What Does Athens Have to Do With the Church?

Transcript

JR 24
7/23/2023
“What Does Athens Have to Do With the Church?”
Selected Verses
Jesse Randolph

Well about a month ago I was invited to speak at the IFCA International Convention in Covington, Kentucky, just a little outside of Cincinnati, Ohio. IFCA, which stands for Independent Fundamental Churches of America, as a fellowship of pastors and ministry leaders, really worldwide, it’s not just America. I’ve been an individual member of that fellowship for several years now. In fact, it was at the 2021 Annual IFCA Convention which was held here in Lincoln, Nebraska that I first heard the name, Indian Hills Community Church. I was visiting from California. I spoke at that convention, heard the name Indian Hills, didn’t think about it further for several months, flew home, and here we are. It still amazes me how God worked providentially through that whole set of circumstances.

The message that I gave at this year’s IFCA Convention was one that was pretty well-received. It got some remarks, mostly positive. It was one that resonated with a lot of folks that we’re likeminded with. There was a lot of follow-ups to the message. There was a lot of chatter. There were a lot of questions after I delivered the message. Regardless of whether that message was well-received in Covington, Kentucky I’ve just decided to bring it all to your attention tonight because I think it’s an important message for our church to hear. It happens to fit really nicely in with our summertime study of Bibliology because as you’re going to hear from me tonight, what I’m going to discuss in this lesson is really all about the sufficiency of the Bible. The sufficiency of Scripture. The question on the table, the question undergirding all of the slides I’m going to run through and all the content I’m going to go through is God’s Word enough? We know the answer to that. But there are going to be a lot of people, a lot of scholars, a lot of theologians, a lot of even pastors who are throwing that question back up in the air as though it’s fair game to question again. I’ve some real concerns about some matters that are brewing today in the realm of theological academia. Matters that will inevitably seep down from the ivory tower of the seminaries to the pulpits, to the pews of our nation. I know in our case it’s not really pews it’s really more like movie-theatre-style seats, but you get what I’m saying and so what I’m going to do tonight is really wave the red flag of warning so that none of us eventually become “tossed to and fro” and eventually taken out to sea.

You know, one thing I have always admired about the man who preceded me in this pulpit, Pastor Gil is how focused and determined he was to read broadly and to read widely. To study theological trends and developments. To keep tabs on where seminaries and movements and churches were going so that he could do his very best, as the pastor and preacher here, to give you not only “instruction in sound doctrine,” Titus 1:9, but to “refute those who contradict.” You know, Gil, in his 52 years here did an excellent job of that. In fact, I recently stumbled across his collection of theological journals. Gil, I’m not even sure if you realize you kept those here for me to now mind. See for the unacquainted, for the pastor, the theological journal is something you tend to put on your shelf, and it collects dust. You might thumb through one from time to time to read something that might interest you, but it typically, sadly for most pastors these days, the theological journal has gone the way of the dodo and it’s not really read very often. Well, Pastor Gil read those journals. There’s this little back alcove behind what’s now my office where I can see his stacks of theological journals and wouldn’t you know it. You pull one off the shelf, yellow highlighting, dogeared pages, jottings, and markings all throughout the journal. You pull down the next journal, same thing. We all know he was an avid reader. It’s truly impressive.

But I bring this up about Gil because what I’m about to share with you this evening is going to be my attempt like Gil, to help look around some corners, the way he used to do here in this role. To get ahead of the curve the way that he used to do as I seek to discharge my duties here to not only preach the Word, but to protect this flock from unsound teaching and theological error.

So, our story tonight begins in Kansas City. What I think would be our nearest metropolitan city and home of one of the nation’s fastest growing and becoming the most quickly prominent seminaries. That seminary is Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary or as it’s commonly referred to “MBTS.” MBTS is growing and thriving under the leadership of its president, a man named Jason K. Allen and it, this seminary has attracted top scholars, prominent scholars, top-rate theological minds from all over the world. This seminary has created all sorts of spin-off initiatives and ministries like For the Church and Spurgeon College and this one, The Center of Classical Theology, which is headed up by this man, Matthew Barrett. Now, like me, Dr. Barrett is a Californian-turned-Midwesterner. But unlike me, he has experienced a rapid rise in theological circles. He’s a prolific author and writer and speaker who has this uncanny ability to not only bring theological principles, heady theological principles down to the bottom shelf for the average Christian reader like he’s done in books like these, “None Greater” and “Simply Trinity,” the two books you see on your left. But he also can swing the big stick with the academic heavyweights, as his most recent works on theology can attest. That would be like his book, third from the left there, “The Doctrine on Which the Church Stands or Falls.” That’s a treatment on the doctrine of justification or the one that just released about a month and a half ago, “The Reformation as Renewal.” Dr. Barrett is a gifted and influential man.

I’m taking this time on the front end to give you this introduction to the works of Matthew Barrett because there is probably no one today in academic circles who is more aggressively and actively promoting this idea of “theological retrieval.” You’re going to hear that term from me a lot this evening. “Theological retrieval” which Dr. Barrett is advancing through his Center for Classical Theology. Here’s the purpose and the mission for The Center for Classical Theology, in its own words. “The Center for Classical Theology exists to contemplate God and all things in relation to God by listening with humility to His Word with the wisdom of the Great Tradition.” Now “contemplate God and all things in relation to God?” Sure. That’s fine. That’s pretty close to a conventional and traditional definition of the study of theology itself even if that word “contemplate” might err on the side or be more on the side of mysticism. But then note how this “contemplation” according to Dr. Barrett and The Center for Classical Theology is to take place. We “contemplate God” it says, “by listening with humility to His Word” and then look at the next few words, “with the wisdom of the Great Tradition.”

