This is the transcript of Restitutio episode 654: The Plight of a Restorationist with Matt Lovegrove This transcript was auto-generated and only approximates the contents of this episode. Audio file 654 Matt Lovegrove.mp3 Transcript 00:00 Sean Finnegan 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 Sean Finnegan Many Bible-believing churches are rigid keepers of tradition. 00:16 Sean Finnegan They have a statement of faith, a historic confession, or old creeds that determine what people should and should not believe. 00:25 Sean Finnegan There's very little space for people to genuinely ask questions, investigate competing doctrines, and honestly change their minds over time. 00:34 Sean Finnegan Today I'm speaking with Matt Lovegrove of Newcastle, New South Wales. 00:39 Sean Finnegan If you listen to the interview from last week with Paul Robson, he talked about Matt a bit since he was the one that introduced Paul to a biblical Unitarian perspective. 00:48 Sean Finnegan Matt is a hardwired restorationist. 00:51 Sean Finnegan You're going to hear about his journey from one exploration to another. 00:56 Sean Finnegan Sadly, it seems like each time he shed some falsehood and gained some more truth, he ran afoul of church leadership. 01:04 Sean Finnegan I think this episode is going to break your heart and make you angry. 01:08 Sean Finnegan Not at any one villain in Matt's story, but at the system that continually crushes restorationists under its weight. 01:16 Sean Finnegan Churches need to change. 01:18 Sean Finnegan Rather than seeking to preserve the status quo at all costs, we need to seek truth, whatever the cost. 01:25 Sean Finnegan Here now is episode 654, The Plight of a Restorationist, with Matt Lovegrove. 01:39 Sean Finnegan Welcome Matt, so glad to have you join me today. 01:41 Matt Lovegrove Thanks for having me, Sean. 01:42 Matt Lovegrove I'm excited to be here. 01:44 Sean Finnegan Yeah, I'm super excited to have you two. 01:47 Sean Finnegan Of course, I just interviewed Paul Robson. 01:49 Sean Finnegan He talked about you. 01:51 Sean Finnegan So to show people who you are and a little bit about your story, I think is really fitting at this time. 01:58 Sean Finnegan Maybe you could just get us started and tell us about your upbringing. 02:01 Sean Finnegan What was your journey of faith like? 02:03 Matt Lovegrove Yeah, so I was raised in a very loving, very supportive household. 02:07 Matt Lovegrove Both my parents are Christians. 02:10 Matt Lovegrove dad studied at a Bible college and actually helped start a church, the church that I was going to all through my childhood and teenage years. 02:20 Matt Lovegrove Started going to youth group. 02:21 Matt Lovegrove Early on, I would have just said I was a Christian and maybe not really known what I meant by that. 02:27 Matt Lovegrove But then early high school, I think I would have been about 14. 02:30 Matt Lovegrove I had a moment of realizing that at the public school that I was going to, I would not have been perceived as a Christian. 02:40 Matt Lovegrove but at youth group on a Friday afternoon or at church on a Sunday, I would have been. 02:47 Matt Lovegrove And I noticed that in many ways there was sort of like a double life I was living, which I suppose I was convicted by that. 02:55 Matt Lovegrove And what I decided to do was to not be a Christian in that moment. 03:03 Matt Lovegrove I actually had this moment of going, all right, well, let's try on this non-Christianity because I hadn't actually tried that on. 03:11 Matt Lovegrove And it was weird because there was maybe a week to it most where I started to just think really dark thoughts about purpose and life and 03:23 Matt Lovegrove where you end up after death. 03:26 Matt Lovegrove And it felt so empty. 03:28 Matt Lovegrove And I kind of got scared and had a moment where I was like, whoa, no, that's not good. 03:33 Matt Lovegrove I don't want to do that. 03:34 Matt Lovegrove It's like, yeah, no, I'm definitely a Christian. 03:37 Matt Lovegrove I need God. 03:38 Matt Lovegrove I need Jesus in my life. 03:41 Matt Lovegrove And I think since then, I've maybe refined those thoughts a little bit. 03:46 Matt Lovegrove when I sort of looked into apologetics as I got older. 03:49 Matt Lovegrove I actually got inspired a lot by Ravi Zacharias, who obviously has not had the greatest reputation for a little bit now, but his four categories of origin, morality, purpose and destiny. 04:04 Matt Lovegrove Does your worldview answer those? 04:08 Matt Lovegrove And I think Christianity does so really well, really satisfyingly. 04:14 Matt Lovegrove And that for me was a huge part of why I became a Christian and I suppose the confidence that I have in God and how he's designed this world. 04:26 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 04:26 Sean Finnegan Tell us about your parents a little bit. 04:29 Sean Finnegan I know they had some interesting situations develop with church and how that affected you. 04:35 Matt Lovegrove So the church that they helped start, dad was the assistant minister. 04:41 Matt Lovegrove He gave the first sermon at the church when I was two or three years old, went after it officially became a church. 04:51 Matt Lovegrove Over the years, maybe the next, you'd say 15, 16 years, the church grew quite a lot. 04:56 Matt Lovegrove Used to be in a single room at someone's house and it became 05:02 Matt Lovegrove for congregations spread across three locations. 05:06 Matt Lovegrove I think I'm getting that right. 05:08 Matt Lovegrove So it was quite a large, like hundreds of people and bringing on more staff. 05:15 Matt Lovegrove And I think the leadership shifted its views in a number of areas over the years. 05:21 Matt Lovegrove So for example, mum was an elder of the church. 05:25 Matt Lovegrove And the church shifted its view on women in leadership. 05:30 Matt Lovegrove and decided that women shouldn't be elders in the church. 05:34 Matt Lovegrove And so there was a whole process about stepping mum down from that position. 05:39 Sean Finnegan And how old were you when this was happening? 05:42 Matt Lovegrove I don't remember exactly how old it was, funnily enough, when mum was stepped down. 05:46 Matt Lovegrove I would have been mid-teens after I became a Christian, I'd say. 05:49 Matt Lovegrove So I think maybe 14, 15, it would have been around that time. 05:54 Sean Finnegan What did you think about it at the time? 05:56 Matt Lovegrove I don't know if I thought I had my own thoughts about it. 06:00 Matt Lovegrove I think I was able to reflect back to mum and dad's thoughts that they had about it, but I'm not sure I'd got to a point where I actually had my own independent thought. 06:11 Matt Lovegrove Yeah, it seemed wrong to me. 06:14 Matt Lovegrove I think I've thought about it a lot more since then, and I suppose I have more thoughts on the theology now. 06:18 Matt Lovegrove But yeah, at the time, I don't know how much I actually thought about that instance, about that incident. 06:24 Matt Lovegrove But yeah, then later on, 06:26 Matt Lovegrove dad realized that he and the rest of the eldership of the church had a different view on justification. 06:34 Matt Lovegrove And I think that there's a lot about specifically their views that was different in small ways, but I'd say a big part of it came down to the person's role in expressing faith. 06:48 Matt Lovegrove And so Romans 4 speaks about Abraham, obviously quoting from Genesis. 06:55 Matt Lovegrove And I think it's Romans 4 verse 4 where Paul writes, quoting Genesis, that Abraham believed God and God credited to him as righteousness. 07:06 Matt Lovegrove And so dad would read that passage, for example, and say, well, it is the faith that God is acknowledging. 07:14 Matt Lovegrove So crediting in an acknowledging sense, acknowledging that as righteousness, as the right way to relate to God. 07:22 Matt Lovegrove But the elders would read that and say it's a transference credit in like an accounting sense. 07:30 Matt Lovegrove And so it was righteousness that was transferred to Abraham in that moment. 07:36 Matt Lovegrove And the problem they had with Dad's theology was that it became not so, I think the word is monogistic. 07:44 Sean Finnegan Monogistic, yeah. 07:45 Matt Lovegrove Synergistic. 07:46 Sean Finnegan One working. 07:47 Matt Lovegrove Yeah, and so they. 07:48 Sean Finnegan One person working, yeah. 07:50 Matt Lovegrove And so they accused that of being synergistic. 07:54 Matt Lovegrove Amen. 07:55 Sean Finnegan I'm a synergist all the way. 07:58 Matt Lovegrove Yeah. 08:00 Matt Lovegrove in this church, that was a bad thing. 08:03 Matt Lovegrove So they accused that of people earning their own salvation through his view. 08:08 Matt Lovegrove And I think there's a lot more to it than that. 08:10 Matt Lovegrove But there was a big process. 08:12 Matt Lovegrove He was 08:13 Matt Lovegrove asked to write a summary. 08:15 Matt Lovegrove This is funny. 08:15 Matt Lovegrove He was asked to write a summary of his view and he wrote a 130 or so page document and submitted that. 08:22 Matt Lovegrove Yeah, he gets into things, which I mean, I thought it was a good read, but I'm sure they didn't appreciate it. 08:29 Matt Lovegrove And their paper was like 2 pages or something like that. 08:33 Matt Lovegrove But the whole process went down and then he was subsequently removed from eldership himself in a very public 08:41 Matt Lovegrove and awkward meeting. 08:42 Matt Lovegrove And then subsequent to that was asked to leave the church, or at least he was sent a letter of intent saying that by this time, if you haven't left, we will ask you to leave. 08:55 Matt Lovegrove And I think through that whole situation, it changed me quite significantly. 09:00 Matt Lovegrove I had always had the teaching from mum and dad that we should be searching for truth with our Bibles open in community 09:11 Matt Lovegrove letting the Bible speak for itself. 09:14 Matt Lovegrove And in many ways, this was them modeling that. 09:19 Matt Lovegrove Obviously this was not their intent, but this was them modeling that to me, that even at great sacrifice, we should be allowing the Bible to speak for itself. 09:30 Matt Lovegrove And we should be allowing our convictions to influence us, which they did to their detriment, having lost the church community that 09:40 Matt Lovegrove they themselves were a huge part of forming. 09:43 Sean Finnegan How old were you when this happened? 09:45 Sean Finnegan Were you still a teenager? 09:46 Matt Lovegrove Yeah, so I was a teenager, but it was like 18, 19. 09:50 Matt Lovegrove So as in I was 18 or 19. 09:52 Sean Finnegan So you were aware of what was going on and you had your own opinions by then? 09:57 Matt Lovegrove Yeah, so I think this is when I actually started to have some independent thoughts about what was happening. 10:02 Matt Lovegrove And I think this whole scenario inspired me to actually search for truth. 10:07 Matt Lovegrove in the Bible. 10:08 Matt Lovegrove And so with Dad's paper, I read it. 10:11 Matt Lovegrove I don't think all the elders read it, but I read all 130 pages. 10:15 Matt Lovegrove It was the first thing that I'd read of any length that was theological in nature. 10:22 Matt Lovegrove Like I think I'd had plenty of talks that I'd heard and maybe little tracts that I'd read, but this was a proper book. 10:29 Matt Lovegrove It really resulted in me having a passion for finding truth 10:34 Matt Lovegrove in God's word, finding out what God has intended to communicate to us. 10:39 Matt Lovegrove And I think it damaged my trust of leadership a little bit because I actually decided to leave the church before mum and dad were asked to leave. 10:50 Matt Lovegrove It wasn't good because I was going to church and fully aware of what was happening to mum and dad, getting some of the behind the scenes details. 10:57 Matt Lovegrove And mum in particular had this horrible meeting private, but it was a group of the elders and her and she came out of that meeting so shaken for years. 11:08 Matt Lovegrove And I was getting so angry at how they were treating my parents. 11:12 Matt Lovegrove Obviously, I'm getting one side of the story, but I was going to church, hearing the talk and hoping that something stupid was said so that I could then 11:23 Matt Lovegrove I don't know, speak badly about them later, which was such an unhealthy thing to be doing. 