This is the transcript of Restitutio episode 644: Restoration Theology 10: Biblical Theology and Progressive Revelation

This transcript was auto-generated and only approximates the contents of this episode.

Audio file
644 Restoration Theology 10.mp3

Transcript

00:00
Hey there, I'm Sean Finnegan, and you are listening to Restitudio, a podcast that seeks to recover authentic Christianity and live it out today.

00:12
The Bible is a collection of 66 books written by dozens of authors over centuries.

00:18
It did not drop from heaven, nor did it arrive all in one generation.

00:22
No, God slowly revealed the Christian scriptures over time.

00:27
As a result, we find development within them, which is important to understand when building theology.

00:34
Well, next time we'll focus on the final form of this or that doctrine.

00:38
Today, our focus is on how doctrines change over time.

00:42
Now, this is nothing to worry about.

00:46
It's not a bug.

00:47
It's a feature.

00:48
After all, our God is not a stone idol.

00:52
but the dynamic, living God who carefully shapes history to his sovereign ends, generation by generation.

01:00
Today we'll begin our first episode in a five-part series covering all the major branches of theology.

01:06
Enjoy.

01:07
Here now is episode 644, part 10 of our Restoration Theology class, Biblical Theology and Progressive Revelation.

01:23
Today we begin our five-part series on theology.

01:28
We're now in the second part of our class.

01:31
The first part focused on Scripture.

01:34
And then in the second part, we are looking at theology.

01:38
Today is about biblical theology.

01:43
And before we get into what biblical theology is, I want to define what theology means.

01:48
It's actually a compound word made-up of theos, it's a Greek word, and logos.

01:54
Theos is a Greek word for God.

01:56
Logos is the Greek word that means word, account, or rationale.

02:01
So your theology is your understanding of God.

02:05
And there's two different kinds of ways that we use the term theology.

02:10
We'll use it to talk about God specifically or any other subject in the Bible.

02:18
And so if people are talking about God specifically, they'll sometimes use the term theology proper.

02:25
And so theology proper is your understanding of God, whereas theology in general could be your theology of salvation, or your theology of the end times, or your theology of the church, or your theology of Christ.

02:39
And so basically it's the idea of doctrine.

02:43
Let's begin with some ground rules in doing theology.

02:46
I've got

02:47
for you here.

02:49
Probably sick of my list, but hey, it's an effective way to organize data.

02:55
So #1, and I said this before, I'll probably say it again, ask God for help.

03:01
Always ask God to illuminate scripture through his spirit.

03:06
Secondly, be willing to change.

03:10
If the preponderance of the biblical evidence is

03:13
different than what you currently believe, then be willing to change what you believe.

03:17
The truth has nothing to fear.

03:20
If the Bible messes with your theology, change your theology.

03:24
Number 3, don't insist on figuring everything out.

03:29
Uncertainty is okay.

03:32
You don't have to know everything.

03:35
It's better to live with uncertainty when it comes to a particular doctrine or practice than to force yourself

03:42
to take a position that has major problems.

03:46
Recognize the problems.

03:47
Put them on the back burner.

03:49
We have that saying.

03:51
It's the idea of when you're cooking, you have these pots and they're boiling things and you're cooking things.

03:57
And then on the back burner, at a distance to the back of the stove, you have something that's just at a low heat.

04:03
It's just simmering there.

04:04
It's not, nothing bad is going to happen.

04:07
It's just warming up, okay?

04:09
That's what you do with your problems theologically.

04:11
You put them on the back burner and let them simmer and think about them from time to time.

04:17
Unless it's something that's absolutely critical to your life, in which case you bring it to the front burner and you really focus on it, right?

04:23
But most issues, you put it on the back burner, you'll figure it out over time.

04:26
God will help you or other Christians will have written a book about it or

04:32
There's a debate.

04:33
Debates are very helpful.

04:34
We'll talk about that.

04:35
You can look up debates.

04:36
We have all these video debates now on YouTube.

04:39
And those are helpful for working on those back burner issues.

04:42
Number 4, don't change the Bible.

04:45
Please, for the love of God, don't change the Bible.

04:49
If your theology disagrees with the Bible, your theology is wrong, not the Bible.

04:56
I know it just sounds like such an obvious thing to say, but I've seen this over and over again, where somebody will translate a verse in this sort of weird way, using words in ways that technically they could mean, but not likely, just to support their theology.

