The Antioch Disagreement

Philip All right, welcome to All Are Yours. My name is Philip.

Sean I am Sean.

Philip And we are still here with these excellent quality microphones, recording to the good of all the people.

Sean Have you thought about why people say their names at the beginning of their podcast?

Philip Because their podcasts are spreading far and wide.

Sean Okay. And so brand new listeners tuning into episode thirteen, they might not know who’s talking.

Philip Our voices are very similar. And —

Sean Wow. Yeah, I guess.

Philip And they might not pick up on my subtle Russian accent, or your Ohioan dialect.

Sean Yeah. Or my cold.

Philip That’s right. But nonetheless, I’m Philip, and the guy across from me is Sean. It’s not Philip.

There you go. Episode 13. We are here recording as per plan. That also is new for us, so we appreciate the listeners’ patience. But this time we were going to record something about Christmas, and it being December and all, that seemed relevant.

Sean Everybody’s got a holiday episode. They make a holiday album.

Philip Correct.

Sean They put together a little Advent devotional. We could have the All Are Yours Advent Devotional. Maybe next year we release something every day leading up to Christmas Day.

Philip Like a quick one. Yes, that’s right. Actually, we had an episode —

Sean All Are Yours 300.

Philip Mmm, look at that. Yes.

We had an episode last December. Had nothing to do with Christmas. Because we’ve been at this for over a year now.

Sean What was the one in December?

Philip I think it was episode two, probably, of —

Sean Goals?

Philip Or maybe that was in January. Maybe it was episode one, because we recorded in November and released in December.

Sean Well, your notes say that episode two was published on December 19th.

Philip There you go. So that’s the one, then. “Abundant Ambition.” And so that one was not about Christmas, and neither will this one be. So we could come back to Christmas maybe next year.

Sean Let’s say that the fact that we will record and get this released is like a gift.

Philip It is, very much, for our listeners.

Sean Who have been wondering what we think on this topic.

Philip That’s right. We have had some people ask us about this because, you know, we keep up with all the relevant stuff on Twitter, on X. We are there.

Sean I feel very relevant.

Philip That’s right. And then the fact that we are self-identified dispensationalists who care about the things of earth. So, consistent dispensationalists. And I use “dispensationalist” in parentheses. It is a filler label for me until I come up with a better one.

Sean Yep.

Philip So who knows? It might be a filler until I die. But I’m hoping at some point —

Sean Until the next dispensation.

Philip There you go. Yeah, I did see that one label, Bereanism.

Sean Yep.

Philip So I thought that one was interesting. You liked that. I liked that one.

Sean I like that as a fun nickname. I don’t know if that’s going to take over.

Philip Yeah, I don’t think it’s going to work. But I was like, hmm, that’s interesting. But — yeah, not going to work.

But yes: dispensationalists who care about the things of earth. And the Twitter wars, the brother wars, as they say, have been revolving around this Antioch declaration.

Sean Yeah. Which is my little funny title: the Antioch disagreement. Both because I think this is true — you and I already agreed that we disagree with the need to sign it.

Philip We did not sign it.

Sean Yeah.

Philip Yes.

Sean So far.

Philip That’s right. And we did not ask each other before coming to that decision. We just decided.

Sean We agreed on our disagreement.

But there’s also been a variety of disagreement even among people that potentially should sign it — the people who actually do not have the disagreements we do. They actually should sign it, maybe.

Philip Right. Yeah, and I think that between the options, I would rather people sign it than not sign it, who are in those camps.

Sean Yeah.

Philip I think our camp is served better by soft supersessionists than hardline supersessionists. So I think I could work with that side a little better.

Sean Yeah.

Philip But nonetheless, yeah, I thought that it made more sense for me not to sign it.

Sean So, antiochdeclaration.com. Presumably that can go in our show notes as well.

Philip Yeah.

Sean For our listeners, for their blessing. But yeah, antiochdeclaration.com.

Which — even its own subtitle on the page is “a statement on racial ideologies threatening the church.” And wow, how many people don’t even like that; they think racism is a useless term.

But yeah, I mean, drafted by — I guess their term is “collaborators,” so they get a special position on the page as the guys who wrote it. But they are some of the kind of people that we have learned from. Even like a Doug Wilson; I think maybe his name is first.

