One God, Three Persons: Understanding the Trinity (Westminster Confession Chapter 2)

Pastor Cisco Victa sits down with Drew Brackbill to discuss Chapter 2 of the Westminster Confession of Faith, Of God and of the Holy Trinity. Together they explore what the Confession teaches about the nature and attributes of the one true and living God and how Scripture reveals that this one God exists eternally as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

In this conversation they begin to look at the historical development of the doctrine of the Trinity and the early church controversies that forced Christians to clarify their theology. From the writings of the early church fathers to the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, they discuss how the church responded to errors such as modalism and Arianism and defended the biblical teaching that Christ is begotten, not made, and of the same essence as the Father.

Join us as we consider why the doctrine of the Trinity stands at the center of the Christian faith and why it continues to matter for the church today.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Welcome to Catechizing Conversations. My name is Sisko Victor. I'm joined today by my guest Drew Brackville. And we are talking about the first or actually no, the second question and answer of the shorter catechism. What do well what rule has God given to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him? And the answer is the word of God, which is contained in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy Him. And then the last time we were together, we were talking about the first chapter of the Westminster Confession, which aligns with that second question of the authority of Scripture. And in that podcast, we were looking at why the confession says that the books commonly called the Apocrypha are not divine inspiration and they are no part of the canon of Scripture. But today we want to kind of switch onto the positive side of things and ask, well, what is the role of Scripture in the life of the Reformed Church? Why is Scripture the only legitimate authority?

Sola Scriptura Versus Tradition

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Yeah. And so coming from a an extreme deep dive into the history of the canon, and and I probably talked at in too great a length about the Apocrypha, but the the reason why we consider scripture to be our only legitimate authority, right? It's not that we discard the value of tradition.

unknown 2:13

Right?

SPEAKER_00 2:14

We love tradition. I mean, we're constantly talking about John Calvin. If we didn't think tradition was important, why are we always quoting John Calvin?

SPEAKER_01 2:21

So we're not we're not like the some who think that there's no value in church history whatsoever.

How We Recognize Scripture’s Authority

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Yeah, what what the reformed tradition is called, we would be called magisterial Protestants, right? Which is which means that we are we are still taught and we are still influenced by the tradition of those who've come before. We don't consider it authoritative. We don't think that it is more true than scripture, or we don't think that it's on equal footing with scripture. The Catholics would say they think scripture and and tradition are equal. The Anglicans, not to put it in a dig at my Anglican friends who may or may not be listening to this podcast, they they would say they advance a doctrine of prima scriptura, which is that scripture is most important, but tradition is also important, right? It's also authoritative. And we advance with the Lutherans a doctrine of sola scriptura, one of the five solas of the Reformation. And we think that it is that the only authority is from Scripture. So in our view, when Scripture and tradition appear to contradict, tradition cannot hold against the Word of God. And so we think that tradition can be instructive, we think that it's valuable, but we don't think it's authoritative. We don't think that the the authority of of of God and and his church rests in tradition.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

And of course, then that is a stark contrast from the Roman Catholics that believe that the only way we can know what scripture is is if the church decides on it.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Yeah. As we talked about last time, right? They they from their perspective, it's Pope Demesis I, right, who first laid out the canon at the Council of Rome in the in 300 AD, right? I think it was more like 380 something A.D. And they would say, ever since then, you know, this is scripture. And you Protestants like to pretend like we all decided this on the 1500s at the Council of Trent, but it was really laid down at the foundations of the church. Well, you know, as I explained last time, not every Pope agreed that the Apocrypha should be in the canon, so there's d there is disagreement, and they wouldn't they wouldn't think that that necessarily is a is a giant conflict, you know, and being charitable to my Catholic friends. They wouldn't say that that that represents a giant conflict. I think it represents something of a conflict, but whatever. We talked about that last time. But they're saying that the church says what is scripture. And by contrast, we think that the only way we can know what scripture is is if the Holy Spirit speaks to us through it. That's what the Westminster Divines said in the in the Westminster Confession of Faith. They put it this way. They would say in chapter one, section five, that we may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to in high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scripture, and the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, right? It's consistent. One of the reasons why we discard the apocrypha, it's inconsistent. The scope of the whole, which is to give all glory to God, the full discovery it makes of the only way of man's salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it doth abundantly evidence itself to be the word of God.

unknown 6:02

Right?

