Dr. Smith put Calvin to the effect that one can only continue to hold to sola scriptura as one continues to hold to the doctrine of the sovereignty of God. Could he give us some examples how sola scriptura is being compromised among the Arminian evangelical churches? I left a question up here so you can see it. I don't know that I can come up with anything right off the top of my head. Does anybody else have an idea? I'm sorry, I just... haven't thought of in those terms, so I don't have anything in particular except, of course, Arminianism in general would be saying that God is not sovereign and therefore you can't count on him as necessarily involved in everything. Some of you have heard me cite the case, for example, of a Methodist minister after a rather tragic death of a young person in the church saying, well, we know one thing, God didn't have anything to do with it. And you see, at that point, they can't look to Scripture for any comfort. If God didn't have anything to do with it, then the Word of God doesn't have anything to say about it. Whereas, if we would see, we would look at it and say, well, we know that it was in God's hands. I was listening to a program coming down this morning to the effect that this woman who had lost her husband, the lady who's teaching at Dallas Seminary, as I gathered, Swindoll's program, and he was asking her what had comforted her most. She came to the conclusion, the sovereignty of God and the loss of her husband. That was the comforting thing to her. And of course, then if she has the sovereignty of God, she can go to his word and receive that comfort that his word would teach. But to dismiss the sovereignty of God and say, well, God didn't have anything to do with that, is itself just, in a sense, dismissing scripture, too, all that would go with it. Perhaps you have other ideas that would go along. One of the things that I point out in medieval church history, and I happen to love the Middle Ages, is that with respect to soteriology, I believe that we see a very unfortunate parallel with Arminianism. I believe that the altar call system has created a works religion. And because of that, people are on a treadmill of trying to earn God's favor. This came home quite in a concrete manner. Don't put that in that box. Bring it here. Or give it to someone else if you're shy. All these men have had butter Buttermilk powder biscuits, huh? But anyway, in a Bible study in a certain Armenian church, the ladies were unwilling to say that they were righteous. They could not say, as Christians, that they were righteous, because they didn't understand justification. And that's built into the altar call, which is then denies the sufficiency of Scripture, which is why we believe here that the church will fall back into the arms of Rome. will have much more of evangelicals and Catholics together because evangelical Christianity has lost, through its Arminianism, justification by faith alone, and that would tie in directly to this matter. Okay, I thought somebody would ask this. Dr. Johnson, how close is Knox's view of prophecy, or his own prophecy, to Wayne Grudem's idea on non-authoritative continuing special revelation? The problem with trying to examine this issue is Knox never claims any sort of vision or dream or he doesn't talk about the mode by which this happens. He just sort of asserts it. It seems to me that Knox promotes it as a means to strengthen the resolve of the forces of the church in Scotland. He is their leader. He's convinced he is God's appointed leader. And he asserts his own authority through the assertion of special insight and power. You'll find in his history of reformation in Scotland him making all sorts of predictions. Now, the issue is not whether they came true or not. The issue is that he makes them and he's quite fond of going back and saying to the people, did not I thus say in the company of many witnesses, that such and such and people, maybe they're shrugging their shoulders, we don't know. But I think he uses it almost as a tool to strengthen his own leadership. at a crucial point in the history of the Scottish Church. I'm not sure that that addresses Wayne Gruden's statement though because we are hearing from certain branches of reformed theologians, that Scottish view does lay a foundation for, we ought to be allowing in our, that the Westminster cannot be interpreted as saying no extraordinary revelation when it says that. There's a whole school up there in Pittsburgh. Knox, I believe it's at the, it's after the August 1560 Reformation Parliament, where the Scots Confession of Faith is presented. And they established this structure where they have superintendents. Now there's a great deal of controversy about that. What were these superintendents? Was Knox a sort of closet bishop? Was he promoting an Anglican or Episcopal form of government with these superintendents? I don't think that's what's going on there, but when he commissions these people to go out, he refuses to lay hands on them because he doesn't want to send a signal that there's some sort of power that is being passed on. And he explicitly says that revelation has ceased. So the problem with Knox is that you can find him in all sorts of contradictions. And I don't know that there's a clear way to resolve this. Consistency, Ben Johnson says, is the hobgoblin on the small minds. And he's just all over the map on this issue. But I think we should recognize that he has these tendencies, and I think it goes back to his self-image as a prophetic tool. While the inspiration and authority of Scripture are foundational to its efficiency, do you believe that in the Reformed denomination, such as the PCA, a crucial issue is the lack of confidence in the perspicuity of Scripture? In other words, Men may agree that scripture is objectively inspired, but then come back and say it isn't clear on women preaching, worship, etc. I think that's certainly true. It may well be that they are saying it's not clear, or as I was suggesting earlier in the paper, that they're saying is not detailed enough, doesn't tell us specifically what preaching is or what women may do in the pulpit and so forth, so that it's that type of thing. There is that affirmation. I think by and large, generally in the PCA, virtually all ministers would say, oh yes, scripture is totally sufficient. It's our rule of faith and practice. But