Pastor Joel Webbin and John White analyze why Reformed Baptists reject postmillennialism and theonomy, tracing the shift to Thomas Aquinas's reliance on Greek metaphysics rather than Cornelius Van Til's presuppositional apologetics. They argue that Aquinas treats human reason as neutral, whereas Romans 1 reveals all reasoning is biased by rebellion against God. Consequently, they advocate for nations pledging allegiance to the triune God instead of pluralism, viewing history as a progressive restoration where the church actively enforces divine law through society, contrasting this optimistic covenantal view with the sudden cataclysmic end expected by dispensationalists. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Welcome to Theology Applied00:04:34
Hey guys, real quick before we get started, I have a small request.
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Thanks.
All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied.
I am your host, Pastor Joel Webbin with Right Response Ministries.
And in this episode of Theology Applied, I was very privileged to have as a special guest John White.
Not James White, we've had him before, we'll have him again, but this is John White.
White.
And the reason why I'm having him on the show is to talk about our subject matter at hand, which is as follows Cornelius Van Til versus Thomas Aquinas.
Why so many reject post Mill and theonomy.
John White and myself both are confident that there is a clear correlation between the recent rise, especially among Reformed Baptists, in their affinity with the writings and teachings and metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas and A disenchantment and rejection of postmillennialism and theonomy.
So, John tweeted this out a while ago, and I've used it as the description for this episode.
He said, Why the talk lately about Thomas Aquinas?
It's because theonomy and postmillennialism are rooted in the authority of the Bible to govern all of man's activities.
Aquinas held a very different view that has deeply influenced Western theological thought.
The flashpoint put down Aquinas.
And learn about Cornelius Van Til.
That's the focus of this episode.
We're going to draw, make it plain and visible.
This is why people are excited about Aquinas because they don't want to be theonomic.
They don't want to be post millennial.
They don't want to practically apply the scripture as the authority, not just for matters of salvation, but matters of life.
All scripture is God breathed, it's for life and godliness, so that the man of God may be equipped.
To get to heaven, no, for every good work, every civil good work, every familial good work, every academic good work, every vocational and economic good work.
That's what Scripture teaches.
The sufficiency of Scripture.
The question that it begs is this what is Scripture sufficient for?
John and I, and working from the writings of Cornelius Van Til, we believe Scripture is sufficient for everything, for all of life, not just spiritual matters.
But life here and now on this physical earth.
We believe that God's word speaks to that, and it does so with authority.
Tune in now.
Big news, really big news.
Our next Right Response Conference is in the works.
We've got a number of things already lined up and organized.
This is what we've got so far the whole conference, three days long, on post millennialism and theonomy.
And the speakers Dr. James White, Dr. Joseph Boot, Gary DeMar, And of course, yours truly, Pastor Joel Webbin.
We've got a great lineup.
We've got great topics.
If you want to find out dates and location and registration and anything else, go and visit our website, rightresponseconference.com.
Rightresponseconference.com.
Applying God's Word to every aspect of life.
This is Theology Applied.
Let's go ahead and jump into our topic for today.
The reason why I asked you on the show is because you You retweeted an announcement for a conference that we're going to be holding with Right Response Ministries.
It's going to be next year, May 5th through the 7th, in Georgetown, Texas, at Central Texas, with Dr. Joseph Boot, Dr. Gary DeMar, and Dr. James White, and myself.
And we are focusing exclusively the subject matter for this conference on theonomy and post millennialism.
And there's been a lot of positive response to this conference.
And of course, there's been a lot of negative response, both from Presbyterians and Reformed Baptists.
But you insightfully nailed down a correlation that a lot of the guys.
Who aren't excited about a conference that focuses on post millennialism and theonomy?
Challenging Sola Scriptura00:08:58
Also, I'm sure it's unrelated, but also happen to be really infatuated with a guy named Thomas Aquinas.
Help us out with that.
I meant to go back and reread that tweet before I came on today and I didn't.
Do you have it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Let me see.
I copy and pasted it.
So if you give me about 15 seconds, I should be able to find it.
Here we go.
Not even 15 seconds.
Here we go.
Why the talk lately about Thomas Aquinas?
It's because theonomy and postmillennialism are rooted in the authority of the Bible to govern all of man's activities.
Aquinas held a very different view that has deeply influenced Western theological thought.
The flashpoint put down Aquinas and learn about Cornelius Van Til.
Okay.
Yeah, good.
Thanks.
Appreciate that, Joel.
Yeah.
You know, you.
Theonomy and postmillennialism both hinge to a very large degree on your view of the scripture.
And your view of the scripture hinges very heavily on your epistemology and your understanding of logic and reason and their relationship.
You know, in Van Til, his apologetic is about what is the ultimate basis of our authority.
What authorizes our belief?
And you're absolutely right.
It comes down to our hermeneutic, it comes down to our epistemology.
How do we know what we know?
And it really comes down, I think, to the sufficiency of Scripture because the idea of Aquinas is, although there are some good things and helpful things from Aquinas, it's important that we remember that he was thoroughly Roman Catholic.
He puts a large emphasis on tradition as an equal stream in terms of authority to the Scripture.
So we as Protestants, we value church history.
A lot of Protestants have lost their way because they don't see church history as an authority at all.
When we affirm sola scriptura, we are not saying the scripture is the only authority.
We're saying the scripture is the highest authority and the only infallible authority.
We know there are other authorities because scripture itself tells us that there are other authorities, but scripture alone is the highest authority and the only infallible authority.
So church tradition, church history is an authority.
It's a great authority, but it's subservient to the scripture.
It errs.
Church history errs.
It's not an infallible authority and it is not an Equal stream of authority to the Bible.
And Aquinas, you know, as a Roman Catholic, thoroughly Roman Catholic, puts a massive emphasis on church tradition and the oral tradition of the Roman Catholic Church.
But in addition to that, Aquinas, when it came to his doctrine of God and understanding theology proper and the nature of God and the essence of God, the attributes of God, all these things, Aquinas relied heavily not just on church tradition, but on a specific set of metaphysics, from my understanding.
That were derived from Plato and Aristotle.
And so the issue is, these things can be helpful, but when we start getting into the weeds of saying you can't know God from the scripture alone, the scripture in and of itself is not sufficient for knowing the Trinity or not sufficient for knowing God.
You must have the scripture plus tradition, the scripture plus Plato, the scripture plus Aristotle, the scripture plus Aquinas.
And that.
That mindset of saying it must be the scripture plus this other thing, I think, is even though talking about Aquinas and doctrine of God seems unrelated to post millennialism and theonomy, the principle undergirding all of it is ultimately, I think, a subtle attack against sola scriptura.