Plus it came out, conveniently, in No Quarter November.

Philip Yeah.

Sean So —

Philip As if it was planned.

Sean Right. Almost as if.

Philip It was the bridge-burning No Quarter November.

Sean Yeah. I mean, that seems related, connected.

Philip Who knows?

Sean But yeah, so, some names from some of the groups of the kind of people that we learn from, even though we’re not really in them. So, we’re not in the CREC.

Philip Right.

Sean I mean, we’re not Presbyterian.

Philip We have this convenient location, a convenient positioning.

Sean Of independence.

Philip That’s right. Where we could pick and choose what we like and what we don’t like, and —

Sean We can throw stones every direction.

Philip Right. And none of their stones hit us.

Sean Yeah, perhaps.

Philip Yeah.

Sean But like you said, we have also gotten at least a couple comments from people within our own congregation.

Philip “What’s going on? Why are you not promoting this?” Yeah, right.

Sean Yeah, one person in particular definitely recommended that the elders sign it. I talked to another guy recently who I thought did sign it; I didn’t find his name. I did find, though, that there is a person on the list who signed it from Marysville, Washington.

Philip Oh, it was a name you do not know, from Marysville?

Sean Yeah.

Philip Hmm. We need to find that person.

Sean Yeah.

Philip Somebody’s paying attention.

Sean Yeah.

Philip So, yeah, Doug Wilson, Joe Boot. I read some of his stuff.

Sean Yeah.

Philip I liked what I’ve read. And along with Joe Boot was — Andrew Sullivan, I think? He’s also part of the same Ezra Institute, maybe.

Sean Okay.

Philip Or maybe he works closely with him.

Sean Well, and then Jeff Durbin and James White. I mean, James White is just getting killed on the Twitter worlds.

Philip I have my thoughts about James White too.

Sean I told my family on Saturday that I stopped listening to James White before it was cool to stop listening to James White. But he does have — I’ve read a couple of his books.

And this is also true: I almost always find it easier to read what someone is saying than to listen to them say it. I probably feel the same way even about myself. I’d much rather read what I wrote a long time ago than listen to me having said it.

Philip There you go.

Sean But —

Philip Yeah. Well, I never really listened to James White. So, even when it was cool to do that, or not cool to not do that, or whatever it is.

Sean I really benefited from a couple of the things that he has taught about Christianity and Islam.

Philip Yeah.

Sean And a book on the Trinity, on justification.

Philip I don’t have any problem with him. That was just other information at the time.

Sean Sure.

Philip But now that he is hated by so many — maybe I’ll start listening to him some more.

Yeah, so: “a statement on racial ideologies threatening the church,” like you said. Kind of in summary, it’s a statement with what these collaborators, the people who wrote it, affirm and deny. And drafted — this note that you have, right, this is in that statement as well — “Reformed, Lutheran, and Evangelical believers from a broad range of churches.”

Sean Yeah, that’s who they think they are, and who they’re aiming the statement at. Which, “Evangelical believers from a broad range of churches,” we fall into that.

Philip Right, exactly right. But they added some words there that I think are intentionally exclusive.

So yeah, it is trying to be an ecumenical statement on race, and there are people who are pushing back against it, and this is causing these collaborators, the writers, and people who support it to double down. Like, this is exactly why we wrote it, because of stuff that’s happening.

Sean I don’t think we’ve ever talked about the word race.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean And if that’s even a good word, and if racism is a thing. I would actually prefer to not use the word race. I’ve heard a few people talk about: there’s one race, there are different ethnicities, and then obviously different nations as well. I actually prefer that terminology.

I get that we’re probably not going to put ethnicity instead of race. People are probably going to keep using the word race in this discussion, so whatever. But I would prefer to talk about the human race, and then the different groups of people within that same race.

Philip Right. Yeah, and people who don’t like the statement don’t like what you just said. I’ve seen a lot of, “No, there is not one human race.” And so that kind of statement is a postwar consensus statement.

Sean Oh. Dang it. I’m in the PWC.

Philip That’s right.

Sean I can’t even believe it. I’m so —

Philip Consensitized. That is a libertarian — yeah, you are not in a good place. But I agree with you, so I’m with you right there.

Sean Okay.

Philip Yeah.