then when they get into their actual application of it, There's that lack of understanding of how this is to be applied. As I've been studying theological education over my adult life, one of the things I have come to is that one of the major problems is not that we don't all, in all the different Reformed seminaries, teach a pretty fair Reformed theology, but we do fail in teaching how do you apply it. Dr. Piper may have been at Reformed Seminary at the time that various people from the Reformed Baptist came in about evangelism and so forth. And it's there, I mean, we had to hear these men were coming and telling us how to do evangelism in a sense we were not, didn't understand how to do it. And I think they opened our eyes in the practice of Reformed evangelism. Same would be true with worship. You ask the average minister. In fact, one of the things that's striking to me, ministers will say, where did you ever get this regulative principle of worship? Well, you just need to start reading the Confession. It's found in the end of the second chapter when it talks about the nature of God and that God is the one who can tell us how we are to serve and to worship him. It's found in the treatment of the second commandment in both of the catechisms. It's found in that whole chapter on worship. It's found three or four different times in the Westminster Confession. It wasn't just an incidental added to it. It's part of the wharf and woof of that confession. It's part of the whole idea of the sufficiency of Scripture. I think Dale is right. Regulative principles, sufficiency of Scripture, these things just go together. They, in a sense, talk about the same thing. And yet, so many men will say, well, I don't understand that, and I've never heard that. And the seminaries are failing to teach practice in worship. practice in evangelism, and that we as ministers all too often fail to do it right, may have an intellectual understanding, but we don't know how to apply it. And I think that's one of our great weaknesses. Perhaps our historians would want to comment, didn't the Puritans understand? Isn't that one of the things that that Puritan movement had? They not only had the faith, but they also had understood how to apply it and how to practice it. I'll take this one first because I can answer it. When Luther had to flee for his life from the Roman trials, who sheltered him? Luther was really dependent upon Frederick the Elector of Saxony which was a part of the Holy Roman Empire and it was Frederick who founded and built the University of Wittenberg and hired Luther and Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, promised Luther at Frederick's insistence that Luther would be granted safe conduct at Worms, regardless of what happened. And true to his word, he was allowed to leave. Now on his way back to Worms, as you may or may not know, Luther was kidnapped. And he was taken into what used to be East Germany and placed in a castle there in Wartburg and for the next nine months translated the German New Testament. And Frederick, the elector of Saxony, arranged for his kidnapping, but he did not know where Luther was taken, so he could say in a straight face to Charles V, I don't know where Luther is. So he's rather devious. I'll take a shot at this second one. I don't know if I can shed much light on it. Has the Roman Church made any significant alteration in its view of scripture in recent years such as would justify those who support evangelicals and Catholics together in the 21st century? I think most of the movement has been on the part of liberal Protestant churches. who want to get closer to Rome than vice versa. And I think the biggest issue preventing a union is the issue of celibacy. It seems to me that's the biggest obstacle. Certainly Rome's view of justification has not changed. In Vatican II, of course, there is a homily now, and the mass is in English, if you're an English-speaking country. It's no longer in Latin. But in terms of alteration of its view of scripture, I don't think there's been any alteration there. I think that the movement is large and not just Protestant. It's liberal Protestantism that's driven by an ecumenicism that demands that we have union at whatever cost. Virtually, it's almost an ecumenium. You can speak of it that way. Because they're virtually saying, we've got to have unity. This is the only way we can deal with the world and so forth. And they don't care what they're giving up. Many of them don't understand what they're giving up, this recent Lutheran churches and their action in Germany. Was it at Augsburg that this took place recently, where the Catholic and the Lutherans? I believe it was at Augsburg. But immediately I heard that the Missouri Senate Lutheran says, that's not us. We're not doing it. And Wisconsin Senate, I'm sure, would have said, no, that's not us. We're not doing it. But it's the liberal Lutheran churches that are falling into that, and liberal Presbyterians will do it, and the World Council of Churches as well. Now I have an interesting one. What is the relationship between the end of special revelation to his people and a minister's sense of call? I don't think that any of us have in our sense of calling a special revelation. I think the Lord may lay things upon us, and this is not at all those of us who would hold that the cessation of the special revelation doesn't mean that we say that the Holy Spirit may not well guide us and direct us by circumstances, by various things that come into our lives and so forth, that we may sense a special sense of call due to those various circumstances. I've always tried to maintain when men come and sometimes talk about whether they should come to seminary and whether they're called to the ministry, I say, first of all, you need to be a Christian. Do you know Jesus as your Savior? Don't believe God is calling men who are not Christians. Although in the history of the church, you look at people like Abraham Kuyper, who seems not to have been a converted man as he first entered into the ministry, was converted due to the prayers and the ministry of a woman in his congregation to him. and that you do see God may, in a sense, overrule the ways of sinful men, but ordinarily this would be the case. You must know Jesus as your Savior. And then the second thing I think a man must have is an absolute commitment to Scripture, even