the end of history, until the final judgment.
This is how God says he's going to govern this world.
He promises to preserve this world for all people, for the entire human race, makes his covenant with all living beings.
And this does mean, one of the things this means is that we're all accountable to God.
Whether you're a believer or unbeliever, you're accountable to God who sustains this world and continues to make his law known even in the created order.
And so I would never want to defend the idea of some sort of a neutral public square or neutral politics or something.
And I do think that we as Christians should, in our various vocations, as we have various opportunities to be engaged in this world, and different Christians obviously have different places in this world, different opportunities, we should strive for excellence.
We should promote what is just and what is right.
But I think we need to, it's very important, I think, to avoid doing it in the name of some sort of attempt to reestablish Christendom.
And this is another thing that I've done some writing about.
And I think this fits into the whole Christian nationalist theme.
Christendom can mean some different things, but one of the historical meanings of it is sort of this long, long experiment, especially in the West, of a kind of a unified Christian society in which whether it's the church or the state or any other thing, it all kind of unified in this confessionally Christian way.
And it really began in the late, early church and, or that sounds a little strange to say, late, early church, early Middle Ages maybe is a better way to say it, and continued on really until relatively recently in human history.
It's kind of, we've kind of gradually lost it over the last few hundred years.
But that involved the idea that we enforce Christianity, Christian orthodoxy with the sword.
And there was a lot of bloodshed in the name of Christendom.
And I am convinced for a lot of theological reasons that we don't want to go back on that road to try to reestablish Christendom.
But that doesn't mean that we just give up.
I don't know how you put it, but the idea that we just let it go or we retreat.
No, I don't think we retreat at all.
I think we are called to live in this world.
I just talked for a few minutes with my students in class this morning about 1 Corinthians 5, 9 through 11.
In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul is trying to, he's urging the church to discipline this member in their congregation who's engaged in unrepentant, serious sexual immorality.
And he says, you know, don't associate with sexually immoral people.
And then he immediately says, I'm not talking about the sexually immoral of this world.
Otherwise, you'd have to leave this world.
And the implication there, it's very clear, is you're not supposed to leave this world.
You need to be in this world.
And we need to engage people and we need to try to promote what is right as we can.
But those are a lot of ideas.
And one thing that I would say is that these issues that we're talking about, these kind of Christianity and culture or political theology or whatever, They can be kind of complicated, complex issues and easily subjected to kind of rhetoric and slogans.
So it is good to have these conversations.
Perhaps I'll simplify it with an objection or a critique.
What would you make of the critique that two kingdom theology makes one too passive in the broader cultural world?
Yeah.
Two things.
First, I'm going to have to call you out on two kingdoms.
You can use the term, of course, if you want.
I don't like the term two kingdoms theology.
It makes it, I don't, to me, it's just a kind of a reformed biblical theology that I'm trying to understand and teach.
And the two kingdoms is just, it's actually a traditional category in Reformational thought generally and Reformed Christianity specifically.
And so I just, I think some of these, I'm not saying you were trying to do this, but sometimes people use this as sort of a way to make it some sort of idiosyncratic, odd thing that's out there.
It's two kingdoms theology.
But it's got a long history and a long tenure in Reformed Christianity.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
It definitely does, all the way back to John Calvin, who spoke in these terms.
So anyway, I just wanted to say that because I didn't mean it as a criticism of you personally, but it's just a little pet peeve of mine.
So for folks who don't like this view, if their objection is it makes Christians too passive in the public square, what's the answer to that objection?
I think the answer is it has never been meant to promote retreat or passivity in the public square.
I mean, I just mentioned John Calvin.
I mean, does anyone really think that John Kelvin was out for Christians not being involved in the public square?
I mean, in the very, you know, Calvin talks about this actually several places in his institutes of the Christian religion.
One of the places he does it is in book four, chapter 20, which is when he talks about civil government and a very famous discussion of there about the purposes of civil government and the goodness of Christians being, you know, having political office.
So it certainly has not meant that.
I have never meant to promote that.
I don't think anyone who looks at my life or the kind of things that I write about, I mean, I've written about, I don't know, so many issues of public affairs that I just think this is, it's kind of a straw man.
Now, maybe someone has met someone who says, because of the two kingdoms, I don't need to care at all about, okay, maybe you've met that person.
I don't think that's representative of what the two kingdoms has meant historically in Reformed Christianity.
What I would say is I think it does give us a certain perspective on how we participate in public affairs.
I think it can equip us with a certain kind of attitude, with certain kinds of expectations.
And I think those are very helpful.