Did you know that when you woke up this morning and you took that first sip of coffee, before you did your morning devotions, that you were supposed to be as you cracked open the Bible, “listening with humility to His word with the wisdom of the Great Tradition?” Did you know as you were headed to church this morning, as you were preparing the sermon that was going to be preached here or in your first hour class that you were to be "listening with humility to” the word that was preached to you “with the wisdom of the Great Tradition?” Or if you’re here tonight and a fellow teacher of God’s Word, when you were going about preparing your message for last week or whenever you last taught, did you know that you were supposed to be "listening with humility to” the “word with the wisdom of the Great Tradition”? Well, according to the Center of Classical Theology, you, and me, and all of us, we are completely missing the boat. We’re not "listening with humility to His word with the wisdom of the Great Tradition.” And because of that, we’re missing out on what this organization says, at least, it means to "contemplate God.”

Now, surely you’re picking up on this by now but I’m being a little bit sarcastic and that’s because I’m quite confident that there have been many pastors and elders and seminary professors and deacons and churchmen and Christian housewives and to borrow from Tyndale, “plough boys” who have had and enjoyed and delighted in a clear picture of God, of Christ, and the gospel which they received through the dog-eared pages of their Bibles even though they did not have the “wisdom of the Great Tradition” and wouldn’t have the faintest idea about what Matthew Barrett and others are now trying to retrieve.

Now, what is this “Great Tradition” we’re all supposed to be familiar with? And “retrieving”? And pursuing? I mean, on their face those words “Great Tradition” initially sound very appealing. It’s great and it’s tradition. It sounds like it is steeped in something. There are some anchors there. But what do the words mean?

Well, rather than trying to clumsily piece together a definition myself because admittedly, this is a new movement, definitions are hard to come by. I’m going to let one of the strongest proponents of this move toward the “retrieval” of classical theology, his name is Craig Carter, a University of Toronto theology professor, give his definition. This is an incredibly long quote. It’s going to take about ten or eleven slides to read the whole thing. I’m not asking that you jot it down because it’s not worth being jotted down, frankly, but I want you to get a sense of what this even is as we try to wrap our arms around what is being proposed.

Here's his definition. “The goal of the Great Tradition retrieval project is to restore a balance between what can be known by human reason and what can only be known by Divine revelation. The work of Etienne Gilson,” you all know him, right? “Is of crucial importance here because he led the recovery of the historical Thomas from the distortions of the neo-Thomism of the modern period.” “For Thomas, philosophy has a role in the articulation and defense of sacred doctrine, but it is a ministerial role, not a magisterial one. He integrated certain elements of Aristotle’s teaching into Christian theology, modified other elements radically such as Aristotle’s view of the nature of God, and rejected other elements contradictory to biblical revelation such as Aristotle’s view that the world is eternal.” “Thomas’s method was similar to that of patristic writers such as Athanasius, the Cappadocian Fathers and Augustine, all of whom critically appropriated elements of Neoplatonism into their thought where appropriate. When the writings of Aristotle became widely known in the West in the 13th century, they were perceived as a secularizing threat to orthodox doctrine. Thomas,” by the way, that’s Thomas Aquinas, “critically appropriated them in the service of his work in restating the Nicene doctrine of God. But Thomas was first and foremost an Augustinian and so he integrated Aristotle into the Christian Platonist framework, which had been developed by the church fathers, mediated to the medieval period through Augustine, and had become traditional by the high Middle Ages.” “Both Augustine and Thomas exhibited a horror of rejecting any sort of scientific truth in the name of Christianity lest the name of Christ be sullied. For them truth is a unity, and all truth is God’s truth. Therefore, reason and faith cannot ultimately be in conflict. Pope John Paul the Great’s 1998 encyclical, Fides et Ratio, was an attempt to restate the Great Tradition’s understanding of wisdom. It characterizes the relationship between faith and reason as follows: “Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth.” For Augustine, Anselm, Bonaventure, and Thomas faith and reason need each other. This conviction is central to the Great Tradition including the “Reformed orthodox,” Richard Muller, that is, the post-Reformation Protestant scholastics Lutheran as well as Reformed who composed the Protestant confessions that define Protestantism.” Are you seeing that this is not a really helpful definition, right? Usually, a definition is boiling it down, this is building it up. Anyway, “To see faith and reason as being in harmony, however, does not mean that there is no room for mystery in the Christian faith. Philosophical distinctions between words used to describe different aspects of God’s being are crucial for preserving sound doctrine. The goal in using philosophy is not to eradicate mystery but to state it carefully in a non-contradictory manner.” I rest my case. I mean, that’s quite the mouthful. Did you catch all those terms and all the words that are being thrown out here? Did you catch how much you’ve been missing out on this entire time? Reason and philosophy and Aristotle and Neoplatonism and Thomism and Neo-Thomism and Augustine and Anselm and Bonaventure and Pope John Paul and Scholasticism and Reformed orthodoxy.

See, the contention of those who are advocating for the “retrieval” of this “Great Tradition” they call it, men like Craig Carter, men like Matthew Barrett are that the Reformers themselves, men that we would be familiar with, men like Luther and Calvin and Zwingli were themselves steeped in this “Great Tradition.”
And that we, as we look to stand on their shoulders in some respects at least, consistent with our own Reformational lineage need to walk as they walked and we need to learn as they learned and we need to read the Scriptures as they read the Scriptures, Philosophically and Thomistically and Scholastically. Here’s Craig Carter again, as he summarizes the aims of “theological retrieval” movement of this Great Tradition. This is much shorter, don’t worry. He says, “We need to listen, learn, and humbly seek to rise to their level,” talking about the Reformers’,” of theological and philosophical sophistication in our interpretation of Scripture and our dogmatic formulations. This is the goal of the Great Tradition retrieval project.”

