Loading summary
Transcript119 lines
- [00:00]
Dr. Scott Keith
Foreign.
- [00:20]
Caleb Keith
Hello there and welcome to the Thinking Fellows podcast. My name is Caleb Keith and I am joined by my father, Dr. Scott Keith, and by Dr. Adam Francisco. The Thinking Fellows is part of the 1517 Podcast Network of shows. You can go to 1517.orgpodcasts to see all of our episodes there. You can also go to the 1517 homepage to see that 1517 is much more than a podcast network. And if you're one of our new listeners on the show, you may pop over there. I'm guessing if you're enjoying the thinking Fellows, you're finding it useful or helpful or entertaining in any particular way, there's probably something else on our website that you will find useful either for personal use or use in your congregation. We have daily blogs, preaching helps, conferences, a publishing house, and so much more. 1517.org, there's a lot going on on that website. A lot of what's happening daily is collected on the homepage. And if you're just looking for more content to go through, you can go through our archives on there. We are, of course, in our why you should series, we've been hopping between various types of topics, epistemological, theological, historical. And today we're coming back around to the theological. I like to, as we were talking about, humans have a desire to create stories to explain the world and the happenings of what's going on. And I like to create a story about the relationship of each episode to the last one. Like a couple episodes ago when we did why you should know something about Islam, you know, I it came well, but the story was, is that, you know, at the last five minutes of the Reformation episode, you know, Adam talked about Soliman and so we needed to do Islam. And then with this last episode we did, it was why you should have a theology and why you should know it and all sorts of other why you shoulds that we managed to discover as we were talking about that topic last episode. And so this time, you know, we ended last episode with sort of identifying good or bad theologies. We talked about revelation from God and direct revelation and sola scriptura and, and all that. And so now as a part of a why you should know your theology and why you and why you have it, I thought we would go to some of the basic theological topics again. And in this series we've covered sin. And if you go back to our, our Lochi series, that was topic number one. And then quickly after that, we did two different topics. We did the law and the gospel. And we talked last episode about words that God uses to reveal himself. And that a good theology, if there, if there is a good theology, it's one that speaks back to God and speaks to the world, world words about God that are from God.
- [03:23]
Dr. Adam Francisco
Right.
- [03:24]
Caleb Keith
And in the Reformation, we had these two categories long gospel were described as the various, the. The ways that God actually reveals himself and talks about himself.
- [03:37]
Dr. Scott Keith
Well, they're literally called. So when we talk about theology being words about God and ideally that are from God. Right. In the Reformation, law and gospel are often just referred to as God's two words. So, so people say, oh, I've read the Bible. It seems like there's more than two words there. Yeah, there are. But, you know, the reality is, is that in scripture, when you're looking at sort of the story that scripture is telling, it's telling the story of God's law and God's gospel, it's talking about God's sort of just demands on the sinner and then God's promises to the sinner. And those are the two tales that are being told. And they're told as one tale because both the law and the gospel always culminate in the incarnation of Christ as that manifest Logos, that word of God himself, giving you his life, his death, and his resurrection on your behalf.
- [04:48]
Caleb Keith
The Lutheranism and the Lutheran Confessions has often held and taught that the law in the gospel is necessary for having and doing a theology, because like you said, it's God's two words, but that it's God's two words in answering the theological question. And when we set up the definition of a theology, we set up part of the problem being how cosmic and metaphysical the things interact and how those things ascribe meaning to you or you ascribe meaning to them. And with the law and the gospel, like you said, those help us take, instead of seeing Scripture, word from God as disjointed words to decode, it helps us see them within this story of answering this problem of the relationship between things and then, and meaning ultimately being taken from that relationship. That when we say that God has a word of law, we're saying particular things about God and particular things about us, and that those two things then help us see what the relationship between God and man are. And then the same goes for the gospel. And when we use an episode title like why you should distinguish, what we're saying is that these two words are different.