Sean But okay, so — aren’t these the same? If it’s the kind of groups that I’m thinking about that want to recognize different races, aren’t those the same group of people that say there is no such thing as racism? That racism is a useless bugaboo and nobody’s actually racist?

Philip Yeah, I mean, all groups have different members.

Sean Yeah.

Philip And so it’s hard to judge one member by a different member. So they’ll agree on certain things and disagree on other ones.

But yes, the term racism is claimed to be overused — which I agree with — and that there is even no such thing as racism. So they’ll push it to that extent. But yeah, within that group as well, they would want there to be multiple races, and, “I’m able to be more loyal to one race over a different race.”

And again, there’s a spectrum of it all, and so we want to be fair to people who —

Sean — to the wrong races.

Philip That’s right. No — well, even to representatives of the group.

But they are making it very difficult to play nice.

But yeah, so: race, racism. I do agree that the word race is confusing. And even the word racism — I don’t like saying that it’s a sin, just because the Bible doesn’t have that word. So, saying racism is a sin, I can’t really point to that in the Bible. I’m able to point to other things in the Bible that would maybe fall under what people are talking about when they say racism is a sin. So, pride, vainglory, or even a certain kind of partiality that the Bible speaks against, that is connected with —

Sean — hatred.

Philip That’s right.

Sean Yeah.

Philip So making it more specific at that level, I do think gives people less opportunity to get out of the corner, right? If you just say racism, they’re able to grab onto a lot of the things and pull and wriggle out. But if you start using biblical terms, that makes it a little more difficult, because the Bible is a bit more specific as to the actual sin.

And so in that way, again, I agree that I don’t think the word is going anywhere, but I think it would be more helpful if we could use more specific terms that the Bible uses when we’re talking about sin.

Sean It could potentially be helpful if we could allow ourselves some measure of balance as well. So, that there could even be a too far, in both directions.

Philip Right. For sure.

Sean It’s probably just postwar consensus.

Philip Anything that they don’t like is postwar consensus, right.

Sean Speaking of that — have you done any reading? Because I think that the book that that primarily started coming from is, I guess his name is Rusty Reno, R. R. Reno. He’s editor at First Things, and his book, Return of the Strong Gods.

Philip Okay.

Sean So I started reading it.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean Have you looked into that at all?

Philip I’ve seen the title.

Sean Yeah.

Philip I have not read it, no.

Sean Yeah. I mean, I’ve got a bunch of other things I need to be actually reading that I’m responsible for on a day-to-day teaching basis. But definitely, talking about postwar consensus, he so far doesn’t actually seem to have gone to crazy extremes. Maybe he goes to more extremes as the book goes on. But wow, the cottage industry in a short period of time that has come from people lumping everything into the postwar consensus.

Philip Right. Well, it’s kind of like people lumped everything into racism.

Sean Yeah.

Philip But don’t say woke right.

Sean Yeah.

Philip You cannot say that.

But yeah, in a similar way. And so the drafters of this declaration are concerned about a few different things: racism — they do use that term — and then even specifically antisemitism.

And so, “postwar consensus” is referring to World War II, so the world built after that war, and the kind of globalism that came out of it; the kind of pseudo-peace between nations, maybe anti-nationalism, because nationalism was — I mean, in my reading about it, it was what drove to World War I initially, that kind of national glory, the will to conquer, and then World War II being an epilogue of that first war.

So coming out of that, maybe certain things we’re not allowed to talk about. And maybe there’s some truth there as well. Certain narratives that can’t be questioned or looked at. You know, people talk about Doug Wilson’s approach to the war between the states, the Civil War. And people don’t like his attitude toward the Civil War. And then they’re saying —

Sean — the narrative, the narrative sometimes given from it.

Philip Right, exactly right. And so then other people have the same approach toward World War II, and the Holocaust, and then — again, it’s a spectrum — and it gets touchy real quick, about conspiracies about Jewish control of all the things.

Sean It’s so touchy, we thought, you know what? We should touch it.

Philip That’s right. Exactly right. Why have we not touched this yet?

And also, observing this from the outside, to me it’s a little bit funny, having a lot of these anon accounts, or even named accounts, on X, on Twitter, calling out Doug Wilson for being a reactionary compromiser. But he’s been talking about this sort of overreaction, on young guys being radicalized, for a long time — way before these guys even had Twitter accounts.