05:12
And that's changing the Bible to fit your theology, and it's bad.

05:15
You should change your theology to fit the Bible.

05:18
We do not begin with a doctrinal package and shoehorn scripture to fit that.

05:23
All right, so let's talk about biblical theology.

05:26
What is it?

05:27
The Bible is not a flat book.

05:29
You can't just pick a verse here and verse there and just squish them together and say, hey, that's my doctrine.

05:35
Michael Lawrence in his book, Biblical Theology and the Life of the Church says, Islam understands that the Quran was revealed to Muhammad all at once, miraculously lowered down from heaven.

05:48
The sacred texts of Buddhism and Confucianism are confined to the lifetime of a single man.

05:53
But the Bible was not written in a moment or even in a single lifetime.

05:59
The Bible was written over 2 millennia as God progressively revealed more and more of himself and his story.

06:07
Two important words there, progressively revealed.

06:11
He continues, biblical theology is not only concerned with what the Bible teaches,

06:16
but how that teaching is progressively revealed and progressively develops over the course of history.

06:24
You're getting the hint that we see this word progressive A lot.

06:29
It's funny, the word progressive these days tends to mean your political views, but when we talk about

06:36
progression in the Bible, it's got nothing to do with liberal or conservative politics.

06:40
It's just talking about progress, the progress of God unfolding redemption over time through scripture.

06:49
In systematics theology, which we'll look at next time, we take the final form of any particular doctrine.

06:56
In biblical theology, however, what we do is we look to see how an idea or a concept develops throughout scripture.

07:05
And if there's development, then you can't just grab a verse here and a verse there and stick them together and say, oh yeah, these two belong together.

07:15
Maybe they do, maybe they don't.

07:16
Was there a development in between the two?

07:20
Example, Leviticus 1927, it says, you are not allowed to trim your beard.

07:29
Now I have a confession to make.

07:33
I trim the beard.

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I do.

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Otherwise it would be like way down here.

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Why do I think it's okay to trim the beard?

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Because I think there has been progression.

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Like that was true for those people at that time in that situation under that law.

07:48
But because of Christ, things have changed and it's not any longer true for us today.

07:54
Deuteronomy 22, 8 says you have to build low walls around your roof on your house.

08:01
I don't have any low walls around the roof on my house, like, I have gutters, but...

08:08
Well, if you believe the new covenant brought the old to an end, these laws aren't any longer in force, especially for Gentiles.

08:15
Gerhardus Voss, who is understood to be the father, maybe the grandfather of biblical theology, he said, the method of biblical theology is in the main, determined by the principle of historic progression.

08:31
Hence, the division of the course of revelation into certain periods.

08:36
So this is the idea that within scripture itself, there are, I don't know what the term is, phases or stages or periods of time that are naturally present.

08:50
Michael Lawrence writes about this.

08:51
He says, in Romans 5, Paul speaks of the division of time before and after the giving of the Mosaic law.

08:59
as well as the division before and after Adam's fall.

09:03
In Galatians 3, he describes the Mosaic epoch as a caretaker period.

09:08
It prepared but did not actually deliver humanity to salvation.

09:12
Peter marks a major division of world history at the flood in 2 Peter 3, 6-7, and then goes on to look forward to yet another world still to come.

09:23
In Acts 7, Stephen divides history into the epoch of the patriarchs, the Mosaic epoch, and the monarchy.

09:31
In Isaiah 63 to 64, Isaiah contrasts the time of Abraham and the time of Moses with the exilic period, concluding with a prayer for another Sinai event in which God rends the heavens and comes down to redeem His people.

09:47
I look at these as steps or phases in the history of redemption.

09:52
I like that turn of phrase, history of redemption.

09:54
The idea is that God didn't just save everyone instantly, but He worked through people over time.

10:01
And there are these different covenants and different events that happened to bring to pass His plan of salvation.

10:08
And what Michael Lawrence is saying here, and what I so appreciate about this quote I just read you, is that he's saying, look, this is biblical.

10:17
This is something in the Bible itself.

10:18
This is not, we're not going to come up with a whole system and impose it on scripture.

10:22
The scripture itself admits that there are these different periods of time.

10:29
All right, so I have a list of 10 biblical periods.

