Apparatus going. Um so I think most everybody was here last week. Uh we'll do a bit of review but nowhere near as much introductory material. I'm hoping. Um uh but we did begin introducing historical theology. I knocked off one of the questions for sake of time. I had three last week and I thought, nah, we don't need to do that third. It'll be, So we've been trying to, attempting through the introduction, answer those two questions, of course, what it is, and then probably more importantly, in a Baptist evangelical church, why do we study it? Or why should we study it? So, oh, I forgot. I didn't have this for you last week. I remembered this. So this is that book I was telling you about by Greg Allison that I've decided would probably be the best general outline to follow if you're interested. It's actually not a cheap book, but it is widely available. And a lot of those older historical theologies and similar things are a lot harder to get your hands on and a lot more, kind of, a lot harder to understand, I think. Of course, I'm from Stokoe. Y'all might not have trouble with it, but. All right. So, definitions. This one we begin with. We'll begin with it for a while until we're comfortable with it. Historical theology is, notice two things, the study of the interpretation of Scripture, the study of how Scripture is interpreted, and the formulation of doctrine by the church of the past. In other words, how Christians in previous ages and eras have interpreted Scripture and made doctrinal formulations, or some might call it dogmatic assertions, from their interpretations of Scripture. We read this one as well, that defined it as a branch of theology concerned with the evolution, the changing, the evolving of theological doctrine, oh, and migration, the movements of theological doctrines, concepts, ideas, and with establishing their historical context. And I made a big deal of that last week. Like, you gotta understand the historical context. A lot of these statements that people make church history or historical theology, or you can take them a place that's really erroneous, and that's what Rome tends to do a lot, go back and try to prove their own point anachronistically, meaning interpreting it not in its own historical context, but in our historical context. particularly their historical context. So that's not a faithful study of historical theology. We also looked at this one. Historical theology embraces ecclesiastical, that's church history in its whole compass, or the history of the kingdom of God within and without the scripture, including all that belongs to the church, its antiquities, ceremonies, jurisprudence, i.e. judgments, And then, but this is what I was honing in on, especially the progress and development of Christian doctrine through the ages of controversy and formation. All right, so that was quick. But any questions on what it is? I think just about everybody was here. It's kind of a fancy legal word for judgments, like the realm or sphere of its judgments. So yeah, like if a church council condemned the heretic, that would be an adjudication by the church, an act of its jurisprudence. So judgments. Does that make sense? Okay. Any other questions? Good question. If you're thinking of them, somebody else probably is too. That's my philosophy. All right. All right, so we began, we made our way through that quickly. We got pretty far into this. Why should we study it? Two avenues for that. The first would be just defending its propriety, meaning is it proper? Does the Bible that is authoritative allow for such a study? And then secondly, examining its practical benefits, which I hope we'll get into today. Do you remember the number one reason why I said that I thought it was proper to study last week? Because the Holy Spirit's always at work in the church of Jesus Christ, right? He's not always at work laying down scripture through the church like he was through the apostles, right? He's not at work in a way that's revelatory and authoritative. by our observation, right? The canon of scripture is closed. There's no new revelation from God through his activity in the church, but he's nevertheless, always, I use the analogy of steering the ship, right? And we looked at a number of passages. We'll go to this one on that again. Remember, I'll ask the father and he'll give you another helper to be with you, y'all, forever, right? So the work of the Spirit's going beyond the apostles here, he's going to be with the church forever, called the Spirit of truth. Like his work particularly here has a doctrinal focus to it, right? Down in verse 23, Jesus said, if anyone loves me, he'll keep my word, so this isn't just a promise for the apostles. The Father will love him, we'll come to him, we'll make our home with him, so that's permanent. But the helper, the Holy Spirit, a few verses later, whom the Father will send you in my name, look, he will, look at the two things, teach you all things, bring to your remembrance all that I've said to you, right? So there's this correlation, this connection between the deposit of truth that Jesus laid down and gave to his apostles to continue laying down after the ascension and the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit. What is it? the Holy Spirit testifies to