And if we hold to sola scriptura, then we believe that proper Trinitarian doctrine is possible by the grace of God and the illumination of the Holy Spirit apart from Aquinas.
We also, if we hold to Sola Scriptura, we see that, well, we have a hopeful eschatology and a view that we are called to disciple the nations and that all people, including the civil magistrate, is subject to the lordship of Christ and should legislate, not according to some John Lockean natural law, but according to divine law.
We don't just submit to natural law, although I'm okay with natural law insofar if we're saying natural law is synonymous with the moral law of God.
Which I believe it is.
I believe natural law in its proper definition would include all 10 of the commandments.
But this idea of we need this extra thing, whether it's John Locke on the theonomy and postmillennial side, or whether it's Aquinas on the doctrine of God side, we're saying scripture plus something.
And what we're doing in that, rejecting theonomy, rejecting postmillennialism, saying we need natural law or this extra thing, we're pretending as though God didn't write a book, but He did.
God wrote a book.
Yeah.
Well, I'll tell you, I should have guessed and realized, Joel, that you would jump off of that tweet.
And that makes perfect sense.
Thank you.
Let me take another swing at that question of, you know, why am I saying that postmillennialism and theonomy have the same root and that it has to do with our view of scripture and how Van Til's view of scripture is different than Aquinas?
And so, what I'll do there to start is the relationship between.
Theonomy and post millennialism.
That's kind of the first step in the thinking.
Then we can talk about Aquinas and Vantel.
You know, Lorraine Betner wrote a good book back in the mid 1900s called Millennialism, and he surveys the different sort of schools of thought around post millennialism.
There were, you know, sort of roughly, I guess, three categories.
There was the view of folks like Jonathan Edwards, who were very optimistic and they saw The progress of the gospel in the earth, and they thought, hey, this is happening.
I think Edwards was quoted as saying, hey, within 100 years, most of the world could be Christian.
And he saw the progress of the gospel, the fruit of it, and so forth.
A second category would be somebody like Benjamin Warfield, B.B. Warfield at Princeton Theological Seminary, who believed that the gospel of Jesus Christ was the most reasonable or the most rational form of belief, and therefore that it would triumph because of that.
That would be sort of the motive force that would produce a post millennial outcome in the world.
And both of those two schools are without going and doing a hermeneutic and looking at the scriptures, right?
What do the prophets and the psalms say, and what's our covenant theology, and so forth, and all that?
And that's part of it as well.
But you could kind of loosely group the Edwards optimism, the Warfield rationality.
It's the most rational because it's true kind of idea.
And there's a lot of folks that are still kind of in that camp today.
What's interesting is that with, you know, Rush Dooney, his first book was about Cornelius Van Til, and his life's work stands on Van Til, on his epistemology, on his apologetic.
His work was an extension, logically, in very many ways, of Van Til.
It was taking that presuppositional notion, and Bonson, the same thing, from my understanding, is taking the presuppositional notion and then applying it to the world of apologetics.
As well as the civil realm and ethics.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
And academics as well.
And so, in by Van Til's view of scripture, and then Rushdeni extended this, and North extended this, the view and idea that were governed by the book.
Nobody, Aquinas believes Romans 1 Revelation, Van Til believes Romans 1 Revelation.
But it's a question of what they do with that.
For Aquinas, it was that man is a neutral investigator and he has God given reason and he'll explore the creation and that truth will lead him towards true good conclusions.
Vantel said, no, Romans 1 teaches that we need to look at believing man and unbelieving man.
Where Covenant Law Meets Nations00:07:24
They're two very different ways that they are going to reason.
The believer wants to worship and serve the creator.
The unbeliever, Is beholding the same revelation in the creation, but he suppresses it.
He doesn't want it to be true.
He is in rebellion against God.
And so that then controls the way that he investigates the creation, the conclusions that he comes to.
The creationists and the evolutionists look at the same data and reach vastly different conclusions.
He has a bias or a presupposition.
And so does the Christian.
We have a presupposition.
Jesus is the one.
That's right.
The most basic presupposition, and this is where B. and Till, The most brace of presupposition that any human being has is the God of the Bible or not the God of the Bible, right?
And so all of our reasoning and logic and categories and everything else is going to jump off of one of those two.
So, in the Vantillian and by extension theonomic view, yes, natural law is there and it's true.
I'm like you, I believe it's the whole Decalogue, I believe it's the case laws too.
I think it is a full revelation, but we are marred by sin and don't see it.
And God, in his wisdom and to fulfill his purpose, gave us revelation of himself a second time in writing in a much more objective form and said, Here, I'm going to govern this way.
This is a tool for you to grow in holiness and to disciple the nations.
And so, from that theonomic perspective, Suddenly, we have something out of God's law in the way that God tells us that He governs the world.
In Genesis 12, 3, one of God's promises to Abraham as a covenant keeper was that I will bless those who bless you and I will curse those who curse you, right?
So that's a giant, big dividing line right down through the middle of humanity right there in the Abrahamic covenant, which I understand the old and the new to be the outworking of God's covenant with Abraham.
Most Reformed theologians, I think, would agree with that.
But they take the second part of Genesis 12, That says all nations will be blessed through you.
They like that, but they don't do anything with Genesis 12, 3a, which says, I will curse those who curse you, I'll bless those who bless you.
Or in the theonomic view, Deuteronomy 28, for instance, is this just a particular thing that God did with Old Covenant Israel?
Or is this the way that God blesses and curses and governs nations?
In Proverbs, it says, righteousness exalts a nation, and the Psalms is full, and the prophets are full.
God condemned Sodom and Gomorrah for violations of Leviticus 19.
You know, you read it right there.
He says, Don't commit these sins.
These are the sins that Sodom and Gomorrah, or excuse me, Canaan, these are the sins that Canaan committed, and I'm judging them for it.
And it's Leviticus 19.
It's the sexual, or Leviticus 18, the sexuality laws of Leviticus 18.
In addition to that, what Rushini would say was in the case of Sodom, that their perversion and homosexuality, sodomy, came out of another sin, namely idleness.
That they were idle.
You know, it talks about how they were arrogant and proud and prosperous, but in that prosperity, they became idle, they began to coast rather than being productive and producing and working and exercising Christ like dominion.
And in their idleness, it gave birth to all kinds of perversion.
So God's judging them for arrogance, He's judging them for idleness, He's judging them for a lack of generosity, He's judging them also for various kinds of perversion.
And we see that very clearly in terms of sodomy.
That's one of the chief things that God judges them for.
So He doesn't just judge them for, for instance, He doesn't just judge them for murder.
It's not just like Nineveh, the violence of our hands, the king specifies.
