I know some of you don't have a book, and I know that will be a challenge, especially because today, in trying to do a review, we probably won't be in our Bibles a whole lot. But I guess one question we need to address before we even get started is why do we study systematic theology? It's not to be merely an academic exercise. There are a lot of people who acquire a lot of knowledge But there are also a lot of people who acquire a lot of theological knowledge who aren't born again. And there's a field of theology called practical theology, a subfield in the theological realm. And I will maintain that if theology is not practical, it is of no use. That our study of theology should be practical to our lives. We should be able to apply it to our lives. That when we study theology it will affect what kind of employee we are. It will affect what kind of child we are. It will affect what kind of parent we are. It will affect what kind of elder we are, it will affect all of our life. So, I would use an example is that Piper maintains, for instance, that marriages would be much better if husband and wife would understand the wrath of God. Now, why would Piper say that? Piper says that because if husband and wife could understand better the wrath of God, they would understand the greatness that they have received in forgiveness. They would understand the degree of that which they have been forgiven. Therefore, what about forgiving your spouse? Do those little things that may bug you, are they worth not forgiving your spouse and holding bitterness? No, they're not. So if we have an appreciation of the wrath of God, for instance, which is a theological study, we would be better spouses. we would be better children, we'd be better parents, we'd be better employees, we'd be better stewards, we'd be better servants. So, that's why there's practical application in theology. I want to read something that Sproul wrote in this book. And I believe that the title is correct because at some level, everybody's a theologian. Because, first off, even those who claim to be atheists know who God is. They know deep down there's a God. Where does the Bible say that? Here's your quiz. Romans 1. Romans 1 says there are no atheists. Everybody has a true knowledge of God inherent within themselves, but they suppress it in their sin. So everyone is a theologian at some level. But Sproul in this book says this, this is a little more reader friendly than some of the things Raymond writes. He says, but also through the writings of the prophets and the apostles, and that the Bible is the word of God. It is theology par excellence. It is the full logos of the theos, the full word of the one true God. The second assumption is that when God reveals himself, he does so according to his own character and nature. Scripture tells us that God created an orderly cosmos. He is not the author of confusion because he is never confused. He thinks clearly and speaks in an intelligible way that is meant to be understood. A third assumption is that God's revelation in Scripture manifests those qualities. There is a unity to the Word of God despite the diversity of its authors. The Word of God was written over many centuries by many authors and it covers a variety of topics, but within that diversity is unity. All the information found in Scripture, future things, the atonement, the incarnation, the judgment of God, the mercy of God, the wrath of God, have their unity in God Himself. so that when God speaks and reveals himself, there is a unity in that content, a coherence. God's revelation is also consistent. It has been said that consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. But if that were true, we would have to say that God has a small mind because in His being and character, He is utterly consistent. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Sproul continues. He says these assumptions guide the systematic theologian as he goes about his task of considering the whole scope of Scripture and inquiring how it all fits together. At many seminaries, the systematic theology department is separate from the New Testament department and the Old Testament department. This is because the systematic theologian has a different focus than the Old Testament professor and the New Testament professor. Now, I would maintain that's a division created by man. Biblical scholars focus on how God has revealed himself at various points over time, while the systematician takes that information, puts it all together, and shows how it fits into a meaningful whole. This is a daunting task to be sure, and I am convinced that no one has ever done it perfectly. As I engage in systematic theology, I never cease to be amazed by the specific, intricate coherence of the scope of divine revelation. Systematic theologians understand that each point in theology addresses every other point. When God speaks, every detail He utters has an impact on every other detail. This is why our ongoing task is to see how all the pieces fit together into an organic, meaningful, and consistent whole. Now, what is systematic theology? Systematic theology is taking the entirety of what the Bible teaches about a topic and systematizing it. The chapter that I had hoped to get to today, chapter eight on God is a Trinity, is one of those examples. We have to take the entirety of the scripture, what it says about God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, and once we aggregate all of the data from the Bible, we come to a conclusion that there is one true God who exists eternally in three persons, namely Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That's what we're doing with systematic theology. That's what we do with the doctrine of God. That's what we do with the doctrine of man. What does the Bible say about man? What does the Bible say about the people of God from Genesis through Revelation? So what we do is we systematize it. So if you have a book in the introduction on page Roman numeral 25, do they even teach Roman numerals in school anymore? Oh, gee. Middle school they did. Really? Okay. All right. On page 25 in the introduction. second paragraph raymond says by systematic theology the department of theology which with this book is primarily concerned i refer to the discipline that answers the question what does the whole bible teaches about a given topic so whatever the topic may be that's what we're going to uh... whether it is the topic of the bible itself the attributes of god uh... the incarnation We will look at what the Bible says in its entirety. Now, we need to put a little caveat here up front that Raymond comes from a theological perspective with which we would not agree in all points. Raymond is a Presbyterian. By the way, where does the word Presbyterian come from? Which means what? Right, elder, overseer, bishop. He was quite a bit in the New Testament. Okay, Raymond comes from a Presbyterian perspective. Therefore, he will differ from us on his doctrine of the church, for instance. He will differ on his doctrine of church government. He will differ on his doctrine of who is to be baptized, because Raymond, by definition, being a Presbyterian, is a Paedo-Baptist. Now, what does a Paedo-Baptist mean? They baptize children? Yes. They believe baptism is like the new circumcision. Yes. They would believe that baptism serves a different purpose than we do. We are not paedo-baptists. We are credo-baptists. What is a credo-baptist? Right, credo is I believe, or based on belief. Paedo has to do with the Greek word for child. Or anti-Paedo-Baptists. Have you seen that? No, I haven't. Yeah, that's what some of those guys like to call Baptists. You know, they are Paedo-Baptists. I would maintain that we are Christian. So we're going to differ from Raymond on his doctrine of the church. We're going to differ from Raymond on church government. We're going to differ from Raymond on who is to be baptized. We're also going to differ from Raymond on the covenants, Raymond being a covenant theologian. Raymond holds to the covenant of grace and the covenant of works. By the way, Spurgeon was a covenant theologian. Spurgeon preached on the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. We'll get to that when we get to it. So then the question becomes, well, then why are we using Raymond's book? Why are we not using Grudem? Or why are we not using Robert Duncan Culver or an older one like A.H. Strong? Well, when Raymond is right, Raymond is really right. Raymond has much to offer. Even in those points, say, where we may disagree, It should cause us to then look at, why do we believe differently from Raymond? Because he, of course, is going to use the Bible to establish his points. Well, we should be able then to use the Bible to establish our points as well. And Raymond also, being a confessional Presbyterian, Raymond holds to the Westminster Confession of Faith from the mid-17th century. And as I was saying with Kevin, Raymond is a hard adherent to the Westminster Confession of Faith. You're going to see the Westminster Confession of Faith throughout the book. I will hold that guys like Raymond are slaves to the Confession. They will say that the Confession of Faith is not an infallible document, but nobody dare change it. It's like the 1689 London Baptist Confession. There are a lot of Baptists who I will hold are slaves to the confession, too. They say that they're, and we'll get to it, they say that they're always reforming. Semper reformanda is the Latin term. That, for instance, when there was something that Tim and the elders thought needed to be changed in our statement of faith last year, it was changed. It was modified. The confessional people, they don't dare change their confession. Even those who admit it needs to be modified, they won't change the confession. So there's a level of almost infallibility that they ascribe to the confession, which I will hold is not healthy in some cases. Because we need to be, in essence, a slave to the scripture, not a slave to a man-made confession. Because the scripture is our only infallible source of guidance for faith and practice within the church. And the Latin term for that is? Sola Scriptura. Sola Scriptura. There's only one infallible source. And much of what the Westminster Confession of Faith teaches is written in response to Roman Catholic errors. And we'll see that as we get throughout the book. Remember, the Reformation happened during the 16th century. The confession that Raymond ascribes to was written in the middle of the 17th century. So they're still addressing errors within the Roman Catholic Church, which are legion. So you'll see that a lot of things in the confession are written as a response to that. Are there any more chairs for you guys? Yeah, it's hard to follow along in some places with the electronic version. All right, so let's go to, in your book, it would be on page 26, it's under the heading of the Justification of Theology as an Intellectual Discipline. Now, today we're gonna try and summarize what took 30 hours last year in two hours. The first 200 pages of this book. We may or may not get through it, but that's okay. Especially since there are those here of the female persuasion who weren't there for any of it last year, unless you were watching it online. All right, under the justification of theology as an intellectual discipline, it would be