But it's not, it's certainly, I would say that this idea has never been meant to dissuade people from being involved.
Yeah, so what I'm hearing is if we in this room made a Christian nation, we might have problems with Sam here.
Sam doesn't baptize his babies.
Oh, I'd be first in line for your heresy police.
Yeah, we'd have to use the sword to enforce the people.
Or you'd just come by spritzing the babies with your spray bottom and be like, oh, they're baptized now.
You're safe.
I mean, you think about that.
It's nice that we can sit around joking about this.
Yeah.
Because in the 16th century, it was no joking matter.
And there were a lot of Baptists who were killed.
Yeah.
I mean, there were Baptists who were drowned.
It's sort of, you know, meant, you talk about, you know, you're talking about satire and this is meant to be ironic, right?
You know, you don't baptize your babies or we're going to, we're going to, we're going to drown you.
Really?
Or you think you need to be baptized by full immersion.
We'll immerse you.
And that was, and so it's actually, it's a totally serious point, is that this is what, this is, this was a big part of what Christendom was.
And there are a lot of people out there who are nostalgic for the high Middle Ages.
Now, most people will say, no, we're not nostalgic.
There were problems with the Middle Ages.
I'm not fully convinced that a lot of people aren't nostalgic for the Middle Ages when there was sort of this idea, this kind of unified, at least the veneer of a unified Christian culture with a pope in which there was some diversity of belief, but there was also good luck being any kind of non-Christian.
I mean, you wouldn't want to be a Jew.
And certainly a lot better for Christians living in the Ottoman Empire than for Muslims trying to live in Christian Europe.
And if you are the wrong kind of Christian, good luck.
And, you know, this is, you want Christian nationalism.
Well, you know, these are the sort of things you need to be thinking about because this is what Christian Europe was.
This is what Christendom involved.
And I think there are a lot of other problems with medieval Europe as well.
But I don't think we want to go back there.
I'm grateful that if you all set up a Presbyterian nation, you'd be kind to me at the heresy trials.
Give me a pass.
The heresy hunters would pass by my children.
You're close enough.
Well, so moving on just a little bit, you have written about the importance of virtue for Christian living and the Christian life.
Can you talk a little bit more about, is that something that we are missing in this modern era of American Christianity that we don't place an importance on virtue anymore?
Yeah, yeah, thanks.
I have written a little bit about this.
I'm in the process of writing more.
And so I have been thinking about this a lot.
And I think the answer to your question is yes.
If you think about the Christian tradition as a whole, I mean, all the way back to the early church, there's been a strong tradition of thinking about virtue.
And just before I say anything more, I should probably just be clear about what we're talking about.
Virtue has to do with character.
It has to do about moral habits that we have.
I'd say a virtue is a character trait.
It's a moral habit that orients us, that disposes us to be doing the right, to be thinking and feeling and to be doing the right sorts of things.
And there's just a long tradition from the early church through the Middle Ages through early Protestant theology thinking virtue is a really important thing to be talking about.
If you really want to understand the Christian life, in other words, you can't just talk about God's law and the commands of God, but you've got to be talking about what kind of people that God calls us to be.
And so you just think about the New Testament.
That's true of the New Testament.
New Testament, I mean, it's true of the Old Testament as well.
And just to focus on the New Testament for a moment, you think about, sure, there are lots of commands, which you might say is law, but how often are we called to be a certain sort of people?
Think about the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5.
I mean, those are basically a virtue list.
And you find Colossians 3, you find a similar sort of list in many other places in the New Testament.
And it makes sense, doesn't it?
Because we are creatures of habit.
I mean, just as human beings, we are creatures of habit.
It's easier to do things we have a habit to do.
And we're born into this world as sinners.
We have all sorts of bad habits.
And we have vices.
And so we are, what does it mean to be a sinner?
We're not blank slates just making bad decisions moment after moment.
We are people who are bent in the wrong direction.
And so if we are to actually live a Christian life, what we need is the Holy Spirit to be re-bending us, to be bending us in the right direction.
And that's our doctrine of sanctification.
Sanctification doesn't just sanctification by sanctification, the Holy Spirit isn't just zapping us moment by moment to do this good thing and this good thing and this good thing.
The Spirit is actually changing us.
He's changing our heart.
He's taking away the old man and clothing us with the new man.
He's taking away our hearts of stone, giving us hearts of flesh.
And obviously, obviously, very imperfect in this world, and it looks different in every one of us because we all have different sin has taken different forms, different contours in each of our hearts.
But all that's to say is that I think if we are to be biblical as well as to be just historically Christian, it's really important that we think about virtue and think about what are the character traits that God has called us to.