The Spirit As Supreme Judge

SPEAKER_00 6:03

So this is them laying out, like, this is why we think the Apocrypha is not really scripture, and why we, you know, discard these other extra biblical books like Enoch, right? Because they don't seem to have heavenly style, right? The uh the doctrine doesn't accord with the rest. It it doesn't connect. But then they say, yet notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof of Scripture is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the word in our hearts. So they are laying, they are saying that the way we know what scripture is is because the Holy Spirit is speaking to us through it. And I think it's interesting that both the Catholics and the Protestants are ultimately relying on the frailty of human perception, right? On our our ability to hear what God is saying through his word. But I think, for my part, that a critical distinction is that Protestants are suggesting, or at least reformed Protestants, are suggesting, that the ultimate onus is on the Lord, right? The ultimate, the ultimate driver of this process is the Lord. He will make it plain to his people what is and is not his word and what is and is not his will, and that he does not need our help to do so. And this, as so many other aspects of Calvinistic theology do, I think places God where he belongs, right? On his throne, at the center of the universe from beginning to end. And that's a distinction between what we what we confess and what the the the more the Catholics and the Orthodox would confess.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

Yeah, that's why we have a prayer of illumination, because we need the Holy Spirit to open our eyes or we remain dense and dark. And as a clarification, we are in no way saying, of course, the the Westminster divines are in no way saying that the Word of God becomes the Word of God, as Neo-Orthodoxy does, or also known as Marthianism, that the the Word of God is or the Bible is fallible, but perhaps when it comes to somebody, it becomes the word of God to them. So that's a very nebulous and subjective and frankly, frankly heretical view of the Word of God.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

Yeah.

Bereans, Literacy, And Guarding Heresy

SPEAKER_01 8:33

The Word of God is the Word of God, whether my eyes are open to it, your eyes are open to it, it is the Word of God. Without argument. And then we also know that that Scripture, and you refer to this, uh, Scripture in a real sense is established by Scripture itself. It's self self-authenticating. Could you speak more to that?

SPEAKER_00 8:58

Yeah. You know, so the the Catholics boy, I've really just started every single sentence by saying the Catholic explain. I'm putting a lot of words in the mouths of the Roman Catholic Church. I guess maybe I'll just say that the So in Acts, in Acts 17, we see the Bereans are examining the Scriptures daily to verify if Paul's teaching was true. So they're going back to the Old Testament. Paul's telling them a new word and uh bringing the gospel to them. And the Bereans are looking at scripture, their the tonic, their their Hebrew scriptures. Although probably it would have been the Septuagint, to see if what Paul is saying is true, right? And Paul uh they're commended for this, they're commended for using their understanding of you know the Old Testament to affirm or to understand what Paul is saying. In 1 Corinthians, in his in his letter to the Corinthians, Paul is explaining how you should interpret spiritual truths by comparing spiritual things with spiritual. And you know, even Peter himself, right, supposedly the the one who laid down the foundations of the Roman Catholic Magisterium, he says in 2 Peter 1 20 that, you know, first of all, no prophecy of scripture comes from someone's own interpretation, right? So that it this is one of our proof texts for the idea that no pope, no bishop, no priest has the ability to say what is and isn't scripture. Their interpretation is it's it's the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit has to be speaking through them. So biblical prophecy never originated from human willpower or understanding, but rather through prophets who are moved by the Holy Spirit. And so that verse underscores the divine origin and reliability of scripture. Now, the Catholics, of course, would say, well, we don't, you know, we think that the Holy Spirit is speaking through the Pope. And, you know, I mean, like I want to be charitable to them, but that's we don't we disagree. We just disagree on that.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

And I know you you feel like you're you're picking on the Catholics a lot. And maybe you are. But uh just going back to Acts 17, 11, I mean, that is a beautiful historical account when it says that there were Jews more noble than those in Thessalonica. They received the word with all eagerness, and then this is what you're referring to examining the scriptures daily to see if these things were so. And as I read that, I think how much error, how much heresy could be avoided if that was the heart of people. Is that not simply because a charismatic figure stands up and says something? Because Protestants have their popes too, right? And and uh often they're the charismatic figures who are demonstrative and skilled and full of charisma, and they say something and people run with it. But we constantly have to go back to God's word to test these things.