probably the third sentence down. Starts with indeed. Indeed, as the Western world has become increasingly a secular city, more and more men and women, within as well as without the church, argue that it is impossible to even say anything meaningful about God. Now, I think if we have our eyes open, we will see that there are people who profess to be Christians who will claim that there is no such thing as absolute truth about God. How do they know that? It's really a self-refuting statement of a sort. The Bible though is clear. The Bible makes very dogmatic statements about God. And the Bible does not give us wiggle room with regard to, we can't say that, well, gee, we can't say anything meaningful about God. No, the Bible says much which is meaningful about God. And if you look at the next sentence, accordingly, Gordon H. Clark begins in his book, In Defense of Theology, with the following assessment. Clark says, theology once acclaimed the queen of the sciences, today hardly rises to the rank of a scullery maid. It is often held in contempt, regarded with suspicion, or just ignored. What do we hear a lot from people? We hear a lot from people that all we need to do is know Jesus and love Jesus. Now, is that true? Yeah, it's true, but is it the entirety of truth? It is not, because what Jesus do you love? Do you love the Jesus of the Mormons, which is a different Jesus? Muslims love Jesus. Do you love the Jesus of Islam? So it makes a difference in what Jesus you love, and how do we determine which Jesus it is that we are loving? We determine which Jesus it is we are loving by what is revealed about him in our scriptures. and that involves theological study. That the Jesus of Mormonism is not the Jesus as described in here. He is different. The Jesus of Islam is different than the Jesus described here, regardless of, say, for instance, what the Roman Catholic Church wants to say when it says that Christians and Muslims worship the same God. I think it is abundantly clear that this book and the Islamic holy book go to great lengths to differentiate between the two, that they are not the same in who they are and their attributes. But we only know that through studying. In our soundbite, Twitter, YouTube, three-minute clip world, That doesn't abide well with deep theological study. We live in a microwave world now. We don't live in a charcoal world anymore. We live in a gas grill world. Everyone wants their grill lit and hot within 45 seconds. But you can't just open up this book and learn wonderful truths about the infinite God in 30 seconds. It takes study, and it takes, I will hold it also takes, it's much easier when we're doing it with our brethren. I did it for many years by myself as we lived out in the middle of nowhere with people who were not of like mind. And it's difficult, and that can also lead to a lot of error doing it by yourself. There were a lot of times that I didn't have iron sharpening iron. So it helps that we have this sort of interaction going on. All right. Now on page 27, Raymond mentions Christ's own theological method. Well, what was Christ's own theological method? He says, All four evangelists depict Jesus of Nazareth as entering deeply into the engagement of mind with scripture and drawing from it fascinating deductions about himself. For example, on numerous occasions illustrated by the following New Testament passages, he applied the Old Testament to himself, Luke chapter 4, 16 through 21. He went to Nazareth where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue as was his custom, and he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. On rolling it, he found the place where it is written. And he quoted, the spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him and began by saying to them, today the scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. Now try and put yourself in the place of those who heard him say that. Do you think they would have just been sitting there going, hmm, okay, I don't think so. Now, what their true reaction was, but when he says that this scripture from Isaiah is fulfilled right here in your presence today, what is he doing? He is applying Old Testament truth to himself. He is bringing in the Old Testament and applying it to himself. He doesn't drive a wedge between the two testaments like we tend to. Because what does he say elsewhere? Right below it, John 5, 46. If you believe Moses, you would believe me for he wrote about me. If we were to go back a few verses in John 5 to 38 and 39, we would see that Jesus calls out his opponents for not understanding that their own scriptures were about the man standing in front of them. So, Raymond goes on, Luke expressly informs us later that, quote, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, the glorified Christ explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself, in Luke chapter 24. Now he's italicized this. Such an extensive engagement of his mind and scripture exposition involved our Lord in theological activity in the highest conceivable sense. It is Christ himself then who established for his church the pattern and end of all theologizing. The pattern, we must make the exposition of scripture the basis of our theology. The end, we must finally arrive at him in all of our theological labors. Everything we do must terminate in Christ. in our exposition of the scriptures. That should at some level drive us to worship as well. It should drive us to wonder. And it should drive us at some level also to mystery. We have to be comfortable with mystery at some point because we do not have comprehensive, exhaustive truth that we can understand. Can we truly, totally understand the Incarnation? We cannot. We can understand much about the Incarnation. Can we totally, comprehensively understand the Trinity? I don't think so, but we can understand much about the Trinity. And we can't go too far with that, because if we get to this today, there are theologians that say, because we cannot understand all about God, therefore, we can't understand anything about God. I think the Bible refutes that from beginning to end. There is truth here, and we can know truth, and God wants us to know truth. Is that not what the Holy Spirit does, is reveal truth to us that we can understand? Do we have any questions or comments so far? Brother, what would you say the dangers are of neglecting to do systematic theology and the errors that someone can get into? Well, I think we can, for instance, get to this in the next paragraph with the church's mandate to disciple the nations, because we also have evangelism involved here, because our theology, our doctrine will dictate how we evangelize. Our doctrine will dictate how we defend our faith against those who, for instance, against those who attack our faith. That we're always supposed to be ready to give an answer, are we not? 1 Peter 3. Well, what are we gonna base our answers upon? We're gonna have, right, we're gonna base our answers upon what we understand from a doctrinal, from a theological point of view of the scriptures. And those who want to oppose us will have their own take on the scriptures. That is wrong. Well, we need to be able to understand our faith and be able to present our faith as best we can. Now, I think we have to be careful in that sense, though, that we can have a fear that, well, I'm not going to go out or do anything or say anything because I might not have an answer for everybody. Well, for instance, what did the man who was born blind and healed by Jesus say? He didn't know a whole lot. But what did he know? I was blind and now I see. He knew that. That was the level of his theology at that point. And he was going to stand on that basis. I think that when we read Paul's instructions, especially in the pastoral letters to Titus and Timothy, he wants them to be able to understand and teach sound doctrine. Well, who are they going to teach sound doctrine to? They're going to teach sound doctrine to people like you and I. So therefore, we can teach other people about sound doctrine. And it all goes back to I believe God wants us to know Him. We are to know the Son. And this is what has been revealed about Him in here. And He wants us to know Him rightly as best we can. One of the dangers I don't know if you all do this, but I know that when I was first saved, I would become just thrilled by a doctrine like the deity of Christ. And so what I would do is I would find every single verse and I'd put a DC in my Bible. And I wanted to have I wanted this system laid down where I could go in and if I needed a text on total depravity, boom, I knew right there, TD, I had it in the column there. One of the things is you systematize the Bible and you take an approach like that where you've got proof text for these certain certain truths. What can happen, biblical theology is where you're kind of taking the Bible in context. You're taking it as a whole. You're not just separating it into these component parts. And I think what happened in later years, I began to recognize that I would then look back at some of these verses that as a very young Christian was my proof text for this doctrine or that doctrine. And I would come to recognize that it's couched in a bigger picture here, and it has meaning that I never saw. when I just reached in and stabbed that one out. And so I think that's one of the things about systematizing. You inevitably end up with a list of proof texts for each. I mean, when we get into the Trinity, what's going to happen? We're going to go bang, bang, bang. We're going to look at these various verses, But you have to remember, there's a context there. And in that context, when you really study the fuller picture, meaning, sometimes meaning comes out that you didn't see when you just, you just know that verse is there. Maybe you memorize that verse. But how it relates to everything around it, you can miss that. Let me give an example, I think from an opposing perspective, that people will tell us, for instance, that a verse that refutes the doctrine of total depravity, for instance, is John 3.16. Now, what does John 3.16 say? When God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. What does that have to say about total depravity? Nothing. Right. It has absolutely nothing to say about the topic. It's in a bigger context. Who is he saying that to? Nicodemus. And Nicodemus is a Jew. And what does he say right before that in verses 14 and 15? He calls upon Numbers 21. and the serpent being lifted up. That's the context in which that is done. And I think Tim's point is we have to be careful not to do that with our verses as well. And if we're going to use verses, we do need to take them in context. The verse that I used in the Sunday school, okay, that perfect love casts out all fear. Well, that has context. John 3.16 has context and we need to have a, as we systematize, we need to have the bigger picture in mind all the time because none of our proof texts are islands under themselves. Even if we're going to talk about the sovereignty of God, Psalm 115.3, our God is in the heavens. He does all that He pleases. Well, that has context. That has meaning. And that also, as Kevin and I talked about earlier, does not contradict anything else that's in Scripture. I think it's important for us to always keep the bigger picture in mind here. that as we look at a verse, there are no