if his faculty begin to tell him you can't trust the Bible, that you be willing to trust the Bible regardless of what the faculty is saying to you. That sort of a commitment. Again, a man, ministry of the word, that's what he's going to be ministering. Why enter into it if you don't believe it? And then the third thing I would point out is that sense of, the sense of call that we may have where Paul says, woe to me if I preach not the gospel. There was a sense in which he had that urgency upon him. I can illustrate from my younger brothers entering into the ministry. first tried to serve the Lord through, he went up and worked at Montreat College, for example, for those of you who are not aware of Montreat College, Presbyterian Church U.S. at that time, Presbyterian Church College. He thought he was going to be able to serve the Church and serve the Lord doing administrative work, and that didn't satisfy him. And then they thought about possibly a call to the mission field, and the World Mission Board said to him, well, you need to go to seminary and get some work there. And so he went to Columbia Seminary, and they had only a one-year program required for him to go be a candidate as a missionary. And he said, well, why don't I just go ahead and finish it? And he finished the program, and by that time, The mission board was not interested in him for one reason or another, and then he went on into the ministry and has been a very successful pastor. At the end of his first pastorate, about 14 years, one of the things they said about him, and I don't think I could have it said about me, says, you are a soul winner. He lived out in the country. People would come walking down that road. He'd go out and meet them, talk to them, walk along with them, and always introduce the Lord to them. He's been a soul winner. That's the drive that he has. And he wasn't satisfied. He tried other avenues of service. He wasn't satisfied. But I don't think he would claim that he had a special revelation, nor would I claim to have a special revelation, but rather in the sense that burden that the Holy Spirit placed upon me, that's the guidance of the Spirit. I think we don't discount the guidance of the Spirit when we say we don't have special revelation. But there are two different things. Special revelation would be actually receiving a content revelation from God, whereas we may have this sense, I ought to be doing this. We begin to apply the word to ourselves and we can't do anything else. And in that sense, the Spirit guides us in that way. The only infallible rule of faith and practice, though, is the Bible itself. This is a very good question. It involves the role of the church in the interpretation of scripture and the proper use of tradition. I think we'd all recognize that one of the biggest problems in a church today is what our critics call Protestantism's Achilles' heel. That is, every man his own Bible interpreter. And in Bible studies, we find 15 people in a circle, and everyone goes around and says, well, this is what this verse means to me. And we have 15 different meanings of a verse. And of course, that's complete nonsense. One of the things we should do is ensure that there is an elder's presence in the Bible studies. That needs to happen so that there is some safeguard, so that heresy doesn't spring out of these well-intentioned Bible studies. The other part of this question was the role of tradition. We pretty much condemn tradition. but doesn't have its place, and of course it does. In the curriculum here, we require X number of hours of church history, and that is tradition. It's important that we understand it and see how God has used the foibles and follies, successes and failures of God's people in the past, but it's not authoritative. That's a very important question. You guys want to tackle that? There's a lot more to be said, I'm sure. I couldn't read this, but I think that's what it said. I have the gift of interpretation. I think it is important to keep in mind as we study scripture exactly what Dr. Johnson said and when you put together a curriculum, we do not, we cannot escape our own presuppositions, our own bias and prejudice when we come to scripture. We're products of a specific culture and subculture and what we get in church history and historical theology is at least some objective platform to some degree that we can step outside and look back at our own exegesis, which is why we believe that historical theology and church history is so vitally important. We want to do our systematics exegetically, but not in a vacuum. We don't live, thankfully, as much as I'm a Luddite, I'm glad I don't live in the first few centuries of the church. You know they had to wrestle with so many things that we've inherited this rich inheritance of the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed, and our Christology and our Trinitarian theology has been worked out by the Spirit leading the Church in her grasp of Scripture. And so, it's not that it's on a level with Scripture, but we're not the arrogant moderns, to borrow David Hall's title of his book. We live in God's providence in a great time in Church history, and thus we use what the church has thought about these things to help us clarify our own thinking and to guard ourselves. I would just add one word, we stand on the shoulders of those who've gone before us and particularly part of our good part of our tradition would be our confessions. And we believe in being a confessional church. Not only do we believe the Bible is God's word, but this is what we believe the Bible teaches. And in the Westminster Standards, we have such an elaborate statement of what we believe the Bible teaches on so many aspects of Christian doctrine. It's a unified system. And so that idea of tradition is certainly part of our thinking as well, and it has its valid place. But again, I think the only rule that is the ultimate rule of faith and practice is the Bible. And we must always maintain that. Now, a question, if the scriptures are sufficient and God can't lie, why is there such a controversy over the six-day creation? God cannot lie, he said it, he did it in six days and wrote it twice. I just saw David Coffin slip out of here. David slipped out so he didn't want to hear the answer to this one. It's been the controversy within our creation committee of the PCA General Assembly