Perspicuity: Clarity For Salvation

SPEAKER_00 12:05

Yeah. And you know, I think that there's so there's an argument to be made for the necessity of biblical literacy, and one of the values of the Protestant tradition, which I I think uh eventually I'll get to this idea, but like one of the values of the Protestant tradition being that it has at least attempted to uplift most believers to some level of biblical literacy so that they can do as the Bereans did, right? And go and examine Scripture and and in a commendable way, and so that they can help to guard the church against heresy. This ought to be the role of every person, right? This is this is to our our Protestant idea of the priesthood of all believers, right? It's not the job of some elite, some clerical elite who know Latin and nobody else knows it. They're the only ones who can read the Bible and they read it and they tell us how it is, and the rest of us just shut up and take it for 1500 years, right? We believe that now I am being uncharitable to Catholics, but no, we believe that it is the job of all believers to to help guard against heresy and to help guard the sanctity and the purity of the of the church and its doctrines throughout history. And it it's and in fairness to modern Catholics, mm I know many modern Catholics who are who are very biblically literate and well read. And I I have a a doubt in my heart that they would be if not for the product of the Protestant Reformation and the Counter-Reformation. So even if you stay Catholic, I think there's a good thing that came out of the Reformation and that it allowed lay people in even in Catholic countries and in the Catholic Church to have access to Bibles in the vernacular that they can read. I think it's indisputable that that's a desirable thing, unless you're some kind of traditional Tridentine mass-loving Catholic, which who you know thinks that people shouldn't be reading the Bible. And there are some that think that.

SPEAKER_01 14:04

Yeah, and I mean I think are you referring to the perspicuity of the scriptures? So we should we jump into that a bit?

SPEAKER_00 14:11

Aaron Ross Powell, Jr. Yeah. Well, so yes, I am. I think that this is one of the Reformation's most revolutionary doctrines, right? Because the the Westminster Confession describes this idea of perspicuity of Scripture in section seven of chapter one. It says all things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all, right? Obviously, you know, there there are some things in scripture that that are confusing. Yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed, observed for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of scripture or another, that not only the learned, but the unlearned in a due use of the ordinary means may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.

SPEAKER_01 15:02

So And was that a direct attack on the long-standing Catholic approach to the Bible?

Printing Press, Reformers, And Access

SPEAKER_00 15:08

I would say that it was. Yeah, like the the Catholics had this idea. This is another I mean, I last time I was just full of ten dollar words, but today is another$10 word. The idea that the Bible was imperspicuous, right? That it's too complicated for uneducated lay people to understand without the assistance of a cleric to interpret it. And again, I just commended them for having changed this a little bit. Now I'm gonna flip the coin. I think there are still Catholics today, some Catholic clerics today, who would say, and I've I I I Googled this, I was like trying to find this TikTok or whatever that I had seen because I wanted to refresh myself on what actually was said and and not you know make an accusation here that isn't true. I couldn't find it. But I remember distinctly watching either an Instagram reel or a TikTok from like a couple years ago of a priest, possibly a bishop, telling people in his congregation, like, don't be reading the Bible too much, you guys. Like, what are you doing, Rome? And I think there's still, and I know I'm gonna get flacked for this, there's still a tendency in some Roman Catholic circles to feel like the that reading the Bible is really the job of the priest, it's the job of the priest to tell me how it is. Uh it's not really my job as Joe Schmoe and the pews. I have another job, I have a family, I have seven kids, you know, to worry about. What am I doing reading the Bible? You know, the priest can just tell me what's in it. Right. And like, you know, in all fairness to Catholicism, that's a perfectly sensible approach to the word if you are in a society where almost no one can read and 90% of your time is spent doing labor, right? You know, and you have no free time, and what free time you have you want to spend on entertainment, and you you can't even read Latin. The Bible's not even available. If you can read, there's not a Bible in your in your German or English or French. The Bibles are all in Latin, and you can't read that. You're not a cleric, you're a peasant. So, you know, if that's the world in which you live and it's the world it was the world of the Christian church for a thousand years, essentially, then it kind of makes sense. And there are still some Catholics who have this attitude. But the the sort of the great argument of the Reformation, and it's I think it's also telling that the Reformation only really came about after the invention of the printing press. There's a lot of people that have written about this and spoken about this, that like the printing press is the thing that launched the Reformation. And I think that's probably true. I certainly think God was active in the work of Gutenberg, right? But the great argument of the Reformation is that the common man is not stupid, right? And he's not unworthy of the word, that the word of God is not too complicated for Joe Schmoe in the pew, and that in fact, if you break the chains of the church's control of the Bible, and you give the book to the people, they will understand and come to faith.