that deposit of truth that Jesus laid down, right? So he does that in the church collectively until Jesus returns. So again, it's not necessarily gonna manifest itself in infallible revelation and inspiration of scripture, but generally speaking, when we study the historical, theological, movements of the church, we see the Holy Spirit guiding her into truth, generally speaking, collectively, and guiding her away from error, generally speaking, collectively. Obviously, there are individuals and groups in that that fall off the cliff, but generally speaking, I gave you the example of the Trinity last week, it's the greatest probably example of that, but generally speaking, Christians, from the very inception have been Trinitarian. And there's been little groups that have pulled away from that and eventually ceased to exist, fall off into heresy and cease to exist. But if there's one doctrine or two doctrines that sets aside Christianity that she's known for universally, it's God is triune, Jesus is fully God, fully man. Right? And that's just one example. So, I mean, we just take for granted, like, you know, like what keeps Christianity at large from going the way of Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormonism? It's the Holy Spirit, right? It's the work of the Holy Spirit that he does individually and thus collectively in tethering the church of Jesus Christ to the word of God. And I asked you last week, do you think that's something we can learn from by observing? Yeah, right? We read this from, as Brooke said, Kenneth Cancer. I actually looked it up. It can be cancer with a slight Z or cancer like with an S pronounced, but it's not Cancer as we thought, but Appalachian Cancer. So if you weren't here, that was just a joke we had. What would you say? Cyancer, that's the way we said it. Cyancer. He says it's good, it's good. While it's not infallible, it must be acknowledged, this work of the Holy Spirit that we observe as God's guidance of all his people in accordance with his promise to the church of all ages. And then we read this important qualifier from J.I. Packer where he said, Scripture must have the last word on all human attempts to state its meaning. Tradition has a ministerial role rather than a magisterial role. You remember that and the distinctions between that? So A, this is the era of Rome, Eastern Orthodoxy, other groups. If you have the interpreter of Scripture, whose interpretation is, even collective interpretation, is infallible, then who's the real ultimate authority? The one who interprets Scripture. So if, as long as you assign infallible interpretation, or any kind of infallibility outside of the Word of God itself, you essentially supplant the authority of the Word of God with that as a greater authority. So this would be reaffirming our reformed concept of sola scriptura, right? Scripture is the ultimate, final, exclusive authority for matters of faith and dogma. So ministerial, royal, magisterial. Ministerial. Magisterial means you have authority. Ministerial means what? You're a servant. The church's authority, the church's function to Scripture is ministerial, not magisterial. What does the Roman Catholic Church call, refer to its authority as? magisterial authority. They literally refer to it collectively as the magisterium. See the difference? Big differences. It's what the Reformation was ultimately all about right there. Or it's what it all boils down to. Alright. In determining doctrine practice, the magisterial authority role belongs to Scripture and Scripture alone. We began looking at practical benefits to the study of historical theology, and I think we spent what time we had left on this. The number one, it helps us to distinguish between orthodoxy and heresy or heterodoxy. And what we were doing last time was just seeing how the word of God calls us to that over and over and over again, saying, What we're observing the church do through the study of historical theology is something that God has repletely and repeatedly called them to do. I think we looked at this one where Paul said, I left you in Macedonia to Timothy, or I left you at Ephesus for this purpose, to charge certain persons not to teach any heterodoxy. is the equivalent of the Greek word, heterodidascline, which is the two words heteros and didasca. I can't remember how you, teaching and different, right? That's where that word and concept comes from. And we talked about how different implies a standard. Of course, the standard would be that apostles teaching, the apostolic, the positive truth laid down. And I think, so when we saw that many places, and I think we got to here, 2 Timothy chapter three. So I'll slow back down on that unless somebody has questions. Okay. Paul, again, telling Timothy, last letter written to him, that we know of, all scripture is breathed out by God. That's that word for inspiration. It's profitable, look at the four things, scripture, for teaching, reproof, correction, training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." So the Scripture is sufficient for those things that some would say you have to have our magisterial authority and our authoritative interpretations for that to function. That's not what the Word of God says about itself, right? So He says, solemnly