that some of us believe the words mean certain things. The word day, for example, means certain things, and it's obvious that it means that, and that we ought to stand there. And others say they're not quite so certain that it means this, and they have other views. They actually have four views that we are saying, and sad to say our committee has come down to the position we are so much in disagreement we can't come in with any report other than to report the four views that we have. We are giving the history of it. I think some of that's educational and useful, and you'll get a pretty good description of each of the four views. And then we were allowed also to each give our advice to the assembly, although the assembly, when they appointed us, said that we would give non-binding advice. That was the most we would do. Well, we're not even going to give the advice, but we're going to write it down. In other words, I'm writing down and have written down for the calendar day view that we say that let's declare that the Westminster Divines intended it to be six calendar days. Let's say any other view is an exception, and let's let presbyteries or sessions accept a man or not accept him on the basis of their own judgment about where he stands. But in other words, leave it to the lower courts And we make that declaration. Well, the committee wasn't willing to do it. And the other statement is, the other kind of advice, we have four views, let's say all four of those are acceptable as proper interpretations of Westminster Assembly. That means that Westminster Assembly didn't say anything about creation, virtually. The space of six days doesn't mean anything. And they're saying, let's let all four views be acceptable by the church. And that's really, in a sense, frightening that anybody would propose that, it seems to me. And yet, a pretty good theologian proposed it in the committee. I won't name any names, but he's a pretty solid fellow. At least he was well-trained. He had a certain man as his professor at Reform Seminary. Comment on the Westminster's perspectivalism and its effect on... I took out Westminster just to talk about frame and point. Oh, perspectivalism. Yeah, I'm not sure that I have... I think that the danger of perspectivalism, as I've seen it and worked through a little bit of Frame's material, is that he's, in a sense, getting away from any really final objective interpretation. That this is the particular perspective that this was written from. And that what he's going to lead to, and what that's going to lead to, is no longer having a firm statement of doctrine that we absolutely believe this is what it says. It's the same sort of thing that we've had in this creation committee. You can interpret the word day in various ways. And since that's its possibility, then which perspective are you coming from? And in a sense, if that's your perspective, that's okay. And I think that's a very dangerous trend that you see in Frame. You want to make further comment on that? Yes, sir. You worked with him. Also, for the sake of people understanding the question, perspectivalism is a theory of knowing that John Frame, Bernd Feuthris, and Richard Pratt have developed. And if you picture in your mind a perfect triangle, this is the diagram they will use, they say that In your knowing anything, there are three perspectives that you must realize are at work. There's the normative, there is the existential, which is who you are, and there's the situational, that in which you find yourself. Now, we recognize there's a degree of truth, I just said that in another way, there's a degree of truth in that, whether you're doing math or science or history or whatever, You bring who you are to the equation and you work in a certain situation with others. The problem is when you apply that to any knowing, but particularly when you start applying it to doing theology, is that although they assert that the scriptural is normative, that the very diagram itself betrays that because it's not a foundation that's normative with two pillars or with two adjuncts, but it's an equal tri-sided diagram. And so the problem is that you can say the Bible is normative, but once you bring in your perspective and the situation into the equation, even if you come to sound conclusions you cannot come down sometimes hard on the conclusions of other people. We've seen it used, for example, to defend some very atrocious approaches to sanctification and counseling, for example, that was being used in a certain church, and actually the persons here that wrote a letter to the church and this person was told, well, you know, we have to understand the situation in which they've said these things and written these things and done these things. There is an incipient relativism in the system. I believe you'll see it in the doctrine of the knowledge of God. I believe you see it in worship and spirit and truth. I heard one of the proponents of Kriyoprospektiv proper spectaculism given, addressed at ETS back in Philadelphia about four or five years ago, on interpreting the Bible. And he applied this system to interpreting the scripture. And the result would simply be origin revisited, pure subjectivism, almost allegory would be better. One of the examples was there was a young man in your church and he was a new Christian, and he came to you and said, I've been convicted, I should move out of living with my girlfriend. I've just read that Caesar kicked Aquila and Priscilla out of Rome, and God told me through that. And this was defended as spiritual interpretation of the text. So I believe that's where it comes. I believe that's why you'll find in that book, a primitive series, for example, the rehabilitation of origin in that series, Has the Church Read the Bible Wrong? Is that the right title? as the church misread the Bible, something like that. And I believe that's what is at work there. So it's something that needs to be a lot more interaction about. And I think you see in Richard Pratt's book, was it that God Tells Stories or something like that, that same sort of getting away from an objective standard, just sort of tell the story and then you make your own interpretation pretty much. I think the relativism is definitely there. The other question I had is, how central is the univocal meaning of Scripture to the doctrine of sufficiency and clarity of Scripture? One