That’ll Preach

Catholics vs. Protestants on the Bible with Dr. Gregg Allison

On this episode of That'll Preach we will hear from Dr. Greg Allison of Southern Seminary on the differences between Roman Catholic and Protestant approaches to Scripture, authority, and tradition. Allison argues that Catholicism's "three stools" of Scripture, tradition, and the Magisterium stand at odds with the classic Protestant vision of Sola Scriptura. He also busts myths about the unity of the Catholic church as well as friendly challenges to Evangelicals looking to cross the Tiber to Rome.

Show Notes

40 Questions About Roman Catholicism by Gregg Allison

Roman Catholic Theology and Practice by Gregg Allison

Can We Have Christianity Without the Miracles? (Orthodoxy IX)

We wrap up our series on Chesterton's classic Orthodoxy by exploring the common arguments against Christianity. Chesterton does not argue from a standard apologetics approach, but instead utilizes common sense to show how our faith in Christianity rests not upon one "slam dunk" argument, but rather the accumulation of a thousand little pieces of evidences. He also challenges common agnostic/atheistic assumptions that men exist as nothing more than animals, religions comes from dark and ignorant times, and Christianity turns everything gloomy and repressed. On the contrary, Chesterton argues that Christianity rightly identifies the uniqueness of man, emerged at the height of the Roman Empire, and provides the conditions for people to sing, dance, and enjoy the pleasures of life without running off a cliff. We also examine Chesterton's suspicion that Jesus's greatest secret lay not in his power, but his joy.

"If I am asked, as a purely intellectual question, why I believe in Christianity, I can only answer, “For the same reason that an intelligent agnostic disbelieves in Christianity.” I believe in it quite rationally upon the evidence."

"Somehow or other an extraordinary idea has arisen that the disbelievers in miracles consider them coldly and fairly, while believers in miracles accept them only in connection with some dogma. The fact is quite the other way. The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them."

"The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth."

The Romantic Appeal of Christianity (Orthodoxy VIII)

In this episode we look at Chesterton's profound exploration of the essence and allure of orthodox Christian beliefs. He celebrates the paradoxical nature of truth, highlighting how orthodox Christianity, with all its enchanting mysteries, brings a fresh vitality to the world. Chesterton argues that while modernity may be filled with wild and wasted virtues, true orthodoxy unites the material and the spiritual, offering a complete and coherent worldview. The author unveils the enchanting beauty of dogma, challenging the notion that religious truths must be dull and mundane. Chesterton invites readers to embrace the romance of orthodox Christian thought, urging them to venture beyond the surface of skepticism and explore the profound truths and mysteries that lie within the heart of faith. He also explores the differences between Buddhism and Christianity and how modern assumptions about religion obscure the revolutionary nature of the Christian faith.

"We come back to the same tireless note touching the nature of Christianity; all modern philosophies are chains which connect and fetter; Christianity is a sword which separates and sets free. No other philosophy makes God actually rejoice in the separation of the universe into living souls. But according to orthodox Christianity this separation between God and man is sacred, because this is eternal. That a man may love God it is necessary that there should be not only a God to be loved, but a man to love him."

"Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a breaking point—and does not break."

Christianity and the Eternal Revolution (Orthodoxy Part VII)

Our series in Orthodoxy continues as we look at Chesterton's interesting perspective on wealthy people, the aristocracy, and placing too much trust in the government. He also points out the fundamental flawed assumption of progressivism: that things left to themselves will progress rather than decay. "Open-mindedness" does not automatically lead to "progress" and neither does revolution lead to better outcomes. He expresses a great deal of distrust for government and extols democracy as the best way to keep human sinfulness in check. The Christian understanding of human sinfulness ought to keep any aspirations to man-made utopia in check. 

"We have said we must be fond of this world, even in order to change it. We now add that we must be fond of another world (real or imaginary) in order to have something to change it to."

"The Evolutionist says, 'Where do you draw the line?' the Revolutionist answers, 'I draw it here: exactly between your head and body.'"

"But all conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change." 

"This eternal revolution, this suspicion sustained through centuries, you (being a vague modern) call the doctrine of progress. If you were a philosopher you would call it, as I do, the doctrine of original sin. You may call it the cosmic advance as much as you like; I call it what it is -- the Fall."

"I could never conceive or tolerate any Utopia which did not leave to me the liberty for which I chiefly care, the liberty to bind myself. Complete anarchy would not merely make it impossible to have any discipline or fidelity; it would also make it impossible to have any fun. The dissolution of all contracts would not only ruin morality but spoil sport."

What Did Jesus’s Death Accomplish? with Dr. Michael Lynch

Dr. Michael Lynch of the Davenant Institute joins us to discuss the controversial topic of the atonement. Theologians throughout church history have debated over the nature and extent of Jesus's death on the cross. Did God unjustly punish an innocent man? Did Jesus's death make forgiveness of sins actual or merely possible? How do we understand theological words like "imputation" and "penal substitution?" Dr. Lynch helps us navigate these treacherous waters with precision and clarity by mining the depths of the Reformed tradition through the works of John Calvin, R.L. Dabney, John Davenant, John Owen, and others. 

Show Notes

Purchase Dr. Lynch's Davenant Institute Lecture Series

The Paradox of Christianity (Orthodoxy Part VI)

We continue our series in Chesterton's classic Orthodoxy by looking at his famous chapter on the paradox of Christianity. Chesterton writes about how the strangeness of Christianity bolsters its credibility as truth. We should not expect divine revelation to make complete sense to our minds. He also points out that the hostility of the modern world towards Christianity reveals its compelling power. People are fine with a universal religion so long as it is not Christianity. Christianity challenges, disrupts, and even romances us into seeing the world as it actually is. 