I’m going to pause here first and say to any visitors that are here tonight, this is not normally what we do. Normally we’re working through the Word or this summer we’re working through Systematic Theology. This is a very laser focused lesson tonight so don’t think that it’s always like this. Come back and it would be great to meet you on a different night as well. I also want to pause though because I know I’m throwing a lot of terms and concepts around here and doing so really quickly and rapidly. But I want to make sure that we all understand, in the room this evening, that what is being said here by men like Barrett and men like Carter and men who are advocating for the “retrieval” of what they call “the Great Tradition,” what they are saying is as Christians, as we come to the word of God, as we study and teach and proclaim the Word of God, as we incorporate the Word of God into our lives, we need to make sure we are accompanying our reading of God’s Word with a sea of pre-Reformation and medieval and patristic theologians. Not only that, certain Roman Catholic theologians and not only that, certain secular Greek philosophers and Greek philosophical constructs. We need to make sure, they’re saying, as we come to the Scriptures, that we come to the Scriptures, through the lens of what they call “the Great Tradition” so that we can “contemplate God” more faithfully.

Now, I’ve given this message the title “What Does Athens Have to do with the Church?” In doing so I’ve borrowed from a famous rhetorical question that was once asked by Tertullian of Carthage who was a late second and early third century church father, a lawyer-turned-Christian-turned theologian who once infamously asked this question, “What indeed does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?” Now by “Athens,” here Tertullian was referencing the introduction of Greek philosophical thought and belief. By “Jerusalem,” he was referring to the apostolic doctrine that was formed through the teaching of Christ and the Apostles. What Tertullian was saying, essentially way back then was that Greek philosophy ought have nothing to do with the development of Christian theology. In other words, Tertullian rejected the whole notion of explaining and developing Christian theology through foreign philosophical constructs. Now, that does not mean that Tertullian was intellectually stunted or that he was anti-intellectual. Not at all. Far from it. This early church father was not one to shy away from dipping his toe into some deep theological waters. In fact, what we know Tertullian most for is that he is credited with first coining the word “Trinity” - trinitas in Latin as a way to tie together and provide a definition that’s comprehensible of the fact that God is both and three at the same time. Tertullian wasn’t anti-intellectual at all. However, what he was suspect of introducing extra-biblical philosophical ideas and speculations into one’s theology.

Well, his rhetorical question here, “What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?” is not some quaint relic of the past. Rather, this question has great relevance for us today as we seek to ask and question, in the middle of this modern-day push for “theological retrieval” “What does philosophy or scholasticism have to do with sound doctrine?” “What does Aristotle or Plato or Thomas Aquinas have to do with sound doctrine?” “What does Neoplatonism or Neo-Thomism,” I mean seriously, just search Twitter, “theology wars” today and you’ll find this debate raging today. This is the rage du jour has to do with sound doctrine? Or, as the title of our message asks, “What does Athens have to do with the church?”

Now, there are six points to the message this evening. There are going to be a number of strands I’m going to try to pull together as I bring out these six points. I can’t and I won’t pretend to be comprehensive here as I work through these. I can’t do a full-scale review of Greek philosophy in an hour. I can’t do a full-scale analysis of just how “Catholic” was Thomas Aquinas in an hour. The best I can do is tee up some major concepts here to wave those red flags of warning and to get us thinking about areas we need to be cautious, and I would say, concerned.

Here’s our first point for tonight. The immediacy of the issue. Here’s what I mean by that. I mean that this whole “theological retrieval” movement in our day is real. It’s growing. It’s influential and it’s aggressive. I don’t want to be accused of exaggeration or hyperbole here, though so I’m going to let those who are most aggressively and vocally pushing for this idea of “theological retrieval” speak for themselves. We’ll hear from them in their own words as we outline some other thoughts and concerns. Now, before I do that though I do want to mention that I have no reason to believe that the men I’m about to quote are not brothers in Christ. I have no reason to believe that any of these men have not genuinely given their life to the Lord and repented and believed in the gospel. I’m not going down that track of calling them heretics. But at the same time the warning I am throwing out there is that these are men who are teaching at prominent and influential seminaries. Who are training a whole generation of pastors and theological scholars; and they are doing so as they promote these teachings in their classrooms and in their writing. That is inevitably, I’m convinced, will make its way into pulpits and pews across the land in the next several years and decades as ordinary churchgoers are soon going to be told that they need Aquinas and Anselm in addition to Scripture. Or Reformed scholastics and Greek philosophers in addition to Scripture so that they can truly understand their Bibles, so we need to be ready.

Here's some pertinent quotes from those today, who, are leading this “theological retrieval” movement. These are a few quotes from Matthew Barrett himself. He says, “The grammatical-historical method alone produces less than biblical results. The classical method,” that’s the one they’re promoting in the “theological retrieval” camp, “does not just pursue knowledge, but wisdom. It’s participatory exegesis.”
Injecting yourself and your theology into the text. Here’s another one, “The reformers saw themselves in continuity not only with the church fathers but with key medieval scholastics. They were resolved to retrieve the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.” “Reformed tradition believed in biblical authority, but they were not Biblicists like the Radicals. Why? They were committed to ‘Reformed Catholicity.’” “Right now, I’m revisiting Christology,” that’s always a dangerous phrase, “I’m revisiting Christology.” I’m thinking of new thoughts about Christology. “And Aquinas raises questions as fascinating as they are profound, questions that evangelicals don’t have on their radars. I can’t help but wonder if the drift away from the orthodoxy of the creeds in the last two centuries could have been avoided if we read someone as orthodox as Aquinas.” “If we have any hope of leaving the darkness of the cave, then we need more Augustine’s today to guide us out of the shadows into the light of God’s Son. That hope depends, however, on humility, the humility to consider whether God’s revelation of Himself to humanity in creation extends far and wide, even to the corridors of Athens.” So “Reformed catholicity,” “Medieval scholastics,” “Aquinas,” “Athens.” Again, we ask, with Tertullian, the old church father, who, ironically would be in that same stream of thought that Barrett said as he now wants us to “retrieve” “What does Athens have to do with the church?”