10:34
I'm sure you could have a list of 12 or 7 or 42.

10:39
Okay, so don't

10:42
stress about the exact way I sliced up the pie here.

10:46
But I do want to go through this with you just to show you how, depending on what period you're in, God's policy is different.

10:56
Okay, what he expects of the people, what his laws are for the people.

11:01
So in that first biblical period, which I just called the Garden of Eden, God creates the heavens and the earth, you know, the sky and the land.

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He puts the first people in the Garden of Eden and he gives them some rules.

11:20
Number one, have children.

11:22
Number 2, rule the world.

11:26
Number 3, don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

11:32
Right?

11:32
So those rules don't necessarily apply to you today, but they were the rules in the Garden of Eden.

11:39
Well,

11:40
After the Garden of Eden ended, we got the old world.

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And I struggle with the category names and stuff like that, but I just call it the old world, the world before the flood.

11:51
Okay, that's what I mean by the old world.

11:54
Adam and Eve's disobedience brought an end to the garden phase.

11:58
Following their disobedience, God sent Adam and Eve

12:01
out from the garden.

12:03
Now, after that happens, the Bible talks, and this happened in Genesis chapter 3.

12:07
So Genesis chapter 4 talks about moral problems.

12:12
Cain murdered his brother, Abel, right?

12:17
And then there were other sinful things that happened, but there were also the development of cities and the advent of musical instruments and other kinds of technology all the way up until it says,

12:31
that the sons of God came into the daughters of men and to them were born the Nephilim.

12:38
This is too much for us to discuss right now tonight, whatever the Nephilim were.

12:44
But let's just put it this way.

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It was so severe that God brought a flood about.

12:50
And so that's what starts the period of the patriarchs.

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The patriarchs began after the flood.

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And so, starting in Genesis 9, God had brought a flood on the world.

13:01
And then we have this period with Noah and then his descendants eventually turning to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.

13:11
Those are like the famous patriarchs.

13:14
There are also matriarchs, I should mention, right?

13:16
So Abraham and Sarah.

13:20
Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob, and this was complicated.

13:23
Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, and Zilpah.

13:28
But anyhow, this is that period of time where things are getting started.

13:31
The policies that God sets for this period during the patriarchs are different.

13:36
One of the things that he establishes is capital punishment.

13:40
He did not have capital punishment before.

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And starting with Noah and going forward, he says, whoever sheds the blood of a man, by a man, his blood shall be shed.

13:50
That was a new policy.

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And lifespans were considerably shortened.

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And God said that you can eat meat.

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Yay! I like this policy.

14:02
It's a good policy, I think.

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You don't have to eat meat, but you can eat meat.

14:06
And then the other one was no more global floods.

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So there are some new policy changes during that period.

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And God, of course, made a covenant with Abraham, which we'll talk about later.

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Then there's the period of the judges.

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The judges, I include Moses all the way to Samuel.

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And so what's the difference between the period of the patriarchs and the judges?

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Egypt.

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Israel had gone down, the children of Israel had gone down to Egypt.

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They were there for centuries.

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During that time, they expanded into hundreds of thousands of people.

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And they were horribly persecuted.

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And so God raised up Moses, the first of the judges, and he brought his people out of Egypt.

14:47
He brought God's people out of Egypt through the 10 plagues.

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Brings them to Mount Sinai.

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They received the Torah, God's holy law, which starts with the Ten Commandments.

14:57
That's just the first part, the intro, introduction to the Torah is the Ten Commandments.

15:02
And they build a tabernacle and they establish a priesthood and they start sacrificing animals to Yahweh and doing it in the 40 years of wandering in the wilderness.

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And then after that, they entered the land.

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So that's this period of the judges where there's a loose tribal confederacy, rampant idolatry, and yet the people do have the Torah.

15:26
Then we get to the period of the monarchy, which is where you have kings.

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So the last judge, Samuel, anoints the first king, Saul, and from Saul onwards, we have kings reigning over the people.

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Lots of history happens there.

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The one point I would like to make, though, is that this is where the prophets fit in.

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Like Isaiah and Amos and Hosea, these prophets, they're speaking to the king and they're speaking to the people during the reign of the kings.

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So lots of prophets during that period.

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And the difference between the period of the judges and the period of the monarchy is that during the period of the judges, you still have a tabernacle, which is a portable worship center where sacrifices can be made.