And these are things that we need to be repenting of our vices.
We need to be praying that the Spirit would work these virtues and need to be to be striving for these things.
We're just talking about humility recently.
I mean, humility is a virtue.
We are to act humbly, but you're not going to be acting humbly if you aren't growing in the virtue of humility.
And so that's why I think virtue is just a really important thing.
And there's been a lot of loss of focus on that.
It's actually been coming back into discussion in Christian theology and ethics over the past, you know, past recent years, but there's still a lot of work to go, I think.
You sold us on virtue.
We're going to stop being vicious.
We're going to stop with all the vice.
Actually, on the topic of virtue, is there a danger when you over-index on focusing on what you do?
You know, if folks become inward, focused on their own virtue, is there a danger that they'll slip into legalism or slip into antinomianism?
Well, there is some debate about does virtue, does a focus on virtue, does it make you too introspective and just too concerned about yourself, kind of self-focused?
And of course, we don't want to be self-focused.
So I think it's a fair question.
But I would immediately want to say that for one thing, if you look at what the Christian virtues are, they are virtues that point you out of yourself.
And so the idea that one is going to, it would be a very odd Christian theology of virtue that actually encourages you to be more self-focused because everything just points you out towards God and other people.
And I think the broader Christian tradition has recognized faith as a virtue.
Now, it's also an act, you might say there are acts of bullying.
We believe in Christ.
It's something we do.
But faith is also, it's important to think of this as a virtue.
And early Reformed theologians often would speak about faith both as an act and as a virtue.
And It's, and it makes sense, right?
I mean, we're not constantly, we're not believe, we're not like we're not like every second of every day, we're doing acts of belief, right?
There are a lot of times when we're not even thinking about the Lord.
We're not thinking about the gospel at every single moment.
I mean, we sleep how many hours a day when our minds are not occupied in this, and yet we're always justified, right?
We're constantly, we're, you know, how to explain that.
Well, part of it is there's a virtue of faith.
We are people of faith, even when we're not constantly, we're not at the moment doing acts of faith, you might say.
And I think if we, if we keep that in life, that we are, that all other Christian virtues really stem out of that faith.
They grow out of that faith.
A faith that is focused on Christ, I think that's a great remedy against either legalism or an antinomianism or a kind of a navel-gazing introspection.
So I think it could be a danger if you are if you have a bad theology of virtue, but I think if you have a biblical theology of virtue, there's a lot of things that are going to keep us from falling into those.
So true virtue has correctives built in.
Dan has a question about Tom.
So there's a lot of, again, we are always online.
So we're always seeing all these arguments that pop up.
And one of the arguments right now, I've been seeing a lot of Reformed Baptist type people.
I don't know if you would consider them Reformed, but Reformed Baptist people, say like James White, he's an online debater and apologist.
He is going hard after people that are talking about Thomas Aquinas.
And he is saying that he's going after other people in the Reformed camp who study Aquinas, who praise Aquinas for his system of theology.
And he seems to be saying, like, if you're reading Aquinas, or if you're basing your theology on what Aquinas wrote, you're not reformed.
You're not biblical.
And I'm wondering, I think you've written about Thomas Aquinas.
So I wanted to see what you had to say about that.
Yeah, I actually wrote my doctoral dissertation back in the day on some aspects of Thomas's thought.
So my interest in him goes back a ways.
And so yeah, here in, yeah, I've read a lot of Thomas and tried to think about Thomas and written a bit about him.
It's I'm certainly not on the side of what you are describing, but I think it's worth, I think we need a nuanced position on Thomas Aquinas.
We who are Reformed or I think other sorts of Protestants.
And I think it might be helpful just for a moment to think about it.
How did early Reformed, I'm just focused on the Reformed now.
How did early Reformed think about Thomas Aquinas?
The answer to that is, well, they had, I think, a very moderate nuanced position that they looked at Thomas Aquinas as one of the important theologians of the Christian church.
The Christian churches, you know, if you're maybe you're, you know, year 1600 or something and you've had, you know, five, 1,500 years of Christian theologians post-scripture, and you've got many who are prominent, and Thomas is one of them.
Thomas is one who has contributed a lot to the theological discussions and the theological positions of the church.
And they, one thing you can say about the early Reformed theologians is that they took Thomas seriously as an important theologian, as a theologian of the Christian church.
And this is a really important thing that I'm concerned about with those who see only, you know, Thomas is just someone to bash, is that the church did not start in the 1500s.
Jesus promised in the first century, he's going to build his church and the gates of hell would not prevail against it.