- [06:24]
Dr. Scott Keith
Yeah. Well, the phrase usually is why you should not confuse law and gospel. Because the most prevalent thing that happens when you make a Sort of theological mistake in this area is that you will read something that is likely law, in other words, God's righteous demand for you and your life, and you will either promote it as and or explicate it as gospel. God's free promises on account of Christ. And in confusing that, the one that usually is harmed in the confusion is the gospel. So when Luther and the Reformers are warning about not conf. And even, I'd even say when later writers are like Walther, are warning about not confusing law and gospel, the primary concern is that in the confusing of law and gospel is the gospel itself that'll be lost. Why is that? Well, because the law is so common to us. It's the thing that, as Paul says, we're, we're familiar with, we gravitate towards, we lean on. It's, it's our natural interpretive sieve is going to be that of the law. The gospel is a completely outside, foreign, alien message to us and we treat it as such. Right. Because it's a, again, Paul calls it that a stumbling block. It's something we stumble over because it's a message. It's. It's largely outside of what we would say is our normal experience, which is somebody paying the price, the ultimate price for the ultimate thing, which is our separating ourselves from God because of our.
- [08:16]
Caleb Keith
Sin and particularly the wrong type of person having gain is, I think, another portion of that.
- [08:28]
Dr. Scott Keith
Think of it this way. It's that the, the hero dies for the villain and the villain gets the, the, the, the benefits of the hero.
- [08:38]
Caleb Keith
Yeah.
- [08:39]
Dr. Scott Keith
And we don't like thinking of ourselves that way. We'd like it for the hero to die for the innocent, for us to identify ourselves as the innocent and then say, and we're even okay with the hero getting the innocent getting the benefits of the hero. But when you say that the hero has died for the villain and the villain has gotten the benefits of the.
- [09:00]
Caleb Keith
Hero, even if we don't want to go as far as villain, you could, you could say like in society we love like the picture of like the lazy person who doesn't get up, doesn't work, doesn't, you know, doesn't do things right. All of a sudden they're waking up with the benefits of the hardest working person in America today who's got his life in order, who's, you know, waking up early, working a hard job, getting paid.
- [09:26]
Dr. Scott Keith
Well, I think the lock clearly describes we sinners as the villain.
- [09:32]
Caleb Keith
Yeah.
- [09:32]
Dr. Scott Keith
In the town. Now, the ultimate villain, of course, is going to be sin Death and the power of the devil. But in, in our sort of participation in that world, that realm of sin, death and the devil, we too are enemies of God. Separate ourselves completely separate ourselves from God because of our sin.
- [09:52]
Caleb Keith
The offense is, I think at like the ground level is often that the person who doesn't reform, the evil person who doesn't at least make an effort to become good.
- [10:03]
Dr. Scott Keith
Yeah.
- [10:03]
Caleb Keith
I suppose is, is getting something. Right. Because we're not.
- [10:07]
Dr. Scott Keith
If you were to say, though, even your efforts to become good are evil. Yeah.
- [10:11]
Caleb Keith
No. Oh, yeah. I mean, all you, all you do is sin kind of.
- [10:15]
Dr. Scott Keith
I do think it's funny. So if you think about it this way, and Adam can chime in on this a little bit, I. We have become. So it's sort of like the abortion debate. Okay. In a way the term abortion is used because if you say killing babies, it's very offensive. Right. So we come up with a term that we can use that's abstract, that we can be comfortable having a conversation about it and we can, we can sit at dinner and have a civilized debate over our positions on abortion. Yeah.
- [10:47]
Caleb Keith
I mean, if you're in a restaurant, you hear people talking about the murder of the innocent.