verses that are just an island. Everything is connected with something else. So, did we answer your question? Oh yeah. I've thought about, there's been times too where a certain groups or sects will build their doctrine of salvation on one verse, like Romans 10, 9, and they'll get from that the sinner's prayer. And then on the other side, there's one that's Pentecostals. They build their whole salvation on Acts 2, 38. They'll take one verse, instead of getting every verse in the Bible that deals with salvation and compiling them all together and letting them harmonize and interpreting each other and formulating doctrine out of it. Right. As soon as we tell, for instance, a Roman Catholic that we believe in justification by faith alone. They may not know three verses in the Bible, but they know James 2.24, which says what? Abraham was justified by works, not by faith alone. Well, does James 2.24 say that? Yes, it does. But when it says it, what does it mean? Right. You have to go back and read James 2.14-26 to see what the point of the passage is. Because in that passage, James also affirms justification by faith alone because he quotes Genesis 15.6 in that passage. But they take one verse out of context and ignore everything else from Genesis all the way through the rest of the New Testament about how people receive eternal life. When did Jesus grant people eternal life? When they believed. I was going to cover the apostolic model, but we'll go by that. Let me go to page 30 in the introduction under the activity of the New Testament Church. The paragraph that starts with engagement of our minds. Engagement of our minds in theology as an intellectual discipline based upon the Holy Scriptures gains additional support from the activity of the New Testament Church. The New Testament calls our attention again and again to a body of saving truth, as in 2 Thessalonians 2.15, the traditions, Romans 6.17, the pattern of doctrine, Jude 3, the faith once for all delivered to the saints, and in Jude In Jude, what does Jude say he's going to do for that faith once for all delivered to the saints? He's going to contend for it. He's going to fight for it. That there's a body of truth. Well, if there's a body of truth, it is our responsibility to know what that body of truth is. 1 Timothy 6.20 says there is a deposit in the faithful sayings of Paul's pastoral letters. These descriptive terms and phrases indicate that already in the days of the Apostles, the theologizing process of reflecting upon and comparing Scripture with Scripture, collating, deducing, and framing doctrinal statements into creedal formula approaching the character of church confessions had begun. Now, we see, for instance, he gives some examples of creedal confessions and 1 Corinthians 15 is a good example of that at the beginning of that chapter. So, this is not something that is new now. If we were to spend time on church history, why has a lot of these doctrines come into play? They've come into play or come into use because heresy needs to be refuted. because people have taught wrongly, that people have taught, as we will get to with the Trinity, a modalistic view of the Trinity, that sometimes God manifests Himself as Father, sometimes as Son, sometimes as Holy Spirit, or that Jesus really was not a man, that He only appeared to be a man. Well, doctrine has developed to refute that because the Bible teaches that He was fully human. There's doctrine that says He was not God as well. that if you take the emptying of himself from Philippians 2 wrongly, that he was no longer God while he was incarnate. Well, that's not what the Bible teaches either. So theological doctrines over time have been developed to refute error. So that's why some of these have come into play. Now let's go to page 31, The Divine Inspiration and Authority of Scripture. As we will argue in part one, the Bible is the revealed Word of God. I think it's important to state that the Bible does not merely contain the revealed Word of God, it is the revealed Word of God. Christ, the Lord of the Church, regarded the Old Testament as such, and He gave the Church ample reason to regard the New Testament in the same way. This means the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, indeed the triune God, quote, is really there and He has spoken. Now, if He is there, where is there? Well, there is everywhere. One of the doctrines of God is that God is omnipresent. He is everywhere. And God really has spoken, and he has spoken in a way that his people can understand. We will see as we get into this that one of the items in the Westminster Confession of Faith is the old word, the perpiscuity of scripture. That scripture is revealed to us and preserved for us so that all of us can understand it, basically. Now, are there some parts that are harder than others? Well, Peter makes it clear there are some parts that are harder than others. But Roman Catholicism has historically stated what about who is to study the scriptures. Right. You only have the leaders of the church, the office of the papacy and the teaching authority of the magisterium. They are to be the only ones studying and interpreting the scriptures and then teaching everyone else. Now, it's interesting when you say to a Roman Catholic who will affirm that, and you ask them, well, what do you think about the Bereans? Because Roman Catholicism has historically been dead set against what they call private interpretation, that Callie shouldn't study the scriptures herself, she should sit there and be taught by somebody who has authority. Well, what does Act 1711, now this goes to proof texting though, what does Act 1711 say about the character of the Bereans? They're more noble. What did they do? They studied the scriptures. Right. They were comparing scripture with the teachings of an inspired apostle. And they're called noble as they're doing so. And some of them believe. Scripture is meant to be understood by the people of God, not just certain of the people of God, by the entirety of the people of God. All right, stated another way, Raymond goes on. Rather, I forgot a sentence. If He is there, then He must be someone people should know. And if He has spoken to us in and by the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, then that fact alone is sufficient warrant to study the Scriptures. Stated another way, if God has revealed truth about Himself, about us, and about the relationship between Himself and us and Holy Scripture, then we should study Holy Scripture. It is simple as that. Indeed, if we take seriously the biblical truth that only in the light of God's Word will we understand anything as we should, from Psalm 36, we must study Holy Scripture, or what amounts to the same thing, we must engage our minds in the pursuit of theological truth. Not to be interested in the study of Scripture, if the one living and true God has revealed Himself therein, is the height of spiritual folly. I guess let me give you an example too right now. Cheryl has a longstanding friend back in Michigan. And this friend keeps falling into error. Well, when this friend asks Cheryl questions, how is Cheryl going to respond if she doesn't know what the Bible says? Well, and this friend wants to engage herself in the Hebrew roots movement of today. Where you as a, they will, at least this part of it holds that as a Christian, you still have to observe the Old Testament feasts and all the Old Testament laws. Okay. If you don't observe the Old Testament feast, you are sinning. That's what this group holds that this lady is involved with. Well, we have to be able to respond to that because in, in ways it sounds so spiritual. It's like Roman Catholicism. A lot of people are enamored by the beauty and the grandeur of the Roman Catholic Church, the architecture and the service and what appears to be spiritual. But what appears to be spiritual is not what should determine our truth. We don't determine our truth by experience. because everyone's experience is different. We determine our truth by what's revealed here. And I think it's abundantly clear that we don't observe the feasts anymore, that the old is gone. Well, how can we do that if we don't know what's in the Scriptures? Now, can we force anybody to believe it? No, because another doctrine is that each person's responsible for their own spiritual conscience. And they're not going to understand it until the Holy Spirit reveals it to them, just as if we don't understand anything until the Holy Spirit reveals it to us as well. And we'll get to that as well. But it matters in us as pew sitters, we are responsible as well. Think about what Paul said to the Galatians. Galatians 3, verse 1. They were falling into error. What did he call them because they were falling into error? He called them foolish Galatians. They were responsible for knowing truth. And because they were not obeying the truth as it had been revealed to them, Paul called them foolish. So, we are responsible for learning truth. Alright, now we can go to chapter 1. A word from another world, the fact of divine revelation. God has revealed himself to us. And if we look at the second paragraph on page three, the paragraph that starts with the Christian church, and we go to the second sentence, Raymond says his aim in part one of this work is to set forth a major portion of the evidence for the teaching that the Bible is indeed God's revealed and inspired word from another world to the inhabitants of this world. We will show that though written entirely by men, it is also entirely the word of the living God because the spirit of God inspired men to write it in the whole and in the part. The relationship between the human authors and the Spirit of God, however, was not one of simple cooperation or co-authorship. Man could not and would not have written the Bible apart from the Spirit's superintending activity. The Holy Spirit, then, is the author of Scripture in a more profound and original sense than the human writers ever could or would have been. God is the primary author of Holy Scripture, with the human writers being the authors of Scripture only insofar as the Spirit mandated, initiated, and provided their impulse to write. This begs the question then, who wrote the Bible? Did God write the Bible or did men write the Bible? Yes. Now, how does that work? Well, Raymond will go to great lengths to show us this and time doesn't permit today, but 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17, what does that say? Okay. All Scripture is breathed out by God. Now, how much Scripture then is not breathed out by God? None of it. All Scripture is breathed out by God. Now, what does the old translation of that say? And Raymond addresses this. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God. Right. Now, when we hear that word inspiration or inspired, when we say, Tim inspired Kevin to go to the prison today, How would we interpret that word inspired? Encouraged or affected. Right, that somehow Tim did something that would enable Kevin to go to the prison. But at the end of the day, Kevin's going to the prison was really only a decision and an act performed by Kevin. Now, is that the way Scripture was written, though? Did God inspire men to write Scripture in that sense? Okay, when you say no, why do you say no? The Latin word was to breathe. To breathe out. Okay, well. Well, it's like it's the supernatural aspect of God. I mean, the way He does that. It has to do with the fact that God breathed the scripture. It's the air. I mean, when he breathes it out, I can't think of exactly how to explain it, but you know what I'm talking about. Well, the word is theopneustos. Well, the T-H-E-O at the beginning has to do with God. And the P-N, we go into the pneuma, the breath. That when God breathes out Scripture, these are exactly the words of God. Does that mean they're not the words of men? When Paul writes what he writes in Romans 9 about willing to give up his salvation, being willing to give up his salvation in essence in order to save his people, were those the words and thoughts of Paul? Yes, they were. Those were absolutely the words and what was on Paul's heart at the time. But in addition to it being what was on Paul's heart and what Paul wanted to write down, it was exactly what God wanted Paul to communicate so that this could be written down and preserved for us. So scripture is a divine work at its root, but it is also very human at the same time. People will then say, well, if men wrote it, it's wrong, because to err is human. Well, I will maintain that to err is not human. Now, can humans err, but humans don't necessarily err? Can the Holy Spirit inspire men to write divine truth? Yes, he can, and not only can he, he does. He does and He has. We have divine truth here preserved in the pages of scripture for us. So, is this a divine book? Yes, it is. Is this a human book? Yes, it is at the same time. Then the question will come, somebody's going to say, well, then the people that wrote it down were mere robots. Well, no, they're not. The actions of men in writing this down were their actions. Let's correlate this to working out our salvation with fear and trembling or Ezekiel 36. When we obey God's statutes, what does Ezekiel 36 say about how we obey God's statutes? God causes us to obey His statutes, Ezekiel 36. We work out our salvation with fear and trembling, Philippians 2. How do we work out our salvation with fear and trembling? We work out our salvation with fear and trembling because verse 13 in Philippians 2 says, it is God who works in us, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. As we work out our salvation, we can only do it because God is at first working in us. And men wrote Scripture. We could go to Peter's writings to see that. that they only wrote what they were inspired to write by God. So therefore, this book is very much divine. Therefore, it can be very much trusted. Alright, any questions on that? Or comments? I think it's 1 Corinthians 14. or 11th, when Paul talks about the head coverings, and he's talking about, well, this is coming from me. Is that the same concept applied to that chapter? Is that 1 Corinthians 11 or 1 Corinthians 7? He's talking about marriage? Head coverings. Well, head coverings would be in 11, but I think when he says this is not from the Lord? Yeah. Okay. Did he receive that as divine revelation from the Lord? Then, Kevin needs to be able to answer, how come he wrote it's not from the Lord? Because when Christ was on this earth, He didn't teach that specifically, but He did give further revelation to Paul Alright, anybody else? Yes, 1 Corinthians 7. He's talking about marriage and singleness. Let's start at verse 8 in 1 Corinthians 7. He says, To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion. To the married I give this charge, not I, but the Lord. The wife should not separate from her husband, but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband, and the husband should not divorce his wife. To the rest, I say, I, not the Lord, that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her." Now, in verse 10, he says it's not him speaking, but the Lord. In verse 12, he says it's not the Lord, but him. Yes, I think verses 10 through 12, he's appealing to the gospels of what Christ taught there when he walked this earth, like, not I, but the Lord. But then in verse 12, he's giving further revelation that he got from the Lord, but Christ himself didn't specifically say it in his earthly ministry. But nonetheless, that doesn't negate that it's from God. What do you think about that? But he says it's not from the Lord. Liberals have liked to use that passage to go against what's Orthodox. It seems like the first one is including everybody. It's almost like a universal precept. But in this next one, it almost seems like it's a universal precept in specific situations, not every single situation. And so I think it's kind of like the first one, not I, but the Lord, you should not separate no matter what the situation you shouldn't. And the second one is depending on the situation, this isn't for me, not the Lord. So I think it's maybe more situational. Well, let's, let's back up. Let's go to verse six. He says, now as a concession, not a command, I say this, Okay? So, in v. 6, who is speaking? Paul. Is it Paul writing this alone? No. In v. 8, to the unmarried and the widows, I say, does he say here, thus saith the Lord? No. In verse 10, to the married I give this charge, not I but the Lord. Now, how can He give this charge if it's not Him giving the charge? Because He just says, to the married I give this charge, not I but the Lord. Go ahead. I would assume that the following statement that He quotes is not necessarily His own thoughts command or principle but one that is given from the Lord." Okay. Then when he says in verse 12, to the rest, I say, I, not the Lord, that if any brother has a wife. Is that a divine command at that point? Can Paul speak for the Lord apart from saying, thus saith the Lord? Yeah, I know somebody's going to say, well, then this is not divinely inspired at this point. Now, I think that may be splitting a theological hair at some level, because the fact that it is preserved in Scripture then makes it divinely inspired. This is one of those hard passages. But the fact that the Lord has seen to preserve it for us in His Scripture means that the truth is still there. Now, for instance, when He said in Romans 9, let's go back there if you want to flip back a few pages. When He said in 9.3, For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh." Is that the Lord speaking or is that Paul? Well, that's Paul writing. He's not saying, thus saith the Lord, but this has been preserved by the Lord for us as Scripture. The issue here, again, is going to the bigger picture of whether or not what is said is truth or not. That if it has been preserved by the Lord, who is the preserver of Scripture, that it is true. That's the best answer I have for it. Because it does seem to be a little bit, and this is where we'll get into paradox later on. It does seem somewhat paradoxical. somewhat, not an absolute paradox or a contradiction. Are you hiding there? Did we answer that a little? What Kevin says is Just to say that what he means is that he feels... do you feel like there's anything in the actual text itself that would discredit that idea? That basically what Paul is saying is, look, we have something perhaps that the Lord spoke to over here And then we have something that he did not speak to, but I'm gonna speak to it. I have the spirit, I'm going to speak to it. The Lord didn't speak to it, but I will. I mean, I feel like that's it. And it's been preserved for us in scripture. Exactly. It's like there are times There are times when Paul is clearly saying something that if not direct, it's derived from something the Lord said. It may be paraphrased or it may be just the idea, the truth that he got from the Lord and he expresses it. And at other times, he's saying, you know, the Lord never said anything with regards to this, but I'm going to say something. And clearly, the Corinthians We're asking them questions. I mean, it seems that even 1 Corinthians 7 is a direct response to questions that they were asking. It seems like the question they posed is, you can understand this, is it right to even touch a woman? And you get the feeling that what was happening is they were getting converted, and they're probably looking at Paul, Barnabas, Jesus, all the primary spiritual Leaders, and they're saying these guys were celibate, these guys were single. That must be the path to real spirituality. And the feeling you get is people were not only saying it's best not to marry, they were saying put your wives away. Best to pursue singleness now. And certainly if you've got a lost wife and you've got to get rid of her, and he's saying no, no, no, no, Okay, back up. Back up. And by the way, what Raymond's going to hold later on in that passage would be different than what we would hold, because when he talks about the unbelieving spouse being made holy, they're going to say that, for instance, the children are holy as well. They're going to use that as support for infant baptism. Well, that has nothing to do with it. There's not a drop of water in the text. Right. It has nothing to do with baptism in any way, shape, or form. So one of our challenges in interpreting the scripture is not forcing our system upon the scripture. And that's what they're doing there. That's what they do with Acts chapter 2, with the promise being made to you and your children in Peter's sermon. They're forcing a system upon what Peter says. And he's going to force the system upon the children being made holy here, therefore they're to be baptized. Well, this passage has nothing to do with who should or shouldn't be baptized. So we have to be careful in what presuppositions we ourselves bring to the text as well. And as we denounce those positions, what we don't want to do is miss the meaning. I mean, there's a glorious meaning that if you are a Christian in a household, that is a Christian household, one Christian in the midst of a household sanctifies in a way that I think it's a glorious truth. We can feel like sometimes if we're in an environment we're the only Christian. We can feel like, well, it's ungodly. It's this, it's that. Yeah, but God put a Christian in there. Now it's totally changed the chemistry. It's sanctified. He goes on and talks about the means by which God has transmitted His revelation to us. Briefly on page 9, he talks about, for instance, theophanies. What's a theophany, so we know our big words? like Christ appears before he's incarnate. Right, a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ. We'll get to that with the angel of the Lord as well. Dreams, visions... Wait, wait, wait. That's actually a Christophany. He said theophany. That's important because it brings up the question. I've heard people say, not that I believe this, but I've heard people say the Trinity appeared to Abraham. And distinguishing between what is an appearance of God and what's an appearance of Christ, comes into play when we begin to think about the Trinity and when we begin to think about the Father, and will we see the Father, or has anybody seen the Father? And I know that there are texts that indicate that nobody has seen Him, but when you take the collective evidence in Scripture and Jesus Himself saying that the pure in heart are going to see God, He doesn't say the pure in heart are going to see Me. It's something that comes up as you're trying to fathom. Sometimes you get the feeling in Scripture that when it says they can't see, it means they can't see all. It doesn't mean they can't see