11:28 Matt Lovegrove And I picked myself up. 11:29 Matt Lovegrove I was just like, that is not a healthy way to go to church. 11:32 Matt Lovegrove I basically had a meeting with one of the guys who used to be my youth group leader. 11:38 Matt Lovegrove This was kind of as I was already on my way out. 11:42 Matt Lovegrove And at the end of it, wasn't bad, it wasn't great. 11:45 Matt Lovegrove But at the end of it, I more or less said that I agree with what dad has said. 11:50 Matt Lovegrove look, we may never agree on this, but at least we're brothers, something to that effect. 11:55 Matt Lovegrove And his response was, I don't know, man. 11:59 Matt Lovegrove Like, this was the youth group leader who I respected so much, who had answered so many of my questions growing up through high school as I was 12:08 Matt Lovegrove sort of becoming a man. 12:09 Matt Lovegrove I thought he was cool, which was important to me at that time. 12:12 Matt Lovegrove He skated, I skated. 12:13 Matt Lovegrove It was very, it was like, oh, this guy's cool. 12:15 Matt Lovegrove And then that just shot me. 12:16 Matt Lovegrove Like, I was so. 12:18 Sean Finnegan He was saying, I don't know, that you're really a genuine Christian because you don't hold to energism, which is a very obscure doctrine that most people have never even heard of. 12:31 Matt Lovegrove Yep, that was what happened. 12:34 Matt Lovegrove And I was, look, this, and this is all I knew of Christian in the time, right? 12:37 Sean Finnegan What denomination was this? 12:39 Sean Finnegan Was this a non-denomination or was it, what was it? 12:42 Matt Lovegrove Yeah, so independent, I suppose they'd call themselves independent evangelical, but it very much came out of the Sydney Anglican style of church, which I believe you talked about with Paul last week. 12:53 Sean Finnegan It's more conservative, Calvinistic kind of Christians. 12:57 Matt Lovegrove Yeah, But independence, so no hierarchy of leadership structure above the church. 13:02 Matt Lovegrove So the elders were the top, which really meant there was sort of nowhere to go above that in terms of having issues and concerns. 13:10 Sean Finnegan You left that church and then what happened next? 13:12 Sean Finnegan Did you become an atheist and say, hey, Christianity is garbage? 13:17 Sean Finnegan Or I don't think you did. 13:18 Sean Finnegan So how did you work through that and what happened next? 13:23 Matt Lovegrove Yeah, well, I still valued 13:25 Matt Lovegrove church. 13:26 Matt Lovegrove This was not at all affecting my faith in terms of questioning Christianity as genuine or not. 13:34 Matt Lovegrove I was dating my now wife at the time. 13:37 Matt Lovegrove Kate is amazing. 13:39 Matt Lovegrove I love her so much and she's been sort of dragged through the mud along with me on a number of occasions. 13:44 Matt Lovegrove sort of just ripped by the tide a few times as well. 13:47 Matt Lovegrove So this is one of those I was kind of like, I'm out of here. 13:49 Matt Lovegrove And then because we were just dating, I don't know at the time, I didn't even go, should I leave or not? 13:55 Matt Lovegrove I think I just went, I'm leaving, which was not particularly mature, I think, at the time. 13:59 Matt Lovegrove But she came along with me. 14:01 Matt Lovegrove We found another church, a church, which I knew a fair few people at the time, felt very welcoming. 14:08 Matt Lovegrove I told them about the theological issue that happened at the first church I went to. 14:12 Matt Lovegrove And 14:13 Matt Lovegrove They said, not an issue here. 14:15 Matt Lovegrove Still reformed. 14:16 Matt Lovegrove This church that I went to, it came out of the reformed Baptist movement. 14:21 Matt Lovegrove So like 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith is their statement of faith type thing. 14:27 Matt Lovegrove But yeah, felt very welcomed, became a huge part of that community, leading the youth group there, being on the music team, gave some talks at the church as well. 14:38 Matt Lovegrove The inspiration to keep searching for truth never left me. 14:42 Matt Lovegrove And I think it was, we were preaching through Romans or speaking through Romans at youth groups, sometimes Bible studies, sometimes talks. 14:52 Matt Lovegrove And we got up to Romans 8 and I found it to be a very encouraging, we spent a whole term on Romans 8, really just wanting to encourage these kids in their relationship with God. 15:06 Matt Lovegrove And we were going to move on to Romans 9 the next term. 15:09 Matt Lovegrove And I just remember reading it and going, 15:13 Matt Lovegrove I don't know what this says. 15:14 Matt Lovegrove I know what I've been told it says. 15:17 Matt Lovegrove Like certain parts about like, who are you, oh man, to talk back to God? 15:23 Matt Lovegrove Like I've been told that when we ask the question, why isn't this person whom I love saved? 15:31 Matt Lovegrove Why didn't God choose them? 15:33 Matt Lovegrove That verse was given in the Calvinistic context, that verse had often been given as the answer. 15:40 Matt Lovegrove you're not even allowed to ask that question. 15:42 Sean Finnegan Which seems like a cop out, right? 15:44 Sean Finnegan You're just saying you're not qualified to ask that question. 15:50 Sean Finnegan It's still a good question to ask. 15:52 Sean Finnegan I think there must be some way to affirm what Paul says in Romans 9, that we are unqualified in many ways to understand how God does everything. 16:03 Sean Finnegan But at the same time, we are made in the image of God and we do have these questions and we do want to ask, why is this person not allowed to be saved? 16:13 Matt Lovegrove Oh, yeah. 16:14 Sean Finnegan So what did you do next? 16:15 Matt Lovegrove Well, I think at that point around the same time, Shy Lin, do you know Shy Lin, the musician? 16:22 Sean Finnegan No. 16:23 Matt Lovegrove He's A Christian, he's a Christian rapper. 16:26 Sean Finnegan Okay. 16:27 Matt Lovegrove And he's reformed. 16:28 Matt Lovegrove And I think he brought out a song on each one of the tenants of Calvinism. 16:33 Sean Finnegan Oh my goodness. 16:33 Matt Lovegrove Like the tulip thing? 16:36 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 16:36 Matt Lovegrove And he brought out a song on limited atonement, or at least he in one of his songs was rapping about limited atonement, how Jesus only died for those whom God elected prior to 16:50 Matt Lovegrove creating anything. 16:52 Matt Lovegrove And I just remember going, no, that's not right. 16:55 Matt Lovegrove That wasn't even something that I think I believed at the Calvinists. 17:00 Matt Lovegrove And I think that even in the church, there was some flexibility on whether you agree with that or not. 17:04 Matt Lovegrove And I think so both of those things happening at the same time. 17:08 Matt Lovegrove And I was just like, oh man, I'm not happy with the Calvinistic explanation of Romans 9. 17:13 Matt Lovegrove I definitely disagree with what seems to be a required consequence 17:19 Matt Lovegrove of the other tenets of Calvinism in limited atonement. 17:23 Matt Lovegrove Like it's not really explicitly dealt with. 17:26 Matt Lovegrove In fact, very much the opposite is said in areas of scripture that Jesus died for the world. 17:32 Matt Lovegrove But especially the elect, like there's areas of scripture where it's just almost explicitly against limited atonement. 17:39 Matt Lovegrove So I think that started a massive exploration for me into Calvinism, which I remember coming across the big passages like Ephesians 1 and Romans 9 and aspects of John. 17:52 Matt Lovegrove Ephesians 2 as well. 17:54 Matt Lovegrove Yeah, just trying to work out, well, I mean, what does this say? 17:58 Matt Lovegrove Not if Calvinism is wrong, what does this say, but just what does this say? 18:03 Matt Lovegrove Maybe the space of a week or a fortnight. 18:06 Matt Lovegrove I just tried to do my best job at understanding Romanstein. 18:11 Matt Lovegrove Just from verse one, what is this saying? 18:13 Matt Lovegrove Context of everything before it, what does this say? 18:16 Matt Lovegrove And I wrote like 30,000 words, all of them useless. 18:20 Matt Lovegrove I'm never going to give that to anyone. 18:21 Matt Lovegrove But it was helpful for processing what I think it was saying. 18:26 Matt Lovegrove And I think I got somewhere with that. 18:28 Matt Lovegrove But I don't think I was mature enough or had the domain specific knowledge enough of other areas of scripture to actually 18:35 Matt Lovegrove be able to distill the information, process the information, and come up with something that made sense and was internally consistent with the rest of scripture. 18:45 Matt Lovegrove But then I discovered this book called Paul's Use of the Old Testament in Romans 9 by a guy called Brian Abishano. 18:54 Matt Lovegrove He's an Armenian guy, and this book, which is now in three parts, because he brought it out from, it was 9, verse 1 to 9. 19:04 Matt Lovegrove Then his second volume was 10 to 18, I think. 19:08 Matt Lovegrove And then the third volume is a bit shorter. 19:09 Matt Lovegrove I think it's 19 to 24. 19:11 Matt Lovegrove But it was basically his analysis of what Romans 9 is saying with a, I suppose, an exegetical approach, a hermeneutical approach of understanding the Old Testament allusions, echoes in their context. 19:29 Matt Lovegrove taking a look at the comparison between the translation into Greek from the Hebrew in the Septuagint, what the Hebrew says, and then what the Greek text says when it's quoted or echoed or alluded to. 19:42 Matt Lovegrove And then finally going, now, let's take a look at the New Testament context and assume that Paul is taking the Old Testament context correctly. 19:52 Matt Lovegrove Well, not, sorry, correctly would be the wrong way of saying it. 19:55 Matt Lovegrove Let's say he's actually reading it within the Old Testament context. 19:59 Matt Lovegrove And that was huge for me. 20:01 Matt Lovegrove It was like, whoa, you can write books like this. 20:04 Matt Lovegrove People are actually thinking this deeply about how to read their Bible. 20:09 Matt Lovegrove And obviously heaps of people are doing that, but it was news to me and I enjoyed it. 20:14 Matt Lovegrove I really enjoyed feeling like I was understanding deeply what Paul was actually saying in Romans 9 and then of course what God is saying and what we are learning about God there. 20:28 Matt Lovegrove I read other books. 20:29 Matt Lovegrove I tried to read James White's Potter's Freedom, I think it's called. 20:36 Matt Lovegrove I also read John Piper's book on Romans 9, and I found both of those to be somewhat disappointing after having read Abishano's book because he did such an in-depth, detailed job. 20:50 Matt Lovegrove And I came to conclusions like, 20:53 Matt Lovegrove It would be said that God is the potter, obviously this is from Jeremiah, and we are the clay. 21:00 Matt Lovegrove And what clay has the freedom that the Arminian is claiming that we have? 21:06 Matt Lovegrove But then if you read those passages in context, the clay is misbehaving. 21:11 Matt Lovegrove That's why the potter is forming the clay into the figures that he's forming it into. 21:16 Matt Lovegrove And it's not 21:17 Matt Lovegrove in Romans, back in Romans 9, it's not the Arminian going, why isn't this person saved and the Calvinist saying, how dare you ask that question? 21:25 Matt Lovegrove It's the sinful Jew who is saying, why would you punish us if the bad things we've done have brought you glory? 21:34 Matt Lovegrove And then Paul goes, what are you talking about? 21:36 Matt Lovegrove God did that despite you. 21:38 Matt Lovegrove How dare you say that to God? 21:40 Matt Lovegrove And so it's not at all 21:42 Matt Lovegrove this 21st century discussion, I mean, it started before the 21st century, but this modern discussion of Arminianism versus Calvinism, it's Jew versus Gentile. 21:53 Matt Lovegrove Why is it that the Gentiles are receiving all of these blessings and the Jews are getting shafted in a sense? 22:00 Matt Lovegrove And it's because they have hardened themselves and God is using that. 22:05 Matt Lovegrove And that for me was just like, whoa, I think I understand this. 22:09 Matt Lovegrove I think this makes sense to me. 22:11 Sean Finnegan Romans 9 through 11, the key to understanding it is right in the first few verses of Romans 9, where Paul talks about how his heart's desire is for his people. 