in the presence of God in Christ Jesus, the charge is the proclamation of the word, right? Be ready in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort, complete patience and teaching. So there's this commitment to the word, this holding fast to it, this firm proclamation of it, nothing else, it. And he says, for the time is coming when people will not endure, remember this was our sort of synonym for orthodoxy, sound or healthy teachings, implying that anything that deviates from what the scripture says is corrupt, sickly, cancerous, has a decaying effect on the listener. It says they won't endure sound teaching. They'll have itching ears. They'll accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions. And boy, is that ever true in every generation, right? That's human nature. And that's why you can make a lot more money by telling people Jesus loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life kind of messages. All right, look, they'll turn, look at the categories here. They'll turn people away from listening to the truth. They'll wander off into myths, into what is false. But he says, as for you, always be sober-minded. What does that mean? Not vacillating. So what do you just stand on? The Word of God. So I just want you to see, like we finished with last week, this message is all through the New Testament. Hold fast to the Word of God. Be diligent to compare and contrast every teaching that you hear with the Word of God. And the ones that don't align with the Word of God, reject them. The ones that do affirm them, right? That's kind of the theme we've been seeing. Let's see. Paul's charge to Timothy, for overseers of the church in particular, he says, as God's stewards, so the managers of God's house, gotta be above reproach. He lists out a lot of ways for that, but then concludes with this. He must, look at the language, hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught. Taught by whom? The apostles, right? Is that not up there? Sorry, thank you. As taught so that they may be able to give instruction, and there's our synonym for orthodoxy, healthy doctrine, sound doctrine, and to rebuke those who contradict it, right? So what's the vocational work of the overseer? cling tenaciously to the word of God, to not let it go, the word that the apostles laid down, and in so doing, identify what's false, warn, reject, and rebuke, identify what's true, uphold, affirm, and propagate, right? It's everywhere. Look at the description here of those who contradicted. There are many who are insubordinate. What does that mean? They don't submit to authority. Brooks says, ask a teacher what that means. I probably learned that from writing assignments from teachers. Empty talkers, right? There's no substance to their message, just appeals to men's carnality and desires. Deceivers, and especially the Jews. No, those are the circumcision party. the Jews, but when you say it like the other way, it sounds anti-Semitic. The Judaizers would be the context here. Those who were going into Christian churches trying to tell people, hey, you got to be circumcised, and hey, you got to keep the Jewish feasts, and hey, you got to go to the temple. Just so you know, that's not really saying all Jews are bad there. But look, this is the point. They must be silenced. That doesn't sound like... Christianity in 2025, doesn't it? But Paul tied us here to charge the overshoes. Hey, you gotta silence these people. You gotta put down this heresy. You gotta stop it from spreading in the church. See, and a lot of what we observe in our study of historical theology is people doing that collectively. And I think we can benefit a lot from it. It says, rebuke them sharply. Why? to show off how smart you are? No, so they can be sound in the faith, healthy in the faith, so that they wouldn't devote themselves to Jewish myths and the commands of people, not God, who turn away from the truth. Think about those warnings that Jesus said to the Pharisees, those rebukes where you uphold the commandments of men at the expense of the rejection of the commandments of God, right? It's the same sort of dichotomy here. And he says, as for you, look, you teach, notice again the alignment, the judging based on the standard of Scripture, the adjudication, right? You teach what lines up, what accords with healthy doctrine. How are we going to know that? How it feels? How it aligns with the Word of God, right? This right here, hold firm to the trustworthy word. That's taught, right? That's taught through the apostolic delegation. So, is this an optional discipline for the church? No. Is it optional to take the stance that so many in our day have of, we're just, you know, collectively as a church, we're just not gonna, you know, like weigh in on these controversial matters. We're just gonna get along with everybody. I mean, guys, correct your opponents with gentleness. He says that in something I skipped over in the same book of Titus, but you gotta correct, right? Especially, especially when those false teachings are corrupting the church or corrupting saints, right? Or when they're having the propensity to. Here we go. More warnings. Paul, 1 Timothy 6, teach and urge these things. Here's our words. Heterodoxy. If anyone teaches a different