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From Solomon onwards, who was one of the kings, they build a temple.

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So that temple represents the only space where sacrifices should be made.

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So that's a change in policy.

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You want to go make a sacrifice on the hills of Gibeah?

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That's not acceptable during the monarchy.

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You've got to go to Jerusalem with your sacrifice.

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Then we get to the exile.

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Here we have the Assyrian Empire carrying away the people of Israel and the Babylonian Empire carrying away the people of Judah.

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And this is a period that lasts 70 years.

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During this time,

16:54
is probably when they started synagogues, in fact, where they were taken away from the land and they still wanted to retain their religion and their beliefs, their way of life, their language.

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And so the synagogue was likely the result of that.

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By the time we get to the New Testament, synagogues are just like totally normal.

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And there's no mention of them in the Old Testament.

17:17
So it's like, well, when did synagogues start?

17:20
And during this period of the exile, the people are still under the Torah.

17:25
They're keeping the law of Moses, but they have no temple.

17:30
So there's no way for them to offer worship in the form of sacrifice during this whole period of the exile.

17:36
After 70 years, the people come back and we enter the post-exile period.

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And that's because Cyrus the Great of Persia told all the exiles of the Jewish people they could return home.

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So they returned home in three

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waves under Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah.

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And they've rebuilt the temple, they've rebuilt the city of Jerusalem, and they started having sacrifices again.

18:03
And they were mostly independent during this period.

18:06
And so once again, they're under the law, but they're also under a new temple.

18:11
They're also serving God in Jerusalem through this new temple, what we call the second temple.

18:18
Then we get to the New Testament and the period I'll just call Jesus Christ, which covers his birth and his ministry, preaching, healing people, casting out spirits, all the different stuff that Jesus did to teach people how to live as a rabbi.

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Certainly his death, his resurrection, his ascension into heaven.

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These are all part of the Jesus Christ period here.

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Now with Jesus, he's

18:44
It's really interesting because he is keeping the Torah, he's keeping the law of Moses, but he's also keeping the new covenant.

18:53
He's living out the new covenant.

18:55
So he's doing both.

18:56
He's keeping, so for example, the Torah says you should not work on Saturday.

19:01
So Jesus didn't work on Saturday.

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I mean, I know they busted on him sometimes for healing people, but that wasn't his main job.

19:07
That was just something that was

19:10
miracle of God.

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He wasn't like working up a sweat when he told the guy to stretch out his hand.

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I think if it was his main job, you might have a problem.

19:20
Like if he was a doctor and he was trying to heal people on the Sabbath.

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But I think Jesus actually did keep the Sabbath, despite his critics on that.

19:29
But at the same time, Jesus is doing new things, like teaching people to love their enemies.

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This is something that we don't find in the Old Testament.

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And we find Jesus giving lots of new teachings.

19:40
about not making oaths.

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In the Old Testament, there's no problem giving oaths, taking a vow.

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Jesus says don't do it.

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So Jesus is doing both.

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He's keeping the law, he's keeping the Old Covenant, and he's teaching and keeping the New Covenant at the same time.

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And then we get to the church period.

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This is initiated by, of course, the ratification of the New Testament on the cross with the blood of Christ.

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And then

20:07
Jesus's ascension into heaven, resurrection, ascension, and it's initiated with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost to the church period that we read about in the New Testament.

20:20
During this period, Jesus's followers expand their gospel message beyond preaching just the kingdom of God to also include preaching about His death and His resurrection.

20:30
And Christianity spreads from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to Galilee.

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The church period of the New Testament is pretty darn exciting, I think.

20:40
So many Jewish Christians continued to keep the law, although Christ's ratification of the new covenant brought the law to an end, which is clear in Hebrews 8.13, which says the new covenant made the old covenant obsolete.

20:56
And then there's the kingdom of God, period, right, the one at the end there.

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Christ's return to earth, the resurrection of the saved,

21:04
Jesus and the saints rule the world, right?

21:06
This whole period we call the kingdom of God, eternal life.

21:10
Everything wrong with the world is made right.

21:12
So my point is, the Bible has these different phases or periods of development, and it's important to recognize them.

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So what I want to do now with you is lay out a three-step method on how to do biblical theology, and then I want to run through an example with you.