anything. Because it's interesting, you go back in the Pentateuch, you'll get a statement over here that they saw Him, and then you get a statement that they can't see him. Don't make any idol because you don't know what he looks like because you've never seen him, but then over here it says the elders saw him. That goes again to the point that Raymond will make about paradox. Are those paradoxes that Tim just mentioned? Well, in a sense they are, but are they irreconcilable paradoxes? No, they're not. It's like Paul in Romans 1 talks about man knows God and man doesn't know God at the same time. Well, he knows God by his nature, but he suppresses it in his sin, and he does not know the one true living God where he has eternal life. John 17 3 says, this is eternal life to know you the one true living God. Well, so man both knows and does not know God. Is that paradoxical? Yes. Is it irreconcilable? Is it contradictory? No, it's not. Um, so yeah, it is possible for man to both see and not see God. Okay. So yeah, there is a difference between a theophany and a Christophany. Um, I was listening to a sermon the other day, and the man stated that Stephen states that the theophany that occurred at the burning bush was not merely a theophany, it was a Christophany. Now, Exodus 3, what happened? Did God appear to Moses? Mm-hmm. Now, the question is, did Stephen in his sermon say that that was Christ? This is a little bit of a rabbit trail. Can you repeat that again? Did Stephen say in his sermon, Acts chapter 6. Yeah, yeah. And Acts 7, where he's giving his biblical theology. He's running through the history of redemption in essence. Did Stephen say that that was Christ that Moses saw in the burning bush? I don't either. It says in verse 30 of chapters 7, and when 40 years had passed, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire in a bush in the wilderness of Mount Sinai. And then it goes on to say that the voice of the Lord came to him saying, I am the Lord. I mean, I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham. Now, I guess as we're interpreting it, I don't want to dwell on this, but are we justified in saying that that angel who had the voice of the Lord was a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ? But the point here is that God has revealed himself in many ways. Theophany's dreams, visions, he directly revealed himself to prophets, he gave prophets words because we know throughout the Old Testament, thus saith the Lord is what they wrote down and thus saith the Lord is what they proclaim to the people. And New Testament, he also revealed himself through his apostles and this has all been preserved for us in scripture and we're not going to take time to look at the establishment of the canon But again, keep in mind that Raymond is writing from the perspective of an adherent to the Westminster Confession of Faith, and the Westminster Confession of Faith, one of the things that the Westminster Confession of Faith is addressing is Roman Catholic error, and Roman Catholicism says that there was no Bible until we said what was in the Bible at the Council of Trent in the 16th century. That nobody knew what was in the Bible until we said so. at the Council of Trent. However, we see in the New Testament itself, we see writings in the New Testament calling other New Testament writings scripture. They didn't need the Roman Catholic Church to tell them that some New Testament writings were scripture. Because Peter wrote about some of Paul's writings that they're hard to understand, but he says some people twist them as they do with what? Other scriptures. So we see that they refer to, Peter refers to Paul's writings as scripture, 1500 years before the Roman Catholic, Roman Catholicism wants to say it's scripture. But the process of how the canon was received, Raymond will spend time later on. But the point is, is that God has revealed himself and God has revealed himself in a way that his people can understand. that the Bible basically is understandable. Are there parts that are harder? Yes. But much of it is easy to understand. And we're not gonna get into hermeneutics, the science of biblical interpretation, but we interpret poetry as poetry. We interpret prophecy as prophecy, historical passages. We read about what happened in Joshua, that's history. And let's face it, the incarnation is history. Our faith is based upon real facts that happened in time and space with real people. And Christ was a real man who really lived, who really died, and who really rose again. That's history. Our faith is not a blind faith based upon myths. Our faith is based upon historical facts. And that's what Paul addresses in 1 Corinthians 15. He says, ask around. There are still all these people alive who saw the risen Christ. And he wrote it down for our benefit. Okay, in chapter 2, it's about the inspired nature of Holy Scripture, and we already addressed this to some degree. But, if we look at chapter 2, the second paragraph under the Bible, messages revealedness, Raymond says, by the Bible messages, quote, revealedness, I mean that the Bible, with regard to the origin of its subject matter or message, is a revelation from God. That is to say, it tells a story that people simply could not and would not have known without divine aid. God was its author and its source. He had to tell it to them. We know nothing about God except that which he has revealed to us. How much has God revealed about himself to us? Everything? No. What's a passage where God says he has not revealed everything to us about himself or his will? Deuteronomy 29, 20 thing, where he says, certain things have been revealed, but what about the secret things? They have not been revealed. That our knowledge of God will never be comprehensive. How can we who are finite know the infinite? Now, we can have finite knowledge, which means we can have knowledge. We can know God. We can know truth about God. And in here, Raymond will address men who say that we can't know truth about God because God is so other than us. But God has, to use probably a bad word, condescended to us in revealing Himself to us in ways that we can understand in order that we can know Him. We can know His Son. We can know the Spirit. We can know truth. We can know truth. because we're supposed to have truth abiding in us. So, all right. And I'll move forward quite a bit here. All right, then let's go to page 35 and we can address the issue here briefly again of God breathing scripture. The middle of page 35, the paragraph that starts with, what specifically does Paul mean when he asserts that all Scripture is God-breathed? Well, if we go down to the middle of the paragraph, does it mean that God breathed something into the Scriptures, or does it mean that God breathed out the Scriptures? It says, after extensive research, Warfield, that's B.B. Warfield, concluded that it means the latter, that God breathed out the scriptures from himself, and his conclusion has generally carried the field of scholarly opinion. Now, we don't determine truth, though, by taking a nose count of scholars, because it depends upon which scholars you ask. We determine truth by what the scripture says. The Bible is clear that these are the words of God and these are the words of men. It is, again, both a very divine book and it is a very human book. Now, because it is divine, what are the consequences of it being divine? Because God is true and God is truth, therefore, what he has revealed about himself in the scriptures must also be true. Therefore, we can trust it. When He says He will do something, does that mean He will do it? Yes. Without fail. Because what He has revealed about Himself is that He will not lie. He will not lie because He cannot lie. It's not in His nature where He can lie. So when He says He will do something, that He will give eternal life to those who believe, He will do it. That He will raise up those who have trusted Him on the last day. that he will judge the rebels on the last day as well. So we can trust him and we can trust him in his word because what he has said is true and the words that he has chosen to preserve for us in this book are all true. I have a friend in Michigan who maintains that the Bible contradicts itself all over the place and he is very comfortable with it. Now, what are the problems with that view? What problems does that lead to? It's the confusion that God just says whatever and he's wrong in some areas. I mean, it's not true, but... It says that God's inconsistent. Yeah. Right. He's inconsistent, and at what level do we know that any of it is true? If he can contradict himself at any one point, or be wrong at any one point, How do we know then any other point he's not wrong as well? Well, God cannot contradict himself because truth by nature does not contradict itself. But the point is of this whole passage is that the book we have is the Word of God. And by the fact it is the Word of God, it must be true. Not only can it be true, but it must be true from beginning to end. Now, if we look at page 43, we look at what happens with especially modern theologians. The middle of page 43 starts with many theologians. Many theologians, for example, Bruner, Barth, and Kosserman, claim not only that the Bible is anything but non-contradictory in its teachings, it is filled, they say, with errors and contradictions, but also that God, who, quote, delights in surprising us, and who can, quote, draw a straight line with a crooked stick, even speaks to us through contradictions. Now, what kind of problem does that present us with? Can you read that again? They say that God who delights in surprising us and who can draw a straight line with a crooked stick even speaks to us through contradictions. It's nonsense. It goes to the old question that somebody may ask us, can God create a rock so heavy he can't lift it? How do you respond to that question? It's illogical. It's nonsense. It's logical nonsense. There is no answer to the question because the question makes no sense at all. And drawing a straight line with a crooked stick, that is also logical nonsense because God being true is a logical God. God is a God of order and truth has order to it. And if God, again, can contradict himself, if he can say A here, and he can say not A over here, and they're both true, what faith do we have in anything that he says being true? If he says Jesus is the only way, John 14, six. And if he were to say somewhere else, well, there's at least one other way or three other ways. Well, which one is right? They can't both be right. That goes to the issue of the people who will say, for instance, I will grant you that Christianity is true, but I also believe that there are other ways to God. Now, what's the problem with that? The problem with that is they are granting the truth of Christianity, which says there are how many ways to God? One, if they grant that truth, they can't say that there are many other ways to God. They have refuted themselves. They're speaking nonsense when they say that there is both one way and more than one way. So. And God, of course, does not contradict himself in that way. Let's move on. What it really does is it creates an opportunity for authority to be placed in a man who can interpret these meanings of these contradictions arbitrarily. Correct. Who's going to determine whether A or B is true if they contradict