- [10:51]
Dr. Scott Keith
Yeah. They wouldn't be civilized anymore. And we do the same thing with sin. Right. Sin is a word that we can become pretty comfortable with because we can talk about it in Sunday school is not helping mommy with the dishes and stuff like that. But when you actually look at what the law, God's word tells us about sin is you, you will see that sin is evil. And sin is evil because it's God making. In other words, what sin actually is, is you in some way trying to take over what God has established as his and, or make yourself that God. Now if there is actually a God and your attempt is to either take what's his and, or take his place, you're now at war with that person. Right. And it's, and that's how sin is described by the law in the text of scripture. And when it's proclaimed to you by a good preacher as full strength law, that's what you're being told is your state apart from Christ. Now we use the word sin because if we use things like words like I did, like villain and evil, it's the same thing as calling abortion, you know, the murder of the innocents. Right. It's, it's accurate, but it doesn't go over well at dinner parties. And that's, you know, and, and I think we've become very Accustomed to saying law. What does the law tell us? Well, it tells us the things we've done wrong. Well, that's great. The things that I do wrong on a day to day basis. If we're just talking about to you do do them wrong to you or to your mom or to your kids or to the other people I interact with on a daily basis, you know, they're easily, they're on the whole easily forgivable. But if you describe it as what it is. Right. A state of your heart whereby you attempt to supplant God every single day.
- [12:49]
Caleb Keith
Yeah. I mean, in the law tells you who you like using the language you were using, tells you who you're at war with and why.
- [12:58]
Dr. Scott Keith
Apart from Christ. I just want to keep saying that. Yeah, those who are in Christ, the war has been fought in one.
- [13:05]
Caleb Keith
Right.
- [13:06]
Dr. Scott Keith
It was won by Christ and he has claimed you for his side. You may still attempt to sort of go awol, but he catches you every time and reminds you of your baptism. And that's why you need the preaching of law and gospel.
- [13:21]
Caleb Keith
We got, I mean, we got into sort of this distinction by doing the relationship really quick in this episode. And we maybe glanced over just doing basic definitions. We got there really quickly. In the Reformation, your homeboy Philip Melanchthon is the guy who sort of outlines them first as distinguished categories within, like when doing public theology, when writing a theology, how do those definitions stick? Where does Melanchthon get them and what are they? So that the, the listener knows exactly what the law is and exactly what the gospel is.
- [14:03]
Dr. Scott Keith
I so if people listen, I assume these are going to error in order listen to the last episode. Melanchthon is very good at sort of gathering evidence empirically from the text of scripture. And then I would say doing abduction like we talked about in the last episode, and then making good inferences from those, those observations from the text. And that's what he does in the lochi. And one of the things he gets very good at is sort of taking, you know, what might take pages and pages and pages to say in. From. In various books from the text of scripture and bringing them together in one part of an ex of a short explanation and putting it into a list. And so, for instance, with the law, he'll say that the law will teach you how you harm your neighbor. Right. The law will teach you that you do not live up to God's righteous demands. But then he'll go further and say that the law actually teaches you that in your heart. Again, Apart from Christ, apart from the baptized Christian being claimed by Christ as their own. That in your heart you are literally at war with God. And you are, like I said, a God maker. I didn't make that up. You are a God maker, essentially.
- [15:26]
Caleb Keith
But his most basic definition is that these are the commands.
- [15:31]
Dr. Scott Keith
Yeah. That you violate, you violated the righteous, righteous demands of God.
- [15:35]
Dr. Adam Francisco
Yeah.
- [15:35]
Caleb Keith
That you're at war because God has spoken particular commands in Scripture and that those who violate those commands, who don't live according to those commands.
- [15:48]
Dr. Scott Keith
Well, if you, if you look at the Decalogue, and I think you could see this as a secular person studying the Bible. If you look at the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, they're almost specifically designed to get the reader to look outside of themselves. Right. The first three look at God. This is, this is what your relationship to God is. This is how you should talk about God. This is how you should think about God. This is how you communicate about God, and this is how you should worship God. Right. And then you look at the last seven, it's like, this is how you should think about your parents and other authorities. This is how you should not murder people. This is how you should not be a sexual deviant with other people because it's harmful to them. You should not steal from other people.