It's not just Genesis 9, right?
Which is what a lot of folks, for their civil polity or their political theology, they want to jump entirely off of Genesis 9 and they won't include anything from the Old Covenant.
Whereas Leviticus 18 says, God tells the Israelites, don't do these things that I've just given you here from Mount Sinai as part of the Old Covenant.
Don't do those because those are the reasons that I'm judging Canaan that you're about to go in and destroy and so forth.
And so, out of God's law, out of the scriptures, we get this picture of how God governs the nations, how he governs the course of history.
And Gary North wrote a lot of good on this and some other theonomic authors as well.
But where I'm driving towards there, Joel, is a third category of postmillennialism, right?
I mentioned Edwards and Warfield.
The third category, North called it covenantal postmillennialism, covenantal in the jumping off that Vantillian idea that all men and all nations are either covenant breakers or covenant keepers, and that God will bless covenant obedience, right?
That all men are in God's law is an implicit covenant with all men and with all nations.
And so all men are either covenant keepers.
Covenant breakers, all nations, and that God will bless obedience and he will curse disobedience.
Right?
So, this comes along as a covenantal sort of understructure that supports, and God says, here's how, yes, post millennialism, yes, the wonderful promises of the Psalms and the prophets that we see of the unfolding of God's people discipling the nations.
But covenantally, here's part of how that's going to unfold.
God blesses obedience, curses disobedience, and the disobedient.
Become disenfranchised over time, according to God's law, and the righteous come into greater prosperity and greater authority and so forth.
So, I would call that kind of a third category.
And that's where theonomy and postmillennialism meet, I think, is in this idea of blessing and cursing, and that God's covenant law that we get to read out of the scriptures rules over all men, all nations, all institutions.
And so theonomy and postmillennialism very tightly linked at the hip in that regard.
Without theonomy, without the view of scripture that the theonomists held and that pretty much Van Til held as well, you're back to like a B.B. Warfield or a Jonathan Edwards kind of general optimism, but no information about how God actually is governing the nations and how history itself is going to.
Covenantally unfold.
So that's kind of the first piece of that tweet was the linkage between theonomy and postmillennialism.
Natural Law vs Moral Failure00:13:03
The second part of it is how is that view that was just roughly articulated, how does that differ from Aquinas' view, right?
His view of the scripture and his view of the world.
And I could perhaps maybe jump in now to that part of it a little bit.
Yeah, okay.
So, with Aquinas, maybe a good place to start with him is his view of the scriptures.
Right up front in his best known work, you can find PDFs of this online.
You don't even have to go to a library.
You can look up Summa Theologica PDF.
And in his first question, kind of seminally for the whole work, in his first question, the question is do we still need the scriptures?
And that's a little bit of a strange question for a Christian philosopher and theologian to be asking.
I think we'll get to it in a minute.
It tells you a little bit about what was going on in Europe.
And at that time, there was a Greek revival taking place, tremendous optimism about man and his reason and so forth, the Greek works having been rediscovered in the 900s and 1000s.
But he asked that question do we still need the scriptures?
And his answer is yes, we do still need the scriptures.
For salvation and for the mysteries related to salvation.
And so, if you think about it, he kind of says, but for everything other than salvation, let me say it this way two concentric circles.
The first concentric circle is life on earth, right?
It's academics, it's government, it's all the stuff that we do as human beings on the earth is the inner concentric circle.
And for that, Man's senses and God given reason are sufficient, right?
Because, hey, we've got Romans 1, and man can discover the truth of how to do life on earth using his senses and his God given reason.
Now, the second concentric circle outside of man's five senses and reason is the mysteries of salvation, right?
And so, to be saved, to be a saved person, I need the scripture to illuminate to me things that are beyond reason, beyond the capability of reason.
So, for instance, I can't reason.
My reason can't grasp or comprehend how Jesus could have two natures, be both God and man and they not be mixed, or that God is three persons and he's one God.
My reason can't grasp that.
So I need the scripture to tell me the things that are going to be by faith rather than by reason.
And so I need that faith for salvation.
So that's where Aquinas is coming from in terms of scripture.
He does not delineate between the believer and the unbeliever in terms of how they reason.
Right, in terms of how they operate.
For him, man was man, generic man.
And again, he's jumping off of kind of that Greek view of the world, where my reason is my great gift and that's my great ability.
He didn't think of man as either covenant breaker or covenant keeper.
He didn't think about man as suppressing the truth of God, whereas the believer wants to glorify God.
So he's not.
If I can interject for just a second, he's not affirming what the scripture says about man's reason and the ways that it is.
Tarnished and affected by the curse of sin.
So he's looking at man as though Genesis 3 never happened.
So that's the first problem he's thinking that man's intellect and his conscience and his reason are unaffected by sin, that man is in this neutral state.
So he thinks it's simply a matter of the intellect rather than seeing what Romans 1 teaches plainly, which is that man's fundamental problem is not intellectual but rather moral, that man doesn't want to submit to God.
And therefore, man will do whatever it takes to do logical gymnastics in order to come up with a reason for not submitting to God.
So it's not that what we often think is that we think, you know, man can't reason to God, therefore he rebels.
God has somehow failed to provide enough evidence for himself, and therefore man cannot see God, and therefore because man doesn't know God, he rebels against God.
But Romans 1 teaches precisely the opposite.
God has plainly revealed himself by what he has made, and this is sufficient.
This natural revelation is sufficient revelation for man to worship God, to not be an idolater, to know the triune God and to worship him according to what God requires.
His eternal power and divine nature have been clearly.
So, not all of God's attributes, we don't see the gospel in natural revelation, but natural revelation is sufficient not to save, but it is sufficient to condemn.
And it's sufficient to justly condemn, which implies that it's sufficient.
Natural revelation reveals enough.
For man to know what God requires of him.
What does God require of you, O man?
You know, Micah 6 8, that you do justly and that you would see God's standard of justice.
So we would say that it's not that God has failed in providing sufficient evidence.
And because God has failed, man therefore cannot reason to God.
And because he can't reason to God, he therefore rebels against God.
We'd say Romans 1 teaches precisely the opposite.
God has sufficiently provided enough natural revelation.
Plus, Romans 2, not just what God has on the outside by creation, natural revelation, but natural law written on the, in the biblical sense of natural law, written on the hearts of men.
His conscience, his own conscience testifies against him.
And so, in all those things, man, the reason why he ultimately does not submit to God is not because intellectually there's a deficiency, but rather, He creates that intellectual deficiency because he already has a presupposition.
He already has a bias.
He's made up his problem, moral.
He's already determined that he wants to be his own God.
He wants to worship the God of Demas rather than Theos, the true God.