SPEAKER_01 18:15

Yeah, and I mean that's this is a beautiful the perspicuity of the scriptures and how the divines define it as you read in 1 7 of the Westburst Confession is so beautiful because it really shows the diversity of the body of Christ that you do not have to have this PhD to understand the scriptures. Now, we are thankful for godly men and women who've gotten PhDs. Don't you have a PhD? No, D min. Not a D-min, D-M-I-N. But I I think even in the Protestant Church, we could hold up people to such a high regard that we we think, yeah, they have to tell me what the truth is. And that that's going back to the Bereans that you're speaking of in Acts 17. No, I I'm responsible to put my head in the scriptures and read it. But the beautiful part, getting back to the beautiful part, is that means a child can come to understand the gospel. Yeah. That means a person who is uneducated can come to understand the gospel and understand it clearly enough to come to faith in Christ.

SPEAKER_00 19:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

And I love how you mentioned that's the that's the breaking of the chains, you know, the bondage that people were under all of those years.

All Scripture Is God Breathed

SPEAKER_00 19:37

Yeah, I yeah. I I think that, you know, since the Reformation, the gospel has been the gospel's the New Testament, has been translated into more than I think it's like 1700 languages. So the good news has reached every corner of the globe in accordance with Christ's Great Commission because the reformers had the audacity to reject what I would perceive as elitism and to some degree the self-dealing corruption of the late medieval church, with you know, bishops and and and clerics kind of handing down their seats to their nephews, right? Not to get into that discussion necessarily, but the reformers rejected this idea that the the the Bible was only for the clerical elite. And they and it's it should it's telling to us that the one that first started this, not to not you know, I'd like to give Jan Hus his due as well in Czechia, but the one who started this revolution was a monk, right? Because the monks were sort of looked down on. They were considered to be yeah, that there's different historiography of the Reformation. Like some people would say, no, we mean they respected the monks, but the Augustinian monks like Luther clearly didn't feel respected. And it's telling that as it was a monk that started this this whole process off Luther being an Augustinian monk. So the reformers had a kind of audacity to ref to reject the elitism of the late medieval church. And like Tyndale, who printed the first English Bible, he had to have a lot of courage because he he believed that everyone should read the Bible. He printed the Bible courageously because he believed everyone should read it, because he believed that the word was plain enough for man in reading it to understand and in understanding to be saved. And I think one of the things that I like about modern Protestantism is that that evangelistic spirit still animates us, right? We're still trying to translate the Bible into every known language. And some of that is because of questionable esqueles. Logical beliefs, maybe. But some of it, I think a lot of it is because we're called to. We're called to bring the word to everyone who can hear it.