22:22 Sean Finnegan He would even be cast away, disinherited from the kingdom of God if he could, by doing so, bring the Jewish people to Jesus as the Messiah and the next covenant that God made with his people. 22:38 Sean Finnegan You just have to think corporately 22:40 Sean Finnegan The whole focus of that whole three chapter excursus is why do the Gentiles get these blessings? 22:51 Sean Finnegan But the majority of the Jews have turned away from the blessings that have come through Jesus. 22:57 Sean Finnegan And it's an important question. 22:59 Sean Finnegan We still ask this question today. 23:00 Sean Finnegan Really understanding it in light of groups rather than God's picking this individual but not that individual is the key that unlocks the door to understanding the whole section. 23:11 Sean Finnegan So that's really incredible that you were able to discover that as somebody that's just like kind of an independent researcher, you know, just like finding random books. 23:21 Sean Finnegan And it's interesting too that you read James White and John Piper who are 23:27 Sean Finnegan held up by many to be sort of like the defenders and the stalwarts of the Calvinist mindset and doctrines. 23:36 Sean Finnegan And it's not like you shied away from reading those books. 23:40 Sean Finnegan Let me ask you this. 23:41 Sean Finnegan Did you want it to be true? 23:43 Sean Finnegan Because that would relieve a lot of tension with the church. 23:46 Sean Finnegan Like if you found out, oh no, I just misunderstood it. 23:49 Sean Finnegan Or were you more like, I know this is wrong. 23:53 Sean Finnegan I just know it in my gut. 23:54 Sean Finnegan I just need to figure it out. 23:56 Matt Lovegrove Yeah, I don't think I had strong feelings about wanting it to be true or not. 24:03 Matt Lovegrove My main thought was that I felt like I was betraying my parents by moving away from Calvinism. 24:11 Matt Lovegrove Not questioning it. 24:12 Sean Finnegan Wait, so your parents were still Calvinists even after they got kicked out for not being monergists? 24:19 Matt Lovegrove So I'd say that there's, as far as your typical Calvinists, they wouldn't be that. 24:25 Matt Lovegrove I think in terms of if we're just talking about sovereignty and providence of God, they would, when it comes to salvation, be on the more Calvinistic side of the fence. 24:36 Matt Lovegrove But I don't want to really be speaking on their behalf because I think they're both fluid in many ways. 24:43 Matt Lovegrove And it's not just like, I'm A Calvinist, that is my title. 24:46 Matt Lovegrove It's just like, well, this is what I currently think based on when I open my Bible and read it, something might pop up that would convince me otherwise. 24:53 Matt Lovegrove And so again, that's a very honorable thing that they have. 24:57 Matt Lovegrove thankfully infused into me. 24:59 Sean Finnegan So they're not really rigid on like the five points of Calvinism. 25:04 Matt Lovegrove Oh, no. 25:05 Matt Lovegrove Yeah, I wouldn't say that they're rigid on that. 25:07 Matt Lovegrove Yeah. 25:07 Sean Finnegan So with you at this point, having developed an alternative understanding of Romans 9 and Ephesians 1, the predestination passages, Ephesians 2, the told depravity passages and so forth, 25:21 Sean Finnegan How did that play out in your experience at church? 25:24 Sean Finnegan Did you keep that quiet? 25:26 Sean Finnegan Did you tell others about it? 25:27 Sean Finnegan What happened next? 25:28 Matt Lovegrove Yeah, so I managed to distill my primary issue with Calvinism down into almost a single argument. 25:36 Matt Lovegrove And that was something that I was happy to bring to people on sometimes. 25:43 Matt Lovegrove I would say something to the effect of 25:46 Matt Lovegrove on Christianity, God holds us accountable for not believing, for not expressing faith. 25:52 Matt Lovegrove And I think like John 3 verses 15 to 18 says words to that effect. 25:57 Matt Lovegrove And yet God is the decisive cause of who will believe on Calvinism. 26:03 Matt Lovegrove So if God is the one who controls who believes and yet we're held accountable if we don't believe, the justice that God is implementing 26:12 Matt Lovegrove doesn't seem consistent with what he reveals himself to be elsewhere. 26:17 Matt Lovegrove And I think that was one that I don't think I've ever received a reasonable response to. 26:24 Matt Lovegrove But that kind of like was running with me in the back of my head, maybe less refined than that. 26:29 Matt Lovegrove But I went to one of the pastors because I essentially was like, well, if not Calvinism, then what? 26:35 Matt Lovegrove And I was very convicted to not give myself a title, particularly of another person. 26:42 Matt Lovegrove So like Arminianism, for example, is Jacob Barminius. 26:45 Matt Lovegrove Like there's just like, this is the I follow Paul, I follow a Polis. 26:48 Matt Lovegrove Like we shouldn't be doing that. 26:51 Matt Lovegrove So I was very much not wanting to give myself a title like that. 26:54 Matt Lovegrove But then I came across Molinism and I was just like, oh yeah, I'm A Molinist now, which is a Molina another title for. 27:02 Matt Lovegrove Yeah. 27:03 Matt Lovegrove Which is another title for a person, from a person. 27:06 Matt Lovegrove And that one, I sat with Molinism for a while. 27:09 Matt Lovegrove And that was when I was having these discussions. 27:11 Matt Lovegrove And I went to one of my pastors and I was just like, look, I don't think Calvinism's got it right. 27:16 Matt Lovegrove I think soteriologically, Arminianism is probably right. 27:20 Matt Lovegrove And as far as like providence and sovereignty is concerned, I think Molinism is probably closer. 27:26 Matt Lovegrove I found out later that what he heard me saying was, I'm exploring those things. 27:32 Matt Lovegrove But he didn't actually hear me saying, I disagree with Calvinism, which is interesting because I thought I was pretty clear, but that ended up coming back to bite me, the fact that maybe I wasn't clear enough. 27:45 Sean Finnegan Well, let's just take a moment and explain these different words because not everybody will know the difference between Calvinism, Arminianism, and Mullinism. 27:55 Sean Finnegan So Calvinism is the idea that everyone is so depraved in their sinfulness that they cannot have faith in the gospel message and that God has chosen in eternity past everyone whom he would like to save and that everyone else is going to burn forever in hell. 28:15 Sean Finnegan And so it has nothing to do with you at all when it comes to salvation, 28:19 Sean Finnegan God has chosen his elect and those elect are going to be saved whether they like it or not. 28:23 Sean Finnegan It's unconditional. 28:25 Sean Finnegan And Jesus did not die for the whole world, just for those who are chosen. 28:31 Sean Finnegan And that if somebody does become saved, they cannot become unsaved no matter what. 28:35 Sean Finnegan That's the perseverance of the saints. 28:37 Sean Finnegan So Arminianism is different than that. 28:40 Sean Finnegan It allows for a little bit more freedom, does sort of affirm 28:44 Sean Finnegan knowledge of the future, but not choosing everybody. 28:48 Sean Finnegan So it has a little more free will in it. 28:50 Sean Finnegan Am I getting that right? 28:51 Sean Finnegan I don't know how you would describe it. 28:52 Matt Lovegrove So my understanding of Arminianism is that it is a soteriology and God's providence kind of sits separately to that. 29:03 Matt Lovegrove And so you can have an Arminian who has a simple foreknowledge view that God simply knows the future and essentially looking into the future as if it's a script that's already been written. 29:13 Matt Lovegrove and that's how he elects those who will be saved. 29:17 Matt Lovegrove But then you've got the Molinist Arminian who had that middle knowledge tool, which doesn't require that the future's already written, so to speak. 29:25 Sean Finnegan So the Arminian believes that God can look into the future and exhaustively see everybody's decisions. 29:34 Sean Finnegan So he can, in a sense, save those who would respond favorably to the message. 29:41 Sean Finnegan And so there is some sense of people's free will. 29:44 Sean Finnegan On Molinism, God simulates all the universes based on their initial conditions and picks the universe in which the most people get saved or something like that, right? 29:58 Matt Lovegrove Something like that. 29:58 Sean Finnegan Yeah, it's a fascinating thought experiment, but it just assumes that there's no free will and that we're all just sort of like reacting to our environment. 30:06 Sean Finnegan and that God could predict exactly what every atom is going to do for all of time. 30:12 Sean Finnegan Am I getting that right or do you want to nuance that? 30:16 Matt Lovegrove Yeah, look, there's so much to say about both of those views, but I think more or less you're right. 30:21 Matt Lovegrove It's the discussion of what in the future is settled. 30:26 Matt Lovegrove Are there future facts that are already settled? 30:29 Matt Lovegrove And if so, is the truth of those facts knowable now? 30:33 Matt Lovegrove And if so, how much of that is caused by God and how much of it is caused by something else? 30:40 Matt Lovegrove And that's the biggest issue with Molinism in my perspective. 30:43 Matt Lovegrove And I know like the grounding objection, which has been framed in a number of different ways, essentially says to Molinism, where are those truths about the counterfactuals if nothing actually has been created yet? 30:57 Matt Lovegrove And I think the issue is that you almost have to say that it's grounded in God. 31:03 Matt Lovegrove in which case future sins are grounded in God's creation of those sins, which again is a big issue. 31:09 Matt Lovegrove So I'm doing like not justice to the Molinist. 31:12 Matt Lovegrove I think they could do a much better job of defending their position. 31:15 Matt Lovegrove But just to like the end of the story, I essentially have settled on a more open view. 31:20 Matt Lovegrove which I think has, like reading about Hezekiah's interaction with the prediction of his death was a huge sort of shift in my view there. 31:27 Sean Finnegan Yeah, you're gonna die. 31:28 Sean Finnegan That's what God said through the prophet, right? 31:31 Sean Finnegan You're gonna die. 31:31 Sean Finnegan He didn't say, unless you pray, unless you humble yourself, right? 31:36 Sean Finnegan Yeah, go ahead. 31:37 Matt Lovegrove Yeah, like, oh man, Hezekiah was such a fascinating one for me. 31:40 Matt Lovegrove And Greg Boyd was the sort of the theologian who I stumbled across. 31:45 Sean Finnegan God of the Possible? 31:46 Sean Finnegan Is that his book? 31:48 Matt Lovegrove Yeah, So he wasn't the first one who I read on open theism. 31:51 Matt Lovegrove Another hugely influential book that I read on Armenianism was God's Strategy in Human History. 31:57 Matt Lovegrove I think Paul Marsden and another guy wrote that one. 32:01 Matt Lovegrove They claimed to be semi-open theists, which I still haven't actually gone back to work out what that means. 32:07 Matt Lovegrove But yeah, Hezekiah, prophet comes to him from God and says, you're going to die, get your affairs in order, you won't recover. 32:12 Matt Lovegrove How explicit and blatant could that be? 32:15 Matt Lovegrove And then Hezekiah goes, God, please heal me. 32:19 Matt Lovegrove Don't let me die. 32:20 Matt Lovegrove And then before the prophet has time to even get home, he's turning around, coming back, going, yep, you're going to be good. 32:27 Sean Finnegan 15 more years. 32:29 Matt Lovegrove Yeah, and on all three, Calvinism, simple foreknowledge, Arminianism, and Molinism, that interaction seemed disingenuous on God's part. 32:46 Sean Finnegan Everyone's like reading their lines, but none of it's really true. 32:50 Sean Finnegan Anthropomorphism, condescension. 32:52 Sean Finnegan They use words to describe what's happening there, but the words basically mean what you think is happening is not really what's happening. 33:00 Sean Finnegan God knew everything ahead of time, but it doesn't seem like the person who wrote that book thought that. 33:07 Matt Lovegrove No, that's right. 