of the things I, as I was getting towards the end of my lecture, I did not read that particular material, but the Westminster Standards do say that the meaning of Scripture is not manifold, but one. And I think that's one of the things that is often overlooked. And in a sense, a lot of people will say, well, it may mean this, or it may mean this, and you can't be sure. Such thing as the days of creation, the length of those days, what does the word day mean? Scripture surely has one meaning. And you can't just say four different things are equally valid. One meaning, it may not be one of the four that we're setting forth, but one meaning is what the passage meant. The other thing that I was going to say is the matter of baptism, for example, the modes of baptism. I don't think the scripture has two or three different modes and you can take your choice, but rather it has one meaning. You have to study it. to understand it. Now, if maybe this question, if it means to get into the Vantill-Clark controversy, I don't know whether you have time to get into that very much. I think that would be next year's discussion. There was one other question here, and let's see if this is correct. Is quarter till, is it correct? All right. Dr. Smith, Dr. Piper, or Dr. Johnson, and or, in what sense does Christ speak when the lawfully ordained teaching elder preaches? Does Christ speak fallibly? How do we understand this authority in light of our denial of continuing revelation? Since I'm being quoted here, we're not afraid to call names around here as you've noted, or no, to refer to names, we don't call names. I believe that the scriptures teach, when the lawfully ordained man preaches the scriptures, that Christ does speak. That was Reformation theology, Calvin the Second Aldetic Confession, straight through the history of Reformed doctrine of preaching. What that is, I believe what is being said in that is, is that there is an authority that's involved in preaching. That it's the shepherd, the king, the prophet, priest, and king who speaks and he uses then preaching as his primary means of grace as he speaks. The practical handle I give to congregations is that you're not determining has he actually did this passage of scripture exactly the best way or the way your favorite commentator does or the way you would, but has he preached what we accept as the truth of God And again, here we get back to the advantage of having a confession. We do have a shorthand summary of what we believe the truth of God is. And so, I might not open up the text in the way that you would, but if I've preached biblical truth from that text, then you're responsible to submit to the authority of that sermon as the authority of Christ. And, but furthermore, the positive promise that's there is that Christ then works most powerfully through preaching, as the larger catechism says, more than any other of the means of grace. But that's not an infallibility. It doesn't put preaching, this is not a Bardian thing that in preaching a flawed word becomes the word of God. No, the Bible is the infallible and errant word of God. and it is that in preaching, but that God primarily uses preaching to be the way that he communicates the truth of the Bible's message. in Anderson's home, your daughter arrived. And one of the things we did that Sunday afternoon, we listened to a tape by Dr. Joseph Piper. And you opened that sermon, Joey, with a prayer to the effect that the Lord Jesus, that he would preach through you. That's essentially what you did. And I thought that was such an effective way to think about preaching. That that's what we are. We who are preachers ought to be praying. that the Lord Jesus preaches through us, that He speaks when we have preached the message. And this is why it's so urgent that we preach the truth and study our sermons and work on them, not just get up and ad-lib off the cuff and so forth. But I felt that, to me, it opened my eyes afresh. It's out of that Romans 10 passage that it speaks about how can they believe they haven't heard Him? It isn't just the Scripture. But it's Him, it's the Lord Jesus that they're to hear. That's right, and then we preach with passion, and that's what we're missing in our Reformed churches today, but that's a commercial. This concludes the first question and answer session. Okay, I'm going to start with Dr. Grant, and probably give him about two to one, since he won't be here for any other of the question periods, and Dr. Knight will. But that might be the only question you have, George, I don't know. Read it and go at it. Did the church make a mistake in adopting the institution called Sunday School? Yes. Actually, the institution of Sunday School as we currently have it did not originate from one single source as is commonly thought. It had innumerable strains. One of those strains was utilized in the Scottish Church. in a way that is quite alien from the purposes that we currently use Sunday School. If you make a differentiation between catechizing, discipling, and the kind of moralizing that currently goes on in Sunday School, I think you could make a very strong case for that additional Sunday instruction. Also, in the Scottish tradition, oftentimes children, particularly poor children, were given the opportunity in Sunday schools to receive godly instruction, teaching them not only the Word of God, but how to read utilizing the Word of God. And in those kinds of contexts, I think that additional Sunday instruction is quite apropos. But if we are talking about kind of the modern evangelical moralizing bibble babble that passes for Sunday school, then I do think that we're standing on shaky ground, thin ice, and every other metaphor of disaster that we can imagine. Dr. Knight, why is it that the scripture permits women praying and prophesying in the church? It seems that teaching would creep more into prayer than asked questions. I think that you've answered half of that, so I guess the prayer is just corporate praying. But in connection with that, would you address one of the emails that we had, and that is, if she could be a passive recipient of revelation, why may she not read scripture in the public worship service? Or maybe she may. According to you. I don't know why the scripture presents women praying and prophesying, just know that it does. And I bow my head and heart to whatever my sovereign King