And because of that, he'll do whatever it takes to intentionally and deliberately misinterpret the natural revelation that God has provided to skew it in order to support his moral rebellion.
His intellect.
His intellectual reason is following suit to his moral rebellion.
We would say that's what Romans 1 teaches.
In addition to that, just one more thing, real quick.
You're absolutely right about Aquinas.
And one of the problems is that we don't take 2 Timothy 3, verses 16 through 17, seriously, that talks about all scripture is God breathed, it's infallible, it's useful for training and equipping.
But it says that it may fully equip the man of God so that he'll understand the mysteries of salvation and go to heaven.
No.
So that he'll be fully equipped for every good work.
Every good work.
So it's not just the good work of accepting Jesus into your heart.
It's not just the good work of faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
It's the good work of ruling righteously, the good work of parenting righteously, the good work of righteous vocation and righteous markets, which I would say are free markets, you know, and that God actually has in his word.
That's the question is when we talk about the sufficiency of scripture, the question that's begged is sufficient for what?
And Aquinas, I think he would say it's sufficient for really just heavenly, spiritual, ethereal things, but not sufficient for life.
It's sufficient for godliness, but not life and godliness.
The scripture says life and godliness.
Bonson would say life.
That's an all encompassing tent.
If scripture is sufficient for life, it's not just sufficient for eternal life and faith, but But human life here on earth in such a way that it glorifies God and lends towards human flourishing.
That's a big tent.
Yeah.
And I agree.
And Aquinas, I'm not trying to use this word in a derogatory way, but he genuflects back to Scripture repeatedly, right?
Because he believes that Scripture says true good things.
But it's interesting that in his view, I think in his structure and in his system of thought, And you see this a lot with people who are Aquinas, you know, Thomas oriented type people today.
For them, Scripture has a derived authority, or Scripture lacks actual authority in history.
Scripture says some true things, but it derives from the natural law.
In other words, if something in Scripture is true, it's true because it roots back to the natural law.
And again, his government of history, you know, in terms of authority in history for ethics, for government, for academics, those two concentric circles is not just his epistemology, but it's where he vests authority, right?
It is the five senses and human reason are vested with authority for ethics.
They're vested with authority for academics.
They're vested with authority for civil government.
And scripture is only for the mysteries that are beyond reason.
And so then, if you stop and think about, well, where does that leave my academics?
Where does that leave my view of civil government?
Well, you know, we might get some interesting ideas out of scripture, but there's nothing there that's really going to help us authoritatively.
In history, temporally speaking, authority is vested in the five senses and human reason, and that is God's intent.
Right?
That's what they're saying is that that's God's intent for humanity.
And again, they don't differentiate, you know, or Aquinas didn't between believer and unbeliever, that that is the intent is for civil government and academics to all be done that way.
And, you know, there's massive implications for that.
I call it the Greek revival from 1000 to 1300 AD.
What was going on, you know, the train, that train was already moving when Aquinas came along.
He sort of entered into a A situation where this optimistic view of man had already been bubbling and percolating and kindling for a couple of hundred years.
The universities began to be founded in Europe around 1100, right?
And as they came into being, this concentric circle idea was already fairly well established and percolating.
And that's the view that was really enshrined, amazingly, by Christians.
From the inception of our Western universities.
And so, you know, we look at the Renaissance and the Enlightenment as like this veering away from the Christianity of the earlier centuries.
But that, epistemologically speaking, in terms of, you know, the authority of scripture or its lack of authority, that train left the station back during the Greek revival.
And the Renaissance and the Enlightenment were just the flowering of that view of the world, right?
Because it left the door wide open.
For unbelieving thought.
Nobody was really surprised in the late 1600s when John Locke was formulating views of political theory and civil government that didn't start with the authority of God and the scriptures.
He may have genuflected to God.
I know he did from reading it, but practically speaking, his system of thought vests authority in man.
And that's where the five senses and human reason end now man is the authority and God is in the dock.
Right.
And with that, speaking of John Locke and natural law, you said a lot of great things, but for our listeners, I just want to back up for a moment.
This gets to the heart of Cornelius Van Til.
And you see this in the way that, you know, that Bonson further took the thoughts of Van Til and applied it to apologetics.
Romans Two and Human Reason00:15:30
So some of our listeners may be familiar with like classical apologetics versus presuppositional apologetics, you know, or evidential apologetics.
So, you know, like when you think of evidential apologetics, you could think of what's Cray, William Lane Craig.
You know, would be a guy that a lot of people would recognize.
He recently did a debate with James White over Molinism, you know, or even like classical apologetics.
You might think of R.C. Sproul.
And this is, you know, who was a big fan of Thomas Aquinas, by the way, you know, and that's not a coincidence that he's R.C. Sproul.
I loved R.C. Sproul.
A lot of his stuff is fantastic.
I think his apologetics is one of his weak points.
I think that he's wrong about that.
He debated, I believe, Greg Bonson over which method of apologetics was more biblically faithful and right.
Greg Bonson arguing for presuppositional apologetics and Sproul arguing for classical apologetics.
And I think the reason Sproul landed there is because of Aquinas and because of Sproul's background.
With a lot of education in the realm of philosophy.
Certainly, he studied theology, but philosophy was what he really focused on in his undergrad, and that kind of set the tone that was really influential for Sprowl in his shaping and formation philosophy.
And then later, adding on to that, some of the deep theology.
So, my point is to say when we talk about presuppositional apologetics, classical or evidential apologetics, a presuppositionalist can make an argument from logic.
They can make an argument even from Evidential means.
What makes them presuppositional is so if I'm making a logical argument as I'm doing the work of an apologist, what I'm going to do ultimately is I'm going to say, I'm making this logical argument.
The reason why I think that this carries water is because you are a logical being.
And I know that you're a logical being because the Bible told me so.
The Bible tells me so.
So what I'm doing is I'm appealing to man's logic, but the bottom of it is not logic, but the Bible.
Not logic, but Bible.
And so we can appeal to other authorities because, again, Sola Scriptura doesn't say the Bible is the only authority.
It's the highest authority.
It's the final authority.
It's the bottom.
And so we can use some of these other appealing to logic, appealing to these kinds of things, but on the basis, always tying it back into, and I do this, and I did that, and I said this, and I said that, appealing to an authority, a real authority, albeit a lesser authority, but I can do this and know this.
Because the Bible tells me so.
But what you're saying with, like, John Locke, for instance, in natural law or Aquinas, is what they're doing is yes, like, if you, to the untrained eye, if you look at some of these writings, you're going to say, look, they're using scripture.
John, Joel, they're using scripture.
Yeah, but only certain parts of scripture.