- [16:35]
Caleb Keith
Look at your neighbor, look at your brother, look at your wife.
- [16:37]
Dr. Scott Keith
Don't lie about other people. Put the best construction on their behavior. As much as it's possible, it's. It's an intentional attempt to get you to look outside of yourself. Why do we think God did that? Well, it's because the real problem is that we're from the Reformation, we're turned in on ourselves. This God making project is a project of our own making and we're trying to make ourselves. And so what the decalogue does, it tries to get you to look outside of yourself and realize that your sin is really the sin of being curved in on yourself. And so Melanchthon, you know, those are the righteous commands, slash, demands of God and you have not lived up to them. And the end result is that this is, you know, this is because, like Christ says, this is because of your heart. It's not from outside of a man, but from within a man that come.
- [17:30]
Caleb Keith
Unclean, the thing that defiles him.
- [17:33]
Dr. Scott Keith
Yeah. Adam, are you just listening to my brilliance today?
- [17:37]
Dr. Adam Francisco
I am. I'm enjoying it. Two things are in my head right now. Well, probably more than two, but one, this view, what you just said that you didn't Say it this way, but the reason why we sin is not. Or we're not sinners because we sin, but we're sinners because it's just who we are. That's essential in Christian theology. And it's radical that the problem is. Yes, the problem is Satan or sin, death and the devil, but the problem really is us.
- [18:18]
Dr. Scott Keith
It's me. Yeah.
- [18:20]
Dr. Adam Francisco
And another thing in my head that kind of goes along with it is that this language about us being enemies or at war with God. It's Romans 5, 10.
- [18:30]
Dr. Scott Keith
That.
- [18:34]
Dr. Adam Francisco
Even while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son. There's the gospel. Despite yourself and how awful you are, God still has reconciled you to himself through the death of his son. And Paul would go on and say, how much more now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved but by his life or his resurrection?
- [19:00]
Dr. Scott Keith
Occasionally you might find a man that would die for a good man or a friend.
- [19:06]
Dr. Adam Francisco
I mean, this is law and gospel.
- [19:12]
Dr. Scott Keith
Scott.
- [19:13]
Dr. Adam Francisco
Caleb, you said Melanchthon is your dad's homeboy.
- [19:16]
Dr. Scott Keith
I think. Yeah, yeah.
- [19:18]
Dr. Adam Francisco
Am I right? I've always been taught. Always read this. I just want to check it with you, since you're the man on this. Law and Gospel is for both the Lutheran and the Reformed tradition, broadly speaking, hermeneutical principle. But it's not a principle that we've kind of come up with and we then interpret scripture through. But rather it's a principle we get from the reading of Scripture. I like how you talked about the two tails in Scripture, the law and the gospel, and how they're not two different tales, so they're weaved together and they find their fulfillment in Jesus. One thing I've always wrestled with with law gospel is not. I don't have any doubts about it. It's Article 4 of the Augustana, Article 5 of the formula of Concord, I believe. But sometimes I wonder. I think we've had these conversations before, but not on air. Is sometimes it as a hermeneutical principle gets ripped from its biblical moorings and then imposed back on Scripture. Does that make sense?
- [20:23]
Dr. Scott Keith
Sure. Standing over the text instead of coming from the text.
- [20:28]
Caleb Keith
Yeah.
- [20:30]
Dr. Scott Keith
Judging the text rather than being breathed from the text.
- [20:35]
Dr. Adam Francisco
Right. I always think it's important to make that point lest it be seen as just principle that somebody just. Melanchthon, your homeboy, came up with. Or Luther.
- [20:44]
Dr. Scott Keith
No. And the idea from the Reformers is that you learn to recognize. Recognize law and gospel in the text, not that you learn to impose it on the text and I think this.