and Lord tells should happen, and gladly rejoice in what He does in scattering His gifts among His people. I don't mean to be simply acting pious in a bad sense in the responding, but to tell you that I don't know all the answers, I just want to obey what the Lord tells us to do. I don't know whether teaching would creep more into prayer than asking questions. It might well do. I think the question means, wouldn't more teaching come from prayer than from asking questions? Well, people are taught how they should pray. They won't try to teach while they're praying. I have heard a couple of people try to do that, and maybe I'm guilty a time or two. But I think we should ask God humbly for his glory to be manifested, his will to come. And if that seems like teaching what he taught us in the Lord's Prayer, I suppose that's all right. But we really are asking for him to do that. Then the question that was tagged on here. There it is in written form. Who wrote it up? I didn't. I'm just trying to discover. It looks like a quick tear out of something. If reading the word is today's prophesying, well, I would disagree with the premise, but we'll get back to that in a minute. May a woman read the scriptures in public worship? I don't think reading the Word is today's prophesying. I think all those other ways of revealing God's will, to badly paraphrase a statement from our Confession of Faith, have now ceased. So when you read the passages dealing with praying and prophesying, I think you can say those applied to the original recipients Because in God's overarching providential control, you see already in the New Testament the works being diminished. So you don't read again about handkerchiefs being put on someone or shadows healing, as you did earlier on. You see it already being diminished even in the scriptures themselves. then I think we can say that reading the Word is not today's, modern day's, prophesy. Reading the Word is reading the Word. It seems to me the answer to reading the Word is already answered in our confessional documents, who should lead in worship and who should pray and so forth. Implication's already there if it's not spelled out directly. I've told my brothers that I concur with the confessional documents, teaching what the scriptures say, and I don't mean to deny that in this moment by not concurring. I think we have really two ways in which the scripture may be read in a gathering of God's people. One way, you told me there weren't going to be any questions at all. I'm trying to get this one question answered, you're giving me another one. Seems to me that if we have someone leading in the worship, as exercising authority, giving the prayer in which all people join in, reading the word in which all are listening, That should clearly be done by the minister or an elder or someone who's recognized to be an authority and not by a woman because she'd be exercised authority. However, if we're gathering together to worship the Lord in which we're asking the people of God to all join in prayer, whether they be men or women or children, and also saying that they may share in their time with us, And I think we do not preclude from women that which we extend to everyone. And therefore, in a gathering for prayer, a woman could say, this passage has been a great blessing in my heart and life this week. But in the corporate gathering, I think she should not lead in the worship while reading Scripture. And then another question here is, Why may not a woman lead in corporate prayer during worship based on 1 Corinthians 11.5? Well, I think I've answered that because it would be leading in worship, and there are two things prohibited. She should not teach a man. She should not exercise authority over him. George, come on back. Another George. But again, there's a Ford Aristar. 775 GBE South Carolina, silver and gray. It's parked across the street. We have a driveway we're trying to protect over there. It doesn't look like a driveway, but it is. You'll see the tracks across the grass. So if you're parked there, please move your vehicle so our neighbors won't be upset with us. The, there are two related questions here. The first is, is it not insane to put our children in the government schools? Yes. And I'm not being humorous in just simply saying yes. I think that this same general thing given the scriptures demand for a Christ centric education do you believe that the men in this room are in sin who either have their children in non-christian education encourage others to pursue the same or do not encourage them from giving their children over to non-christian education Okay, and is it possible to faithfully put children in public school while supplementing and redirecting their training at home? There are obviously practical difficulties in this. We need not quibble over number of hours and having to take back what is given. The real essence boils down to what the commands are in places like Deuteronomy 6 and Ephesians 4 and 5 and 6. I do believe that we must consider where we are in terms of our culture. as we faithfully teach our people what is right. I do not want to in any way justify that which is wrong. However, we do have cultural conditions which we must wean our people away from. And I'll give an example. The prison system. I do not believe that our current prison system is biblical in any form or fashion. I do not believe that it mirrors the biblical standard of justice. We do not have in place appropriate mechanisms for restitution, for appropriate meeting out of justice. Now does this mean that I advocate opening up the prison doors and starting all over tomorrow? No. Does this mean that I do not believe that we need to have some sort of a redemptive work in the midst of this very, very unbiblical kind of system? No, I believe that we need to properly speak into this very broken and inappropriate system. That does not mean, however, that I accept the system and that I condone the system or that I justify the system. So I think it's real careful that while we say, yes, it is the responsibility of covenant families to undertake covenant education of their children without exception, We have to be really careful to realize that we're speaking into a cultural situation where that is a new word. And where we have to wean people away, train them properly, provide them with the resources and the tools. We've got to