Or here’s some more Craig Carter. He says, "Something interesting is now happening in the twenty-first century in reformed and evangelical circles that would have been difficult to predict forty years ago. The post-Reformation scholastic theologians are being rediscovered. All of a sudden, a tradition dominated for a century by an ahistorical biblicism,” he’s talking about us there, “is reading von Mastricht, Perkins, Owens, and Turretin. Who saw that coming? A revival of scholastic realism is taking place today in front of our very eyes!” Or here’s Peter Sammons from The Master’s Seminary, my alma mater who says “the Scholastic method is a contemplative and detailed way of reflecting on Scripture. Scholasticism produces patience and humility as opposed to rash claims of knowledge. Sadly, years of intellectually inbred thinking,” again that’s us, “has led to stunted growth, and those today who won’t read or think outside their own generation are doomed to perpetuate the cycle. If the integrity of the Church is to be preserved, if even a hollow shell of reason is to remain, then the contemporary rejection of Scholastic thinking must be torn up by its roots and cast to the wind. We must make ignorance of the past a thing of the past. Give me one man like Zanchi or Turretin, wielding the Scholastic method like a skilled surgeon, over a hundred theologians holding to modern, inbred, scholarship. Bring back the Scholastics!” I’ll have more to say on whether we are anti-intellectual at the very end of the lesson so don’t worry. I’m not caving into the idea that we are inbred in our thinking.

Again, these are men who are shaping men for ministry today. These are the men that are lecturing in the seminaries, conservative seminaries today. Who are assigning books to read and assigning research papers to write and are graduating men not just to serve the academy but to serve the church, God’s people. They are doing so with this hyper-emphasis on this retrieval of scholastic theology and medieval theology and Greek philosophy as a way they say we need to understand and be rightly informed in the Scriptures. All this to say, this is not some abstract concern I’m raising on a random Sunday night or some hobby horse I’m riding or some axe I’m grinding. No, this modern-day insistence on “theological retrieval” is already in the seminaries and it’s trickling its way down to the churches.

Well, to champion a cause like this one you need a foil. You need a target at which to shoot your arrows.
You need to have something to aim at and for those who today are arguing for “theological retrieval,” they have their foil. They have their target. And guess who it is? It’s you. It’s me. It’s the Bible-thumpers. It’s the Biblicists. That leads us to our second point, the bogeyman of biblicism. You know, at one point, theologians were saying things like this, like Charles Hodge. “The duty of the Christian theologian is to ascertain, collect, and combine all the facts which God has revealed concerning Himself and our relation to Him. These facts are all in the Bible.” Or again, this from Hodge. “Christianity is a system of doctrines supernaturally revealed and now recorded in the Bible. Of that system there can be no development. No new doctrines can be added to those contained in the word of God. Every question, therefore, as to what is, or what is not Christian doctrine, is simply a question as to what the Bible teaches.” “Or here’s J.I. Packer, from his Fundamentalism and the Word of God.” He says, “The teaching of the written Scriptures is the Word which God spoke and speaks to His Church and is finally authoritative for faith and life. To learn the mind of God, one must consult His written Word. What Scripture says, God says.” Here’s Charles Ryrie. “Everyone has a basis of authority which becomes a base of operations for his thinking and doing. That basis of authority is complex, for it is made up of several things; and sometimes people are ignorant of the fact that they have such a thing as a basis of authority. But everyone, without exception, has one. A study of the Bible is the most important means by which a Christian can come to know this basis of authority which is the revelation of God.” Now we don’t even agree with all those guys I just quoted theologically but those quotes they provided from years past are clear. They are cut and dried and they are straightforward.

But now, what we have are those who are pushing for “theological retrieval” not only disagreeing with statements like these but ridiculing them and mocking them and derisively calling this approach “biblicism.” There are those in this “theological retrieval” camp and especially, as I mentioned before, in the Twittersphere, in our blogosphere, in our modern sound-bite generation that have this penchant for calling those who have not automatically reflex ably embraced their theological retrieval methods “Biblicists.” They will accuse them; they will accuse us of worshiping the Bible. They will accuse us of bibliolatry. They will call us, those who bow down to a paper pope. It’s at least creative.

Here’s Matthew Barrett again, in his new book, the one that came out just a month ago, “The Reformation as Renewal.” He says, “Biblicism moves beyond believing in the final authority of the Bible to imposing a restrictive hermeneutical method onto the Bible.” I have five quotes from him. “Biblicism is a haughty disregard, chronological snobbery in the words of C.S. Lewis, for the history of interpretation.” “Biblicism limits itself to those beliefs explicitly laid down in Scripture.” Okay. “Biblicism conflates theology and economy, as if who God is in Himself can be read straight off the pages of Scripture.” “Biblicism neglects the divine author’s intent and ability to transcend any one human author.” Now, some of this is true. You know we “Biblicists” do, for instance, tend to develop our beliefs based on what is laid out for us in the black-and-white pages of Scripture. But the rest of this, at a minimum, is highly exaggerated as a way to fit the theological approach that Barrett is advancing here which is that, he says, we need to go beyond the Scriptures to Aristotle, to Plato, to Aquinas, to various other philosophers and theologians representing what he calls “The Great Tradition.” The accusations continue. Here’s R. Scott Clark. He says, “It is the attempt,” he’s talking about biblicism here, “it is the attempt to read Scripture in isolation from the rest of Scripture.” Is that how you read your Bible? “It is the attempt to interpret Scripture as if no one has ever read it before.” Again, is that how you read your Bible? Or here’s Pat Abendroth. Many of you will recall, if you are old-timers, he spent his earlier years here at IHCC. He’s now an open adherent to, and promoter of, covenant theology and he says, “Biblicism is a bane.” Wow. Who knew?