Sean Yeah.

Philip So —

Sean Before there was Twitter.

Philip That’s right. So it seems like Doug Wilson has seen this coming for a while. And he keeps talking about the left holding things back, suppressing what is actually true, and building up this kind of bubble of resentment, of bitterness, of maybe even a bubble of hatred — because they’re not allowing the truth to be spoken, they’re not allowing what is actually visible to be pointed out.

And so Wilson has been talking about, or foreseeing, this overreaction for a while. So even this Antioch declaration that he contributed to is, in my understanding, not some kind of reaction on his part to something recent that’s happened. He has been aware of this coming up for a while. And so these characters that have named themselves or not named themselves have just been identified, and so Wilson is now pointing them out. But it’s not something that, again in my understanding, caught him by surprise.

Sean Yeah. Well, it was a year ago — I think it was No Quarter November ’23 — when American Milk and Honey came out. And that’s got a lot about — in fact, I think antisemitism is even in the subtitle of that book.

So, Deuteronomic blessings. Which very much so relates to what we are talking about with Kuyperian dispensationalism, and a jealousability that provokes Israel to repent and receive Jesus as the Messiah, by seeing the kinds of blessings that they could have had, that were said that they could have had, even in like Deuteronomy. So, as we believers experience that, being used by God at the right time to actually provoke the national revival among them.

So Wilson, in that book, talks about antisemitism. But he tries to protect himself by claiming he’s just a soft supersessionist — which means that there is going to be a future generation of Israelites that repent, but as a nation there’s not really anything left for them. So the land parts, and the actual throne in Jerusalem that Jesus would sit on, and Israel having a central spot globally as a nation, that part is not happening. But the parts where they’re going to get saved, that part’s going to happen. So hence he’s a soft supersessionist.

Philip So he identifies a future ethnic group — it will be clear who’s in and out of that group — and he’s saying that that group will be saved.

Sean Yeah.

Philip Is promised salvation. But then he doesn’t take the next step of the additional promises in the same verses. So hence he’s the soft supersessionist.

Sean Right. And that’s his label. I had actually heard “soft” — I guess it’s not surprising that you can have a spectrum of things. But soft supersessionism is fine, which has then got him called a Jew lover by hard supersessionists. By what potentially then sounds like antisemitism. I mean, it sort of looks like it, sort of sounds like it, sort of smells like it, but, you know, that’s not what it is, right?

Philip Right. And yeah, that distinction, like you said, comes from Wilson publishing that book, and even calling out that covenant theology comes out of supersessionism. That was something that Wilson said as well.

Sean Yeah.

Philip And so this disagreement being kind of rooted in a lot of those foundational aspects of covenant theology.

Sean And I don’t want to steal our own thunder — and yet, why not? All are yours. You can let your lightning and thunder out at any time.

When people within, like, even our church are like, well, why does dispensationalism matter? Why do we have to care about the covenantal capital C, dispensational capital D? Why do we have to care about that? Can’t we just appreciate the fruit of what they’re doing? And we want the same kind of fruit and we can just get along.

And in so many ways we do. I mean, episode five was, you know, All Are Yours includes the people we —

Philip We like them.

Sean — love so much. Which is part of the reason why we would even talk about this kind of document that, bottom line, is not necessary among our group of people. We’re not producing this kind of young man. We’re not producing this kind of resentment toward any particular people group.

Philip We have our own problems.

Sean We definitely have our own problems, but by grace this is not one of them.

Our reading of the Bible that then gets labeled as dispensationalism — fine, you can keep looking for a different label, that’s all good. But, like, why does it matter? Well, because it actually does keep us from certain assumptions about other people, including the Jews.

So a person who is actually reading God’s word should be able to acknowledge that the current generation of Jews are in significant judgment because they’ve rejected the Messiah. That doesn’t change their status as having been recipients of a covenant, that at the right time they’ll receive the benefits of — the benefits of the covenant that has been purchased by Christ will be conferred on them, which is soul salvation, national restoration. But we don’t actually have to support everything that they are currently doing as a nation.

Philip Right.