- [20:53]
Caleb Keith
Comes, you know, it's about your broader theology and determining again that place between you and God and meaning. And you know, who sets up this distinction really? You see this in the Apostle Paul, right. About what the law does to you and to God and that relationship between you and God and what the gospel does to you and God. And he draws a strong distinction between the two and says things like the one is not the other. Right. The law does not do things that the gospel does. And in fact identifies this problem at the beginning that you said of where the law is being proposed to do the thing that the gospel does.
- [21:40]
Dr. Scott Keith
The main thing that the law does not have the power to do that is often ascribed to it is to save. Yeah. The law has the power to kill and the gospel is the power to save.
- [21:53]
Caleb Keith
And the greedy God makers take the law and go, what an amazing tool for my God making.
- [21:58]
Dr. Scott Keith
Well, what if I could convince you that if you just lived this way and I was the one that was giving you the insight how to live, that it would save you? How, how much would you love me?
- [22:12]
Dr. Adam Francisco
You know, and that's all religion, right?
- [22:14]
Dr. Scott Keith
Yeah.
- [22:14]
Dr. Adam Francisco
Whether it's historic religions or man made ideologies masquerading as religion or in Islam, there is a sort of a parallel teaching. It's called the promise and the threat. And it's exactly what you described. The threat is you'll be condemned if you don't follow the law. But the promise is if you follow.
- [22:39]
Dr. Scott Keith
The law, you'll be safe.
- [22:41]
Dr. Adam Francisco
You'll probably maybe be safe.
- [22:43]
Caleb Keith
That's a great contingent. Promises are my favorite promises.
- [22:47]
Dr. Scott Keith
Well that's not so different than I'm working get crucified for what I'm about to say than the, the Roman Catholic system. I mean there's no guarantee within that system that if that you have followed it well enough to be saved. You certainly will not find out until you know your eyes open in either glory or purgatory or the other. And so, and that's just not the way the scriptures speak about this. I mean there is one way to internal life. That way is through Jesus Christ our Lord. And the way that you are attached to him is by the proclamation of the gospel into your ears and the power of the Holy Spirit through that proclamation on your heart, bringing you to faith, that trust alone in Christ Jesus as your only hope for salvation. And then you are saved. This is, this is an outside in thing. This is not something that you muster up within yourself and do. And when we, you know, when we Sometimes get accused of sort of, I'll use a good 80s phrase, bagging on the preaching of the law is just not true. Because the, the preaching of the law is critically important to the preaching of the gospel because a person first needs to be killed in order that they be made alive. The gospel is that thing that makes you alive. The law is that thing that kills you. The person first has to be killed and thus the preaching of the gospel, the law has to occur. My only thing that I advocate for is to actually preach the law, actually kill the sinner, right? Don't nag the sinner, don't wave your finger at the sinner. Don't convince them that if they just try harder they won't be a sinner anymore. All of these things are useless and or untrue. Kill them with God's lot because that's why he gave it. And then bring them alive with God's gospel because that's why he gave it.
- [24:36]
Caleb Keith
It fundamentally creates a lie about the character of God and who God is. That in, in disguising something about what the gospel says who, about who God is, which is the kind of God that would die for sinners. Like the kind of God who is looking to atone for your sin is going to reconcile you, is going to come for you. When you, when you go this other way, when you confuse the law in the gospel in the favor of the law, when you preach a nagging law that is telling you all you got to do is self actualize, work harder, understand this better. You're hiding something fundamental about what God has said about himself and about who he is in relation to you.
- [25:27]
Dr. Scott Keith
And you.
- [25:27]
Caleb Keith
And you create a lie in this relationship between you and God about who the reconciler is. And it's you who becomes the reconciler between the relationship, the broken or at war.
- [25:38]
Dr. Scott Keith
And that's just not the story of scripture.
- [25:40]
Caleb Keith
And that is, that is not the story of scripture. And so if you.
- [25:43]
Dr. Scott Keith
The story of scripture is scripture is that God from the beginning intended to send the Messiah, the Christ, the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world and your sin. And that is the story of scripture. And for the scripture, I like how.
