Episode Transcript
[00:00:06] Speaker A: Welcome to the Truth Exchange podcast. This is a weekly program with Doctor Jeffrey J. Ventrella where he answers questions from subscribers around the globe, answering questions about worldview, cultural apologetics, and other miscellaneous items. I'm your host, Joshua Guillotine, and this is another edition of the director's bag.
We have a symposium coming up in August 30 31st in Pasadena, California. And CS Lewis said this, there is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch, every split second is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan. Life gets busy with so many decisions and crucial choices. What career should I choose? What degree can I only please God as a pastor or a missionary?
And what about dating, marriage, and sexuality? Then there's politics, there's the arts, there's entertainment. Or how about the deeper questions, like, who am I and how am I to be in this life? How do I think and live in today's world? And we aim to answer some of these deeper questions at this truth exchange event.
It's called every square inch taking the Lordship of Christ to the streets. Every square inch of creation is Christ. So let's live like it, and let's do it together.
Jeff, you're the director and the chair of the Truth Exchange Fellowship, and this has become one of your first responsibilities since you joined the staff, is create this kind of fellowship. And I think the symposium is going to have some sort of play in that. But this symposium is really has become your baby. This is your first event that you're overseeing with the ministry. And I would love for you to just take a couple minutes, if you could, to talk about where did the theme of this event come through? How did this percolate to be? Why is this issue of Christ's sovereignty and taking his lordship to the streets important for believers today? Yeah.
[00:02:15] Speaker B: Thank you, Joshua. I am. I am a person who, as far as I can remember, as a Christian, captivated by the offices of Christ, prophet, priest, and king. And really, the confession we make and the profession we make as christians is Jesus is Lord. And we see this just all the way through the scriptures. And what happens is oftentimes, particularly in our shared reformed faith, we become very technical, which is important, and we become theological, which is equally important. But then we lean. We sometimes don't connect these valuable theological and precise truths to what it means to live and breathe every day. And as we know from the book of acts, it's in Christ in whom we live and breathe and have our being. So there's no molecule that is apart from Christ. And I'm drawing here not only upon cs Lewis, but upon the great theologian Abraham Kuyper from the Netherlands, who understood the idea of Christ's sovereignty is then is distributed and applied throughout all of creation, including human culture. So in other words, Christ is Lord of the individual. He is lord of the family, he is lord of institutions, he is Lord of the politics in the public square. He is the supreme law giver, so on and so forth. And he is someone in whom, as the shorter catechism says, we are to delight in God, we are to enjoy him. And so consequently, the good things that God gives reflects who he is as a loving father, as someone who shields us and protects us, and then gives us things for our delight, such as feasts, such as good wine, such as great food, et cetera, et cetera. So these are the kinds of things that we want to be talking about and then showing, particularly the next generation from our friends at Providence Christian College and elsewhere, that this is the glimpse of the holy one, the glorious one, in whom we live and move and have our being. And he concerned about and sees and equips us to live faithfully in whatever our callings are. And I guess the other thing I would say, Joshua, is we are infected in many ramparts of evangelicalism with a sort of dualism. The idea is that, well, there are religious things, there's ritual things, there's spiritual things, there are higher things. We leave that to the professional clergy. So we have a clergy laity, not distinction, but actually a dualism, or we have a duality or a dualism between grace and law or between church and state. And we don't understand that if Christ is supreme, all moral endeavors have equal validity. And so we want to recapture that reformational thinking of vocation and not have people think that, well, you got to go to the Ivy League or you're not important, or, well, you know, you've got to get married at 19, or you're not important. Well, those are all good things, but they're not the only things because there's.
[00:05:38] Speaker A: A couple things that went through my mind is, I've heard this a lot. When people, when a Christian will say Christian, a will say, jesus is lord, and therefore I ought to live this way, there will be christian bee who will say, well, brother, you're emanatizing the eschaton.
So the point is that the lordship of Jesus is, yes, it is now, but it's really not yet. So let's calm down a little bit here. Our zeal for taking Christ's lordship into politics, maybe we can have some of that lordship in family. Maybe we can have some of that lordship here. But really it's for later. It's really for when Jesus comes back. How, how would you respond to that kind of a conversation?