They're only using certain parts of scripture, the concentric circles that you're talking about.
They're only using a certain part of scripture when it comes to ethics and civil governments and why.
That's what you have to get down to so that you say, well, Scripture is the authority.
Yeah, but why only some of Scripture?
And the answer to that question is so, what's the determining factor?
What's the highest?
Scripture is an authority in the mind of John Locke, in the mind of Thomas Aquinas.
But what is the determining factor for which portions of Scripture apply and which portions don't?
The higher authority than Scripture, which is man's reason.
See, what they're doing is they're putting man's logic on the bottom, and Scripture is being supported by man's reason.
So, the fundamental, foundational authority is not Scripture, but man.
Man is the sum of all things.
And because arguing from man, we then get to determine from the Scripture what's useful and what's not, what's applicable and what's not.
So, even though we're using Scripture, and so it looks like we're saying Scripture is the authority, the difference is this it's subtle.
But no, you're not saying Scripture is the authority.
You're saying Scripture is an authority and a lesser authority, but the authority.
Paramount authority is actually man's reason.
That is the metric, the authority that determines the winnowing fork that determines which scripture makes the cut and which scripture doesn't.
Whereas the presuppositional guy, the Vantillian guy, the Greg Bonson guy, if you just consistently apply that hermeneutic and that epistemology throughout every realm of life, from the way we read the scripture to the way that we argue for the faith and apologetics and defend the faith, To markets, to civil government, to ethics, to all these different things, to parenting, to family, to education, academics, all those things.
If you just do that across the board, then one of the things you're left with, in the simplest terms, to try not to confuse our listeners, is one of the things you're left with is sola scriptura.
I guess I could say it this way a true commitment to sola scriptura necessarily concludes in a commitment to to tota scriptura.
And what I mean is that if you really hold to sola scriptura that the Bible is the highest authority, And the only infallible authority, then what you end up with with a true commitment to sola scriptura is you end up with the whole Bible and not just pieces of it.
Tota scriptura.
Sola scriptura is a minimizing principle, it makes sure that we don't get anything beyond the Bible.
Tota scriptura is a maximizing principle that makes sure that we get the whole Bible, the whole counsel of God, not just the red letters, you know, but recognizing that all of scripture is God breathed.
All of it is Christ speaking.
Leviticus is Christ speaking.
And so.
And I think that total scripture naturally flows from sola scripture.
If you really believe that the Bible is the bottom, it's the foundational authority, that nothing is propping that up.
That authority of the scripture props up every other lesser authority.
If you really believe that, that it's the bottom, then you're left with having to, and certainly there's I's to dot and T's to cross.
It doesn't mean it's simple or easy, but you're left with the obligation.
If sola scripture, you're left with the obligation of I've got to do something with the whole Bible.
I can't just do something with part of it, total scripture.
Would you agree with that, John?
I do agree with that, Joel.
I was sitting there as you were talking, thinking of a word for sufficient.
You mentioned earlier the sufficiency of scripture.
You mentioned the scripture from 1 Timothy that talks about it equipping man for every good work.
The sufficiency of scripture is the crux of the debate there between, and Van Til said, That the Bible is authoritative about everything of which it speaks, and it speaks about everything, was one of his ways of putting that.
And sometimes people say in response, well, what color should my tie be?
Or, you know, how do I put together this toy?
Or, you know, whatever.
And that's not his point.
His point is that the ethics of everything that is encountered in the human experience and the human life, all of the ethics of life, the Bible addresses.
And it addresses them authoritatively.
And, you know, Van Til, that view is not in any way degrading to the natural law.
You said you believe, and I believe, Romans 1, God reveals himself.
It's amazing.
He says, what can be revealed has been revealed, is sort of the language there in Romans 1.
It's very comprehensive, right?
And we know that we are marred by sin and that our ability to comprehend.
The fullness and the depth of that revelation in the creation is limited by our sin.
But we don't in any way need to degrade the natural revelation.
But we need to be careful that we don't, the authority of the law in creation as a standalone entity is unquestioned.
Instead, it is the ability of man, fallen man, believer or unbeliever, but certainly an unbeliever.
To be able to encounter God's revelation in the creation and do justice based on it, right?
When he is wanting to suppress that knowledge and live his life in such a way as to justify his rebellion against God.
And so, into that picture comes the scripture where God, in his wisdom and in his providence, says, I gave you my law once.
Now, I'm going to give you my revelation of myself again, objectively and in writing.
And what I'm giving you, these scriptures are God breathed and they're sufficient for every good work, right?
And they tell us about God, what he really truly is like.
We don't have to guess.
We don't have to discern it from the creation or from our own consciousness.
God tells us objectively, clearly, this is what I am like.
And he gives us his commands and his ethics and so forth.
So it's just, it's fundamentally a very different view than Aquinas' view, which really sort of booted, booted, in principle at least, boots the scripture out of history and out of temporal considerations, right?
Whether it's academics or, you know, civil government or anything like that.
Whereas the entail had the different view that God is bringing the scripture and it is authoritative.
That's good.
Yeah, I completely agree.
And I think it's important also for us to keep in mind that in terms of God's Revelation to all men, not speaking of special revelation, but speaking of natural revelation, we don't just have Romans 1, we have Romans 2 as well.
Romans 2, Paul's making a very clear argument saying that if you go to a Gentile tribe or nation that has not received an ounce of special revelation, they've never got a prophet, they've never got an evangelist or an apostle or a page of the Torah or anything like that, they're still justly condemned because we could argue it like this God is just when he judges because man is morally culpable.
God would not be a just judge if man wasn't sufficiently responsible, morally responsible.
So, God is just in his judgment because man is morally responsible.
And man is morally responsible because he's not ignorant.
He's not ignorant because he has knowledge.
So, it's because man knows, because God has revealed himself, because man knows he's responsible for acting in accordance with what he knows.
And because man is responsible when he fails in his responsibility, God can judge him.
Justly.
So the judgments of God are just because man is morally responsible.
Man is morally responsible because man is knowledgeable.
Man is not ignorant.
And that's what Romans 1 argues in terms of natural revelation on the outside of man.
So outside of man, creation, the stars and the sun and the sky and the world, creation itself testifies to certain things about God.
That's natural revelation.
But then we also have it's not just that.
We have Romans 2 that says there's something also testifying to all men, not just believers.
This is not special revelation for those who are regenerate.
But all people, without ever receiving even a Bible verse, all people have creation outside of them that is speaking something about God.
Psalms talks about the skies pour out speech.
And so there's something outside of man that is speaking from God, a revelation from God, but there's also something on the inside of man, namely his conscience, that man has been created in God's image.