- [25:58]
Dr. Adam Francisco
You say from the very beginning. I know we all know this, but I think that point is essential that like right from the get go, Genesis 3:15 is the first promise. Right after the fall, the promise comes.
- [26:12]
Dr. Scott Keith
And the promise is, is then referred to. Every time there's a, there is a fall that is a representation of the fall, right?
- [26:22]
Dr. Adam Francisco
Yeah.
- [26:23]
Dr. Scott Keith
Every Single time. Israel is then chosen. And every time Israel falls, there's a reminder of the promise from that fall to the original fall to the promise. Yeah.
- [26:34]
Dr. Adam Francisco
Even when it goes a whoring after other gods. Yes, yeah, yeah.
- [26:39]
Dr. Scott Keith
There's always the problem, which is often just as we go whoring after other gods, often. I mean, this gets back to the question that I try to answer on this all the time, is why. Why should you go to church at all? Well, you should go to church because even if you're baptized, redeemed Christian, you know, like Paul in Romans 7 or like, Listen to the talks we just gave and everybody just gave it, that here we still stand, Northwest Arkansas. We dealt with being simultaneously saint and sinner. That every day you're assailed by sin, death, and the power of the devil that is trying to. Literally trying to win you back. Now, no one can pluck you out of God's hand, right? This is, this is the reality. But these attempts are made in your own sinful flesh. These makes these attempts every single day to convince you really that you are God. And your inclination as being born a sinner is to lean into that. And so why do you go? You go every Sunday to be killed and made alive once more. To be reminded once more that this is the depart from Christ, this is who you are, and that you need to plant yourself in Christ and that the only way to plant yourself in Christ is to receive his gifts time and time again. To hear the gospel not just once when you're converted, but again and again and again to sustain you in that faith. The power of the Holy Spirit coming through the preacher's words to remind you, to grab hold of you one more, to give you that big bear hug that, that as you've been assailed all week, you know, Monday through Saturday by your own sinful flesh, by sin, death and the devil to. To jump ship, you might even and come back and then you get the gifts of God in the sacrament. You know, this is why you go. Well, and if you're not getting those things, you should be getting those things. And I pray to God that everybody that faithfully attends church on Sunday really is getting the goods like that as faithfully as possible. But if you're not, I worry about you and I pray for you that you, you know, that you are able to affect some change at your church where you do, and. Or find a church that does.
- [28:38]
Caleb Keith
Yeah, I mean, I think even to add to sort of the world assailing you is also when everything's going okay it enticing you? I mean, one of the ways, one of the, the things, you know, I think in the last episode we were talking about polarizing culture. One of the big things right now is taking, taking ownership and acting in a way that'll improve your own situation. Right. This is good here. Now, civil law advice, right? Jordan Peterson, wake up and make your bed. Do something in the morning. You're mopey and you're sad and you can do something about this. Get up and do something in the morning. There's some other popular figures too, where the theme is about taking ownership and acting. And that advice that certainly works here in the civil realm ruled by the law, like to get up in the morning and act is also enticing you back to the God making. Right? Well, this might work here too.
- [29:44]
Dr. Scott Keith
Yeah. Well, it's like the movie Devil's Own with Keanu Reeves, right, Where he's a, He's a lawyer.
- [29:52]
Dr. Adam Francisco
Oh, devil's advocate.
- [29:53]
Dr. Scott Keith
Devil's advocate, sorry.
- [29:54]
Dr. Adam Francisco
Yeah, yeah.
- [29:55]
Dr. Scott Keith
Or he's a lawyer and sort of. Isn't it Al Pacino? That's. Yeah, the devil, you know, and he tries to entice him, first through greed, and it doesn't work. And then, you know, at the end of the movie, they kind of reset time and Keanu Reeves goes back to defend the innocent guy and wins. And now he's, he's proud of his achievement of winning. And the devil's in the background. He's like, well, greed didn't work. But pride, Pride's advice, I can work with that, you know, and so this is the thing like even when everything, when everything's going well, you have the same situation. Your, your inclination is towards this is, this is. So as a. For historical reference, within the Lutheran Reformation, there was a reformer named Matthias Flahius or Flacius, I like to say flakiest because that's how gymnastic and says it. But who, you know, was attempting at one point to communicate how steeped we are in sin and how in need we are of the preaching of the.