doctrine, I'm reluctant to say heresy. because heresy kind of historically defined as soul damning, and not every different doctrine will damn your soul, right? I mean, like you could say we should keep the Saturday Sabbath, and that would be hetero-todoscalane, a different teaching than the church has, you know, upheld mainstream for 2,000 years, but it wouldn't be a soul damning error, right? But if you say Jesus isn't God, There's no path to salvation in that, right? That's heresy. See the difference? That's why I'm reluctant and I'll be reluctant to throw around that word during this study. So if you hear me say heresy, like either I'm just slipping or I'm saying this is a position that is incompatible with any form of Christianity. It cannot exist. within the sphere of acceptable Christian differences. Does that make sense? The differences, okay. Anywho, if anyone teaches different doctrine, does not agree with the, again, sound words, if anyone teaches heterodoxy, doesn't agree with the orthodoxy of our Lord Jesus Christ, notice he's the ultimate author and source of that New Testament deposit of truth. and the teaching that accords with godliness. So there's an ethical aspect to the truth of scripture that I'm sure we'll focus on a lot throughout the course of this study, because, boy, it makes a big deal. There's a big correlation oftentimes with truth claims people make, and their proven collective ethic, the proven collective ethic and morality of their movement. And it says so much. Again, all part of this study. Let's see. We'll skip to Jude 3. Remember where Jude says, I was eager to write to you about our common salvation. But I found it necessary to write to you appealing to you to contend. for the faith, so there's error that's crept in, right? If you know Jude, it's a big correction of error and a big warning against false teachers, right? Stern and sober warning. But he says, here's the appeal, contend for the faith, look at it, that was once for all delivered to the saints. Definite article, the faith, so that's not talking about subjective faith, like belief in the scripture, that's talking about what? the Christian faith, he says it was delivered, probably aristence there, I'm not sure, I'd have to look it up. Based on the English, it looks that way. So that's something that's happened, it's completed, delivered once for all. So what does that say about those who would say we have ongoing revelatory doctrinal authority? It's wrong. We don't have to overcomplicate this. It's wrong. He warns, certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation. Ungodly people. Notice again, ethics. Notice the correlation of bad ethics, immorality, and heterodosculine, unsound doctrine. They're ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality, and look, deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ. Why is false teaching a de facto denial of Christ as Lord and Master of the Church? because he's the one who laid down that deposit of truth. He said, this is the way. They say, there's another way, right? That's denying his lordship. Romans 16, 17. These aren't exhaustive. I think this is the last one on this, but I just want you, like, if you think about this and think at the several we looked at last week, like how often do the New Testament writers say, hey, contend for the faith, watch out for false teaching, right? Appeal to them to pursue doctrinal purity. It's very serious. I appeal to you brothers to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles. Again, there's the ethic, sectarianism, those who divide the church. But notice, look, these things, contrary to the doctrine, the teachings that you've been taught, he says, avoid them for such persons don't serve our Lord Jesus Christ, right? So heterodoxy, right, false teachings, teachings that don't align with the word of God, they divide the church. And what does that tell you if people unite around false teachings? They're not the church, right? It's a good necessary inference. Any event, what I'm wanting us to see is just, oh, don't get to that too soon. We've got this mandate from the word of God, from the spirit of God to mark and avoid false teachers, to mark and avoid false teachings, right? How does historical theology, studying historical theology help us to do that? We can see how this has been done in the past, right? Guys, what's that doing? It's helping us to discern the collective witness of the Holy Spirit on these major doctrinal matters. I say collective, right? Because what? There's strength in numbers. The individual people can fall off, but in a sense, there's this large-scale guiding of the ship keeping her from being utterly corrupted by falsehood. There are periods when that got very scary. But she always, the Holy Spirit always brings her back. And when he does, boy, she usually shines too. So yeah, here's the quote. This is huge. This is a huge, I learned this in a church history class. This was my professor, Sam Waldron. You may know him or know of him. He has a very annoying voice, but he's brilliant. He's brilliant. I think he coined this phrase. I've not heard it anywhere else. Heresy is the progeny of novelty. What in the world does that mean? That's what I thought first time I heard it. What's progeny? It's