I mean, these are faculty members at seminaries. These are prominent authors. These are today’s forward-thinking theological leaders and influencers who are actively and aggressively warning people about the warnings of what they call “biblicism” as they seek to baptize Christians into their preconceived theological methods and notions. When shots like these are sent over the bow by such popular voices who carry big sticks not only in the Christian academy but today, in more popularized theological circles there might be an initial temptation to respond to this sort of statement with backing off. To back off our biblicism. Like wow, “Maybe these guys have something to say. Maybe they’re right.” “Maybe I’m not as up to speed with medieval theology and Aquinas and the Aristotle as I ought to be.” “Maybe Grandma Pearl or Grandpa Fred were just a couple of knuckle-dragging Biblicists who need to get their act together.

Hold your horses. There’s no need to get the “Great Tradition” tattooed on your neck just yet, okay? We need to consider these words from some faithful theologians from the past who held the line faithfully. B.B. Warfield says, “The prevalent habit of concession to the world’s thinking is the mother of all heresy.” Or John Frame, he says “traditionalism,” like the “the Great Tradition,” “is not a biblical virtue. And total alignment with a historical tradition leads to spiritual shipwreck.” Then my own hermeneutics professor, he’s still at Master’s Seminary, Brad Klassen, says, “The truthfulness of a theological assertion is measured not by its originality, profundity, simplicity, or transcendence,” I mean that is like that eleven slide definition I read a few minutes ago, “but by whether it is demonstrably normed by the language of God’s Word.”

So, there are good guys still. What we’ve just seen is that those in the “theological retrieval” camp have chosen “biblicism” to serve as their foil, their fall-guy, their bogeyman. If biblicism, according to this crowd is to be avoided, what is to be pursued in its place? Well, as we’ve already seen it is tradition. It’s “the Great Tradition” as it’s called.

Which takes us to our third point, the trend of tradition. As we’ve already seen, there’s this loud growing movement that’s arguing for this pursual of “theological retrieval,” “the Great Tradition.” But how did this movement start? Where did it come from? Well, the reality is if you do some theological excavation you can see where the roots of this are. The current iteration of this movement is found in the soil of hermeneutics. That’s where it all starts. Bible interpretation. Specifically, it comes out of this still-relatively-new phenomena of something called the “theological interpretation of Scripture.” It’s a hermeneutical grid that a man named Kevin Vanhoozer came out with only a couple of decades ago. That school’s philosophy is summarized well here by a man named David Starling. He says, “Theological Interpretation of Scripture is an approach to biblical interpretation that approaches the text with explicitly theological presuppositions, questions and concerns, seeking to hear in Scripture not only the thoughts and voices of its various human authors but a word from God that functions as the primary and authoritative source for our knowledge of Him.” He also notes, Starling does, that this theological interpretation of scripture movement is “an overtly theological interpretive stance.” and that’s “a legitimate and fruitful approach to biblical interpretation.” Now hold that in your mind. I want to contrast that with what Bernard Ramm said many, many years ago. He said, “The historic Protestant position is to ground theology in Biblical exegesis. A theological system is to be built up exegetically brick by brick. Hence the theology is no better than the exegesis that underlies it. The task of the systematic theologian is to commence with these bricks.” “The task of the systematic theologian is to commence with these bricks ascertained through exegesis and build the temple of his theological system. But only when he is sure of his individual bricks is he able to make the necessary generalizations, and to carry on the synthetic and creative activity that is necessary for the construction of a theological system.” I can boil that down where Ramm, and where we, would land, is this idea of building your theology from the bottom up, brick by brick, as you exegete the Scriptures. Whereas Vanhoozer and the Theological Interpretation crowd, it’s like they would say instead of building it brick by brick on the way up it’s like you are looking through the rooftop of your pre-loaded theological presuppositions and then building your theology from the roof trying to assemble it from whatever grid you’re looking through.

I bring all this up because it is this sort of thinking, the thinking that undergirds the whole “theological interpretation of Scripture” hermeneutics movement which is now feeding what we are seeing today in this whole theological retrieval movement. In fact, Matthew Barrett has made that clear. He’s writing a new systematic theology. It will come out in 2024 and he says, “My systematic theology will be characterized by serious attention to exegesis and biblical theology. While some systematics neglect hermeneutics, I will present a hermeneutic that listens to the best interpretive insights of a theological interpretation of scripture. In contrast to biblicism’s ahistorical indifference,” he just can’t help himself, “I will consider the superiority of pre-critical readings of sacred scripture to help the Christian understand why his or her theology is distinctively Christian to begin with.” Or here’s Gavin Ortlund, “Like the turn toward theological interpretation in biblical theology, the turn toward retrieval in systematic and historical theology lacks official boundaries and resists precise definitions. It is better understood as a set of shared loyalties or instincts in theological method—an overall attitude guided by the conviction that premodern resources are not an obstacle in the age of progress but a well in the age of thirst.” Ortlund here is saying really two things. First, like Barrett, he’s linking today’s theological retrieval movement back to the founding of the theological interpretation of Scripture movement. Second, he’s saying that we need to be engaging in “theological retrieval” in order to be healthy, thriving Christians and to have healthy, thriving churches. Interestingly, the Reformers would use the term ad fontes, meaning back to the fountain, back to the source to refer to the Scriptures. Men like Barrett and Ortlund and others, they are using that term ad fontes to say that we need to go back to the Great Tradition.