- [30:58]
Caleb Keith
Actual law and identifying that we are.
- [31:00]
Dr. Scott Keith
The problem and identifying that we are the problem. That he went so far as to say that sin is, is part of our substance, right? And he gets in this big, big war with Melanchthon and others that are kind of riding on the Aristotle Aristotelian category of substance and would say, well, if sin is a necessary substance of being human, that would.
- [31:22]
Caleb Keith
Christ was.
- [31:22]
Dr. Scott Keith
That would meant that Christ was a sinner. And they get on him and they get into this big debate, and finally he waves off, says, you're right, I should have used another word, blah, blah, blah. But here's the point. He was trying to do the right thing.
- [31:33]
Caleb Keith
I mean, he was trying is right.
- [31:35]
Dr. Scott Keith
He was trying to communicate that our tendency is to play down our own sinfulness. And he was trying to dial it up.
- [31:43]
Caleb Keith
He was trying to find a way to say, you can't escape this. You can't escape.
- [31:47]
Dr. Scott Keith
Apart from Christ, you can't escape this. Apart from the preaching of the Gospel, you can't. You can't escape this. And he was doing the right thing and kind of went too far. I. I think most of us would read that these days and not recognize that it was too far. I always think that with debates during the Reformation. In the last episode, Adam pointed out how sort of segmented we are and sort of chasers after orthodoxies. And I thought, oh, man, it would have really sucked to live during the Reformation too, because that was happening. Right.
- [32:15]
Caleb Keith
I mean. Yeah. I mean, like, for all intensive purposes, substance would have mean there is no act to get rid of your sin.
- [32:24]
Dr. Scott Keith
Right.
- [32:24]
Dr. Adam Francisco
There's no.
- [32:24]
Dr. Scott Keith
Yeah, there's nothing. There's nothing. And so Christ couldn't.
- [32:27]
Caleb Keith
Of course, that's the right intention when we're talking about, you know, defending the place of the gospel and what Christ has done.
- [32:35]
Dr. Scott Keith
Yeah, yeah. So I just. I just use that as a point to say, listen, that this is. This is such a deep problem that has been recognized as a deep problem by many brilliant theologians for years, and they've tried to describe it, and you can go too far in describing it, but our tendency is to not go far enough.
- [32:54]
Dr. Adam Francisco
Yeah.
- [32:54]
Dr. Scott Keith
Which is also what Flockius was fighting against in his day.
- [32:58]
Dr. Adam Francisco
And I mean, isn't it the case that much of at least nominal Christianity has given up entirely on any sort of doctrine of original guilt?
- [33:10]
Dr. Scott Keith
I think as far as condemnation before.
- [33:12]
Dr. Adam Francisco
The law and so on.
- [33:13]
Dr. Scott Keith
I think as far as, like how we would say it in our confession on Sunday morning, that's true, that I am sinful and unclean, you know.
- [33:21]
Caleb Keith
Yeah.
- [33:22]
Dr. Scott Keith
I mean, I think as a sort of descriptor of who you are. Yes. Yeah.
- [33:26]
Caleb Keith
I think, I mean, free will theology has won in this sense that your will determines your being, your ontology, the who, the who. Your decisions are, determine. The who is playing.
- [33:38]
Dr. Scott Keith
Right.
- [33:38]
Caleb Keith
And so with a Christian, the. Your ontology, you know, so they would still say, your ontology's changed, like we would, but it's changed because of a decision to. To act on what Christ has done. Rather than Christ changing you, baptism changing you, the proclamation of the gospel changing you. So that the gospel is actually an act.