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Number one,

21:32
Collect all the scriptures on a particular topic and arrange them in chronological order.

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Now, in the old days, in order to do this, you'd have to actually read a paper Bible front to back, right?

21:48
That was the only way you could collect all.

21:50
all the verses.

21:51
Or maybe you look it up in a concordance and look up key terms and flip to page 754 and then, scroll through in the tiny print and think, oh, there's a verse about faith.

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Okay, write it down on a yellow legal pad, you know, with an ink pen.

22:10
Times have changed.

22:12
Now, if you have Bible software or a good website, you can find all the verses on a topic in a second.

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Or you can ask AI.

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So let me give you an example.

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Let's say you want to study about the Abrahamic covenant, the covenant God made with Abraham.

22:28
You want to study that.

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How does the Abrahamic covenant develop over time throughout scripture, from Genesis all the way to Revelation?

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That's what biblical theology is.

22:39
It's tracing how an idea develops over time.

22:42
This is what I told the AI.

22:44
I said, list out all the verses in the Bible that pertain to the Abrahamic covenant.

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not just in Genesis, but throughout the Old Testament and the New Testament as well, list them out in chronological order.

22:55
That's what I, this is literally what I typed into the AI, okay?

22:59
And it spit out something, and I said, not quite good enough.

23:04
Eliminate references to the historical Abraham that don't pertain to the specific promises God made him.

23:11
The AI, instead of giving me the verses about the promises God made to Abraham, it just gave me everything about Abraham that the Bible says, which is a lot.

23:21
Then I told it, redo this list, but don't put headings for each book of the Bible.

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Just list out the references as you have them in order.

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And this is what the AI spit out.

23:31
Glory, hallelujah, praise God, amen.

23:33
51 verses about promises that God has made to Abraham in less than 5 seconds

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of working with the stupid thing.

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Boom, there it is.

23:43
I shouldn't call it a stupid thing.

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It is impressive.

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Now, step #2 in doing biblical, so number one, collect all the verses.

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Step 2, take notes on what you learn as you read through each of the verses in context.

23:59
There is no way for you to get AI to do this for you.

24:04
have to read the verses yourself.

24:07
AI can help you know where all the verses are, but guess what?

24:11
There is no download to your brain feature in AI currently, right?

24:15
You have to actually look them up on your phone or in your paper Bible or however you want to do it, listen to it on audio, I don't care.

24:23
And when you do that, you want to take notes on what you learn as you read through each of the verses in context.

24:30
ask questions like, does this concept appear just in one part of the Bible?

24:35
I mean, when you look at the list, right, you notice that, oh my goodness, so much is in Genesis.

24:43
And it has a definitive starting point of Genesis chapter 12 and a definitive ending point of chapter 48.

24:50
Guess what you should really do?

24:51
Not just read each of those verses individually,

24:54
but read all of chapter 12 through 48 so that you get the full context and all the in-between stuff that gives the meaning to the verses.

25:04
And then we have a whole section in Exodus and then almost nothing in Leviticus.

25:09
For Leviticus, I would just drop in on chapter 26, verse 42, read it.

25:13
And then, unless it was something that needed me to read more in the context, just move on.

25:18
Almost nothing in Numbers, just two.

25:20
But then once again, in Deuteronomy, we get this massive chunk about the promises God made to Abraham.

25:27
So you might want to read through Deuteronomy, like chapter 1 through 9, and then chapter 29 through 34.

25:36
Right?

25:37
You see how I'm saying to do this?

25:38
Like, because you don't really necessarily want to read the whole Bible.

25:41
If you can, it's great.

25:43
but you also don't want to just read verses in isolation.

25:48
Okay, so what do you find as you read through?

25:51
Well, in the beginning, you notice that there's many verses in Genesis, you read through those, and you realize that God's promises to Abraham originally were to give him a land, to multiply his descendants, and to bless them.

26:10
Bless those who bless him and curse those who curse him, right?

26:13
So that's the Abrahamic promise or collection of promises.

26:18
And so you say to yourself, all right, well, God's gonna give this land and this blessing to Abraham.

26:24
You know, God blessed Abraham, right?

26:25
Didn't he have like lots of money and, you know, lots of possessions?

26:29
Sure.

26:30
Okay.

26:31
Did he have lots of descendants?

26:36
I mean, there was Ishmael.