"Paganism declared that virtue was in a balance; Christianity declared it was in a conflict: the collision of two passions apparently opposite. Of course they were not really inconsistent; but they were such that it was hard to hold simultaneously."

"It looked not so much as if Christianity was bad enough to include any vices, but rather as if any stick was good enough to beat Christianity with."

"This is the thrilling romance of Orthodoxy. People have fallen into a foolish habit of speaking of orthodoxy as something heavy, humdrum, and safe. There never was anything so perilous or so exciting as orthodoxy."

"It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect."

The Problem with Pessimists (Orthodoxy Part V)

Bryan and Paul discuss chapter five of G.K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy entitled "The Flag of the World". In this chapter, Chesterton explains why we must love a place before we critique it and the freedom that God gives to mankind. He takes shots at naturalism and so-called "progress" by helping us understand how Christianity revolutionized the world. He also digs into the paradox that true love for the world requires a particular hatred for it and a desire to see its redemption.

"The point is not that this world is too sad to love or too glad not to love; the point is that when you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more."

"Men did not love Rome because she was great. She was great because they had loved her."

"...what we need is not the cold acceptance of the world as a compromise, but some way in which we can heartily hate and heartily love it. We do not want joy and anger to neutralize each other and produce a surly contentment; we want a fiercer delight and a fiercer discontent. We have to feel the universe at once as an ogre's castle, to be stormed, and yet as our own cottage, to which we can return at evening."

"Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but to look outwards, to behold with astonishment and enthusiasm a divine company and a divine captain."

Three Ways to Read the Bible Well with Dr. Jonathan Pennington

Dr. Jonathan Pennington of Southern Seminary (SBTS) joins us to talk about his new book Come and See: The Journey of Knowing God Through Scripture. We talk about three ways of reading Scripture well: informationally, theologically, and transformationally. Each of these stages challenges us to grow in our understanding of the word of God in practical and tangible ways. We read informationally by using our cognitive faculties to grasp content or information in Scripture. We read theologically when we pay attention to the whole scope of the Bible and the church's tradition of interpretation via creeds and confessions as we engage with texts. Finally, We read transformationally when we slow down and prayerfully apply Scripture to our lives and receive it as a means through which God meets us and changes us by the Holy Spirit.

Show Notes

Visit Dr. Pennington's Website: https://www.jonathanpennington.com/

Get his book Come and See

About Dr. Pennington

Jonathan T. Pennington is currently Professor of New Testament Interpretation at Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky (USA). He has also regularly served as a visiting professor at Reformed Theological Seminary (Orlando), Southeastern Seminary, The Village Church Institute (Dallas), and The Institute of Biblical Studies in Orlando, FL as well as Morling College (Melbourne, Australia).

He is also the Spiritual Formation Pastor at Sojourn East and regularly speaks and teaches in churches all over the country.

He earned a B.A. in History as well as a Teaching Certificate from Northern Illinois University. He received the Master of Divinity degree from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (Chicago), where he also taught Greek for two years as a NT Fellow. During his time at TEDS he also served for five years as the Associate Pastor at the Evangelical Free Church of Mt. Morris in northern Illinois.

He holds the PhD in New Testament Studies from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland (in St. Mary’s College), where he wrote a thesis entitled “Heaven and Earth in the Gospel of Matthew” under the supervision of Professors Richard Bauckham and Philip Esler. He attended St. Andrews as a Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholar and while there he also served as a lecturer in Greek. Dr. Pennington is a member of the Society of Biblical Literature, the Evangelical Theological Society, the Tyndale Fellowship (Cambridge), the Institute for Biblical Research, and the International Organization for Septuagint and Cognate Studies. He has published a wide variety of books, articles, and Greek and Hebrew language tools. (For fuller information see the Publications pages.) He is the also the host and co-producer of the YouTube show Cars, Coffee, Theology.

Why Democracy Needs Fairy Tales (Orthodoxy Part IV)

We’re back in Chesterton’s Orthodoxy looking at his take on how fairy tales inform our virtues and teach us about joy. Our modern craving for novelty reveals a weakness rather than a strength for God continues to do the same things over and over again, but finds joy in them. Children find joy in repetition because they do not lose their wonder for the world through cynicism. We also look at how democracy relies on tradition to give former generations a “vote” in how we live our lives. A failure to appreciate tradition disconnects us from the stabilizing forces of society. 

Quotes from Orthodoxy

"Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about."

"There is the great lesson of Beauty and the Beast; that a thing must be loved before it is loveable."

"Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” 

The Suicide of Thought (Orthodoxy Part III)

We continue our discussion of G.K. Chesterton's book Orthodoxy with his third chapter on how modernity's abandonment of Christianity not only lets vices go wild, but also virtues. We also discuss how Chesterton identifies modern false humility that remains skeptical about everything except its own skepticism. Here are some solid quotes from chapter three:

"The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone."

"A man was meant to be doubtful about himself, but undoubting about the truth; this has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert—himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt—the Divine Reason. Huxley preached a humility content to learn from Nature. But the new sceptic is so humble that he doubts if he can even learn."

"A man does not go mad because he makes a statue a mile high, but he may go mad by thinking it out in square inches."

"Every act of will is an act of self-limitation. To desire action is to desire limitation. In that sense every act is an act of self-sacrifice. When you choose anything, you reject everything else."

"But it is impossible to be an artist and not care for laws and limits. Art is limitation; the essence of every picture is the frame. If you draw a giraffe, you must draw him with a long neck. If, in your bold creative way, you hold yourself free to draw a giraffe with a short neck, you will really find that you are not free to draw a giraffe. The moment you step into the world of facts, you step into a world of limits."