33:08 Matt Lovegrove People praying that God wouldn't do the things that he said he would do quite a fair few times in scripture, which seems so bold, because if God says it's going to happen on all of these views, it's going to happen. 33:20 Matt Lovegrove I'm a high school teacher, and I think I liken that interaction to not an empty threat, a genuine consequence that I am giving my students, such as they're being super disruptive, 33:35 Matt Lovegrove derailing my lesson and I'll say, look, we're done. 33:39 Matt Lovegrove Could you please take yourself up to the office? 33:41 Matt Lovegrove Sit this one out. 33:43 Matt Lovegrove I have every intention of sending them there. 33:46 Matt Lovegrove I have no intention of them remaining in the classroom. 33:50 Matt Lovegrove And yet they would, because they're a person, say back to me, sir, come on, just give me one more chance. 33:56 Matt Lovegrove Like, this won't do well for me. 33:58 Matt Lovegrove It means I'll get another sanction. 33:59 Matt Lovegrove It means I won't be able to do this at home. 34:01 Matt Lovegrove Please just give me one more chance. 34:03 Matt Lovegrove And I have sometimes gone, all right, one more chance. 34:07 Matt Lovegrove Now, I genuinely changed my mind. 34:10 Matt Lovegrove I genuinely intended to send this student out and I genuinely responded to his request for grace, for mercy. 34:19 Matt Lovegrove And this is exactly what we see God doing. 34:22 Matt Lovegrove And I think it's Jeremiah, like if a nation that I had said I would destroy turns from its wicked ways, I changed my mind. 34:30 Matt Lovegrove Like, I think for me, that was like another catalyst 34:33 Matt Lovegrove all happening around the same time, where I think the open view of the future, although I still find many verses kind of challenging on that, at least is the working theory that I'm comfortable with at the moment. 34:44 Sean Finnegan Going from Calvinism to open theism, what happened with you at the church? 34:49 Sean Finnegan Were they like, oh, that's fun. 34:52 Sean Finnegan Everybody's on their own journey. 34:53 Sean Finnegan You know, like, what did they say? 34:57 Matt Lovegrove So this is one which I thought they knew about. 35:00 Matt Lovegrove So this one really took me by surprise. 35:04 Matt Lovegrove I was also leading on a camp unconnected to the church, a youth camp at the time. 35:12 Matt Lovegrove And their statement of faith, because it came out of the Sydney Anglican Church, this camp, was fairly reduced in what you needed to actually affirm, but they were definitely Calvinistic. 35:25 Matt Lovegrove And I led on this camp for a couple of years after already having decided I wasn't a Calvinist. 35:33 Matt Lovegrove I had no intention of being underhanded or influencing these young Christians in any way against the statement of faith that the camp had. 35:44 Matt Lovegrove And it honestly never really came up. 35:46 Matt Lovegrove They were much more interested in other things like the gospel. 35:50 Matt Lovegrove But I got to a point where I felt like I was being a bit sneaky 35:54 Matt Lovegrove because I didn't actually have to sign the statement of faith every year. 35:57 Matt Lovegrove I think I maybe agreed on it the first time I led and after that it was kind of just assumed. 36:03 Matt Lovegrove And so I emailed the director of the camp and said, hey, just so you know, and I didn't say outright, I'm not a Calvinist. 36:11 Matt Lovegrove I basically read the statement of faith. 36:14 Matt Lovegrove And there was only one thing on there that I disagreed with. 36:18 Matt Lovegrove And it was a phrase about what the spirit did. 36:22 Matt Lovegrove The phrase was something to the effect of the spirit will compel people to believe, which is obviously that irresistible grace part of Tulip. 36:34 Matt Lovegrove And I said, I think this could be made more biblical by framing it in the way the Bible does and saying that we believe that the spirit convicts the world of its sin rather than compels people to believe. 36:49 Matt Lovegrove And that led to a discussion, which then it came out that I didn't agree with Calvinism. 36:53 Matt Lovegrove And he said, all right, I'm going to have to talk to your elders about this. 36:56 Matt Lovegrove And I was like, fair enough. 36:57 Matt Lovegrove Here's their numbers, have a discussion with them. 37:00 Matt Lovegrove They're fully aware of this situation. 37:02 Matt Lovegrove Or so I thought. 37:03 Matt Lovegrove And he then got back to me a little while later and said, yeah, we sorry, we can't have you on this camp. 37:11 Matt Lovegrove We need your elders to support you leading on this camp and they don't. 37:15 Matt Lovegrove And in fact, they've stepped you down from leadership 37:18 Matt Lovegrove at the church. 37:19 Matt Lovegrove And I was like, what? 37:21 Matt Lovegrove That's not being, they didn't say that to me. 37:24 Sean Finnegan Just to clarify, sorry to interrupt here, but. 37:27 Matt Lovegrove That's fine. 37:28 Sean Finnegan Were you in a paid position? 37:30 Matt Lovegrove No. 37:30 Sean Finnegan Okay, well, so you're volunteering to work with the hardest population of humans on the planet, young people, at a camp. 37:41 Sean Finnegan And they're like, oh, well, you're not fully a Calvinist. 37:47 Sean Finnegan Get out of here. 37:48 Sean Finnegan This is just crazy. 37:50 Matt Lovegrove Yeah. 37:51 Sean Finnegan I'm sorry, keep going. 37:52 Sean Finnegan What happened next? 37:53 Matt Lovegrove No, that's absolutely fine. 37:56 Matt Lovegrove I don't think he meant to get ahead of the elders on that one. 38:00 Matt Lovegrove I think he had assumed that they'd already contacted me and let me know that I would need to be stepped down from any of the volunteer ministry positions that I was involved in. 38:12 Matt Lovegrove And they did subsequently, like everyone apologized for that. 38:16 Matt Lovegrove There was no ill intent in that. 38:18 Matt Lovegrove But essentially they said that we need to have a discussion to make sure that I hadn't, and in their words, departed from the clear teaching of scripture, which in their mind is Calvinism. 38:30 Matt Lovegrove And so for a few months, I can't remember how long, three to six months, something like that, I had a discussion with one of the elders, basically just going through everything that I had 38:40 Matt Lovegrove come to what I thought was true in scripture. 38:43 Matt Lovegrove And we very much did it with, hear the Bible open, let's just read it. 38:48 Matt Lovegrove At the same time, another one of the elders who was involved started using the language of clear and crystal clear in his sermons, making it very clear that he believed Calvinism was crystal clear in scripture, which made my dad very angry. 39:04 Matt Lovegrove Are you trying to push Matt out of this church? 39:08 Matt Lovegrove Again, I'm not going to comment on any intent in that. 39:12 Matt Lovegrove And especially most of the elders involved, all but one I am on very good terms with now. 39:20 Matt Lovegrove But the whole scenario was unsettling for me. 39:23 Matt Lovegrove The final instance which led to me leaving the church, and I wasn't removed from this church, but the final instance was 39:34 Matt Lovegrove after the three to six months of having these discussions, they had said that we would meet, we would conclude whether or not they believed I had departed from the clear teaching of scripture. 39:45 Matt Lovegrove And in my understanding, the meeting that I was walking into was going to be one purely theologically. 39:52 Sean Finnegan Like a Bible study of some sort. 39:53 Matt Lovegrove Yeah, Or even just a delivery of their conclusion. 39:57 Matt Lovegrove Like that's all I was expecting. 40:00 Matt Lovegrove And so I didn't feel the need to bring an advocate along for me or a support person or anything like that. 40:07 Matt Lovegrove Didn't even cross my mind. 40:10 Matt Lovegrove So this meeting was me and three of the elders of the church. 40:13 Matt Lovegrove And it was very much not what I expected. 40:16 Matt Lovegrove I walked into this meeting and it essentially started with them saying, here are the areas of your life where we feel like you have sin that needs dealing with. 40:26 Matt Lovegrove And they'd had months with me, one-on-one, in an opportunity, opportunities to have this discussion with me, not in the format of my authorities who have all the power in this decision and me without a support person, completely took me by surprise. 40:45 Matt Lovegrove That meeting did some real damage to me. 40:47 Matt Lovegrove I have had difficulties controlling my physiological responses 40:54 Matt Lovegrove in subsequent meetings with leaders, like psychological blockages in my thinking and shaking, like it actually really did some damage to me, which I suppose I'm still managing that. 41:08 Matt Lovegrove And this was getting close to 10 years ago now, actually. 41:12 Sean Finnegan Yeah, sounds like post-traumatic stress disorder where you've had an acute incident and then 41:18 Sean Finnegan When you're in a similar situation in the future, your body remembers what happened last time and sort of reacts to it as if it's that situation. 41:28 Sean Finnegan What were they saying that generated this kind of response? 41:32 Matt Lovegrove So there was three main accusations they brought to me and they were all to do with sort of my roles in the church. 41:41 Matt Lovegrove Like one of them, for example, was we, with the youth group, we had a combined youth event, which 41:48 Matt Lovegrove was growing and I was a sort of a big push. 41:52 Matt Lovegrove I was one of the ones pushing to grow even more. 41:55 Matt Lovegrove I, in my youth, had been so encouraged by the big sort of camps and the big events where lots of young people come together and you're not ashamed to be a Christian. 42:07 Matt Lovegrove You're not ashamed to sing 42:10 Matt Lovegrove Worship songs out loud. 42:11 Sean Finnegan Yeah. 42:12 Matt Lovegrove Oh, it was so influential. 42:13 Matt Lovegrove And I was like, I want that in Newcastle. 42:15 Matt Lovegrove Like, why are we going to like the state? 42:17 Matt Lovegrove Why are we going to Sydney and like traveling to have these events? 42:22 Matt Lovegrove Let's just do it here. 42:24 Matt Lovegrove And so we were growing. 42:25 Matt Lovegrove We had like 10 youth groups all meeting once a term or something like that. 42:31 Matt Lovegrove And they accused me of making it 42:35 Matt Lovegrove my own ministry and growing without permission. 42:40 Matt Lovegrove I was shocked by that because the events that we were running were spoken highly of in sermons within the church by some of the elders. 42:50 Matt Lovegrove And I said, you knew about this. 42:52 Matt Lovegrove Everything we did, I ran, like I asked you permission for the churches that were theologically different from us. 42:59 Matt Lovegrove Every other church, I thought you'd handed this ministry over to me. 43:04 Matt Lovegrove So that was the sort of accusation which was brought to me. 43:08 Matt Lovegrove I was also accused of wanting to be a leader too much. 43:14 Matt Lovegrove So I'm struggling to remember exactly how they framed it. 43:17 Matt Lovegrove So I need to say that since then, they have actually retracted all of it. 43:20 Matt Lovegrove Like none of it they stand by anymore. 43:23 Matt Lovegrove They have gone, yeah, actually, no, not that, not that, not that. 43:26 Matt Lovegrove So I actually just think they didn't know what to do with me. 43:29 Matt Lovegrove And that was maybe a Hail Mary of sorts, which 43:34 Matt Lovegrove ended up, I suppose in one sense working because after that meeting, I was like, I'm done. 43:38 Matt Lovegrove I don't want to be here anymore. 43:40 Sean Finnegan So you quit the church after that meeting? 43:43 Matt Lovegrove Yeah, we ended up, my wife and I ended up going on holidays for a few weeks and we had a bit of space from it and that was helpful. 43:51 Matt Lovegrove And I went, well, that was too helpful. 43:55 Matt Lovegrove I shouldn't feel that good after not being at church for three weeks. 43:59 Matt Lovegrove I think we need to move on. 44:01 Matt Lovegrove Yeah, so we did. 44:03 Matt Lovegrove We I write a. 44:05 Matt Lovegrove letter to the elders and said, we're out of here. 44:08 Matt Lovegrove And we still have, this is the interesting thing. 