Well, ideas have consequences, and this is no less true of the modern-day fascination with this “Great Tradition.” In 2016 in a book he titled, “The End of Protestantism: Pursuing Unity in a Fragmented Church,” Peter Leithart has said. “Protestantism has had a good run.” But then he goes on to note that the world is in a different place today, and so Protestantism is no longer needed. Instead, is what he would like us to do is embrace and affirm a more ecumenical vision of what he calls “Reformational Catholicism.” Which sounds very similar to what Barrett is promoting down in Kansas City now which he calls “Reformed Catholicity.” Leithart says, “A Protestant’s heroes are Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and their heirs. If he acknowledges any ancestry before the Reformation, they are proto-Protestants like Hus and Wyclffe. A Reformational Catholic,” that’s what he’s saying we should be, “gratefully receives the history of the entire Church as his history, and, along with the Reformers, he honors Augustine and Gregory the Great and the Cappadocians, Alcuin and Rabanus Maurus, Thomas and Bonaventure, Dominic and Francis and Dante, Ignatius and Teresa of Avila, Chesterton, de Lubac and Congar as fathers, brothers, and sisters.” Leithart here is saying along with the other “theological retrieval” proponents like Barrett and Carter, that we don’t need to stop at Luther and Calvin as we go back in church history. We don’t even need to stop at the proto-Reformers like Hus and Wycliffe as we go back in church history. No, we should go even deeper into the well to the writings of the medievals and the scholastics and various heroes of the Roman Catholic Church like Aquinas and Bonaventure and Teresa of Avila. We need to go deeper and broader in our appropriation of the Great Tradition because even though those authors and theologians I’ve just mentioned were dead wrong on many key doctrines such as the core doctrine of soteriology, how one gets saved, they faithfully represent the vaunted “Great Tradition” so we’re going to go ahead and let them on the bus.

Well, this trend in the direction of “theological retrieval” not only has a bent toward incorporating more and more theological voices from “The Great Tradition” for the sake of the advancement and growth around “The Great Tradition” it also now is advocating more incorporation of more secular philosophical concepts and ideas as we heighten our understanding and our awareness of Scripture and theology and that’s dangerous. That leads to our fourth point, the perils of philosophy. See there is a vein of thinking within those who are now pursuing “the Great Tradition” that goes down the path of not only reading more dated and detailed theological works as a way to rightly understand, but they would also say, the Scriptures. But also goes down the path of saying we need to saturate our minds with secular philosophy and metaphysics a necessary tool to rightly understand the word of God. This argument, which admittedly is complex, can’t be done in fifteen minutes, but it would boil down to something like this. Because the Bible was birthed in a day in which Greek culture and language and philosophy still reigned supreme around the world, we’d be wise to be conversant with Greek language and history; and by the way, up to that point, no argument from me. I think it is good to understand what the aorist tense of a verb as we understand the Greek language to better understand the Bible, like we even saw this morning, or to understand what the Hellenistic influence in the region of Galatia during Paul’s day was. Nothing wrong with that. But they would take it a step further and say that we also need to be conversant in Greek philosophy and Aristotelian logic and Platonic thought and Neo-platonic thought. Not just conversant to those matters but committed to those matters. They’re saying that if we truly want to be Reformational, in the lineage of the Reformers, if we really want to be consistent with the truth that’s been promoted in the stream of the Great Tradition we need to be committed to weaving into our understanding of the Scriptures Greek philosophy and constructs. You think I’m exaggerating? Here’s a quote from Louis Markos. He teaches at Houston Christian University. He says, “A healthy, corrective dose of Plato can help us not only to preserve the purity of Christian doctrine but to think properly about that doctrine.” Here’s Hans Boersma. He’s a Dutch Reformed theologian up in Vancouver. He says, “Faith isn’t meant to function without reason, and we shouldn’t attempt to do theology without philosophy.” Or this one, “We need a good dose of Plato for some of the key teachings of Scripture to become intelligible.” Don’t put that on your fridge, please. “The Bible,” here’s Boersma again, “cannot be interpreted without prior metaphysical commitments. We need Christian Platonism as an interpretive lens in order to uphold Scripture’s teaching.” Last one, “To reduce the Christian faith to a strictly biblical Christianity, [let’s call it pura scriptura,] shorn of the metaphysical assumptions of [Christian] Platonism is self-defeating.” He put that in parenthesis, that’s his quote. Where it says, “let’s call it pura scriptura.” I like that. We’re all about that. Put that on your fridge, on your license plate.

Well, guess who loves Hans Boersma’s teaching and is actively promoting his teaching? It takes us all the way back to the beginning, Matthew Barrett. Matthew Barrett down at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary is instructing men and training men to read more and more Boersma and men like him. So, the best and the brightest of theological minds as they are flooding down to Kansas City to be trained here getting various works on Platonic philosophy as they study the Scriptures. Here are a couple of Tweets from Matthew Barrett. Here’s one, it says “my philosophical theology seminar, MBTS, starts soon. PhD students will read Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Boethius, and Aquinas. Together we will retrieve classical realism. Here’s another one. They’re reading the same works in his PhD seminar. This is concerning. This is troubling. This is dangerous. I’m not alone in saying this. Consider Van Til, the great presuppositional apologist. He says, “None of the great Greek philosophers, like Plato and Aristotle, and none of the great modern philosophers, like Descartes, Kant, or Kierkegaard and others, have ever spoken of the God who is there.” Or bringing it closer to our camp, Lewis Sperry Chafer says, “Only by the new birth can one ‘see the kingdom of God.’ The cure for spiritual darkness is ‘the light of the world’. The groping of natural men—and sometimes they are men of great mental powers—are varied and complex. However, they have formulated certain general lines of philosophy, and these, like the false religions of the earth, bespeak the spiritual limitations of fallen man.” Or Bernard Ramm again says, “Evangelical Christianity refers to that version of Christianity which places the priority of the Word and Act of God over the faith, response, or experiences of men. Concretely this means the supremacy and authority of the Word of God (as a synonym for all the revelations of God, written and unwritten) over all human philosophies or religions.” See what the modern fascination with philosophy does, especially those in this “theological retrieval” camp is reverse what Ramm is saying here. No matter how much they might say so, for those who are pushing hard for “theological retrieval” Scripture doesn’t rule over philosophy for them. No, Scripture needs to consider philosophy and listen to philosophy which, in the end, means that Scripture is beholden to philosophy.