themselves? Right. Well, I think that goes to another level. and I don't know how much time we would spend there, but this does go to extra-biblical authority, authority outside the Bible, such as the Roman Catholic Church. At what level is the authority of the magisterium, the teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church? It sits in judgment upon Scripture. They will maintain it doesn't, but when you look practically at it, it does. Because it does not matter what the Scripture says If their teaching authority says something else, it is true, regardless of what the Scripture says. For instance, with their extra-biblical dogmas they have, the infallibility of the papacy. When the Pope speaks ex cathedra, from the seat of St. Peter, he speaks infallibly. Well, where's that in the Scripture? First, where's the office of the papacy in the Scripture? It's nowhere. OK, where is the doctrine of the immaculate conception in scripture? By the way, whose conception is considered immaculate in the dogma of the immaculate conception? It's not Christ. It's Mary. Yes. The dogma of immaculate conception has to do with Mary. That's how Mary is sinless, according to the Roman Catholic Church. Because she was conceived immaculately. Those are things that are outside the Bible because they've established an authority which trumps the Bible. There's gonna be another dogma that they're trying to get established and that Mary is the co-redemptrix, that Mary is the co-redeemer of man along with Christ. Where is that in the Bible? Nowhere. So that's what happens, as Justin says, when we bring man placing his authority over the Bible. All right, let's move on here. Now, what I want to do is go to chapter 3, Attributes of Holy Scripture. And the confession that Raymond ascribes to on page 56 talks about the necessity of the Bible. And the paragraph right underneath it on page 56 says this, The confession begins by asserting that although all men and women know God at some level or consciousness, as is described in Romans 1, because of God's revealing work both within them, that is, the light of nature within men and women, and all around them, in both His creation and providential care, for instance, Psalm 19, 1, with the heavens declaring the glory of God, Yet this general revelation is not sufficient to give to them the knowledge of God that is necessary for salvation. All it does is leave them in their idolatry without excuse." Now what does he mean? He's talking about what is called general revelation. That which God has revealed about Himself which everybody knows and everybody can see. That you can look up there today and know that God exists. Is general revelation infallible? In what sense? Well, is God's revelation in His Word infallible? And what do you take that to mean? What He says about Himself in Scripture, it's without error. It's completely trustworthy. And so, is God's revelation in creation infallible? not to reveal completely all of this, like from what it's meant to. We're not talking about depth of revelation. Is what is revealed infallible? Yeah, there is a God that is designed. Why don't people receive it as true then? Because men are infallible. Because men interpret the Scripture that is infallible. Right, why does Stephen Hawking look up there and not see God? Because he's suppressing the truth he knows because of his sin. His understanding is darkened. Ephesians 4.17. They know that when they look up, whether they look up in the daytime or the nighttime, that the heavens declare the glory of God. But what do they do with that knowledge in their sin? Any fallen man, they suppress it. That word means it's like stuffing your suitcase to go on vacation. They push it down. It's there, but they push it down. I just bring that up because For instance, the question comes up, was everything created in a literal six days? Or, the Bible's absolutely true, but should those days be taken as not literal days? not in any way impinging upon the infallibility of Scripture, but how should that be taken? And so we look at creation, we look at Scripture, we look at creation, we look at Scripture. We would say both are infallible, but we know that historically, Was it Copernicus? Was the one that was kind of the heretic? Because he began to look up through his telescope and he began to recognize, well, wait a second, the earth is not center of everything. But here's the church pronouncing him a heretic because he was actually correctly observing what God has revealed in the creation. And I think when we look at the created world, it looks old. Now could God have created it looking old? He created Adam. Not two years old. So He definitely could have. But throughout history, obviously sometimes people have not interpreted either the revelation of Scripture or creation properly, but sometimes they've missed it on one. And because they don't see properly in one, or they think they properly understand Scripture, and so they reject what can be seen and known about God in creation or vice versa. So the issue of General revelation is that it's something that every person inherently knows, but they suppress it in their sin, as opposed to special revelation, which we'll get to in a second. But if you look at page 57, there's that footnote number 3. which is really referring back to what was stated on page 56 in the phrase that ends with Romans 1.20. Raymond says, these verses imply that it is unnecessary for the Christian to try to prove the existence of God to people. They would suggest rather that every human being already knows at some level of consciousness or unconsciousness that God is really there. The unregenerate, of course, do all they can to suppress this knowledge, Romans 1.18, although they are never completely successful. It is for this reason that the Bible speaks of the unregenerate person as both knowing God, in the passages from Romans 1 and 2, and not knowing Him. 1 Corinthians 1, 2, 1 Thessalonians 4, and 2 Thessalonians 1 at the same time. That is, he knows God is really there, but he does not know Him savingly. This again goes that because of what has been revealed naturally and inherently with every man, every man knows God. So every man is not an atheist. They may declare themselves to be an atheist, But every man has a knowledge of God, but because of the effects of the fall, they suppress it in their sin. But because of that, we need special revelation, which is the means by which men are saved. There's an issue that some believe that what is revealed in nature can save people. called natural theology. Can a man look up at the heavens and know Jesus? What if the Spirit reveals it to him? It's like Muslims in the Middle East having dreams. It's difficult because of course, we don't base our theology on other people's testimonies, Now, was Paul saved by natural revelation or divine revelation? Special revelation. What sort of revelation was John the Baptist saved by to have the Holy Spirit from his mother's womb? When did God know Jeremiah? Before He was even... Before you were formed, I knew you. But that's all divine. Now, can God use nature? Apart from the Spirit, can a man come to know Jesus? No. 1 Corinthians 2 is clear that spiritual knowledge is only attained by the Spirit. But we know faith comes by hearing, hearing by the Word of Christ, so we want to lock into that. The Gospel we know to be the power of God unto salvation. If God breaks out of His... God is free to not stick to His own laws. but we don't want to take, perhaps, what are possible exceptions. And then the thing is, we may find out in the end that every one of these testimonies was bogus. Not one of them was true. So we want to be careful. Yeah, we operate on the precepts God has given us. He has charged us with... this goes to what is probably an urban legend about St. Francis of Assisi, that old saying, you've heard, preach the Gospel, if necessary, use words. Well, how do you preach the gospel without words? You don't, you have to proclaim. Paul considered himself a carex, a proclaimer, a mouthpiece repeating the message of his master. That is our responsibility as well. That is, in essence, bringing special revelation to the lost. Because God does use means and we are one of the means by which he uses. to bring special revelation to the lost. If we get to Gloria and we find that Spurgeon was right, and every child that died in infancy is populating heaven, how did God bring them in? How does God bring in a miscarried baby in two days through a preached Christ? No. but that's his prerogative. Top of page 58, Raymond gives an affirmation of the necessity of Scripture. He says, Scripture is necessary certainly for salvation and the knowledge of God's will for His church. It's most immediate areas of application within the context of the confessional statement itself. Here he goes back to the confession. But necessary also for the justification of all knowledge and a personal meaning itself. Now, we're not gonna spend a lot of time on the justification of knowledge, that field of epistemology, how we know what we know. It's fascinating, but we're not gonna do it. But the Bible also ascribes personal meaning to life, to men. Because the Bible tells us that men are created in the image of God. Now, does fallen man still maintain the image of God? Yes, in the same manner as Adam. No, it's fallen, but it's still there. So every man is created with, in essence, a sense of dignity where we're all on the same playing field. Think about an atheistic world. Is there any meaning to anybody's life? Not if you're a consistent atheist, not if we're just a cosmic accident, which is what atheism must believe if it's consistent, that there is no meaning for Pat to have been created. Pat is just an accident, according to atheism. Therefore, in an atheistic world, why should I be kind to Pat? Do I have any reason other than a reason I established myself? No. There is absolutely no reason to be kind to Pat. There's no reason. In a truly, consistently atheistic, naturalistic world, is it not all about the survival of the fittest? It is all without law or order. Well, that's not the way that God has revealed his creation to us in his word. That there is order, there is design, there is purpose. Not only for nature, but for man, his creation. And we learn about that in the scripture. Because when we're told to love our enemies, why should an atheist love his enemy? He has absolutely no reason. Now he may, but he has no basis for it. And what meaning does an atheistic life have other than what the atheist ascribes to it? Nothing at all. If you're just here and then you're gone. If you're just another accident that goes away. But we have scripture which tells us that man has meaning, that life has meaning. Okay. All right. He goes on with the establishment of the canon for quite a while, and we're not going to go there. But let's go to the infallibility of the Bible, page 70. What time is it, by the way, Pedro? Quarter to 12? Oh. Oh, it's still daylight time at the Grace House? Alright, biblical infallibility, page 70. What does the word infallibility mean in the second paragraph? By it we assert that the Bible is true, that is to say, devoid of and incapable of teaching falsehood or error of any kind in all that it intends to affirm. It is internally non-contradictory and doctrinally consistent. Its assertions correspond