44:12 Matt Lovegrove My parents are still there. 44:14 Matt Lovegrove My sister, my brother-in-law is still there. 44:16 Matt Lovegrove We have even gone to that church, visited since then. 44:21 Matt Lovegrove And we are still very welcome there. 44:23 Matt Lovegrove I don't think I would be welcome to attend there. 44:25 Matt Lovegrove I'm not wanting to push that because I don't want to create another controversy when it seems to be going fairly well. 44:33 Matt Lovegrove I should also say that my brother-in-law is a pastor at that church now. 44:37 Matt Lovegrove So there's the risk that I see of that bringing disunity into my family. 44:44 Matt Lovegrove So although I think I am actually very welcome to attend on occasion, I don't want to push being a regular there. 44:51 Sean Finnegan Yeah, okay. 44:53 Sean Finnegan So what happened next? 44:54 Sean Finnegan Having changed your mind, well, gone with your father in changing his mind on the idea that God alone saves to recognizing that the person actually has faith, just like Abraham did in Romans, moving out of Calvinism to open theism, you said, you know what? 45:13 Sean Finnegan I'll just become a Unitarian because I don't have enough enemies. 45:18 Sean Finnegan No, I mean, how did you even get on this other topic? 45:22 Matt Lovegrove So I was looking for trouble and I decided to go to the heart of the matter. 45:27 Matt Lovegrove So we started going to Calvary Chapel. 45:31 Matt Lovegrove I have tried to keep the church names out of it, but I think Paul said it last week. 45:35 Matt Lovegrove So I'll say it this week. 45:38 Matt Lovegrove We went to Calvary Chapel and they received me so lovingly. 45:43 Matt Lovegrove Like there is such a great community of people there. 45:48 Matt Lovegrove Yeah, we're not there now. 45:49 Matt Lovegrove And that was 45:51 Matt Lovegrove felt like such a huge loss because they received us so, lovingly, like straight into the family, come along to everything, jump in this chat. 46:03 Matt Lovegrove Like I think the pastor, even in like my first month or two there, he's just like, oh, Matt, we got to get you up to give a sermon. 46:10 Matt Lovegrove And I was like, oh, no, I don't want to draw any attention to myself. 46:14 Matt Lovegrove I'm happy to, I just don't, I don't want any attention. 46:17 Matt Lovegrove I just want to be a quiet encourager in this family. 46:21 Matt Lovegrove And I think I was still hungry for truth. 46:23 Matt Lovegrove Like I didn't mention this previously, but there's other things that like I'd looked into, like hell, like women in ministry, sexuality. 46:33 Matt Lovegrove There are a number of things that I looked into, some of which I didn't budge. 46:38 Matt Lovegrove I was like, yeah, actually I think what I was brought up believing is the truth. 46:42 Matt Lovegrove Some of it, which I changed quite drastically. 46:45 Matt Lovegrove And I felt every time I got closer to truth, I got closer to God. 46:51 Matt Lovegrove And so I was hungry for more of it. 46:52 Matt Lovegrove And because everything had been so sporadic and this seems interesting, I'll look into this. 46:58 Matt Lovegrove I think I wanted some order, some structure to the digging that I was doing. 47:04 Matt Lovegrove And so I decided to sign up for Masters of Divinity online. 47:08 Matt Lovegrove And it was through Malling College, the one that Paul tried to. 47:12 Sean Finnegan Yeah, the one that wouldn't let him join because of his beliefs. 47:15 Matt Lovegrove Yeah, 47:16 Matt Lovegrove And the reason I went with Morling is because the other two sort of main theological colleges in Sydney, which is sort of the nearest sort of hub for this sort of thing. 47:28 Matt Lovegrove Morling was a Baptist college, which had a lot of flexibility on Calvinism and Arminianism. 47:33 Matt Lovegrove So I was like, great, that seems to be the best option. 47:37 Matt Lovegrove And they received me well, it was online part-time. 47:41 Matt Lovegrove So I didn't actually have to jump through the same hoops that Paul did for full-time. 47:46 Matt Lovegrove which you need to have an interview, I think, for that. 47:48 Matt Lovegrove I just signed up and paid the fee type thing. 47:52 Matt Lovegrove But I kind of picked a couple of courses to start with that again just interested me. 48:01 Matt Lovegrove I did a principles of leadership and management, which I found so insightful. 48:07 Matt Lovegrove And I kind of did the master's equivalent of a theology 101, which included some church history. 48:15 Matt Lovegrove Through, it was maybe the 3rd or 4th week, they jumped into the Trinity. 48:20 Matt Lovegrove They jumped into the divinity of Jesus. 48:23 Sean Finnegan And at that time you believed in the Trinity, no big deal, right? 48:28 Matt Lovegrove Yeah, Jesus was the only true God in my mind. 48:33 Matt Lovegrove God was three persons. 48:34 Sean Finnegan This wasn't an area where you had reservations up until this point. 48:40 Matt Lovegrove No, I'd never questioned it. 48:43 Matt Lovegrove I felt like I had questioned it and come out the other side agreeing with it. 48:48 Matt Lovegrove But I think that the reason why I felt that was probably because I wasn't mature enough or new enough to truly question it when I did. 48:57 Matt Lovegrove Because I think it happened quite early in my 20s when we sort of addressed it at church and on a church camp. 49:03 Matt Lovegrove I think the theme was the Trinity and I came out of that going, oh yeah, that makes sense. 49:08 Matt Lovegrove But it was really interesting because they went through the 4th century debacle when the Trinity became, I suppose, enshrined in Christian theology as a centerpiece of what we believe. 49:24 Matt Lovegrove And I just remember hearing about the whole back and forth after the first Nicene Council 49:32 Matt Lovegrove the church would flip back and forth between pro-Nicene, anti-Nicene. 49:37 Matt Lovegrove And so much of it, seemed to me, came about as a result of who was in charge. 49:43 Matt Lovegrove Whatever the emperor believed seemed to be what the church believed. 49:47 Matt Lovegrove And maybe that's not like one to one the truth, but it certainly, I got that impression. 49:52 Matt Lovegrove And then I came across the Edict of Thessalonica, which from memory was an edict that Theodosius put out. 50:00 Matt Lovegrove one of the emperors. 50:01 Matt Lovegrove And it essentially, the edict was basically, we believe in the Trinity. 50:08 Matt Lovegrove If you don't, you'll get some consequences. 50:11 Matt Lovegrove This was exactly one year before the second council, before the 19 Constantinopolitan Council, where they, in 380, where they essentially went, yes, the Trinity is what the church believes. 50:25 Matt Lovegrove And I remember thinking, that's just such unfortunate timing for this truth that I believe that it's marred with this emperor interjecting and basically ending the discussion. 50:38 Matt Lovegrove And another thing I remembered was that all the arguments that they were using at this time were so different to the arguments that we now use. 50:45 Matt Lovegrove And I don't actually know if that's the case. 50:47 Matt Lovegrove That's just the impression that I had at the time. 50:50 Matt Lovegrove And all of that prompted me to go, well, 50:53 Matt Lovegrove there's got to be some strong theological biblical basis for this then because the history didn't give me any confidence in it. 51:01 Matt Lovegrove And that just started me on a bit of a journey of reading the Bible with the lens of do these authors believe that God is Trinity? 51:13 Matt Lovegrove And it was a few weeks of sort of trying to work out how I wanted to approach this whole thing 51:21 Matt Lovegrove and then a few months of actually most of it, honestly, reading the Bible. 51:26 Matt Lovegrove I eventually started to sort of venture outside the Bible and find out what others were saying about this. 51:33 Matt Lovegrove But there was just so many questions that came about as a result, like from individual passages and just general things that left me so unstable in that view and so worried because I knew that with Calvinism, you have people like 51:51 Matt Lovegrove RC Sproul or Sproul, who is now dead, he would say things like, Arminians are our brothers, but only just. 51:59 Matt Lovegrove And so I was just like, all right, so we're still within the scope of Christianity. 52:02 Matt Lovegrove So questioning Calvinism does not question my Christianity. 52:06 Matt Lovegrove But my impression of questioning the Trinity was that I'm actually questioning Christianity. 52:11 Matt Lovegrove I am actually saying, is Christianity true? 52:14 Matt Lovegrove And I think there's a lot of things that happened. 52:16 Matt Lovegrove There's so many questions that I came through. 52:18 Matt Lovegrove Things like, 52:20 Matt Lovegrove Why is Jesus never equal with God in scripture? 52:23 Matt Lovegrove Why did the authors never actually express in any explicit terms that God is 3 persons? 52:29 Matt Lovegrove Why is Jesus only called God a handful of times? 52:34 Matt Lovegrove Why is Jesus never eternal? 52:36 Matt Lovegrove Like he's at the time, he's pre-existed in my view, but he's never eternal. 52:42 Matt Lovegrove There were so many questions that, and then there were like, that's around the time I started to discover. 52:48 Matt Lovegrove your podcast and a few, like Dale Tuggie's podcast, Transfigured podcast, Dustin Smith podcast, like all these podcasts that I was just like, oh, I'm not the only one having these questions. 52:59 Sean Finnegan Other people are thinking this too, yeah. 53:02 Matt Lovegrove Like I kind of thought that I'd actually fallen away at one point. 53:05 Matt Lovegrove I was just like, I don't think I'm a Christian anymore because I don't believe that God is Trinity. 53:10 Matt Lovegrove And then coming across what genuine Christians, truth seekers in a relationship with God 53:17 Matt Lovegrove actually having reasonable suggestions as to how we can manage these passages. 53:25 Matt Lovegrove That was life saving. 53:27 Matt Lovegrove So thankful for coming across you guys and the work that you've been doing in the UCA. 53:34 Matt Lovegrove Like honestly, it was, I thought I was alone and I felt so, outside of the camp of Christianity for a time there. 53:43 Matt Lovegrove just reading through scripture, and this is how I ended up framing it to the first people I talked to about it, I basically would say, I don't think the New Testament authors were Trinitarians. 53:56 Matt Lovegrove I just don't get that impression. 53:58 Matt Lovegrove And then that would obviously start the discussion. 54:01 Matt Lovegrove I'm happy to talk about a few people who I initially approached to about this. 54:04 Matt Lovegrove But what was actually really fascinating is I talked to a non-Pentecostal Protestant 54:11 Matt Lovegrove And they would immediately go, so who's Jesus? 54:15 Matt Lovegrove But then I talked to a Pentecostal Protestant and their first reaction was, so who's the Holy Spirit? 54:21 Matt Lovegrove Which was very funny. 54:23 Matt Lovegrove I didn't necessarily have good answers initially. 54:26 Matt Lovegrove And so for a time there, I was just like, I just need to study this. 54:31 Matt Lovegrove I eventually started telling people and not because I thought that anyone's salvation was at risk. 54:39 Matt Lovegrove I read in Romans 10 and the gospel presentations, what was required for salvation. 54:47 Matt Lovegrove And I suppose what I mean by salvation, what is required for present salvation for us to experience saving in this lifetime and what is required for future salvation on judgment day? 55:02 Matt Lovegrove Because I think there's slight nuance 55:04 Matt Lovegrove and a slight difference to how we can think about the present and the future, that is salvation. 55:11 Matt Lovegrove Well, in the future, I didn't find anywhere that had me concerned that someone believing that God is Trinity would be kicked out of the kingdom. 55:20 Matt Lovegrove And I read things like Jesus talking about the unforgivable sin and saying even 55:28 Matt Lovegrove this is actually really interesting because the word blasphemy is not used of Jesus in this section. 55:32 Matt Lovegrove It's used of the Holy Spirit, but not of Jesus, which was another flag for me. 55:36 Matt Lovegrove Because if Jesus is God, then surely words spoken against him is blasphemy. 