Well, Scripture itself gives us very clear direction and warnings about this type of approach. Recall that one aspect of the “fullness of time” Paul mentions in Galatians 4:4 leading up to the historical preparation for the coming of Christ was that the world’s philosophies had failed to provide answers to life’s great questions. Recall that in that scene involving Paul and the Athenian philosophers at Mars Hill in Acts 17 where we see that the world’s philosophies, as they did for those philosophers, always leave a person searching and groping for more. Or consider Colossians 2:8, which we’ll get to at some point the morning, where it says “worldly philosophies and systems of thinking “will eventually always lead us down to a path heresy as it did in Colossae in Paul’s day. Or recall what II Corinthians 10:5 teaches. That we are to be “destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God” and to take which thoughts captive? “Every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” That’s true whether it’s a sinful thought or a theological thought or a philosophical thought. Every one of our thoughts needs to be taken captive to the obedience of Christ.

Now, before we leave this topic of philosophy and metaphysics and its perils it’s important to note that while those who are promoting this return to “the Great Tradition” or making it sound as though there is a monolithic uniformity going back through the centuries and making it sound as though every church Father and every Reformer and ever proto-Reformer believed this same things they believe today, that’s demonstrably not the case. Consider these words from John Chrysostom, who lived and ministered in the fourth century. Many, many centuries ago. The very time period that those of the Great Tradition movement are trying to retrieve. He says, “Let us, then, have faith, and let us not entrust our own affairs altogether to reason. Why is it, may I ask, that the Greeks were able to discover nothing of God? Did they not know all the pagan wisdom? How is it, then, that they were unable to get the better of fishermen and tentmakers, and unlettered men? Was it not because the Greeks trusted everything to reason, while the latter placed all their confidence in faith? That is why these prevailed over Plato and Pythagoras and, in a word, over all who were in error. Those familiar with astrology, mathematics, and geometry, and arithmetic. They surpassed all who had a thorough and complete education and became as far superior to them as true philosophers to those who are actually dull and witless by nature.” Or Brad Klassen, modern theologian says, “‘The Great Tradition’ is a very mixed bag. Those who propose ‘retrieval’ without careful qualification directly undermine what the Reformation sought to recover.” Both Chrysostom and Klassen are right. In fact, consider some of these words from actual Reformers who were not as “bought into” the Great Tradition as men like Barrett would have us believe.

Here's John Calvin. I think he qualifies as a Reformer. He says, “We ought to seek our conviction in a higher place than human reasons, judgments, or conjectures, that is, in the secret testimony of the Spirit.” “The testimony of the Spirit,” Calvin again, “is more excellent than all reason.” “The only true faith is that which the Spirit of God seals in our hearts.” Here’s another Reformer, John Knox. He says, “The word of God is plain in itself; and if there appear any obscurity in one place, the Holy Ghost, who is never contrary to Himself, explains the same more clearly in other places: so that there can remain no doubt.” Then there’s the Swiss Reformer, Zwingli, says “I eventually came to the point where led by the Word and Spirit of God I saw the need to set aside all things and to learn the doctrine of God direct from his own Word. Then I began to ask God for light and the Scriptures became far clearer to me - even though I read nothing else - than if I had studied many commentators and expositors.” To which I say, what a bunch of Biblicists!

Takes us to our fifth point. The sufficiency of Scripture. This is the link to our Summer in the Systematics series. Notwithstanding, Barrett and Carter and Boersma and Ortlund, we simply must affirm and recognize here what the Scriptures themselves plainly teach. Which is that the spiritual insights of unbelievers, whether those be the philosophical musings of Greek philosophers or the theological ramblings of those like Aquinas who hold to a false form of religion are not going to be of ultimate value to the follower of Jesus Christ. As he or she, with a Bible in their lap, and a pen in their hand, and most importantly, with the Holy Spirit indwelling them, comes to the Scriptures. There’s no more value than those things. The Bible in the lap and the Spirit in the heart. That’s really, I Corinthians 2:14 here. “But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one.” See when you come to the Scriptures you’ve got something Plato didn’t have. You’ve got something Aristotle didn’t have. You’ve got something Thomas Aquinas didn’t have. You’ve have the Spirit of God dwelling inside you not only conforming you into the image of your Savior but illuminating for you the truth of His Word.

J.I. Packer, in “Fundamentalism and the Word of God,” says “The Holy Spirit, who caused [the Word] to be written, has been given to the Church to cause believers to recognize it for the divine Word that it is, and to enable them to interpret it rightly and understand its meaning. He who was its Author is also its Witness and Expositor. Christians must therefore seek to be helped and taught by the Spirit when they study Scripture, and must regard all their understanding of it, no less than the book itself, as the gift of God. The Spirit must be acknowledged as the infallible Interpreter of God’s infallible Word. ‘The supreme Judge in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.” “The Bible, therefore, does not need to be supplemented and interpreted by tradition, or revised and corrected by reason. Instead, it demands to sit in judgment on the dictates of both; for the words of men must be tried by the Word of God.” Then he says, “The humble pupil of Scripture will trust his textbook and not doubt its claims for itself.” I love that last quote, “trust” your “textbook.”