Sean We don’t have to do that at all. Have some dispensationalists done that? Like, knee-jerk response, oh, we’ve got to protect Israel, because whoever blesses them will be blessed and whoever curses them will be cursed. That should be considered, but I don’t think that a dispensationalist, because of that, has to automatically rubber stamp every decision that they make.

Philip Right.

Sean That said, we don’t hate them, just like we don’t hate any people group. But we don’t have people hating that whole group, as wicked as some of them are, because we actually think God has a purpose for them still — even if, again, they’re not currently recipients of his blessings. We are supposed to be desiring an increase of God’s blessings on us, so as to provoke them to want the Christ that we are worshiping, that they should be worshiping.

Philip Right.

Sean Which you wouldn’t think provoking them would include hating them.

Philip Right.

Sean That’s the wrong kind of provoking.

So, when people — again, in our own circle — wonder why we have to get so detailed, why we would care about this part of the discussion: it’s because all ideas have consequences, and the capital C covenantal supersessionism, whether soft or hard, has consequences. The Antioch Declaration is — I mean, it’s fine for them to do that and try to recover a balance, or try to keep there from being the extreme consequences of the ideas. But the ideas allow it.

Philip Right, exactly right. Yeah, it’s kind of — so, in business there’s a concept called blue ocean strategy.

Sean You’ve told me about it before, but say it again.

Philip It’s a business positioning approach: when the competition is over there eating away at each other in the bloody red ocean, you ought to swim into clean blue ocean and start your own thing. So, get out of the pre-agreed-upon categories, maybe, that the market is speaking, and start your own category and just pivot altogether.

So in some sense, the supersessionists are there in the bloody red ocean eating away at each other. And we’re kind of over here not dealing with some of those categorical issues, just because fundamentally it doesn’t even align. We’re not talking about the same presuppositions there.

Sean Yeah.

Philip And yeah, I mean, the approach to the nation of Israel today — I agree with what you’re saying, where there are not only wicked and vile individuals that are Jews, but also the nation itself is not honoring Christ, right? These are not God-honoring principles right now that the nation is promoting.

And so I would maybe take issue with — I think Daily Wire was talking about how every American should have a dual allegiance, with America and Israel.

Sean Okay. Is this Shapiro?

Philip It’s Shapiro and Andrew Klavan.

Sean Okay.

Philip Yeah. Who are both Jews, right? Andrew Klavan’s a Jew. He’s a Christian Jew. But so, I would disagree with that. Being a dispensationalist in parentheses, I would not promote some kind of dual allegiance there. And again, that is not because there’s some Jew hate, but because fundamentally it’s not Christ honoring.

And so our approach to the nation of Israel, even today, is to provoke them to jealousy — not provoke them to more hatred. We want them to want what we have. And that might lead to hatred. That might lead to persecution, which it has before. But the approach is: we want them to want what we have, so that they could come to Christ in order to obtain it.

Sean And maybe it’s just the Musk algorithm that likes to try to make there be engagement, and so it shows me things in my timeline that somehow the computer knows is going to fire me up.

Philip Provocate you.

Sean Yeah. But it is actually kind of surprising how many guys in this world claim to be Christians and claim to be in the Reformed camp — capital R Reformed, so typically then some sort of Presbyterian Reformed churches or thinking — who go so far as to say, you know, Jews, there’s nothing still for them. There’s nothing for them but judgment that’s coming.

Which is not only denying Old Testament things, that’s even denying New Testament things that promise salvation for Jews. So again, not everybody is out on that extreme. And I don’t think that everybody who says that I would automatically call an antisemite either. But, like, “there’s no fulfillment left for them,” and saying things like, well, the true Israel was Jesus, and so everything that was promised to Israel is done in Jesus.

Philip Right. Including Romans 9–11.

Sean Right.

Philip Yeah.

Sean Which was post-Jesus.

Philip Right.

Sean And there’s actually no way to switch out Israel — you can’t.

Philip Sean, but it says not all Israel is Israel. It says that.

Sean Which you would have to make be “not all Jesus is Jesus,” right? Because that’s post-Jesus. So if you were to do a search and replace —

Philip Not when I’m reading that verse. I could make it be a different thing. I could switch off, from verse to verse, what I want Israel to mean.

Sean Yeah.

Philip So, no. But yeah.