26:37
And then Isaac, and then he actually got married again later to a woman named Keturah.

26:42
I don't know if anybody ever reads that part of Genesis, but he had some more kids with her, including, I think Midian was one of his kids.

26:49
So he had a handful of descendants, but not really many descendants.

26:55
So this is a promise that we're waiting for its fulfillment after Abraham dies.

27:00
Then we see Isaac, and Isaac and Rebecca, she can't even have kids.

27:04
So she has to pray, and then she has twins.

27:07
but then no more kids after that.

27:10
But then with Jacob, Abraham's grandson, we get 13 children, 12 sons and a daughter.

27:18
You imagine being that daughter.

27:21
But then you're like, okay, but they never inherited the land.

27:24
When do they inherit the land?

27:25
And you're reading through the story and you get to Exodus and they're all in Egypt and it's like, oh man, they're in Egypt.

27:30
They're not even in the right place.

27:32
But then God raises up Moses.

27:34
And you know what God says to Moses?

27:36
Four centuries after he said it to Abraham, 4 centuries plus later, he says to Moses, I am Yahweh, the one who appeared to Abraham, and I'm going to bring you to the land that I promised to Abraham.

27:51
That's what he says to Moses in Exodus chapter 6.

27:54
Isn't that incredible?

27:55
So you get to like Exodus, here it is on the list, 6 verses 2 through 8.

27:59
So you read that and you're like, oh my goodness, God hasn't forgotten his promises.

28:02
He still remembers it.

28:03
It's 4 plus centuries later, and now he's gonna do it.

28:06
And he does.

28:07
He brings them out of the land, and eventually through Joshua, they enter into the land.

28:11
Abrahamic promises are all fulfilled.

28:13
He's got millions of descendants.

28:16
They've all been blessed, and they've inherited the land.

28:19
We're done.

28:20
Good night.

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You would think.

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You would think that's it.

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But when you get to the New Testament, what you discover is that there's this whole section in Romans and Galatians that talks about the promises God made to Abraham, and what the Apostle Paul sees is a fresh fulfillment.

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That now God has, through Christ, brought this Abrahamic faith to the Gentiles as a way for them to become saved apart from the works of the law.

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It's like a whole new understanding of the Abrahamic covenant.

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And then this is also fleshed out in Hebrews as you go along.

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And then there's yet another fulfillment in the future when they will, we will all inherit the land and not just the land of Israel.

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It says in Romans 4, 13, Abraham will be an heir of the world.

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So we see as we trace an idea through scripture that it develops, it progresses, it changes.

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And so now I go back and I read Genesis chapter 12 and I see God call Abram and Sarai out of Ur of the Chaldees.

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And I think to myself, because of Christ, I am a descendant.

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I am a child of Abraham, even though I have no genetic

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descent from Abraham and Sarah.

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Because of Christ, that seed has become a tree of faith and I have been grafted into it, says Romans 11.

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And so now when I read in Genesis chapter 12 through 22, all this saga about Abraham and Sarah and Hagar and Ishmael and all the different stuff that happens, I think to myself, wow, I'm really invested in this.

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is my family history.

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So that's how progressive revelation can help you understand the Bible.

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And then #3 in the method, summarize your findings in a chronological manner.

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That's what I was just kind of doing, was imitating what that would look like on the subject of Abraham and the covenant.

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And maybe you would write something down like this.

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God's promises to Abraham of blessing

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Many descendants in inheriting the land were initially fulfilled in the time of Joshua.

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However, a second fulfillment occurred through Jesus as he brought the Abrahamic promises to the Gentiles.

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Ultimately, these promises will be completely fulfilled in the kingdom of God when an immense multitude of God's people, both Jew and Gentile, inherit the earth and enjoy God's blessings forever.

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This understanding is how progressive revelation works.

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Andreas Kostenberger and Gregory Goswell write in their book, Biblical Theology, this then is the purpose of biblical theology, to understand the theology of the Bible on its own terms before systematizing its teachings on various subjects and making application, even though there is, of course, a vital element of synthesizing in biblical theology itself.

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The difference, however, is that synthesizing in biblical theology essentially involves the topical or thematic groupings of insights.

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So that's what we were doing.

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We were looking at a topic or a theme, still in keeping with biblical terminology and within the framework of the original historical setting in which a given teaching was given.