And although sin has marred that image, a vestige of the image of God remains.
That's why we believe all people, not just Christian people, but all people are image bearers and are worthy of dignity.
And we hold to the sanctity of Human life, because human beings, not just Christian human beings, but all human beings, even non Christians, are made in the image of God.
But part of what it means to be an image bearer is that we have a conscience that testifies to the truth of God.
So you have two forms of revelation, really.
It's not just Romans 1, it's Romans 1 and Romans 2.
Romans 1, God is speaking to man outside of him in creation.
Romans 2, God is speaking to man inside of him through the conscience, testifying it.
And between these two things combined, you, O man, are without.
Excuse.
Man is rendered excuseless.
He does not have an apologia.
He has no argument to be making against God to say that God is somehow unjust in his judgments because God speaking inside of man, the imago de, the conscience, Romans 2, and outside of man, natural revelation, Romans 1, God speaking in both of these ways is sufficient according to God.
It is sufficient for man to be knowledgeable, knowledgeable enough to be morally culpable, and morally culpable enough to where if he fails in his moral responsibility, God is not.
Judging him harshly, but justly.
And so, in that, my point is to say Romans 1 and Romans 2, when you add them together, it doesn't just give you the second table of the law.
When John Locke and guys like that and Christians, when they want to define natural law, they want to say natural law is what governs nations, right?
Natural law is what governs nations.
You know, the moral law, all 10 commandments, the decalogue, that's what governs Christians because it's written on their heart.
But natural law, Governs nations.
And essentially, this is the argument because I don't want there to be any confusion for our listeners.
The argument that people are making is that natural law is the second table of the law, meaning natural law is commandments five through 10.
That's usually the way that I've heard people articulate.
Natural law is, it regards how we should love our neighbor as ourselves, the second table of the Decalogue.
But the first table of the Decalogue, commandments one through four have no other gods before me, do not make any graven images, do not take the Lord's name in vain, and remember the Sabbath, keep it holy.
This is divine law.
This is part of moral law.
And that's written on the hearts of Christians.
But not unbelievers.
But Romans 1 and 2, when you add them together, completely denies that notion.
Romans 2 speaks of the second table of the law and our duty towards our fellow man and how our own conscience testifies against us when we do wrong to our fellow man.
But Romans 1 doesn't really talk about the second table of the law.
Romans 1, I think it includes that, but Romans 1, the explicit examples that the apostle provides have to do with the first table of the law, it has to do with idolatry.
All men, non Christian men, are without an excuse when it comes to commandment number one, two, three, and four.
That's what Paul's saying that they have no excuse with because there's a God in heaven who has revealed himself sufficiently.
So when man worships the creation, the created things, rather than the creator itself, that's not love for neighbor.
Worshiping Created Things00:03:12
That's not the second table of the law.
Commandments five through ten.
No, it's not.
Yeah, that's commandments one through four.
That's the first table of the law.
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.
And we could say that's a breach of the first commandment, idolatry.
It's a breach of the second commandment because you're worshiping created things, which are visible things, rather than the invisible God.
It's also a breach of the third commandment.
It is to take God's name in vain.
It's to attribute deity to a created thing that is not God.
It's to trivialize the name of God.
And I would also argue that even the Sabbath, the fourth commandment, is built into natural revelation Romans 1.
There are pagans who would agree that if you're in agriculture, you do well to work the land for six years and rest it on the seventh.
Why?
Because God has built a one in seven principle into the fabric of creation.
And we believe that the Sabbath is not removed by Jesus, who is Lord of the Sabbath, but rather renewed by Jesus from the last day to the first by virtue of his resurrection.
And so, my point is Romans 1 gives us the first table of the law.
It's not quite this simple, but for the sake of a generalization, Romans 1, natural revelation, God revealing himself by creation outside of man, gives us the first table of the law.
How to love the Lord our God, commandments 1 through 4.
Romans 2, natural law, in the way that John Locke would use the phrase natural law.
Revelation inside the conscience of man gives us the second table of the law, Commandments 5 through 10, how to love our neighbor as ourselves.
Romans 1 plus Romans 2 gives us moral law, divine law, the full Decalogue.
And all of this, Romans 1 and 2, is talking about pagans, not Christians, pagans, saying this is the standard for them.
So, yeah, I think we should have Christian nations and Christian governments that publicly identify and pledge their allegiance to the Christian God.
The triune God.
We cannot have pluralism, which is just a euphemism for polytheism, which is atheism.
No, we cannot have public atheism as our pledge of allegiance as a nation.
We must pledge our allegiance in the civil realm publicly to the triune God because he's revealed himself to all people, including non believers.
And this is his law for which he governs the world, not just the Christian church, but the whole world.
And that seems like a thoroughly clear, Biblical argument, anybody who's arguing a watered down, that's your foolproof scotch theonomy that Christians should be drinking.
But then you get scotch watered down or you get a seven up in scotch, you know, like something poured into it, you know, and that's where you get John Locke and these guys.
But to say that John Locke is the standard for robust reformed theological thought, I just don't understand how we get there.
You know, so I don't know.
Do you have any comments or pushback or anything with that?
John?
Yeah, I don't have pushback, but I thought of as you were talking, Psalm 103, verse 18 or 19, that God's throne is in heaven and his kingdom rules over all.
Inherited Optimism About Man00:02:09
So it is right and good.
All men are commanded to obey the Lord, to obey his law.
And that, I would link the low view of the law and the low view of the scripture.
In a sense, you called it kind of scotch and seven up.
I think that's kind of, you know, in the history of the West, that's what we see is more and more seven up going into the drink, right?
As we've gone along, as we've gone along.
And my argument and position is that the spout of seven up was set up back during the Greek revival when this view of the scripture and this view of man's reason as autonomous and having authority, his five senses and reason, that view was set up and was inherited.
Down the way, it was inherited by the reformers.
I like to say that the reformers dealt with the optimistic view of man that came out of the Greek revival.
They dealt with that optimistic view of man.
It was rearing its head in Roman Catholic salvific theology and putting man as the primary actor and mover in his own salvation, sort of a works based idea.
And they dealt with and corrected very thoroughly.
And wonderfully, uh, that the view of the optimism about fallen man in the Reformation, uh, salvifically, right, in terms of personal salvation, they dealt with it, but they have not yet, the church has not yet dealt with the implications of this optimistic view of man with respect to it, respect where and to civil government.
Correcting the Reformation View00:04:39
Um, you know, I like to say that there's uh.
Discipling his church in the first thousand years, uh, we nailed down the doctrines of God, right?
In the second thousand years, we nailed down the terms of grace and soteriology, right?
And then who knows what will be in the third thousand years.