55:40 Matt Lovegrove But he didn't use those words, but he did say words spoken against me will be forgiven. 55:46 Matt Lovegrove And so someone who goes to judgment day, perhaps having spoken words against Jesus out of ignorance, could be forgiven. 55:54 Matt Lovegrove And so I had this thought of, I don't think someone's going to get kicked out of the kingdom because they have this view. 56:01 Matt Lovegrove And I also think that although I have benefited greatly from this view in the present, and I think that my relationship with God is enriched by it, I don't think a relationship with God is lost if you don't have a Unitarian view. 56:13 Matt Lovegrove So I didn't evangelize this view. 56:15 Matt Lovegrove I was happy to talk to those about it who seemed interested and with the psychology going on in my body, who I felt safe to share. 56:24 Matt Lovegrove these details with. 56:25 Matt Lovegrove And. 56:25 Sean Finnegan That's totally understandable because you had been through the ringer multiple times and you didn't want to go through that again. 56:32 Sean Finnegan So yeah, you were kind of careful with who you would. 56:36 Sean Finnegan I mean, this is way bigger than your other issues, at least as far as the importance people attached to it. 56:44 Sean Finnegan Paul had mentioned about some friend of yours that you had shared it with and then 56:49 Sean Finnegan this person and his wife had been friends with you and split apart and didn't want to associate. 56:55 Sean Finnegan Tell us just briefly about that because we are getting a little bit long here. 57:00 Matt Lovegrove Yeah, sorry. 57:00 Sean Finnegan It seems to be a critical moment in your journey on this because that's kind of how it became known to others in the church. 57:09 Matt Lovegrove I started sharing the view with initially just close friends and family and 57:15 Matt Lovegrove There was such a spectrum of responses. 57:17 Matt Lovegrove One of the discussions I had with one of my close friends, by the end of the discussion, he would probably have called himself a Unitarian. 57:25 Matt Lovegrove It was just eye-opening to me that someone could actually be convinced of this because I thought for a moment, I was just like, well, maybe I'm just a tinfoil hat type, speculating this is not even close to the truth. 57:35 Matt Lovegrove But after that, I was like, well, maybe it is. 57:37 Matt Lovegrove Maybe this is something to this. 57:39 Matt Lovegrove And then other people had like this instant amygdala response. 57:43 Matt Lovegrove They responded with panic and fear and I was accused of being a part of a cult in the first discussion. 57:49 Matt Lovegrove And so I had these extremes, like someone was in tears at the end of the first time of me even, I didn't even tell them I'd rejected the Trinity. 57:56 Matt Lovegrove I just asked the question, do you think someone can still be saved who doesn't think Jesus is the only true God? 58:03 Matt Lovegrove So most friends I told didn't show 58:06 Matt Lovegrove much response, that they didn't show much interest. 58:08 Matt Lovegrove And that's true of this friend. 58:10 Matt Lovegrove He and his wife were the type of friends who they'd drop in on their way home from going out and they'd stay three days, literally sleeping in our spare room for three days. 58:19 Matt Lovegrove So we were so close with this couple and I shared with them, I shared my views on what the authors of the New Testament believed and I gave them sort of a bit of insight into why I think that. 58:34 Matt Lovegrove And for a couple of years, it just wasn't on their mind as far as I could tell. 58:40 Matt Lovegrove Like we didn't talk about it all that often. 58:42 Matt Lovegrove I never brought it up. 58:43 Matt Lovegrove I had committed to not bringing it up with people unless they brought it up with me after my first sort of, this is where I stand. 58:50 Matt Lovegrove If you want to talk about it, I love talking about this stuff. 58:53 Matt Lovegrove If you don't want to talk about it, I'm not pushing anything. 58:56 Matt Lovegrove But then out of literally out of nowhere, like maybe there were signs, but I walked up to this friend at church 59:03 Matt Lovegrove because he was at the same church and hadn't talked to him in a little bit. 59:07 Matt Lovegrove And I was like, hey man, we should catch up. 59:08 Matt Lovegrove And out of nowhere, he just said, hey, look, I don't want you to talk to me, text me or approach me anymore. 59:18 Matt Lovegrove We don't want to spend time with you. 59:21 Matt Lovegrove Somebody must have gotten to this. 59:27 Sean Finnegan Guy and radicalized him, right? 59:29 Sean Finnegan Like just told him that. 59:30 Sean Finnegan Yeah, absolutely critical. 59:33 Sean Finnegan What do you think happened? 59:34 Sean Finnegan Do you know? 59:37 Matt Lovegrove Yeah, I think I know what happened. 59:38 Matt Lovegrove He was spending a lot of time watching the Jesus image. 59:43 Matt Lovegrove There's a church called Jesus Image somewhere in America. 59:46 Matt Lovegrove Florida's jumping to mine, but I don't know for sure. 59:49 Matt Lovegrove And the pastor of this church is actually Benny Hinn's nephew-in-law. 59:56 Matt Lovegrove I think I said that right. 59:58 Matt Lovegrove And it was after spending a lot of time listening to these podcasts and sermons that I think it came out of that. 1:00:07 Matt Lovegrove But it was so shocking. 1:00:08 Matt Lovegrove And initially he didn't sort of expect our wives to stop hanging out. 1:00:16 Matt Lovegrove But it was always a bit weird for them since then. 1:00:19 Matt Lovegrove And then after a bit of time, and it wasn't just me that he cut out, there was the other friend that I talked about who ended up agreeing with me. 1:00:28 Matt Lovegrove He was cut out as well. 1:00:30 Matt Lovegrove And then our wives, so he came up to me a little while later and said, your wife and my wife aren't going to be spending time together anymore either. 1:00:41 Matt Lovegrove And I said, are you going to allow 1:00:44 Matt Lovegrove your wife to talk to my wife to say that? 1:00:47 Matt Lovegrove And he said no. 1:00:48 Matt Lovegrove And so from then, he, his family, his kids, my kids, it was just done. 1:00:54 Matt Lovegrove And oh man, that hit so hard. 1:00:56 Matt Lovegrove That hit so hard. 1:00:57 Matt Lovegrove Because there were other friends who had similar, and since then there's been other friends who have had similar sort of rejection type responses, but nothing as extreme as that. 1:01:06 Matt Lovegrove And because of that, because of the emotion that my wife and me and then the other couple who was kicked out of their friendship as well, they obviously very emotional and publicly so, like that whole announcement that they had to ask was not public, but you can, it's happening, like, something's happening. 1:01:27 Matt Lovegrove And so we had so many people coming up to us, asking us, what's going on? 1:01:31 Matt Lovegrove Like, what's going on with you too? 1:01:33 Matt Lovegrove Why is your wife crying right now? 1:01:35 Sean Finnegan Yeah, kind of hard to hide that. 1:01:38 Matt Lovegrove Yeah, and that ended up opening the door to me essentially having to say, it's because of my view on Jesus, it's because of my view on God that that's happened. 1:01:51 Matt Lovegrove Prior to that happening, I 1:01:54 Matt Lovegrove had made the elders aware of my position. 1:01:59 Matt Lovegrove And I had said, look, I'm not interested in leading in this church. 1:02:05 Matt Lovegrove I'm not interested in being an issue. 1:02:07 Matt Lovegrove I love this family. 1:02:08 Matt Lovegrove I just want what's best. 1:02:10 Matt Lovegrove And so they had a few requests, like don't approach people about it. 1:02:16 Matt Lovegrove They initially said, don't convince people of it. 1:02:19 Matt Lovegrove My other mate who was in the discussion who'd agreed with me, he's just like, we can't control what people believe. 1:02:24 Matt Lovegrove which I thought was a very reasonable response. 1:02:26 Matt Lovegrove But essentially we were asked not to be the initiators of any of these discussions and to direct people to the elders whenever the topic came up with us. 1:02:35 Matt Lovegrove But I also wasn't going to not have a discussion when another person came and asked me questions about something. 1:02:43 Matt Lovegrove I wasn't just going to stonewall them and say, no, go talk to the elders about it. 1:02:47 Matt Lovegrove And because of that, it just became forefront, heavily so. 1:02:51 Matt Lovegrove There was almost in every sermon, people apparently were talking about it all the time, just the view of God not being Trinity, the Unitarian position. 1:03:02 Matt Lovegrove It was a weird situation because the church was preaching that there was discussions happening in the church, but I wasn't allowed to offer any perspective on the position. 1:03:15 Matt Lovegrove And so I think what ended up happening was they were just injecting fear, like the Unitarian is hiding behind every wall in this church type thing. 1:03:25 Matt Lovegrove And without anyone even knowing that it's me, they couldn't even come and talk to me. 1:03:29 Matt Lovegrove And so they started getting concerned people going to them saying, well, we're really concerned about this. 1:03:35 Matt Lovegrove And then they had people coming to them saying, well, can you tell us about this view? 1:03:39 Matt Lovegrove And 1:03:40 Matt Lovegrove I'd say almost all of it was their own doing, firstly, because they were telling me to tell others to go talk to them. 1:03:46 Matt Lovegrove So I was, and so a lot of people would go talk to them. 1:03:49 Matt Lovegrove And then also the fact that who's this mysterious Unitarian who is trying to undercut the truth? 1:03:58 Matt Lovegrove Yeah, so it was not a health, it definitely wasn't healthy for the church, which was no good at all. 1:04:05 Matt Lovegrove And that's when it sort of like a process started to happen within the church. 1:04:09 Matt Lovegrove where they basically started to take maybe freedoms away from me. 1:04:14 Matt Lovegrove So they eventually said, we don't want you going to a Bible study, definitely not doing any sort of ministry, things like that. 1:04:23 Sean Finnegan You could just come on Sunday. 1:04:25 Sean Finnegan Is that pretty much it? 1:04:27 Matt Lovegrove I could go on Sunday. 1:04:28 Matt Lovegrove I think I might have still been allowed to do Crash, like the childcare for the two-year-olds. 1:04:34 Matt Lovegrove My child was two at the time, which is why I wanted to be involved in that. 1:04:38 Matt Lovegrove But there were also so many supportive people and people who I'm not going to name who were members of the church who have been dubbed Unitarian sympathizers and people like Paul who all he wanted was unity. 1:04:57 Matt Lovegrove For so many years, he was like, I don't know what's true, but you can't treat Matt this way. 1:05:02 Matt Lovegrove We need to have unity. 1:05:04 Matt Lovegrove That's one of the 1:05:06 Matt Lovegrove highest callings that we have as Christians in the church is to have this unity. 1:05:13 Matt Lovegrove And I was so thankful for him and a few others who I'll keep anonymous. 1:05:18 Matt Lovegrove Honestly, that alongside my wife being so supportive and loving throughout this whole thing has kept me sane, has helped me not to completely fall apart. 1:05:30 Sean Finnegan Yeah, I mean, you've been through just such an ordeal here. 1:05:33 Sean Finnegan It's incredible. 1:05:35 Matt Lovegrove Yeah. 1:05:36 Matt Lovegrove I want to be clear that most of the elders were very loving and responding out of good intent. 1:05:46 Matt Lovegrove It was messy. 1:05:47 Matt Lovegrove I think I was misrepresented a number of times. 1:05:50 Matt Lovegrove And just to give you an example, I don't think they intended to misrepresent me because in a discussion with another Unitarian, I might be lazy and say something like Jesus isn't God. 1:06:01 Matt Lovegrove But to be precise in a discussion with someone who's not a Unitarian, I think is so important because I'd not phrase it that way if I was with a mixed audience. 1:06:10 Matt Lovegrove Because it's so easily rejected. 