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While systematic theology operates more broadly on a conceptual plane.

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So we have biblical theology, we have systematic theology.

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Biblical theology takes an idea and follows it through scripture to see how it develops.

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Biblical theology recognizes the differences between different books of the Bible and different authors in scripture, that they talk differently about a particular subject and that it develops over time.

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Systematic theology, as we're going to see next time,

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We don't care about development or differences.

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We want to know what is the final form of an idea?

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What's the final version of it?

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And how can we categorize it in a way that is easy to understand?

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And that's what we'll turn to next as we continue through our class on restoration theology.

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Well, that brings this presentation on biblical theology to a close.

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If you'd like to ask any questions or leave any comments or feedback, you can go to restitudio.org.

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That's the website for this podcast.

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Restitudio is like restitution with no N.

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restitudio.org, O-R-G, and find episode 644, Biblical Theology and Progressive Revelation, and leave your thoughts there.

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Now, on last week's episode, 643,

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applying scripture in your context, we got a comment in from Mark via YouTube who said, I've very much been enjoying this class on restoration theology regarding cultural relativity.

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I appreciate the example of the holy kiss versus the handshake or hug we use in this day and time.

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Something I have always pondered was the young pre-arranged marriages at 12, 13, or 14.

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Respecting the Bible that premarital sex is wrong, one can only wonder how much premarital sex was going on in biblical times.

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Since we live in a different time period and want to follow the Bible, can you expound how two Christian people would be able to date assuming that they are much older in years than those who had prearranged marriages in biblical times?

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Is there anything that you would know about dating in the Bible?

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that's a juicy question, Mark.

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Thanks.

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Thanks for asking it.

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I don't think I've been asked for dating advice, nor would I think my advice would be all that helpful for people since all of my dating occurred in the last century and the very wee early years of this one.

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So yeah, it's been a while.

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Been married for

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coming up on 23 years.

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So I've been out of the dating scene for quite a while.

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From what I know is the kids are all on these apps today and good luck.

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You know, dating has never been easy and it probably never will be easy.

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But as far as your question about premarital sex and pre-arranged marriages, there is no scripture that requires an arranged marriage.

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It's just assumed

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that happened because that was the culture in which the Bible was written.

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And the other people groups who lived outside the land of Israel also arranged their marriages.

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And this is because the whole world functioned on a patriarchal system where a woman was protected by her father until she came to the age of marriage and then she was protected by her husband thereafter, assuming everything went well.

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That system worked, I think, fairly well.

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Our system today offers women many more protections than that old patriarchal system.

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And I think in that regard, it is actually really helpful and really good that women do have many more rights and privileges and say over their own lives.

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But with respect to dating, it does seem to be very difficult for women and for men.

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You know, as a pastor, I hear a lot about this from single folks that are just

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bewildered.

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And to be honest, my heart breaks for them.

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I had a lady come to church, a young lady, she was 28 and had never been to the church before and just came to visit and on the recommendation of a relative.

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And she's like, yeah, I don't really have friends my age and I would love to get married.

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I just don't know anybody around my age.

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You know, I work this job and I go to this church.

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She goes to a different church.

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20 minutes away from, maybe 25 minutes away from my church.

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And she's just asking, like, can you help me?

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I'm like, man, if I could help you and all this, it's funny, I have all these single people in my church, right?

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And they have the solution to each other's problems, but they don't marry each other.

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They always want to look outside.

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But anyhow, it is certainly a problem today and people are struggling and then getting married much, much later.

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I got married at 23.

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as did my father before me.

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I don't know when his father got married or other folks, but it didn't seem all that young to me at the time.

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I had graduated college.

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I was a year out of college and had plenty of time.

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I didn't rush it or anything.

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It was just how it worked out for me.

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A lot of people get married later now, and that does introduce this whole question of premarital sex.

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But just to be fair, Mark, to your question,

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I had to struggle with this too, man.

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Like, look, from the time a person goes through puberty until the time that this person is married, yeah, it's a struggle.

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So even getting married at 23 didn't like magically make it all go away.

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It was a real struggle and I had to fight the good fight.

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And there were times where I

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And there were a number of years there where I didn't even know how serious of a problem it was.

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I wasn't really taking my faith seriously, and I did fall into sin.

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Thankfully, when it came to dating my wife, I was in a different period of time where I did know what the Bible said about it and did take it seriously.