[00:06:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I appreciate that people want to be careful here because immunizing the eschaton, that's a quote from Eric Vogelin, actually. And the idea there is that it's a form of utopia, so that Marxism immunizes the eschaton through catastrophe and those sorts of things. Socialism also is on that vector. And christians can certainly zealously try to do that. But I would say that's not christian theology. Christian theology has and confesses, and in fact, it's foundational, a second advent of Christ when all things are made right. But the fact that all things will be made right in the future doesn't deny the fact that some things are increasingly sanctified now. And so we want to have not just education, but christian education. We want to have not only faithful marriages, but christian marriages. We want to rear our children not simply to be robotically obedient, but to have a passion for the Lord. And the same is true in these other kinds of endeavors. It makes a difference. We can't be neutral with respect to who governs us and how. And that applies then to the realm of the public square. It's interesting that Isaiah in chapter 59 laments, and he says there's a problem. He says, justice is gone. I'm paraphrasing here.
There is no justice because truth has stumbled in the public squares. Interestingly, the concern here is that truth is to be evident. It's to be steady, it's to be a beacon, it's to be known, it's to be seen. But instead it's teetering, it's tottering, it's wobbling, and that should not be. And what does the prophet say? The Lord saw it and wondered that there was no one to intercede. And we see here a picture of truth stumbling. And the solution there is to steady stumbled truth. We talk about truth being exchanged for the lie. Well, because redemption has come. And the passage goes on. He's talking about the messiah later on. The idea is that he then empowers us to steady stumbled truth, to be having a life that is increasingly sanctified in all that we do under Christ's lordship. So I would encourage the person not to.
Not that they are, but it seems to be lazy to simply say, oh, we're ammonizing the eschaton. And so we're wiping our hands of our responsibility. That's simply not a christian view of man and things.
[00:09:34] Speaker A: Who should come to the symposium, and why should they choose this event over the other events coming out this year?
[00:09:41] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great question. Let me start with the faculty. The faculty that will be addressing us this year are all truth exchange scholars, and what's great about them, they, to a person, manifest humility and character, and that is conjoined with razor sharp, committed intellects to Christ's lordship. And they are also very effective communicators. And I don't just mean as sages on the stage. What you will find is, and how we are structuring this symposium is that they will also be guides by their sides. In other words, we'll have breaks that are extended, we'll have meal times that are extended, where we can rub elbows and pick the brains of these great presenters. So you're going to get contact with the leading lights in these areas of what we might call public theology. So what happens when the truth exchanges for the lie? Well, we have redemption, and therefore, how do we apply the truth to every square inch of reality? So that's one reason. The second reason is we're dealing with mature, balanced professionals. They don't go off and chase the latest Internet or social media hype. They're not unstable men and women. In fact, they are able to discern and look through that. So then it comes out, who should be there? Well, particularly who should be there as the next generation. Young professionals who are seeking to understand a christian view of calling, and particularly a christian view of these various disciplines to which they may be called. It would help them to make some decisions. I think that's really good. But I also think that mature saints, those who are perhaps in grand parentage, ought to come because they're going to be filled with hope when they see these young people engaging in these particular issues so that they're not just, you know, potted plants for Jesus, that, in fact, we are taking them to engage and to give them a considered reason for the hope that is in them. So we're dealing with cultural apologetics. This is where they live. This is where they move, and we're going to be addressing the very issues that they are facing. And I think people will be encouraged for that.
[00:12:01] Speaker A: If we could, I'd like to talk about each one of these speakers and perhaps their theme. Are you ready to do that, Jeff?
[00:12:11] Speaker B: I'd be glad to do that.
[00:12:12] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:12:13] Speaker B: No promises made.
[00:12:17] Speaker A: Okay. All right.
[00:12:18] Speaker B: So let's try them.
[00:12:19] Speaker A: Let's start with Doctor Andrew Sandlin. And I am so excited to have him back with us. I remember the first time I met him at one of our think tanks and he is just a.
Him and Sharon are an incredible blessing to this ministry and they've been to me personally, and I know you have known them for decades.
Could you talk to us about, well, one, about the ministry that Sandlin is involved with and then what will he be addressing?