1:06:12 Matt Lovegrove If you say Jesus isn't God, someone just goes, well, look here, it says Jesus is God. 1:06:16 Matt Lovegrove So like, well, discussion over. 1:06:18 Matt Lovegrove Like I'd want to say Jesus is not the only true God, something like that. 1:06:21 Matt Lovegrove And so I felt a little misrepresented, but not, I don't think intended. 1:06:26 Matt Lovegrove And I'd say that there was only a couple of instances where 1:06:29 Matt Lovegrove Maybe the frustration that they had with the situation got the better of them and I perhaps wasn't treated well and there wasn't good intent behind those. 1:06:40 Matt Lovegrove And obviously some of the words that were used of my view and of me were not very nice. 1:06:44 Matt Lovegrove Like I was told that I was a divisive person with a depraved view who was twisting scripture, had a dissenting view, like pretty harsh things. 1:06:55 Matt Lovegrove And all I thought I was doing was trying to get to know God better. 1:06:59 Matt Lovegrove when they announced publicly that I had contributed to unrest in the church on the view of the Trinity or Jesus divinity specifically was what they were interested in mostly. 1:07:13 Matt Lovegrove And for that reason, I had been asked to leave. 1:07:16 Matt Lovegrove That was it. 1:07:18 Matt Lovegrove I took myself out of all the chats and ceased attending the church at that point. 1:07:24 Matt Lovegrove And that was 9 or 10 months ago. 1:07:27 Sean Finnegan It's so recent. 1:07:28 Sean Finnegan I didn't realize it was just that brief of a time ago. 1:07:32 Sean Finnegan That's incredible. 1:07:33 Matt Lovegrove Yeah, no, not that long ago. 1:07:35 Sean Finnegan So why aren't you an atheist? 1:07:45 Sean Finnegan Not that I want you to be an atheist, I don't, but you get slapped around a couple of times, you figure it leaves a mark. 1:07:52 Sean Finnegan I mean. 1:07:53 Matt Lovegrove So 1:07:55 Matt Lovegrove I think it goes back to the instance when I was 14 when I became a Christian. 1:08:03 Matt Lovegrove And Christianity does such a good job in Christ of explaining origin, morality, purpose and destiny. 1:08:13 Matt Lovegrove I think there is such richness in the Christian life. 1:08:16 Matt Lovegrove I think there is such joy through the pain. 1:08:20 Matt Lovegrove I don't know what, I can't even fathom what life would look like without a relationship with God. 1:08:29 Matt Lovegrove I find it difficult to go to church at all. 1:08:33 Matt Lovegrove I'm still going. 1:08:34 Matt Lovegrove We have a community that we're attending who the lead elder of this church was the principal who hired me at the school that I'm currently working at. 1:08:47 Matt Lovegrove I grilled her. 1:08:48 Matt Lovegrove I was just like, what if I have a discussion and someone comes to this view and then others start to come to this view? 1:08:55 Matt Lovegrove And her response was, I can't control what other people believe. 1:09:00 Matt Lovegrove And I was just like, oh, that's so reasonable. 1:09:03 Matt Lovegrove Why are you so reasonable? 1:09:06 Matt Lovegrove So I feel safe there. 1:09:07 Matt Lovegrove That's not the issue that I have with going to church. 1:09:10 Matt Lovegrove I think there's just a massive disillusionment I have with 1:09:14 Matt Lovegrove the structures that we have and the damage that it's done to my family and the fact that I've uprooted my family three times now, or at least I have been uprooted and because of things that I've done, I really value giving my children and wife a stable community that they can grow closer to God in. 1:09:36 Matt Lovegrove I think that's so important. 1:09:38 Matt Lovegrove Since having left Calvary, 1:09:41 Matt Lovegrove I have a great community of people who do not go to the church that we're currently going to. 1:09:47 Matt Lovegrove And so for me, they are the community that I find most encouragement. 1:09:51 Matt Lovegrove So people like Paul, other friends who have agreed with the position that I have, other friends who don't agree with the position that I've landed on, who I'm regularly in contact with, regularly meeting. 1:10:03 Matt Lovegrove I play a lot of snooker with a few of the guys and they are such a loving, welcoming Christian community. 1:10:11 Matt Lovegrove And I also happened to move onto a street with a Christadelphian church down the road. 1:10:15 Matt Lovegrove And this was such a funny way of introducing myself. 1:10:18 Matt Lovegrove I was just walking past them one morning about a year ago before I got removed from the church from Calvary. 1:10:25 Matt Lovegrove And one of the guys was getting out of his car and I just said, hey, are you a Unitarian? 1:10:30 Matt Lovegrove And he was like, I think he was a bit taken aback. 1:10:33 Matt Lovegrove And he's like, oh, yeah. 1:10:34 Matt Lovegrove And I was like, oh, cool. 1:10:36 Matt Lovegrove So am I. 1:10:37 Matt Lovegrove We went to the pub, had a beer, I've invited them over. 1:10:40 Matt Lovegrove Like we're in and out of each other's communities, which has been so encouraging. 1:10:44 Matt Lovegrove Like they're such a lovely group of people. 1:10:46 Matt Lovegrove I think the only reason, or one of the reasons why I wouldn't go to a Christadelphian church is because my wife is not necessarily in agreement with my position, nor is she in agreement with necessarily the Trinitarian position. 1:11:00 Matt Lovegrove I think she's a bit on the fence and unsure. 1:11:04 Matt Lovegrove I don't think an explicitly Unitarian church would therefore be the best thing for her at this stage until she's on board with it, or if she does come on board with it. 1:11:16 Matt Lovegrove And so kind of I feel a bit stuck in that we need to be able to both have a home. 1:11:23 Matt Lovegrove And because this is such a divisive view, it kind of has to come down to, will you accept people who believe both? 1:11:33 Sean Finnegan Yeah, it's interesting. 1:11:35 Sean Finnegan You've been consistent all throughout your journey. 1:11:38 Sean Finnegan And I talk about this in my restoration theology class, but you're just a restorationist and people are not prepared for that kind of. 1:11:47 Sean Finnegan investigative mindset that says, hey, let's look into this and let's look into that. 1:11:53 Sean Finnegan Yeah, I know everybody believes this, but like, is it really true? 1:11:57 Sean Finnegan And we just don't have communities that value that. 1:12:01 Sean Finnegan We have communities that value established tradition and the confession of 1689 or Westminster or I don't know, the Nicene Creed. 1:12:12 Sean Finnegan Creating communities that are committed to a posture towards truth, not towards a specific truth, might be a way forward. 1:12:22 Sean Finnegan Have you thought about getting something going in your area or would you say that you just don't have enough people that are interested yet? 1:12:31 Matt Lovegrove Oh yeah, I want Paul to be the pastor of my church. 1:12:33 Matt Lovegrove I'm just waiting for him to want it too. 1:12:36 Matt Lovegrove Yeah, Once he's qualified, he can be a pastor. 1:12:44 Matt Lovegrove I need to work through my psychological response to Christian structures and leadership before I would ever lead anything in that respect. 1:12:55 Matt Lovegrove I am enjoying being able to have the community that I do have. 1:13:00 Matt Lovegrove I'm really enjoying being able to spend the time that I have with my kids. 1:13:05 Matt Lovegrove I think any sort of additional leadership position would take away from, it would have to take away from that. 1:13:11 Matt Lovegrove So all of that said, I think the priorities that I have aren't leaning towards that at this stage. 1:13:17 Sean Finnegan Okay. 1:13:18 Sean Finnegan What's next for you? 1:13:20 Sean Finnegan Are you gonna question some new thing? 1:13:23 Sean Finnegan You know, I'm curious. 1:13:26 Matt Lovegrove Every single week, I mean, barring sickness and busyness, have a coffee with my dad. 1:13:33 Matt Lovegrove We've been doing this for over a decade now, I'd have to say. 1:13:37 Matt Lovegrove They're awesome discussions. 1:13:38 Matt Lovegrove We disagree on so much. 1:13:40 Matt Lovegrove It's awesome. 1:13:40 Matt Lovegrove But it's such a loving discussion. 1:13:42 Matt Lovegrove And we are iron sharpening iron, or at least I think we both express it that way. 1:13:49 Matt Lovegrove And we just bounce around between what's interesting to us at the time, whatever we've been reading. 1:13:57 Matt Lovegrove We spent a long time talking about Calvinism, a long time talking about Trinitarianism, Unitarianism. 1:14:04 Matt Lovegrove We spent the last sort of month talking about glory. 1:14:07 Matt Lovegrove What does the Bible say about glory? 1:14:09 Matt Lovegrove How can you be precise in your understanding of glory that's consistent both internally with scripture and lived experience? 1:14:17 Matt Lovegrove What does it mean when the end 1:14:21 Matt Lovegrove goal, the end point of the golden chain of redemption is that we are glorified. 1:14:27 Matt Lovegrove And I know it's expressed in past tense, which is often maybe a Jewish idiom that is referring to the future tense, but perhaps that's already started. 1:14:36 Matt Lovegrove And what if glory is simply imaging God back to him and in our sanctification? 1:14:42 Matt Lovegrove that's happening now and maybe, anyway, so all of that. 1:14:45 Matt Lovegrove We just kind of, we jump into the next idea. 1:14:47 Matt Lovegrove So you and your dad have a. 1:14:48 Sean Finnegan Great relationship where you can bounce ideas off each other and listen and disagree, but still remain in relationship. 1:14:58 Sean Finnegan And that's pretty rare, especially for father and son. 1:15:02 Matt Lovegrove But it's very cool. 1:15:05 Matt Lovegrove Yeah, he does. 1:15:06 Matt Lovegrove He does a good job to be patient with me. 1:15:10 Sean Finnegan All right, anything else we should cover before we close down for this conversation? 1:15:15 Matt Lovegrove Look, nothing jumps to mine. 1:15:17 Matt Lovegrove I'm sorry. 1:15:17 Sean Finnegan You got a website, you got a book you're working on, nothing. 1:15:24 Matt Lovegrove Well, I think there's been phases where I've put pen to paper and I have actually written a lot, but none of it for others. 1:15:34 Matt Lovegrove It's all been for my own internal processing. 1:15:38 Matt Lovegrove And I think I've gone through phases of just recovery, like feeling not burnt out by the process of doing theology, but burnt out by the being tossed to and fro by decisions that have been made. 1:15:54 Matt Lovegrove And I think I'm just coming out of that now and I'm starting to feel energized again. 1:15:58 Matt Lovegrove And I think the Unitarian Christian Alliance conference that we had was a big part of that feeling just inspired to 1:16:06 Matt Lovegrove start to try and be an encouraging person more intentionally with the gifts that God's given me, whatever they happen to be. 1:16:13 Matt Lovegrove So nothing that I'm working on in sort of any official or formal sense at the moment. 1:16:19 Sean Finnegan What about the debate circuit? 1:16:20 Sean Finnegan Would you want to do a debate on YouTube or something? 1:16:25 Matt Lovegrove Honestly, there's like a big part of me that would be very excited by that. 1:16:30 Matt Lovegrove I really love Dustin Smith's approaches to his debates. 1:16:34 Matt Lovegrove And I think like 1:16:36 Matt Lovegrove I would have to prepare like he does. 1:16:39 Matt Lovegrove I don't think there'd be any other way that I could do it. 1:16:41 Matt Lovegrove There was a point there where I was feeling super disillusioned by these formal debates because I had a moment of going, no one's listening. 1:16:47 Matt Lovegrove Like, no, person A and person B, they're not listening to each other. 1:16:51 Matt Lovegrove Why are you so hard on those people? 1:16:56 Matt Lovegrove I, and that's right. 1:16:58 Matt Lovegrove But being one of the members of the audience, it was frustrating me that they weren't actually reflecting God in these discussions. 1:17:04 Matt Lovegrove And I was just like, what a waste of time. 1:17:05 Matt Lovegrove Like, anyway, but that's not all debates. 1:17:08 Matt Lovegrove But like, that's certainly not all debates. 1:17:10 Matt Lovegrove And there's been so many moments where I've just gone, oh, I just want to talk to that person and have someone record it because I think it would be an enriching discussion. 1:17:19 Matt Lovegrove And especially not so much in the formal debate sense. 