Now there might be some who are hearing this or listening and you might be tempted to think, aren’t you, Jesse, falling right into the trap of that these Great Tradition guys are setting for you? “Aren’t you, by saying that we don’t need anything but the Scripture and the Spirit, showing yourself to be that bible-thumping Biblicist fundamentalist guy?” Well, I’m absolutely a Biblicist. I’ll also gladly take the title of being a biblical fundamentalist. But the charge of being anti-intellectual will not stick. That’s going to take us to our sixth point for this evening, the significance of study. As it relates to our study of the Scriptures. For those of us who teach, our proclamation of the Scriptures, we aren’t the independent-minded, free-wheeling, free-spirited, toss-all-care-and-caution-to-the-wind, lone ranger-types that those in “the Great Tradition” are saying that we are as “Biblicists.” No, we aren’t free of any presuppositions. That would be impossible. We all come to the Scriptures with presuppositions. Biblicists have presuppositions. But our presuppositions are not rooted in things like a commitment to Christian Platonism or a Thomistic metaphysic or Reformed scholasticism. No. Our presuppositions are rooted in very basic truths rooted in God’s Word itself like the truth of presupposition that God is, that He exists. The presupposition that God is a God of truth, that God cannot lie. That God has communicated the truth He deemed fit to communicate to us through the Word and that His word, as we’ve been learning this summer, is inerrant, and infallible, and sufficient. So, let’s start there. That we as “Biblicists” admittedly do have presuppositions.

But now it’s also important to note that notwithstanding the swipes taken at us by those who are chasing after “the Great Tradition” we are diligent in our study of the Scriptures. We don’t cherry-pick Bible verses. We don’t build theology through simple proof-texting. We don’t unfairly quote or take Bible verses out of context. No. We labor. We toil. We sweat in the study and then by applying sound principles of hermeneutics, a consistent, literal, grammatical method of Bible study, that we do all that so that we can be consistent with the stream of faithful exegetes who have gone before us confidently extract the once-and-forever meaning of whatever text that we’re studying or whatever text that we’re in. If we hit a wall, and sometimes happens, we get confused, if we get stuck in the study, we have resources at our disposal. First, as we just went over, we have the Spirit of God. The same Spirit who breathed out His word is the same Spirit who has taken up residence in our hearts who illuminates and gives clarity to His Word. Second, we have Scripture itself which is the clearest source of study and cross-referencing that we need. Here’s Ramm again. He says "Scripture interprets Scripture. Where a passage of Scripture is obscure, it is to be understood or boxed in light of the total teaching of the Scripture on the subject. The purpose of the motto is to show once again that the Protestant interpreter does not need to fall back upon the church at certain critical places in the interpretation of Scripture, for Scripture is complete in itself.” Scripture interprets Scripture for us. Third, we have our local church pastors and elders who have been charged with guarding “the treasure,” II Timothy 1:14, “which has been entrusted to them.” And who have been charged with “retaining the standard of sound words,” II Timothy 1:13 and who have as we already addressed in Titus 1:9, been charged with “giving instruction in sound doctrine,” and “refuting those who contradict.” Fourth, we have trusted commentators and scholars and theologians who share our commitment to consistent literal historical grammatical hermeneutics who can keep us within the right guardrails and keep us within bounds and give us a sense of assurance that we are on the right track. Fifth, we have our own God-given reasoning abilities and intellects which give us the ability, by God’s grace, to think logically, to think coherently as we take in biblical truth. But even then, our own human reasoning faculties need to come under the authority of God’s word, they need to be brought into conformity with God’s Word. They never rule over the Word of God. J.I. Packer is helpful on that one. He says, “Nor may reason be viewed as an independent authority for our knowledge of God’s truth. Reason’s part,” no matter how smart you are, “is to act as the servant of the written Word. We may not look to reason to tell us whether Scripture is right in what it says, reason is not in any case competent to pass such a judgment; instead, we must look to Scripture to tell us whether reason is right in which it thinks on the subjects with which Scripture deals.” Sixth, we can read other sources. We can read church history. We can read Greek philosophy. We can read Aquinas. We can read creeds and confessions. We can read the very men that Barrett and Carter are saying we should read from “The Great Tradition.” But note, that there’s, and this is where the distinction has to be drawn, we would say that our biblical exegesis, our study of God’s word, is not to be “informed” by our reading in these fields. In other words, we don’t read Thomas Aquinas because we think that he’s the key that turns the lock to a right understanding of who God is. We don’t read Plato because we think Platonic thought is necessary for reading the Scriptures the right way. No, we respect two millennia of church history that’s gone before us, but we don’t revere church history or raise history to such a place of prominence that it comes anywhere close to being some sort of established tradition that reigns over the Scripture.

At the heart of critiques of churches like ours, is that we are anti-intellectual, that we are uninformed, and we’re just a bunch of backwoods Biblicists and fundamentalists. We’re so consumed with our charts and our fights that we can’t read the thick books and run with the big dogs. That’s just not the case at all. We have many top-rate scholars in our ranks who would correct that notion. But I’m going to end with one final quote here just to close as we get our thoughts right, as we think about what the priority is here as a church. Is it scholasticism? Is it Aquinas? Is it Aristotle? Is it philosophy? I don’t think so. I like what John Wesley here said. He said, “I want to know one thing, the way to heaven. God Himself has condescended to teach the way. He hath written it down in a book. O give me that book. At any price give me the book of God! I have it. Here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be Homo unius libri.”
A man of one book. Let us all be men and women of one book.

Let’s pray. God thank you for a chance to explore these topics this evening. God the things I raise, I raise not with excitement, not with joy certainly, but with real concern. Concern about what’s happening in various seminaries around our nation, what’s happening among various theological faculties. We can sit here in Nebraska and think this will never impact us and the truth is, it may not for a few years, but the concern is that in the decades ahead. In the years ahead and generations ahead this will be something that makes its way into pulpits across the land and into pews across the land and I pray that tonight’s message will equip everyone here to think rightly according to Your word about what is true and what is false, to have a renewed commitment and resolve to know that the Scriptures, the sixty-six inscripturated words of God are true, they are accurate, they been given by You and they are sufficient. So may we leave this place motivated, spurred on to go back to the book. To be those men and women of that single book in which we have all that we need pertaining to life and godliness. We thank you for this day. We thank you for the privilege of worshiping You, the living God. It’s in Jesus’ name we pray, amen.