[00:12:47] Speaker B: Sure. So Doctor Sandlin, I call him Andrew, is a longtime friend. He's a faithful friend. What's so neat about him is he's a pastor and been pastoral, but he's also interdisciplinary trained. He's broadly read and deeply read, but you'd never know it because he doesn't try to wear that on his sleeve. It just comes out in considered prayerful wisdom. And what Andrew's going to be addressing, I think, is the choices we have with respect to how do we understand not partisan politics, but the structure of politics today. We have competing models we have on the left and the right, models that are both unchristian. And what I'm going to ask Andrew to do is to really talk about what does the christian faith animate with respect to the political public sphere. We ought to reject cultural Marxism, but similarly we ought to reject species of paganized new rightism. And I think that he will be able to articulate that in a way that makes sense and to help us thread that needle very, very well.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: Doctor Brian Matson, he comes back with us. He's been a longtime friend of this ministry, and I know that you've known him since he was a boyenne up in teenager, right?
[00:14:10] Speaker B: That's right. Brian is another long time friend, faithful friend, one of the leading public theologians right now literally in the world. He would never tell you that he's accomplished musician, he understands taking things to the retail level and just talking to people. But he's also an expert on the great theologian Herman Bovink. So Brian, I can address a number of things, but I think what we're going to have him do is to talk about and frankly theologically undress this nonsense that's happening with what he calls the children's crusade. That is to say, the young, restless, typically men that are rattling sabers about christian nationalism and are essentially statist in their orientation. That particular vector needs to be understood for what it actually is, which is nothing less than a pagan fascism being dressed up in christian veneer. And Brian's done very good work published on this. And you know, he can talk about whatever he wants to talk about, one sense, but that is an area that I think very valuable for him for us to consider.
[00:15:21] Speaker A: And then we have Doctor Thaddeus Williams, another longtime friend of the ministry. He's also one of our senior fellows, as you mentioned, all the majority of the speakers are truth exchange scholars. Doctor Thaddeus Williams, he's up at Biola, is that right? And he also teaches at Trinity with you.
[00:15:39] Speaker B: He does, yeah, he's at Trinity Law school. He's also a biola. Thaddeus is a well known theologian, but what I really love about him is his passion for the lost. He's able to take the theology and engage in meaningful conversations, sometimes with very, very belligerent people, and just express Christ's decided love for the world and explain to them. But we're going to have Thaddeus close the symposium and give us a preview of his new book, which is really the reason we're doing these kinds of things is not to be partisan or political at all, but to show forth the glory of God, the gaze of God. His new book does this very effectively. So, Thaddeus, I think we'll spend some time kind of opening up and telling us about how that should look as we get sent forth, never forgetting that this is really all about God and not about our little preferences.
[00:16:38] Speaker A: That's right. And then we will have Doctor Joe Boot, who was in Canada, but now is in England. And again, Doctor Joe Boot has been with us for a number of our events, as well as a scholar and fellow. What will he be addressing?
[00:16:54] Speaker B: I think Joe's going to deal with the non neutrality of christian education. We've got young people here, and we believe we're going to have people from local christian colleges and universities. We want to reinforce the fact that they're choosing a christian education, and we want to help them understand that this is a non negotiable, that christianly educating christianly thinking about education is a crucial component of. We addressed this on one of our dictas recently, and Joe's just thought about this deeply. He's founded christian schools. He's been educating people for many, many years. And so his burden includes this idea of how do we understand what is education and how do we understand that as a Christian? Joe's a very effective speaker. And plus, you know, with a british accent, he could read the phone book and you'd be persuaded.
[00:17:48] Speaker A: Other than that, he is good. He's very good. And then we have David Bonson tell us a little bit about David.
[00:17:57] Speaker B: So David is a super productive individual. He currently manages wealth, but he's engaged in so many spheres in the public sphere. He recently was able to get the largest bank in the world to back off their esg and die sorts of things because he knows what he's doing. He's uber competent. He's a well known author now, and he is going to be addressing economics, but not in a dry, boring way, but basically taking the idea of economics that in fact humanity, the work that humans do, that's an economic calling, is in fact part of who we are in imago day that work is not something we do so that we don't work anymore. Rather, work is something that we're called to do and we can glory in it. And he does a very good job of outlining this. And his book is just outstanding on it. It's called full time and really, really addresses some of the pernicious myths that are out there floating around in evangelicalism about work and productivity.