to what God Himself understands is the true and real nature of things. Then he goes on, by inerrancy we intend essentially the same thing as infallibility, namely that the Bible does not err in any of its affirmations, whether those affirmations be in the spheres of spiritual realities or morals, history or science, and is therefore incapable of teaching error. Because the Bible is God's word, its assertions are as true as if God spoke to man today directly from heaven. So when the Bible says David was the king of Israel, it means David was the king of Israel. When it says that Jesus was born of a virgin, he was born of a virgin. Now, we go to page 71. The sentence that starts, many are the objections. Many are the objections that have been brought against the doctrine of the Bible's infallibility or inerrancy, including number one, the Bible contains errors in history and science. How would you respond to that? Somebody says to you, well, the Bible gets history wrong and it gets science wrong. Well, give me an example of, give me an example of somebody who may say to you that the Bible gets science wrong. Whenever they say that the moon gives off light, like they'll say, they'll use the scripture where it says the moon gave off light and then they'll say, well, science says that it's only light reflecting off the sun. I mean, from the sun reflecting off the moon. Right. And is the Bible really trying to tell us that the moon generates its own light? Or sunrise. Or creation. That's going to be a big place where they say, Right. And he goes on at length actually about creation because I know that now science is infallible, of course, except when it isn't. Well, what did science teach when I was a kid? Science taught that the universe was created by the Big Bang. It taught that Pluto was a planet. Yeah, science used to teach that the universe was created by a big bang because at some point in time past there was a singular point of matter and something caused it to blow up and here we are. Well, has science changed? Yes, and Raymond points this out and goes to great lengths to talk about the fact that science has changed. Science now says that the universe, much science says the universe was created out of nothing. Well, that refutes one of the basic laws of science. which is out of nothing, nothing comes. Or every effect must have a cause. Well, but why do they change? Because they know that there's a problem with the Big Bang and all of its derivatives. But what they want to do is they want to deny the biblical truth of creation out of nothing while affirming their own truth of creation out of nothing. That matter can just spontaneously come into existence. Well, and as Raymond says, why can't that happen again? He's got a valid point. But this is where we go when science says that creation could not have happened out of nothing. The Bible says creation happened out of nothing. Which one is right? Well, we have to go with the Bible if we affirm the Bible to be true. And when they say history is wrong, it's interesting when people will say, well, the Bible contradicts itself all over the place. If you ask them for contradictions and they give you a list, you will find out that when they're looked at, they're not contradictions at all. They may be mysterious, they may be paradoxical in nature, but they're not a true contradiction. And then they like to say, well, historically, we don't have any evidence that such a man lived. And then they'll dig something up, and they'll say, oh, well. This is kind of testimony to that, in that I was a skeptic before coming to Christ, and I said those same things about the historical nature of the Bible, and I have found it to be the most objectively, historically attested thing that you could ever produce. And yet, the attacks on it and the accusations against it are far greater than anything else that is far more weakly supported from an objective perspective, like that Alexander was who he was. We know nothing about it, except for documents that are 400 years after he was dead. But the Bible is far better attested than that from any objective standard, and yet, The things that are said about it are far worse than they say about any other historical accuracies. Right. I think his last sentence in that paragraph is valid. He says, We must take seriously what it didactically or teaches about itself, and study its historical and scientific phenomena in light of its teaching statements about itself. That is to say, we must approach the Scripture's phenomena not inductively, but presuppositionally. Now, what does he mean by that? We presuppose, or we as Christians assume the Bible to be true. Therefore, we interpret outside matters in light of what the Bible says. That's circular reasoning. Do you know what he means by circular reasoning? Well, explain circular reasoning. You come back to your original line of thinking. We see the world in view of a certain worldview. and we have to come back to that. The Bible's true. How do you know the Bible's true? Because the Bible says it's true. Right, you start with your conclusion. Now, how do you respond to an objection where they say, well, you're reasoning in a circle? I say that's right. I am whoever said it was wrong to circulately reason. You do it. I do it. We all do it. We all appeal to our highest authority. Right. Everybody has a starting point. We have a starting point. For instance, we say the Bible is true, or we say God exists. Everybody has a first axiom, a starting point that they don't prove. The atheist does. When the atheist says to us, you have to prove the existence of God. Why? There was a debate between Alvin Plantinga and Antony Flew. And Antony Flew was an atheist, and he says to Alvin Plantinga, you have to prove the existence of God. And you know how Plantinga responded? No, I don't. And Flew said, yes, you do. Plantinga said, no, I don't. And that went on for about 10 minutes. No, we don't have to prove the existence of God. The Bible never does not set out to prove the existence of God. The Bible states it. It presupposes that God exists. When our opponents want to say that our arguments are invalid because we're reasoning in a circle, we are doing nothing more than our opponents are doing as well. We're doing the same thing. The thing is we're admitting we have a starting point that we don't have to prove and they won't do it. when somebody will say to us, I don't believe anything unless you can prove it to me. Now, what's the problem with that statement? Can they prove that statement to us? No, they can't. How can they prove their own statement saying that they don't believe anything unless there's proof? That is their own starting ground that they're not going to back off from. Well, we have our starting ground that we should not back off from either. And our starting ground is that this is the Word of God. We don't have to prove it. We're just called to proclaim it and defend it. Because, again, apart from the Spirit, how is the unregenerate man or woman going to understand it anyway? They're not going to. We don't have to prove it to them, but that's not to say that God doesn't prove it to us. How do we know that Scripture is true? Because the Holy Spirit testifies to us as believers that it is true. So apart from that, we wouldn't know it's true either. So he will reveal truth to us as we study. We are commanded to, again, study. We're not commanded to just sit in our lazy boy and pray that we get all spiritual truth without ever opening up our Bible. That we are to labor in studying the word as well. All right, so that's one objection. Now, second, number two, the Bible writers never claim inerrancy for themselves. Well, Raymond says it is true that the Bible writers recognize their own personal finitude or their fact that they are finite and their own sinfulness and thus their liability to error. Thus they insist that everyone is or may be a liar. However, but they nevertheless claim inerrancy for the written word of God, which he gave to humankind through them by inspiration. The last sentence is important. In fact, it is precisely because they could err that the Spirit's inspiring influence was necessary to keep them from error. That without the influence of the Spirit, yes, men can and men will err. But when the Spirit inspires a man to write down something which is to be preserved for the people of God, He will inspire that man or has inspired that man to write it down without error. So just because the Bible is a human book does not necessarily mean it's a book full of air. It doesn't have to. All right, number three, the doctrine of inerrancy leads to bondage to a book and thus to spiritual bondage. Answer to the contrary. The doctrine of inerrancy guarantees the truthfulness of scripture and truth never binds one unwholesomely. It is truth that sets one free from bondage to sin, thus granting true liberty. John 8.32, which is bondage to God and his Christ. Where does Jesus say that his audience is supposed to abide in John 8.32? If you abide, where? In My Word. Now, did these men live in the Word of God? This is a question. Absolutely they did. Did they know what it said? Yes. Did they know what it meant? Well, Jesus says they didn't. They know what it said, but they didn't know that the Hebrew Scriptures were about Him. Beginning with Moses. Well, answer your own question. Are you talking about the mystery of Christ in the Old Testament? Okay. Now, is it clear that Jesus expected these men to know that the Old Testament was about Him? Yes, because He holds them accountable for it. Why didn't they know that the Old Testament was about Him? Okay. How did Peter respond when Jesus asked him in Matthew 16, after asking who these other people say that you are, he then asks Peter, who do you say that I am? Or ask the apostles, the disciples, who do you say that I am? What does Peter say? We're the Christ. Son of the living God. And what does Jesus say right after that? He only knew it by revelation. Now, does God hold people responsible for their ignorance of truth, which has not been revealed to them? Yes. Is that a little mysterious? Yes, it is. But it is the truth of the scripture. that unless truth is revealed to them, as Jesus says in Matthew 11, right before He says, come all who labor and are heavy laden, I will give you rest. What does He say right before that? No one knows the Son except the Father. No one knows the Father except the Son, and whomever the Son chooses to reveal to Him. Right, and he has just thanked the Father for hiding these things, which he's talked about before, from certain people. So, just because the Spirit has not yet revealed truth to people does not get people off the hook for their ignorance of the truth. Right, ignorance is our fault. Yes, we are responsible. We can't, come the last day, somebody cannot call upon God as the responsible party for their ignorance. Man is responsible for his ignorance. Incoming. OK. Three minutes? Okay. Alright. Let's see, we already talked about four and we'll move on here. We've only got a couple of minutes to go. Alright, let's go to the Bible's authority. Page 73. And obviously, we're not to page 200. Okay, Raymond explains, this article from the Westminster Confession of Faith, explicating the ground of the Bible's authority, first states that the ground wherein the Bible's authority does