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And God was very gracious to help me and her to stay pure through that period.

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And I'll say this too, I shared this at the men's conference that we had here a couple weeks ago.

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There was one little spot in our dating after we had gotten engaged and before we got married where it was, I'll be honest, it was just like insanely hard not to cross the line into sex with her.

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And I really didn't think I was going to make it.

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I thought I was just going to have to indulge the lust of my flesh and indulge in sin.

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And

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I did kind of like the only emergency thing I could think of, which was I fasted.

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I just stopped eating and I drank water, but I just didn't eat anything or drink anything for a few days.

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And boy, there's nothing that puts the brakes on your libido like food insecurity.

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I don't know if that's the right term for it, but starvation.

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That's really all you're thinking about is your belly.

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And after a few days of doing that,

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She even made some nice green drinks for me, some juices, juiced vegetables so that I could have at least nutrients while I was going through this fasting and seeking God's assistance and help.

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And made it through, I think, about 5 days.

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I don't remember exactly how many days, but it was a good chunk of time, fasting and then just drinking the juices.

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That was sufficient to put the brakes on the whole thing and to show her that I was taking this whole thing seriously.

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that we were able to make it to our wedding night.

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And that was a beautiful thing for both of us who had not always done everything right before this relationship, that God gave us the grace and the power and the Spirit to be able to handle the dating properly.

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So, but here's the thing.

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Years later, just like only a couple weeks ago, I was in a counseling session with my wife and she brought this up.

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She brought this up.

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We're like, we have not talked about this in years, maybe decades.

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And she said, look,

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When Sean got too tempted in our relationship, he fasted.

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And she said, that was one of the most incredible things he's ever done for me, because he showed me that he cared about my spirituality as well.

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To the single people out there, hey, having some self-control and going to God in your time of need can leave a lasting impression on your spouse if this is indeed the person you end up marrying that you're in a relationship.

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So anyhow, I just wanted to share that a little bit with you.

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Good luck with dating.

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My advice as a pastor is to get married and not date somebody forever because it does get difficult and you don't want to put yourself in that situation indefinitely.

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Somebody named J.

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Webb wrote in saying, if Jesus or Saul of Tarsus taught the Torah, laws of clean and unclean foods do not apply to believers, then they are teaching false doctrine.

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And then he quotes Isaiah 66, which is about the end times and how God's going to judge people who eat swine's flesh and mice, I guess.

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And so this is a typical Torah observant critique that I get.

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And basically, this is somebody saying that God cannot have a new covenant.

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The new covenant must just be the old covenant interiorized.

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It can't be a break with the old covenant.

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It cannot go in a new direction.

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And my guess is this belief stems from an idea, a very pagan idea of God, that God is immutable and cannot change.

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And that's not the Jewish belief.

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That's not what we find in the Hebrew scriptures.

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What we find in the Hebrew scriptures is a God who is dynamically engaged in the history of redemption with his people, and he does change.

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And there was a day before you did not need to keep the Sabbath.

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And then when Moses gave that instruction, they had to keep the Sabbath.

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And there was a day when they came before him and said, hey, this guy's picking up sticks.

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What do we do?

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They didn't know what to do because they had not kept the Sabbath before.

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And Moses said, well, stone him.

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And so that set a precedent.

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And then there is a time after the old covenant when Jesus had died on the cross and ratified the new covenant and according to Hebrews, made the old covenant obsolete.

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What else does the word obsolete mean?

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If something is obsolete but you're still using it, when you have the new version out, that doesn't make any sense.

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So I think the new covenant is the new version and that's really my understanding of it.

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If you'd like to learn more about this subject, check out my class, New Covenant Theology.

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It's on YouTube.

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and to probably just type New Covenant Theology and my last name, Finnegan, and you'll be able to find it there.

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And that's where we go, kind of Jerry Wirral and I go through a bunch of this stuff together.

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Well, that's going to be it for today.

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Thanks everybody for listening in to the end.

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Can't wait till next week to talk to you about systematic theology and biblical coherence.

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It's going to be awesome.

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I'll catch you then.

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If you'd like to support us, you can do that at restitudio.org.

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If you'd like to support us financially, thanks to you who are supporting us.

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It means A lot.

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And don't forget, the truth has nothing to fear.