like, yeah, descendants, I think you said, the offspring, something like that. In other words, it's something that's a progenitor, right, is one who produces progeny. So what's novelty? Something new. We know what heresy is, we already talked about that. So how is it that heresy is the offspring of new things? because the Word of God ain't new and the Spirit of God ain't new. Right? And if we've had the same Word of God for 2,000 years and the same Spirit of God stirring the ship for 2,000 years, then if somebody like a Joseph Smith or a Ellen G. White or a... Can't think of the Jehovah's Witness dude's name. Charles Taze Russell comes up and says, hey, the church has had this core doctrine wrong for all these years. Now the truth has come out. Right? No, right? That's heresy is the progeny of novelty. The thirst for something new is very, very dangerous. For new doctrines and new revelations and new ideas from God. Now, I have to qualify that, okay? Because dogma, which is the church's doctrinal formulations of the scripture, that develops. progressively over time. In other words, go to the third century and find someone teaching on covenant theology. Not really going to happen. Go to the seventh century and find someone talking about covenant children, which that's erroneous, but that ain't going to happen. Why? Because that was, you know, that came Many, many years later, right? So as the church has to confront these, this is one of the most beautiful things about this study. And we're right now done with this section. Here's how most of these beautiful, orthodox formulations happen. It's as the church collectively is confronting error and speaking to it and contending with it. We talked about that last time. Where did the formula, one God eternally existing in three persons, Father, Son, Holy Spirit come from? Co-equal and co-eternal. Yeah, I mean, ultimately it was ratified at Nicaea, right? But it was the church dealing with these false teachers for 200 years before that that said, Jesus isn't fully God, or God only manifested Himself as Jesus. He wasn't co-equal with God. Those things force the church to go to Scripture and say, no, this is what the Scripture teaches about that. And from that we get these great historic creedal formulations about Christian truth and doctrine that were benefited from. So there is a sense in which there's nothing new under the sun by way of scripture and revelation, but our collective understanding certainly progresses. But here's how it starts, and this is the thing where people get backwards. If you look at the study of church history, and maybe I just don't even need to say all this right now, It starts with the biggest, most foundational things and then narrows and focus as it goes along. And doesn't that make sense? It starts with what's the word of God. Once that's recognized, not created, recognized, affirmed for what it is collectively, you go on to things like what's the nature of God. Then in the fifth and sixth centuries, what's the nature, person, and work of Jesus, right? And then eventually we come to the big debates on justification, right? What's our tendency? We start at eschatology and work our way backwards. That's what I did, right? That's just not healthy, right? You have to know the foundational things to understand the minutia, right? And we see that's the way the spirit of God is stirred. Did I confuse everybody with all that? Because we'll see that in our study. So this is what historical theology is. It's just seeing the collective Christian effort Just affirm what's true, denounce what's false. I think it's gonna be beneficial to us. We'll stop with this quote. Sorry, few minutes over here. I don't hear the hordes out there yet. This is from that book, the green book, Greg Allison. He says, historical theology helps the church recognize sound doctrine and distinguish it from false doctrine because generally speaking, quote, The faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by everyone, that is what the church has historically believed and held as its doctrine, corresponds to orthodoxy. And what has been traditionally rejected by the church corresponds to heresy. Generally speaking, he's saying. Guys, think, sorry, think about this. Think about what it says about your hubris for you to sit down with your Bible And for you to say, every orthodox Christian theologian for 2,000 years has been wrong about, they've all agreed on this subject, that had the Spirit of God and were just as smart as me, and had the same Spirit of God, and they've all agreed on this, but I'm saying they're wrong. I mean, what level of hubris is that? You see what I'm saying? Yeah. So like, there's a lot of safeguards, there's a lot of benefits, there's a lot of humility that the study of historical theology will produce, as long as we judge even the creeds and councils ultimately by the word of God, right? Can creeds and councils err? Yeah, they can, and they do. All right, finally, he says, a study of historical theology that rehearses the development of doctrine helps churches today identify and embrace orthodoxy and to reject and correct heresy. So that's what we're gonna see a lot of. And we'll stop there. Good stopping point. Any questions? Criticisms? Critiques? Okay.