But, um, you know, the Lord is teaching his people, and what we get to see from the last thousand years of history is, uh, the beauty and wonder of the doctrines of grace formulated in the Reformation.
But we are today.
Getting this the fruit of view of academics and of in our universities today, which are cultural thought leaders of great authority in our society, and as well as in civil government, those are both places where Christians have been very quiet, right?
Uh, and progressively quiet over the last three or four hundred years.
Uh, and I think it they have not to stand, uh.
Apologetic does to stand on the truth of our academic disciplines, as well as our starting point for authority in the civil realm.
And it's not an arbitrary type fidelity to scripture.
You know, it's part of the beauty of his apology and all human thought with the God of the Bible.
Apart from the God of the Bible as your initial premise for all human thought, nothing will make sense.
Nothing can ultimately make sense in terms of understanding what the world is like and why we're here and meaning.
People use words unbelievers, they will say things, and I'll ask them, well, why do you believe that murder is wrong?
Why do you believe that rape is wrong?
And so forth.
They'll say, they'll give various reasons.
You know, well, everybody knows that.
Everybody, what are you, a Nazi?
You know, some kind of weird guy.
It's like, no, I'm not a weird guy.
You just told me what you believed, and I'm asking why you believe it.
And what Van Til's apologetic does is it peels that onion for the unbeliever all the way back to his initial basis of belief, his initial what authorizes him to believe something.
And the unbeliever always will not have any ultimate basis for his own belief other than he thinks so.
And we as Christians over the last thousand years have allowed ourselves to move into that way of thinking.
Where we don't start with the God of the Bible and the truth of what the scriptures teach, we allow ourselves instead to start with the Bible might be true and it might not be true.
Van Til, I like, he used to say that you could take a Greek philosopher and he could stand there and be an eyewitness to the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.
Stand there and watch the whole thing.
And then he rises from the dead and he sees him ascend into heaven.
And the Christian turns to the Greek philosopher and says, See, I told you that he was the son of God.
And this proves it.
And the Greek philosopher would say, well, that's really interesting.
That's a new human potentiality that I was unaware of, right?
I didn't know that humans could rise from the dead.
Maybe I can rise from the dead.
But this business about Jesus being the Son of God is absolute nonsense, right?
And so the idea that we're going to start our academics or our government or whatever with the idea that the God of the Bible might or might not be true, there's always a door out of that room for the unbeliever.
Always, right?
I don't care if you stand there and witness the resurrection.
So, if that's the basis of our authority, if we're coming from the direction that our senses, five senses and logic, like the Greeks and like Aquinas, if that's the basis of our authority to disciple the nations, we're in big trouble, right?
Instead, Scripture itself teaches us that His Word is what is living and active, dividing soul and spirit, joint and marrow.
Throughout the whole course of Scripture, it's that image of the sword.
It is God's living and active Word.
That comes out of Jesus' mouth, right?
Theos Nomos in Every Culture00:02:49
And that governs and that does his work.
So I think that you were alluding and describing the extent of God's law and that all men are under God's law, all 10 commandments, right?
But we've lost that over time as we've begun to think, maybe not in personal salvation, because we got that, we got that nailed down, but beyond that, Whether academics, government, et cetera, culture, we've lost or we have learned to think like unbelievers in a very large way.
And one of the amazing things about Van Til, I remember reading his actual books for the first time myself.
I had read Brush Dooney's book about Van Til first, that was my introduction to him.
But as I was reading Christian Apologetics and his systematic theology, the thing that struck me was kind of like a surreal, Sort of a thing.
It was a mind shift and it felt really radical.
It kept striking me that again and again and again, he just kept assuming that what God said in the Bible was actually true.
And he kept rigorously reasoning from that basis to this area, to this area, to this area.
And it really, I mean, it was a mental process.
I felt like I was being deprogrammed as I was reading Van Til, and there was joy.
You know, that began to come to me, you know, as I read more and more of it, because it's beautiful, it's wonderful.
Christ really is the King of Kings.
He is the Lord of Lords.
His throne is in heaven, but his kingdom rules overall, like it says in Psalm 103.
Amen.
Amen, brother.
Yeah, people always say, you know, well, Jesus said, my kingdom is not of this world.
And I would say, yes and amen.
His kingdom is not of this world, but his kingdom is most certainly in this world.
The way that he rules his kingdom is not the way that man, tyrannical man, with his faulty reason and sin, would rule the world.
So Jesus, his kingdom is not.
Of this world, it is of a different nature, but it is in this world, it is not a mere spiritual, ethereal, heavenly kingdom.
Jesus, God, so loved the world, and the world is not going to literally dissolve like snow.
God is redeeming and restoring all things in the beloved in Christ Jesus, and He has set His holy one, His anointed one, He has set Him on Zion, on Mount Zion.
And the nations rage and they try to break the bonds apart, they try to achieve autonomy, but But theonomy is inescapable.
Christ Wins Despite a Losing Church00:11:20
And the reality is that everyone is a theonomist.
Everybody believes in theos, namos, law.
The question is just which God?
Is it the God of the Bible, his law, or is it demos, man, as God and their law, or is it some other God?
But there's always a God.
Every culture, cultists, worship, every culture, every nation has a God.
And that God has a standard of morality, and that morality is legislated.
Through the laws of that nation.
All legislation is moral, neutrality is a myth.
And so these are just, I think a lot of Christians are hopping on the post millennial theonomic train right now because I think the last two years, in terms of God's providence, has just opened a lot of eyes, including my own, to the inevitable, inescapable reality of post millennialism and theonomy that we're going to have to wrestle with these.
Realities and do something about it.
The whole idea of it's not whether, but which.
That principle right there has been, I think, one of the clearest lessons over the last two years.
It's like, well, I don't want Christendom, you know, I don't want Spanish crusades.
And I've been telling people, Christendom on its worst day can't come close to putting up the number of casualties that secular humanism has.
We've been murdering a million children annually for the last half century in this nation.
I think it's time.
To put the final nail in the coffin of secular humanism.
Secular humanism has been horribly destructive.
And so we look at, well, look at these, the anecdotal evidence of something that happened under Constantine or something that happened, like maybe strict Sabbatarian laws with the Puritans.
And we don't want that, do we?
It's like, I don't know.
Do we want doctors cutting off the forearms of 15 year old girls?
To use it as a penis?
Do we want that?
I mean, it's just, it's not whether, but which.
There will be a God, there will be a law, and it's going to be moral.
There is no neutrality.
And so, you know, so basically the Christian, you know, guy who's a theonomist is just saying, yeah, I think God's law is better.