[00:19:05] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have really. I had just finished reading his book and it's been helpful for me in just navigating conversations with my sons about work. Let's go ahead and talk about Doctor Jones is going to be addressing pagan sexual.
[00:19:20] Speaker B: I think that's the focus. Doctor Jones is just very facile in this. He of course, is our founder of truth exchange. And his opening up, particularly of Romans one, has led to a lot of fruitful thinking in many different disciplines. So Peter is a theologian. He's been a missionary seminary teacher and has a burden for this. And he is. Has insights and connections biblically that we just typically don't see. And it's not because they're far fetched. He's just thought deeply about these kinds of things. So I believe he's going to talk about that. And then you mentioned Mary Wellers as one of our staff persons. Mary's really focused on some of the sexuality issues on the retail level, how it affects our young daughters, how it affects young women, how do we engage with these kinds of issues? Mary has written one of our popular letters too, which is a series of things that are very pastoral and how they come across. And I think the young people will really be attracted to how Mary addresses these kinds of issues. And it really opens up when we have q and A and stuff like that. Questions about dating or if you prefer, courting, whatever label we want to put upon that. How do we create families for the next generation? You know, that's very important. Even as we record this, I'm soon to be attending a wedding of one of our sons, creating yet another family. So very important stuff. So I think those kinds of issues, and I should mention I didn't before the symposium, besides having great presenters, great presentations, and in fact, lots of time to rub shoulders with them, we're going to have a q and A sessions, too. We're going to make our presenters stop on time so that we're going to be able to field questions because there's some real excellent interchanges that occur, and we've got people with a wealth of information we might as well share as broadly as we can.
[00:21:22] Speaker A: Yes. And then last but not least is Doctor Jeffrey Ventrella. Yourself.
You will be addressing, I think. Well, I'll let you tell us what you're going to be addressing.
[00:21:35] Speaker B: Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And it's not because I'm undecided. There's just so many things that are popping through my mind.
I want to balance out what everyone else is doing. I want to compliment them, but I also want to give them some handles. So I'm thinking about talking about essentially the choices we have in the public square, Christ, Caesar, or self. And I think I'm going to be teasing out the fact that we can idolize the individual through false worship or we can idolize the collective, the state, through false worship. Both of those reflect a disordered worship and disordered theology. And so I want to show how these things work out on the retail level. So that's where I think I'm going. But, you know, I reserve the right to get struck by lightning, perhaps, but I'm pretty confident that that's someplace we need to go, because I think that would fit nicely in some of what the others are doing because I think that it touches upon politics, sexuality, law, the glory of God, those kinds of things. So I think it'll maybe prime them to, you know, we've written on this, and soon those materials will be available, a monograph with respect to that. So, anyway, that's what I think I'm going to be doing. I'm going to be doing a lot of housekeeping, too, you know, slapping around the presenters. I probably shouldn't say that it's being recorded, you know, telling bad jokes, all that sort of stuff. You get the full service. I will not bring my trumpet, however.
[00:23:13] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:23:14] Speaker B: I may sing for you. In fact, it's on recording. I will sing for this symposium.
[00:23:21] Speaker A: Okay, great.
I.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: And I don't mean as part of the chorus, I mean a solo.
[00:23:27] Speaker A: Okay, well, good. Well, I hope you're going to do something from the chairman of the board.
[00:23:32] Speaker B: 100%.
[00:23:33] Speaker A: Okay. Well, listeners and viewers, please register now at www.truthexchange.com. you can register for the symposium. The dates are August 30 through the 31st in Pasadena, California at Providence Christian College. We look forward to seeing you all with us. I know I will be there. It will be good to be back in southern California for just a short time and look forward to being with everyone there. So please register now. Again, the website is ww dot truthexchange.com, where you can register for the symposium and look forward to being with you all. This concludes a recording of the director's bag. For more resources from Truth Exchange, please visit us online at www.truthexchange.com. you can follow us on X as well as Facebook for more updates and content related to Truth exchange. Be sure to join us next week for more questions from the director's bag. I'm your host, Joshua Guillo, and this is the Truth Exchange podcast.