And it's really important for us who are Protestants to say, we are, the early church is our church.
The medieval church is our church.
Doesn't mean they didn't get everything right.
We don't get everything right.
But the Reformation, it was the Reformation.
It was not a new, brand new church.
It was the reform of 1500 years of Christianity, a reform of 1,500 years of a church that existed for 1,500 years, is the way I should put it.
And the early Reformed theologians view Thomas as one of our theologians because medieval theologians are our theologians.
Patristic theologians are our theologians.
And at the same time, they didn't think Thomas, they didn't regard him the way some Roman Catholics of their day regarded him, which was, and some, and many later, as sort of the theologian par excellence, you know, sort of the one who sort of sets a standard by which all later theology is judged in some way or another.
They read Thomas, they took him seriously, and sometimes they agreed with him, sometimes they disagreed with him.
Some Reformed theologians agree with him a little more and some agree with him a little bit less.
But it's interesting, you find, I've run into this, a couple of early Reformed theologians I've read who would include Thomas among the better scholastics.
So they're thinking scholastically like these medieval school theologians of which Thomas was one.
And they didn't like a lot of these scholastic theologians, but they thought, well, some of them are a lot better than others.
And they would include Thomas in the better of these theologians.
And they took Thomas' side on a lot of issues.
And I was just writing not that long ago about there's a certain issue on which the Reformed agreed with Thomas over against Roman Catholics of their day, a certain issue having to do with certain anthropological debates.
It seems to me, this may be too long of an answer to your question, but it seems to me that we should have the same attitude today.
To take the meat and spit out the bones.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, we do that with Augustine, don't we?
I mean, Augustine, you know, if Augustine came on the floor of my presbytery and was examined for ordination, he would not pass.
He just, I mean, he holds views that we did we, and, you know, say that, maybe it sounds shocking, but I don't think it should be shocking.
I mean, he lived a long time ago.
I mean, we'd like to think he would come around.
But that's the way I say we still think of Augustine as a good guy, I think.
I mean, I think people in Reformed circles who are debating Thomas, they all think of Augustine as a good guy.
Unless you're the neighbor whose pear tree he was pilfering.
Yes, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, maybe not those people.
A lot of people don't like Augustine, but I think in our, you know, certainly in a Reformed theological world or in a lot of other theological worlds.
And that doesn't mean that we have to say that he got everything right.
And we don't use that standard for any other theologian.
There's no Reformed theologian I've read that I agree with on everything.
That doesn't mean that I throw him out.
So you cannot read Thomas.
You cannot seriously read Thomas and not see that a lot of what he was doing is Orthodox Christian theology.
So Aquinas, he did pretty good, though.
He came up with five proofs for God.
So checkmate atheists, right?
How do you feel about the proofs, the five proofs?
Yeah, I mean, he didn't, I wouldn't say he made them up.
I mean, he is, so he's trying to gather stuff that other people had talked about.
So I think that's part of it.
I mean, I think it's, how do I feel about them?
I don't know.
It's this sort of apologetics of proof for God.
It's not really my thing.
That's never been what I've taught, never been what I've written about.
But the way I kind of look at that is I think this world is filled with testimony to God.
And I think Thomas is absolutely right to think that, you know, even apart from arguments of scripture, is that, well, you can't live in this world without being confronted with God.
And I think if you look at this charitably, I think you'd say, well, I think Thomas is trying to put on paper something of the testimony that this world and our human reason as it takes this world in and tries to understand it.
He's trying to put on paper something of this testimony.
And at the same time, I think calling him proofs can, maybe that gives the wrong idea.
They're not like mathematical.
I can remember sitting, I was a math major in college, and I can remember sitting and spending hours watching my math professor draw proofs on the board.
I don't think it's quite like that.
I don't think God's existence is quite like a mathematical proof.
But I do think we do have a responsibility to try to bring out to the world the way that the world testifies to God and the way the world makes sense if there is a God and the way that who we are as human beings makes sense if there's a God in a way that doesn't make sense if there's not a God.
And so I'm sort of neither a huge fan nor an opponent of Thomas's Thomas's the five ways.
In the camps, there's pro and against, and Dr. David Van Drunen is a little bit of both, but with charity of mind.
This has been just fun and wonderful.
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I have recently come to the Reformed faith and discovered covenant theology.
It really opened up my eyes and changed the way I read the Bible.
And I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on all that.
And just say something smart.
Like if we were making that Christian nation, we might kick Sam out again because Sam is a dispensationalist.
I'm 0 for 2 with your heresy problems.
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