1:17:22 Matt Lovegrove But if we could just pick a topic, sit down, 1:17:26 Matt Lovegrove I had moments of thinking, what if I just record data in my discussions and let people, like there's hints of frustration occasionally, but it is so respectful. 1:17:35 Matt Lovegrove I'm just like, I think people would get a lot out of that. 1:17:37 Matt Lovegrove So that's the, I mean, that's the only thing I've really considered. 1:17:40 Sean Finnegan Well, look, Matt, God has given you a brain. 1:17:43 Sean Finnegan As Paul said, you have an amazing brain. 1:17:46 Sean Finnegan So finding a way to use that in service to God, 1:17:50 Sean Finnegan is good. 1:17:51 Sean Finnegan I think because of your experience with church leadership, there's a lot of woundedness there. 1:17:57 Sean Finnegan And some of that will be just healed in time. 1:18:01 Sean Finnegan Some of it you might need to work on with a counselor or with prayer or some sort of therapy. 1:18:07 Sean Finnegan But in the meanwhile, the way you think and the way you reason is 1:18:13 Sean Finnegan is really interesting. 1:18:14 Sean Finnegan And I think it would be great if other people could benefit from that. 1:18:17 Sean Finnegan I don't know what that would look like, if it's a book, if it's a podcast, if it's debates, if it's some other thing. 1:18:23 Sean Finnegan Who knows? 1:18:24 Sean Finnegan But I just want to encourage you to find a way to have an outlet for, you know, how God has made you to be. 1:18:33 Sean Finnegan I think it's good. 1:18:35 Matt Lovegrove Thank you, Sean. 1:18:36 Sean Finnegan That's my opinion, whatever it's worth. 1:18:39 Matt Lovegrove It's so encouraging and I do thank you for that. 1:18:41 Matt Lovegrove I've had a lot of leaders say very different things about me. 1:18:45 Matt Lovegrove So look, if I do anything, I'll make sure I let you know. 1:18:49 Sean Finnegan Yeah, cool. 1:18:50 Sean Finnegan All right, well, thanks so much, Matt, for talking with me today. 1:18:53 Sean Finnegan I appreciate your time. 1:18:54 Matt Lovegrove Thank you, Sean. 1:18:55 Matt Lovegrove I really appreciated being here. 1:19:01 Sean Finnegan That brings this interview to an end. 1:19:02 Sean Finnegan What did you think? 1:19:03 Sean Finnegan Come on over to restitudio.org and find episode 654, The Plight of a Restorationist with Matt Lovegrove, and leave your questions and feedback there. 1:19:14 Sean Finnegan On episode 116, which was the introduction to my class on 500 years of church history, I just call it the 500 class, covering the period from 1:19:26 Sean Finnegan Martin Luther to Joel Osteen over the last few centuries. 1:19:31 Sean Finnegan Denise wrote in saying, so thankful I came upon Resitudio and am really enjoying lectures by Sean. 1:19:37 Sean Finnegan What seems to draw me in is how the classes I have listened to thus far give historical context. 1:19:44 Sean Finnegan What was life as a Christian like 500 years ago? 1:19:49 Sean Finnegan I accepted Christ as a young girl, was not raised in a Christian family, raised by my great aunt. 1:19:55 Sean Finnegan Not an easy childhood, but Christ has placed different people in my life along the way to help me. 1:20:00 Sean Finnegan Apparently he has now placed these classes by Recitudio, which have ignited a hunger to hear more. 1:20:06 Sean Finnegan Thank you for your work and that this is not a monetary cost. 1:20:10 Sean Finnegan Well thanks Denise for writing in. 1:20:12 Sean Finnegan I hope you do enjoy the 500 class. 1:20:15 Sean Finnegan I did two church history classes. 1:20:18 Sean Finnegan I did a class covering the last 500 years of church history, which is the one she's doing now. 1:20:23 Sean Finnegan And I also did one covering the first 500 years of church history. 1:20:27 Sean Finnegan So out of the 2000 years, the first 500 years and the last 500 years, in my opinion, are the most interesting. 1:20:34 Sean Finnegan Of course, there is that Middle Ages period, the 1000 years from 500 to 1500, and I have not yet done a class on that. 1:20:42 Sean Finnegan Maybe someday, who knows? 1:20:43 Sean Finnegan But 1:20:44 Sean Finnegan It's always nice to hear positive feedback from people that are enjoying the classes on the podcast. 1:20:50 Sean Finnegan On last week's episode, 653, why I'm convinced that Jesus is the human Messiah with Paul Robson, Donald wrote in saying, at the end of number 653, you responded to a comment from a person looking for a non-biased translation. 1:21:06 Sean Finnegan Your response to compare translations and study the Greek and Hebrew were good, but the most valuable resource I use is the Blue Letter Bible, a free app or online. 1:21:17 Sean Finnegan It has many translations available to compare and an interlinear with parts of grammar noted, as well as dictionary and concordance resources. 1:21:25 Sean Finnegan I am surprised it is not more often suggested as a resource. 1:21:31 Sean Finnegan So that was Blue Letter Bible. 1:21:33 Sean Finnegan There's also Bible Gateway. 1:21:35 Sean Finnegan These are two of the most well-known free websites that people use. 1:21:41 Sean Finnegan Of course, then there's the YouVersion app on the phone. 1:21:44 Sean Finnegan I personally use. 1:21:46 Sean Finnegan accordance on my PC and this is a paid program that you have to buy stuff for over time and that's how I get to my Bible translations and my access to the original languages and stuff like that. 1:22:02 Sean Finnegan But if you're just starting out, yeah, Blue Letter Bible or YouVersion or Bible Gateway is a great place to look and they're free, which is just incredible considering that every 1:22:14 Sean Finnegan Bible translation, maybe not every, but many Bible translations are licensed and they do charge a fee. 1:22:18 Sean Finnegan So I guess these websites are making it back on advertisements. 1:22:23 Sean Finnegan Now, a number of other folks have also written in on the interview with Paul Robson. 1:22:29 Sean Finnegan Socket Man says, thank you for your testimony. 1:22:31 Sean Finnegan Lots of points that mirror my own. 1:22:33 Sean Finnegan God bless. 1:22:34 Sean Finnegan Stay young, my friends said, this was truly edifying and validating conversation. 1:22:40 Sean Finnegan Thank you so much to both of you. 1:22:42 Sean Finnegan MJ wrote in saying, thank you for your testimony. 1:22:45 Sean Finnegan One thing that stood out to me was how it took your friend actually getting kicked out of the church for you to finally dig in and confront the issue yourself. 1:22:53 Sean Finnegan It's funny and a bit sad how a lot of times it takes someone else's departure to trigger real confrontation and force us to examine what we actually believe. 1:23:02 Sean Finnegan Nothing else seems to cut through the inertia quite like that. 1:23:06 Sean Finnegan Well, obviously I can't speak for Paul and 1:23:10 Sean Finnegan whether or not he was really looking into the issue and to what degree prior to Matt getting kicked out, but he did certainly look into it afterwards. 1:23:19 Sean Finnegan This issue would not be so significant if churches weren't kicking people out for it, which I don't even know why I'm laughing. 1:23:27 Sean Finnegan It's so sad that it happens. 1:23:29 Sean Finnegan And now you've just heard Matt's story, so you know the kind of damage that this treatment of curious people causes. 1:23:38 Sean Finnegan But you're right, it does take a lot to wake people up. 1:23:40 Sean Finnegan A lot of times there is an assumption that the pastor is the expert, is the professional, has the training from seminary, and that there are no questions about big doctrines. 1:23:55 Sean Finnegan But nothing could be further from the truth, considering how much Christianity has drifted from its origins and the biblical record that we have, as well as the apostolic practice. 1:24:06 Sean Finnegan So 1:24:07 Sean Finnegan Thanks for your comments on that. 1:24:09 Sean Finnegan Someone named Son of God by new birth in Christ said, wonderful conversation. 1:24:14 Sean Finnegan People are on a journey. 1:24:16 Sean Finnegan That is a truth that helps me with those who are rejecting the truth from Jesus' own words. 1:24:21 Sean Finnegan Sometimes in the biblical Unitarian sphere, I see strong words thrown back when we are rejected. 1:24:27 Sean Finnegan Jesus only has strong words of condemnation for those who spoke against him as being from Satan. 1:24:33 Sean Finnegan He never condemned those who did not immediately follow him or found his teaching to be hard sayings. 1:24:38 Sean Finnegan God's blessings to both of you as you spread the truth of God's Son. 1:24:43 Sean Finnegan This is an important point that the commenter raises here, which is regardless of how people treat you, are to treat others the way the Bible tells us to treat others, which my go-to verse on that is 1 Peter 315, 1:25:00 Sean Finnegan which says, always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you in accounting for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect. 1:25:09 Sean Finnegan I think there is a time for confrontation when we're talking about those who are in sin, especially leaders who are in sin, and most notably the sin of hypocrisy, where we do see Jesus in, for example, Matthew 23, speaking in a much stronger way than we typically see. 1:25:28 Sean Finnegan So that would obviously be the exception, but our standard operating procedure should be general in some respect. 1:25:33 Sean Finnegan And I just so appreciate how Paul and Matt both have handled themselves with such grace towards those who have treated them so badly and towards really a system, a toxic system that is insisting on mental uniformity 1:25:53 Sean Finnegan and that is willing to kick people out who don't measure up to that arbitrary standard which was set centuries and centuries after Christ. 1:26:00 Sean Finnegan It's not something that Christ said, thou shalt believe in the Trinity to be saved. 1:26:05 Sean Finnegan It is not a verse in the Bible that says, if you don't believe Jesus is God in an ontological sense, then you are not a real Christian. 1:26:14 Sean Finnegan That is not what the Bible says. 1:26:16 Sean Finnegan Everyone who meets Jesus just assumes Jesus is a human being. 1:26:19 Sean Finnegan Jesus never challenges that. 1:26:21 Sean Finnegan It is part of the written record. 1:26:23 Sean Finnegan Just read the gospels for yourself. 1:26:25 Sean Finnegan I just love hearing how Matt did that and then challenged Paul to do that. 1:26:30 Sean Finnegan Just read the gospels. 1:26:32 Sean Finnegan And when you do that, you see that they don't read as if the authors are Trinitarian. 1:26:38 Sean Finnegan They read as if the authors believe the Father is the only true God. 1:26:43 Sean Finnegan So I think that's pretty strong evidence and an exercise that I recommend to anyone. 1:26:48 Sean Finnegan Well, as we continue through this series of interviews, up next is going to be another Aussie named Sam Mansfield from the Christadelphians, and he's going to be talking about Genesis 126. 1:27:00 Sean Finnegan So I hope you join me next week for that interview. 1:27:03 Sean Finnegan In the meanwhile, if you'd like to support Restitudio, probably the best thing you can do is share this episode with your friends. 1:27:10 Sean Finnegan This episode is on 1:27:12 Sean Finnegan Apple Podcasts, it's on Spotify, it's on YouTube, and other podcast platforms, whatever people are using for their primary app to listen to podcasts. 1:27:23 Sean Finnegan And many of these do have share buttons. 1:27:26 Sean Finnegan You can share it on social media, you can send an e-mail to people. 1:27:30 Sean Finnegan There's a website, restitudio.org, that you can go to and find all the previous episodes listed out very conveniently. 1:27:37 Sean Finnegan If you click on podcast or podcast info, you can get that list of all the episodes and link them to friends. 1:27:45 Sean Finnegan Another way you can support us is financially. 1:27:47 Sean Finnegan You could do that on our website. 1:27:49 Sean Finnegan Just hit the donation button and certainly do appreciate those who are supporting us. 1:27:54 Sean Finnegan Thank you so much. 1:27:56 Sean Finnegan That's going to be it for this week. 1:27:57 Sean Finnegan Thanks for listening to the end. 1:27:59 Sean Finnegan And remember, the truth has nothing to fear.