SPEAKER_01 22:07

Yeah, that's right. And and with great privilege, which this is a privilege, to have the word of God in our hands and to now understand that yes, I can understand what's necessary for salvation and to walk in faith and after Christ, with great privilege comes great responsibility. And one of the proof texts we have for the importance of scripture and how it's come about, and that it's infallible and fully inspired is 2 Timothy 3.16, which says, All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness. And that's that means all scripture, right? Not just the popular parts.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

Yeah. Yeah. And I I think another thing that the the Westminster Divines would have found sort of objectionable about modernity and about our modern approach to scripture is that like we tend to pick and choose which parts of it we're going to emphasize. A lot of Christians. You know, so we'll get into this too, but like there are there's a movement in modern Protestantism, this idea that the red letter Bible movement that, like, again, to reference a TikTok that I tried, or I think it was an Instagram reel, that I tried to find but couldn't. It's of a woman, you know, going through and she's saying, like, did you know that you know, this whole Bible? And she's she's you know flipping through her Bible, Jesus is only appears in this part of it. She calls up the side. It's like and only this much of it is his actual words. I'm like, Yeah, so so what's your point? You know, and I and I think it's a fun reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of just what the Christian faith is to suggest that the entire Old Testament should just be tossed out because that's all old timey nonsense, and there's people dying and fighting and then stuff in there, and like all kinds of yucky stuff. It's like you call yourself a Christian, but you don't understand that this was Jesus Christ's bread and butter. I mean, he like the guy you claim to care about, he loved this stuff. This, you know, he he he meditated on on the Lord's law day and night, right? And so we know that the apostles, the ones who gave us this heritage of faith, they considered every part of scripture to be critical.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

And so what you're referring to in terms of all scripture is God breathed, not just the popular parts or the parts that I want to focus on. That emphasis to focus on perhaps the Beatitudes or the scriptures of Jesus. Speaking of love, of course, what she did, but focusing only on those things has been a fruit of liberalism.

SPEAKER_00 24:59

Yes. Well, and pop theology too. Like, boy, am I gonna keep referencing am I gonna reference jelly roll? Maybe you've heard of Jelly Roll.

SPEAKER_01 25:08

Is that the singer? Yeah, he's the singer with a lot of tattoos.

Pop Christianity And Selective Reading

SPEAKER_00 25:10

He used to look like a dead ringer for Charles Spurgeon, and then he lost a ton of weight and he no longer looks exactly like Charles Spurgeon. But my wife and I have this in-joke that Jelly Roll is the reincarnated Spurgeon. You might have to cut this apart. But you know, he recently at the Grammys was getting up there and and talking about how Jesus is for everyone and and not to criticize Jelly Roll at all. I think that actually what he said was very courageous, and I think he's right. But there is a tendency in and some of the other things I'm gonna criticize some other things Jelly Roll has said, right? There's a tendency that people that are new believers or they're approaching Christianity from a perspective that only looks at how celebrities engage with it, Justin Bieber Christianity that is, you know, Jesus basically just says, love everybody, man. And well, no, I mean Jesus says a lot more than that, right? Jesus says that, you know, unless unless ye eat my flesh and drink my blood, right? Ye cannot come to me. And C.S. Lewis, of course, talks about this in the trilemma, right? The idea that it's Jesus was just a moral teacher or just a guy that wanted everybody to love one another is not like that's not, I mean, it it is true that he was a moral teacher, and he did say that we should all love each other. And those are things that he said, and they're very important. And it's easy for like sometimes judgmental Protestants like myself to ignore those parts and focus on the you know the meat of what Jesus really said.

SPEAKER_01 26:45

Right, but it it's recognizing, which as you said in pop culture today, that Jesus spoke a lot about hell.

SPEAKER_00 26:50

Yeah. Um and he he condemned a lot of people too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

And he got angry.

SPEAKER_00 26:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:58

Yeah. So so all of scripture, not not just the parts that we that are our hobby horses, even.

SPEAKER_00 27:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:06

And that's the benefit of expository preaching.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 27:10

And it's also the benefit for the people of God to come into the house of worship with an expectation that as long as the word of God is being taught and declared, this is Jesus' word to me.

SPEAKER_00 27:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:23

Referencing the second Helvetic Confession, the preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God.

unknown 27:29

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 27:30

And so I would assume a lot of people come into church. I want the soberness of that that reality.