think real seriously about this government education situation when we're talking about poor children. or we're talking about an African-American community in the United States where 80% of the children are in single parent homes. If we're going to really bring reformation in this area, then we've got to start seriously thinking about those kinds of contingencies. Be real careful about the language that we use. I personally believe that the government school system is deleterious in every way, shape, form or fashion imaginable. And we need to move our people out and ultimately we need to see the Church of Jesus Christ entirely supplant the government school system and make it so irrelevant that people come rushing into the arms of the gospel. I think that's essential. But it's going to take us a while. And we've got to figure out a way to make it affordable and doable. And if we make Christian education the exclusive domain of the white and the rich, then all of our talk about sin in the government schools is a weight upon us. There's an additional question of what value, if any, is the prayer in public schools movement. I personally am not involved in the prayer in public schools movement. I'm involved in the supplanting of public schools movement. At the same time, as in the case of the prison system, I don't want to ignore the fact that they are there and that the harvest is white in those schools. And that our opportunity for the gospel is great. Now, if we think that we're going to solve something by having generic prayers read over the intercom by some unregenerate who thinks that such things are nice, then we're really deluded. But if we use every opportunity to bring the gospel to the world, then I'm going to seize those opportunities. I began my ministry as a young man, my wife and I. on the streets of Houston, Texas, going into gay bars, asking the proprietors if they would allow me to have five minutes to proclaim the gospel. Everybody thought it was a big joke, and they loved having this geeky-looking, skinny preacher kid come into gay bars. It was big entertainment. And they even did little posters, they advertised, the geeky guy with the bow tie, he's gonna come and he's gonna say stuff about Jesus. Well, the reality was, as goofy as that was, God honored his word and brought many out of darkness into light. So while I'm working hard to put the government schools out of business, if they ever ask me to come and speak, I come. I'm not a part of the prayer in schools movement. I'm not sure that that's particularly helpful, but I certainly don't despise the opportunity to have the name of Jesus exalted where'er we may go. Here's a long series of questions. Please comment on women teaching. And they have four categories. On the mission field, Bible studies, high school, and give testimony to mixed group or in church. Let me begin in that order. I certainly think that Elizabeth Elliott is a key example of the effectiveness of a woman carrying testimony to her faith on the mission field. But I want to remind you that what she said and what she said so often and why that she is not allowed to speak at our ban and other times anymore. When she, when her converts on the mission field and remember she was working among very primitive groups, came to her and said, you are the most informed, you know the most about the Bible, you must lead our worship and you must bring the message. She said, no, God told me that I'm not supposed to speak, teach or exercise authority over men. He has saved you and out of your group you must find some man who will do that. I'm willing to help him with understanding of the Word and teaching, but I will not violate God's teaching when He has, by His Spirit, brought you to Himself." So I think we can obviously have women in the mission field sharing their faith in all sorts of ways. As the early women did, they were the first to see the empty tomb. They were the first to comment about the empty tomb to the men, even though the men tend to dislike them and not believe what they're saying. Bible studies. Well, in Bible studies, the whole rule of thumb applies. Are you teaching a man? If you are not, then you may teach the Bible study for women and children. If you are, you shouldn't do it. High school. The question, of course, would be raised, aren't you teaching men because you have budding young men in your class? As long as the young men are under the authority and can be instructed by their mother, they can also be instructed by a surrogate mother in her place. That's for the parents to decide, not for me to decide. And I'll leave it to them and the person who asked the question. Four, give testimony to the mixed group or in church. If in the mixed group or church, Opportunity is being extended to any and all to give testimony, was extended to all, should not be removed from the women who are in attendance, because they too may share in what God has done in their life. And then I have two other questions added to this page in different handwriting. I think it means the paper was short, and we've got someone else. Shall I continue on? Can a woman teach men in a home Bible study? I don't think the setting is what is important. It's whether there are males and females there. I think Paul has already spoken on that subject. I would just encourage you to follow what he says. I do not permit a woman to teach a man in biblical things. Now, can a woman teach a man how to knit, to wash dishes, her clothes, a lot of other things like that? Of course she can. We should gladly learn from her. Can a woman leave a congregation in prayer? That depends. Is she leading the congregation by being the dominant and sole figure, or is she participating in prayer that a number of other peoples are participating in? Then another question. If speak means teaching, not oral expression, And are you contending that women may give testimonies, make hymn-psalm requests, lead in prayer within corporate worship service on the Lord's Day? I'm not contending for anything, particularly except what Paul is teaching, but I want to be sure that when I'm asked questions like this, I don't go beyond that which is written. The Bible says women may pray and prophesy in corporate gatherings. I want to permit that. Praying, at least, not prophesying. They can't see. And I want to forbid what the Bible forbids for them. And I don't