- [34:06]
Dr. Scott Keith
Yeah.
- [34:06]
Dr. Adam Francisco
Well, I think Christians by and large don't have a problem in acknowledging in some way, you know, they'll mean different things by. But that they're sinful and unclear, clean. They might use different language, but the words by nature, that's the real offensive thing.
- [34:22]
Dr. Scott Keith
Yeah.
- [34:22]
Dr. Adam Francisco
I think to even modern. Or to Christianity. Modern Christianity. And. But it's also very, as I said earlier, very radical to, I mean, believing that you're guilty just because you're born. That, that, that's a tough pill to swallow.
- [34:39]
Dr. Scott Keith
Right. I would. Well, we even call it secular people. Yeah. We even call it like, we refer to it in the show, the slaughter of the innocents. Right. And so we, we have, we even have a hard time with that. That's why, I mean, that's one of the reasons why in scripture it's not just connected to your actions, but to who. Who you are. Right. And a reminder of that you might not see. You cannot see what's in a person's heart. You cannot see what their inclination of their heart is. And so the only thing you have to go on are their outside things or actions. And when you're talking about, like, especially like babies being just born, it's very hard to see an intentional outward action that's sinful. And so this is, this is not what we're talking about here. And this is why it's so important to understand that the law reveals not just sins, but sin. Right. It will reveal sins, individual sins for sure, but it reveals sin. Right. That you are a sinner. And that's the key. That's really the key to the, to the proclamation of the law. Not, Not a list to just help you do better. Certainly is. Is capable and ought to be used to point out individual sins, but those individual sins are a reflection of what the law really reveals. But that you're a sinner.
- [35:58]
Caleb Keith
Well, guys, do we want. Do we want to call it here? Do we want to end on the law?
- [36:02]
Dr. Scott Keith
Well, I would say. I would say the cap side of that. The purpose for that preaching is again to. To kill, to kill that God Maker within you. So that when the preaching of the Gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit comes, you are actually made a new. You are made anew again. And that you are brought back, that you are. That you are reminded of who you are in Christ and that you are assured of who you are in Christ. And that Christ is draped over you again. And that you realize that when you stand before God, you're not standing before him and all your God making deeds that were successful, but you're standing for him and he's seeing Christ and he's declaring you righteous on account of that. These two things go hand in hand. Both the recognition and understanding of law and gospel and the proclamation of law and gospel. Theology is for proclamation. You don't just do these things for the sake of doing them. You do these, you understand these things. You discern law and gospel so that law and gospel can be proclaimed to the world and that people can be brought to Christ as their only hope for salvation. Yeah.
- [37:05]
Caleb Keith
And so that we can hope for the day where our, our ontology is not similar. It's not determined by the word of the law and the gospel, but is only determined by the word of the gospel.
- [37:17]
Dr. Scott Keith
And like I said in my talking NWA that you will go marching in as just saints, not sinner saints. Right?
- [37:25]
Caleb Keith
Awesome guys. Great episode. Thank you for listening to the Thinking Fellows podcast on the 1517 podcast network of shows again. You can go to 1517. Org to see all of the projects at 1517 if you would like to support the show. If the Thinking Fellows has been helpful to you, educational, valuable, maybe we're just a conversation partner on your ride to work. We could use your support to continue the efforts of the podcast network. Go to 1517.org and it'd be extraordinarily helpful if you were willing to sign up as a reoccurring donor. If. If we haven't made that impact yet or you're not quite ready to financially support the Thinking Fellows, you help us in another way and that's by leaving reviews on Apple Podcasts. You can go to the link in the show Notes to our page on Apple Podcasts or you can if you Google the Thinking Fellows. Our Apple Podcast page is like result number two, right under 1517 and there you can leave a review even if you don't use Apple Podcasts as your preferred platform for listening to this show. Thank you very much for listening. We will catch you next week. Bye.
- [38:48]
Dr. Scott Keith
Sam.