not reside. It does not reside in the testimony of any person or church respecting the Bible. The Bible's authority is not dependent upon man. The Bible is in and of itself authoritative. He goes on, the article states the sole reason why the Bible ought to be believed and obeyed because God who is truth itself is in a unique sense its author and therefore because it is the very word of the one living and true God. In sum, it receives its authority from heaven. It requires no earthly advocacy in regard to the issue of its authority. Its authority is intrinsic and inherent, that is, it is self-validating. In no sense is its authority derived from human testimony." He goes on, This article was originally intended to convey against the Roman Catholic dogma that the authority of the Bible depends upon the authority of the Church. Roman Catholic teaching is that, since it was the Church that determined the Scripture canon in the first place, the Scriptures are reliant upon the Church for their authority. Now, we don't live in the mid 17th century when the Westminster Confession of Faith was written because the Reformation was very still much fresh in the minds of people then. But, and we know that Roman Catholicism has certainly morphed over time in the last several hundred years, but at root its teachings have not changed because its teachings cannot change. that when it says it makes infallible declarations at the Council of Trent, for instance, concerning justification by faith and its denial, faith alone and its denial of that, or what it determines the scripture to be, it cannot change those. Now they will tell us that what they're doing as time goes on is clarifying things. That when the Pope in the early 14th century makes a statement in a papal bull, which by Rome's definition is an infallible statement without error, that if you do not submit to the papal authority, you cannot be saved. Well, now with Vatican II, Rome, acting apart from the Bible again, calls people like us separated brethren. With Vatican II, it says that people who don't even know Christ can be saved as long as they've sincerely sought God in their own way, even in their pagan worship in the Catholic catechism. Well, this is what happens when we go outside biblical authority and when we have Rome sitting in judgment upon the Bible. Because the Roman Catholic Church maintains that it has determined what the Bible is. So therefore, it has established itself as an authority above the Bible. But the Bible is clear that there is no authority above itself. That we don't determine what the Bible is, we receive biblical authority because the Bible authenticates itself. It doesn't need us. And we only understand that self-authentication by the testimony of the Spirit in our lives. So the Bible is authoritative in and of itself. And he addresses R.C. Sproul here, and I think he's got some valid points, is because one, Sproul's apologetic method starts off with this. He says the Bible is basically reliable. Now, what do you think about that statement? The Bible is basically reliable. to be shot full of holes. That that's the problem with it because if it is basically reliable that means basically right there's at some level where it has to be basically unreliable. You said that? Sproul. That is the Ligonier apologetic. Well, you've got to follow the whole train of thought before you just hear the first point. Here it is. The Bible's basically a generally reliable, trustworthy document. That's premise A. So premise B, on the basis of this generally reliable document, we have sufficient evidence to believe confidently that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Premise C, Jesus Christ being the Son of God is an infallible authority. Premise D, Jesus Christ teaches that the Bible is more than generally trustworthy. It is the very Word of God. Premise E, the word in that it comes from God is utterly trustworthy because God is utterly trustworthy. Conclusion, on the basis of the infallible authority of Jesus Christ, the church believes the Bible to be utterly trustworthy, i.e. infallible and therefore authoritative. But where does that logic fall to pieces? Look, if it's basically reliable, but it is the very source from which we learn about this infallible Jesus Christ, and it's only basically or generally reliable, then how do I know that it might not at least partially be unreliable and it might not be unreliable right at the point in the description of this Christ who is supposed to be so infallible? Even just from a pure logic, logical deduction if you look a couple sentences past, Raymond says, I do not believe the progression is a valid argument in that the conclusion declares more than the original premise will allow. That if the Bible, think about our starting point, the Bible is basically true. Well, what can an opponent say at that point? They are perfectly justified in saying, well, then the Bible at some points is not basically true. And who's going to decide where that is? Right. Can not the person who objects then say, well, I, I, uh, I think I'm justified in believing that one of the points where the Bible is not basically true is that Jesus Christ is not the son of God. Why do they even say it's basically true? Why not just say it's utterly true? Well, because he's trying to go somewhere with it. He's trying to build a case. But see, the problem is we have all these attacks on the Bible because the devil attacked the Bible in the beginning. And this world is full of his demons. Should we expect there's going to be an all-out assault on the Word of God? Yes. And primarily on what? The Person of Christ. You see, that's where this thing What are you going to assume? That the guy who you just convinced, okay, I'll grant you the Bible, it might be generally true, but where is the primary attack going to come? It's not going to come on some text off 1 Chronicles, the genealogy. That's not where it's going to come. It's going to come on the person. and work of Christ. That's where the primary satanic attack is. Sproul is indebted greatly to Thomas Aquinas in much of his thinking. Thomas Aquinas being a medieval Roman Catholic scholar. And I think that's where part of this comes from. Sproul's a little too Catholic for my comfort. I appreciate it. But he's too partial. He includes Catholicism in Christendom. He doesn't speak as plainly as I would like to see him speak about Catholicism. And we'll close with this. Let's go to page 75 because this addresses the issue. All right, the paragraph that says, with regard to premise A, the Bible is a basically or generally reliable and trustworthy document. That's the starting point. So, with regard to premise A, can Sproul simply assert that the Bible is generally trustworthy or must he demonstrate it? Surely the latter. But how does this do this? So how do you show or prove? that the Bible is generally reliable. or even no evidence at all beyond the word of the writers, many of whose identities are doubted by critical scholarship. Consider for a moment one of the more intriguing biblical events, namely Jesus' transfiguration. How is one to go about proving it happened and happened the way the evangelists reported? By citing archeological evidence, I think we would all admit that we can cite no archeological evidence for its occurrence. By citing then what purports to be eyewitness testimony, just so surely, but Peter's is the only testimony that we have that purports to be such. We have nothing from the other two reported eyewitnesses, James and John. And Matthew, Mark, and Luke who report the event in their respective gospels were not eyewitnesses, but rather secondhand or even further removed reporters. So let us say that one cites Peter's purported eyewitness testimony in 2 Peter 1, 16-18 as his primary proof for the event's occurrence. Will such an appeal satisfy the skepticism of the secular historian? I do not think so. So now the apologists must begin to amass the requisite evidence showing first that it was Peter who in fact wrote those words, or these words. The reader should recall here that critical New Testament scholarship, I think, wrongly denies the Petrine authorship of 2 Peter. And second, that when he wrote them, he wrote the truth. And I think you can see that OK, so you can provide this piece of evidence. Well, then you're you're you're skeptics can say, well, what about this or what about this? How and that can go on ad infinitum. Imagine using that logic with the devil. It was really behind these things. I mean, this is a satanically attacked book. And are you going to use that logic? I mean, can you see Jesus out in the wilderness using that kind of logic as he quotes Deuteronomy? Well, this is generally reliable. And you could go on to, say, page 77, where he uses the same premises with regard to the Bible being generally reliable history. Well, here we go again. I think the Bible presupposes its own truth, which it has to, because God is speaking about himself. And therefore, our starting point is that the Bible is the word of God, therefore it's true. And that's where we have to stand. Because as soon as we move off that base, and start going to satisfying their demands, where in essence, answering a fool according to his folly. It's like Satan tempting Jesus in the wilderness, like, if you are, if you are, but Jesus is like, it is written, like, affirmative, not even. and He dealt with all the leaders that way and with His disciples that way. I mean, He quoted that Scripture. It is true and you should have known it. So, this is our base as He gets into in one of the subsequent chapters. This is our base for our knowledge. And we can't remove our foundation. As soon as we do, we're on slippery slope. And we'll stop there for today. Any other questions for today? I want to get through this so we can actually spend more time in the Bible, which we'll do when we get to the Trinity. Again, this is not to be merely academic. This is all practical. You've heard Jeff emphasize various times at the Westminster Confession largely was answering Catholicism. And then of course, the 1689 London Baptist Confession, which we used to hold to, is just basically a baptized version of the Westminster. And we're 400 years removed. For one thing, we did our own statement is the 1689 in the Westminster, they put the addresses for the proof text, but they don't actually put the proof text themselves. And I wanted a statement that actually had those in there. And then, it's like Jeff was saying, most of the people that hold to the Westminster or the 1689 don't hold to everything. They have exceptions, but nobody wants It's like the King James Bible. Don't touch that. It's sacred. And so that was another thing. There were points of disagreement. And rather than putting the exceptions all the time, let's just have a statement of faith. we can all agree to. And because they did primarily go after Catholicism, and I think in our day we have a lot of other things that have come upon the scene. We're in a day when open theism and the new perspective of Paul, we've got oneness, Pentecostalism out there. I just felt like having a more rounded When we pick up next time, let's... Next time will be the first Saturday in December. Two weeks from now, which should be the 6th? Is that correct? If I'm not mistaken? Okay. The 6th? Okay. Pedro, why don't you close us?