want to let one influence the other because Paul says, Should women ask questions in a Sunday school class taught by men? And then the same question similarly, if women can't ask questions during public worship, does that mean we can't ask questions during a Sunday school lesson or a Bible study? Also, can she not ask questions of men other than her husband after church service, pertaining to the service, asking of the elders and pastors? I certainly agree with the last question, although she should make sure that she recognizes the headship of her husband. I'm not seeking to get another opinion that she thinks he's going to give her, but there are all sorts of nuances involved in all these things, and we need to examine our motives and our hearts as well as the with the teaching of the Word. I must confess that in my teaching of Sunday school class and Bible studies, I've been a man of my day. As long as the women did not go to teaching and asking questions, I permitted it. You may chastise me for that, and I'm willing to be chastised. Two related questions. What is your vision for higher education? And secondly, what can we be doing to rebuild the foundations? Rebuild the foundations in quotes. I assume Isaiah 58. I do have a vision for higher education and that vision is in formation because I believe that in many ways we're having to recoup some losses before we can go on to great gains. And so one of the things that I have done, for instance, at Bannockburn College and in talking with fellow pioneers in establishing new schools and new works, In a lot of ways what we're attempting to do is go back and look at what guys like Chalmers and Kuiper did prior to us as they kind of started all over again with New College Edinburgh, Free University of Amsterdam, and see where they went right and where they went wrong and seek to walk in their footsteps initially. So I begin my answer by saying my vision for higher education is partly to recover some of our lost legacy in Christendom. to begin to look at the way that curricula was designed originally, recover some whole lost categories of teaching, for instance, moral philosophy, as opposed to, say, segmented history or what is fearfully called the social sciences. trying to recover the much more biblical categories and teach things through the lens of those categories. And then secondly, to recover some of the great classics. One of the questions that I began to ask as a fledgling historian, as a young man, was I hear all the time people say, how come we don't know about George Washington, Patrick Henry, Robert E. Lee, Robert Louis Dabney, John Henry Thornwell? Why don't we know about these people? And I started to ask the question, okay, we've got some of that stuff floating around, but who were they reading? What was on their reading list? How did they become educated? And so part of my vision for education is to recover that. Now, obviously, I don't want to stop there. What I would like to see is a kind of Christocentric education. And this is something that is shared with Christ College. Kevin Claussen is here. It is shared with New St. Andrews in Moscow, Idaho. It is, I believe, shared here in Greenville. It is a vision to recover a thoroughly biblical approach to teaching young men and women to think and to think biblically. One of the questions that I get all the time from parents is if my child comes to your college, I can see that they might be prepared to go on to seminary or something. or I can see that they might be prepared to go teach English in a classical school somewhere, but what other job could they ever possibly get? And of course, my response is that you can go to a university and learn some very narrow, narrow skills. It'll take four years of learning how to run Microsoft Explorer. so that one day your 22-year-old can graduate and play pong with someone from California. Or you can teach that young man or woman to think so that they can go on their first day on the job and figure out how to work Microsoft Explorer in 15 minutes. How would you respond to the claim that Christian education is a peripheral issue that is not essential to the gospel? Is the matter of Christian education one which must be pressed upon elders and members? You know, I read Deuteronomy chapter 6 I read the call to discipleship, the responsibility placed upon parents, Ephesians chapter 6. I see this so clearly. I can't imagine how we can somehow arrive at the conclusion that Christian education, which is perhaps a misnomer. We probably ought to call it the discipleship of young men and women. I can't imagine how that could be considered peripheral. We are called again and again and again to teach the precepts of the living God, the statutes and the commandments of the living God, the application of those commandments and statutes. We're commanded to teach them to our children so that the name of the Lord may be praised. so that this generation will not forget and thus stumble and fall. This is an overriding theme all the way throughout the scriptures. Now, if this question is, in a Hyperion sphere sovereignty sense of it, should parents be assuming this responsibility primarily, and elders be exhorting parents to take up that responsibility, thus separating the sphere sovereignty of church from family, I think that that is a very appropriate and very legitimate separation. I don't think that every church needs to have a school. I do believe that every church needs to be exhorting, teaching, and facilitating fathers and mothers appropriately nurturing their children in the precepts of the living God. Raising them up in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord. I think that is essential. How that works institutionally may vary from place to place. I think that's one of the brilliant things about Thomas Chalmers and his parish concept. He understood that sphere sovereignty separation, and he was able to create flexible institutions that would meet the needs not only of those covenant children within local churches, but also reach the poor and the disadvantaged and the disaffected in the community, which ought to be our heart passion if we're going to reach this generation of Christ. And so I see this as central to the discipling task, not peripheral, but I don't necessarily see it as integral to the institution of the church because there are sphere sovereignty issues.