SPEAKER_00 27:37

Yeah. I I think I I mean, I'm I wonder what Jelly Roll thinks about the minor prophets, right? You know, and it and I think that it's a downside of modern or one of the great failings of modern pop Christianity. Where's your take on Nehemiah, Jelly Roll? Talk to me about Ecclesiastes, Mr. Roll, right? And not to suggest that Jelly Roll's never read Ecclesiastes, but if he hasn't, if you're listening to this, Mr. Roll, crack that bad boy open, you know, and you might find that that there's more there. And I think like I think most Christians that that end up like we just did a study on Ecclesiastes, so this is why it's top of mind for me. But most Christians who crack that open, it's like really dense with stuff that is impacts your life and makes you look at the world in a different way. And so I think there's a tendency to but it's also very depressing. And there's a tendency to discard the parts of scripture or ignore the parts of scripture in in all churches and through all history that that aren't upbeat.

SPEAKER_01 28:45

Yeah, we're picking on Roman Catholics or pop Christianity, but the health and wealth gospel focuses on scripture that it wants to focus on.

SPEAKER_00 28:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:54

I mean And then it interprets it in a in a uh uh a very uh erroneous way. Yeah, Jesus came to give you abundant life means I should have and live the American dream.

SPEAKER_00 29:05

But but do you mean Jesus didn't want me to own three Lexuses and two townhomes and a boat?

SPEAKER_01 29:11

But but that's another example of picking and choosing and perhaps theoretically saying all scripture is inspired by God, but well, let's avoid the suffering part. So so who gets to decide what counts as God's Word?

Expository Preaching And Hearing Christ

SPEAKER_00 29:25

God. You know, and we we talked about this. There's also this in and I'm gonna open my little Westminster Confession of Faith here because I was wanting to read from it here, but the there's this idea in the Westminster Confession of Faith that the Holy Spirit is the supreme judge. Right? And he speaks in the scripture. And I there's a specific yeah, it's it's section ten of chapter one. The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of counsels, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men and private spirits are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the scripture. And that's you know, that that I think gets at the heart of our our reformed idea of the scriptures is that it's it's God, it's the Holy Spirit that's working in and through us and speaking to us in the scripture, and he is the judge, right? So it doesn't really matter what the patristic sources said. Of course, we look back at the patristic, meaning the you know, early church sources. We look back at the church fathers. We do care what they thought, and we love when they thought what we thought, we love to point it out and say, look, see, you know, uh Melino of Sardis said that the apocrypha's not legit. And when they disagreed with us, we're like, well, that guy must have been having a bad day, you know. Augustine normally is great, but he liked the Septuagint, and so we're just going to ignore that. You know, we have this tendency to only list those sources which agree with our uh belief system, and we ignore those sources which do not. This is a uh because human beings are fallen, but thankfully we have a supreme judge, and it is the Holy Spirit. And so we know we we trust that when all things are made clear at the end of time, you know, the Holy Spirit will will instruct us.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

So we understand the Supreme Judge is the Lord, is the Spirit of God. Let's let's talk briefly about when we talk about sola scriptura, that does not mean solo scriptura. What's the difference?

SPEAKER_00 31:43

Yeah. Well So the this idea of the perspicuity of scripture, right? That everybody who reads scripture can find truth in it and be saved. That that is not to suggest that every person's interpretation of scripture is equally true or equally valid. Only that scripture is clear enough that every person can find the truth therein, right? So and we don't consider individuals to be the final arbiter on what the Bible says. This is an accusation that gets leveled at us and at Protestants in general by people with a more magisterial understanding of interpret scriptural interpretation. They would say, Well, you you think everybody is his own interpreter of the Bible. And we don't really, right? We think that that the Holy Spirit is guiding people to truth. And we happen to think that ours is the most truthy, right? And that everybody else is a little bit wrong. But every human being thinks that. It's not as though we can we should be pretending like we don't all think we're right and everyone else is right. Right.

SPEAKER_01 32:49

And if we didn't, if we didn't, then I guess we should close up shop and scatter, right? So we we do believe that we have a reason to be here and that we are not only standing upon God's word, but the those that have gone on before us.