The last thing that I wanted to mention, because I thought it was really good what you said about just, you know, the first thousand years, postmillennialism has helped me so much to just.
Pan out and get a 30,000 foot view.
So, the first thousand years doctrine of God, and I would maybe even add to that, you know, a doctrine of the word and a doctrine of God, you know, inherent inerrancy of scripture and then theology proper and our view of the Trinity and the hypostatic union, like the things that you were talking about how can God be three persons and one God, one in essence, and then the second member of the Trinity having two natures that are not severed or not divorced, but also no mixture.
That's we just take that for granted.
But that took some serious theological work.
And approximately a thousand years to nail down.
And then the last thousand years, you're absolutely right.
I mean, we've been, I would say, just the last 20, 30 years, we've seen this rise in reformed soteriology, the doctrines of grace.
And I think that in the province of God, that makes sense.
You know, on the 500th year anniversary, you know, of Luther and the Reformation, and it's kind of like we're, it feels like the last 20, 30 years with guys like Paul Washer and MacArthur, you know, and it feels like, you know, in Sproul, like we were kind of rounding out.
That second millennium of church history in terms of soteriology.
So it's like you've got your doctrine of God, doctrine of the word, and you've got your doctrine of salvation.
But we really haven't.
There's been some work done, guys, the Scottish reformers, Protestant resistance theory, John Knox, some of the writings of the Puritans.
It's not like no work has been done on these things, but we really are just stepping into moving from doctrine of God, doctrine of the word, doctrine of soteriology to a doctrine of ethics.
A doctrine of civil government, a doctrine of academics.
And that's not crazy.
You know, it's like all this sounds crazy and people get squirmish.
They're like, this is novel, this is new, anything new, you know, has the potential of being heresy.
But I think that reaction comes from someone who their presupposition, they may not even consciously be aware of it, but their presupposition is that Jesus is going to return in about 15 minutes.
That's right.
And the world is supposed to get worse.
Until he does.
So there's two things.
It's Jesus is returning soon, relatively soon, and he has ordained that things will get worse until he comes.
So if that's your mindset, then you don't even hear someone saying, like, yeah, I think we're still in the early church and that we may have another 10,000 years and it's going to take another thousand.
It took a thousand years to iron this out, it's going to take another thousand years to iron that out.
We're just getting started.
And that just sounds completely foreign.
To somebody who doesn't have a post millennial optimistic outlook on the world, Jesus actually winning the world, saving the world, not universalism, each and every individual being regenerate, but that Jesus' kingdom, of the increase of his kingdom, there will be no end, and that he, all authority on earth and in heaven, that this stone cut by no human hand is going to crush the kingdoms of this world and then grow into a mountain that fills the world.
The earth, the mustard seed that's going to grow into a tree.
That kind of, and it all really starts even back with Genesis.
Post millennialism, it's like 1 Corinthians 15, you know, and then, you know, understanding partial preterism and reading Revelation and light of that, you know, these kinds of texts, 2 Timothy chapter 3, Jonathan Jambres, you know, these men, they will not get very far.
Their folly will be plain to all.
So people will go from bad to worse, but they won't be successful.
These texts were vital, but it's funny, like as I really.
Studied the scripture, my post millennial eschatology starts all the way with Genesis 1.
What is the nature of God?
How does God work in the world?
What's God's MO?
You know, like with creation, did God create everything cataclysmically and suddenly?
No, he did it in a process.
Yes, six literal days.
I'm not a heretic, so I believe in six literal 24 hour days, but it still was a process.
God didn't just speak one word, he spoke 10 words over six days.
And in the same way, God, through a process in creation, doesn't it, you know, or you think of, so creation is a process.
Sanctification.
God doesn't immediately sanctify us, he immediately justifies, but sanctification is a process.
And so then to think of eschatology as a process that God is working in the world, building towards some glorious end.
Dispensational premillennialism is this idea of just this cataclysmic, sudden boom, Jesus wins.
And we're saying, no, no, how did God create the world?
How does God sanctify the individual?
How does Christ build his church?
That's the same way that God is saving the world and restoring the world.
And so we're just being consistent with the nature of God all the way from Genesis, but not just looking at Revelation in isolation, but we're starting with Genesis all the way to Revelation.
And when you have that post millennial framework, Instead of things must get worse and Jesus is coming soon, it's things will get better and Jesus may tarry for a few thousand years.
Then the kind of language that we've been using in this episode about, yeah, we knocked out three doctrines in 2,000 years and that's okay.
We're right on track.
Then it doesn't sound so crazy, so foreign.
And so, anyways, I want to thank you for coming on the show.
Any final thoughts that you want to share?
Well, in response to what you were just sharing there, Joel, if I could, the idea that if, if, if, If a young person is in a math class and the goal is to learn math, what should they expect that the teacher is going to give to them?
Well, they're going to give them math problems.
And if the church, if Jesus is building his church and God is discipling his people toward maturity and the full measure of Christ, like it says in Ephesians 4, then there are going to be problems.
People say, well, what about this?
And then the Middle Ages, what about this abuse of power?
Well, God is training and teaching his people.
You're not going to get every math problem right necessarily on the first try, but It is a process toward maturity that God is discipling his people toward.
And I guess one closing thought there that I'll share is Psalm 2 talks about that the rulers of this world want to break off God's chains, the chains of his law, and they're warned kiss the son, lest he be angry and you perish in the way.
God judges.
And I don't know if it's a coincidence, it's the second Psalm.
The second to the last Psalm is Psalm 149.
And if you put those two together, it's amazing the picture that Psalm 149, there's a picture of the saints of God, the people of God, with the high praises of God in their mouth and the two edged sword in their hand.
And it says that it is there in glory of all God's people to put the chains back on the rulers and the nobles of this world.
It's a beautiful picture of, you know, because a lot of times people will say, well, that's going to be Jesus, but that's not us.
Right, we're not Jesus, and Psalm 149 very clearly teaches that when Jesus said, All authority is mine, therefore you go and disciple the nations, that He was involving us in the discipling of the nations and calling all men to obedience, and that beautiful post millennial vision.
Yeah, amen.
Thanks so much for coming on the show, and I hope that our listeners feel encouraged that Christ wins.
And the reality is, you know, to be fair, I don't want to straw man any argument, every eschatology says that Christ wins.
The question is how.
The post millennial says that Christ wins through the church.
The premillennial says that Christ wins despite a losing church.
So, both believe that Christ wins, to be fair.
But what we're specifically saying is that Christ wins through us.
And we believe that.
And I believe that that is a hopeful and, more importantly, a biblical message.
So, thanks, John, for coming on the show.
God bless you.
You bet.
God bless you, Joel.
Thanks so much for listening.
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