Sola Not Solo Scriptura

Orthodoxy, Ecumenism, And Disagreements

SPEAKER_00 33:04

Yes. And I think that there's some value in ecumenism, right, which is the uh the the idea that we're the Christians have more in common than than not, and we should be gathering together and trying to heal up the divisions in the church. I like that idea. But you know, it would be foolish to suggest that we don't all have total incompatibilities in some of our doctrines. But I think that there is a there is a common thread of orthodoxy in in most of the Christian church today that says, you know, Jesus Christ is Lord and and we all agree that he died on the cross. And, you know, I think I have some different ideas about what the doctrine of justification is from my Catholic friends. I, for example, don't I don't think that purgatory is real, but I but Jesus Christ is my God, right? And he's he's their God too. And I think that acknowledging that is is we could do more of that in the modern church. The fact that there are theological differences between us and other churches doesn't mean that the gospel is false. It just means that we're not perfect, right? That humans are fallible and our interpretations are fallible. Well, the Catholics would say that. The Pope's interpretations are sometimes not fallible. But you know, we don't need to get into that. I I do think that there's there's a another reason why what the Westminster Divines are writing in chapter one of this confession, another reason that it's relevant today, not just that there's still questions of spiritual authority today, which there are, but there's there's modern groups that want to throw out portions of the Bible, right? That that want to say, well, you know, like we talked about the red letter Christians, but there's also liberal churches that reject the literal meaning of many parts of the Bible, or or uh even who would reject moral lessons of certain parts. You know, that there's a focus on all the times Jesus says that you should be nice and love your neighbors, and then but they forget that he also told people that you shouldn't do sins. So I think that there's a and also the Bible is pretty clear about what is sin and what it defines sin as. So there's there's some pretty sizable groups that want to create their new a new homardiology, a theology of sin uh pretty much out of whole cloth. And that requires them throwing out the parts of the Bible that give us the historical homardiology, the understanding of what is what is sin. I think that's troubling. You know, that's a problem that that we're the in orthodoxy we're confronting a social problem of a social gospel. And this idea that uh we should just ignore all of the parts of the Bible that convict people who are doing things that aren't considered sins anymore, right? Like the Bible condemns gossip. The Bible condemns Saint Paul condemns rebelling against your parents. I mean, he places that in the same category as as theft and murder. So like we don't consider that to be a serious sin anymore, and I think that we uh have lost something of the of what the the gospel is telling us thereby. You know, in almost every church, gossip is endemic. You don't hear a lot of pastors preaching sermons about why you should immediately stop slandering your neighbors like and why you should like absolutely not be talking behind each other's backs. That like we live in a culture that says, spill the tea, girl. No, don't don't spill that tea. That's a sin. So there's some Yeah, there's some real issues with that, I think.

SPEAKER_01 37:06

So uh yeah, there's a person listening, and perhaps they've not had a high view of God's word, or they've been taken on a rabbit trail into some of these extra-biblical books that are enticing and somebody on TikTok is talking about. And I I trust that today, by hearing us work through this first chapter of the Westminster Confession, that you would be called back to God's Word. And you would understand that no matter how complex it looks or how intimidating it looks, that that you can begin to see the gospel by the power of the Holy Spirit through the that written word, which is God's word to his people. And I want to conclude by looking at uh this is Fisher's shorter catechism explained. And he asks, What should a man do that the Bible may not remain a sealed book to him? And I love the answer. He says, Whenever he looks into the word of God, he should look up to God, the author of it, saying, Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law. Quotes Psalm 43, 3. Oh, send out thy light and thy truth. Let them lead me. Amen. That's what we want for us personally, that's what we want for Christ Church and for our local church here at Lebanon Valley. Well, thank you, Drew, for diving into this uh deep subject, but vital subject, right?

SPEAKER_00 38:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:42

And we've got a lot more work to do.

SPEAKER_00 38:44

There's a whole bunch of chapters in this conversation. That's right. So this is only chapter one. This one took two two podcasts.

Modern Revisions Of Sin And Scripture

SPEAKER_01 38:50

So we hope that you'll you'll stick with us and continue to work through these documents of historic faith. You've been listening to Catechizing Conversations. If this uh conversation has helped you, please share it with someone. You could look back at some of our other podcasts, and uh we're glad that you tuned in. May the Lord bless you, but I'm not sure.