Sean So we’ve got consequences in terms of how we actually view entire other groups of people, that come from the way you read the Bible and what categories you demand to be part of your reading. So, must you read through the covenant of grace? Like, that’s a thing that’s in the Antioch Declaration itself.

Philip Right.

Sean Well, we don’t like that term.

Philip Yeah. Postwar consensus, maybe, applied in a different way. Maybe it’s even post-positive world; you could bring that in here as well.

There is a sort of — I don’t know if it’s inclusivity, or, we’re looking for unity amongst Christians and so we throw out categories that are too complex or unnecessarily divide. But this idea of the church and Israel — people who maybe don’t want to talk about it — it’s pretty recent in church history. It has been an ongoing conversation since the church started.

Sean Yeah.

Philip The church, Israel, the connection with that — every generation is working through that and building off of what the previous generation built, whether that was wrong or right. And so we believe that certain people in church history got it wrong. We believe others got it right. And we want to be faithful from where we have.

And we also believe that there are actual repercussions that we have already seen play out in church history when you get those questions wrong. And so it’s important to get it right. So for us it’s not a pet project or some kind of hobby horse. We think these categories are important, and we want to actually identify them right and then also build on top of it, not just get stuck on the foundational level, maybe.

Sean Sure. Including, you know, fellowship of grievance kind of rallying cries.

Philip Right.

Sean And that relates to the red ocean, where then everybody’s eating each other. Like, once you can’t identify the actual enemy, then your neighbors are your enemy — even if they’re not genuinely trying to attack you. You start needing to fight them all the time.

Philip Right. Yep.

And so, again, the people who wrote the declaration are watching out for — they even say, right, to identify and resist the rising tide of reactionary thinking emerging on the fringes of our own circles. So they understand that these are ideas and concepts that are within their circles, within that sphere.

And so then, within that circle, you have people who are hating it, who are not liking it. And that is also, I think, a spectrum. A spectrum of maybe people who are more reasonable — I’ve seen some reasonable pushback to the declaration being sloppy, or unclear, or unhelpful in a certain way. People who also maybe publicly fight against antisemitism but would not sign a statement like that, even though they are covenant theologian type people, for maybe better reasons than some other people have. And then, a spectrum of haters of the whole idea, of the whole concept.

Sean Yeah.

Philip And so you have people who think there is no woke right, that we can’t have any enemies to the right of us — that whole approach.

And so, you said that you came across this containment right.

Sean Yeah. I’m not sure I know even who the guy is, but it was just a picture of, like, the flood. So you’ve got the big tall dam, and then the town below, and the water that’s being held back by the dam. And so the picture below that is potentially being protected — in the meme format, it’s Trash World, from Isker’s Boniface Option. He’s the one that at least keeps using “Trash World”; maybe he didn’t invent that. But Trash World is being protected from the lake of water, which is called Christian nationalism in the meme. And the dam is called the containment right.

And it has to include people like a Doug Wilson, and James White, or Joe Boot, the Antioch Declaration kind of collaborators, and maybe anybody who signed it — as trying to keep the really good stuff from overcoming the negative world, the trash world, because they, the containment right, are apparently afraid of the farther right. Wilson calls them the dank right, not just the dissident right. The potentially racist white boys who, if they could just be let loose, well then they would fix all of the problems. They would flood Trash World.

Which, of course, you don’t get good things from a flood. So, the meme breaks down. That’s fine. If Christian nationalism was water like that, that would flood a town — that would destroy it, not actually win it. Which, I guess you want Trash World to be destroyed —

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean — rather than redeemed or saved.

So again, it breaks down, that’s fine. But “containment right” was a new phrase to me that I saw earlier today. Like, hm, I guess people trying to be balanced are then the ones who are —

Philip Right.

Sean — causing the biggest problem.

Philip Right.

Sean They are maybe worse than Trash World itself.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean Because they’re keeping it from being better.

Philip Right. So we have to go as hard and as fast in the opposite direction of the left as we can. Whatever it is they’re doing, we’ve got to do the opposite of that — is a lot of what we hear.

And so that’s where it’s, you know, you can’t have any enemies to the right. If there is somebody who is a little more extreme than you are, well, you’re supposed to just support that person, or at least not criticize them publicly, in order to not kill their mojo, in order to not ruin the work that they’re trying to do.

Sean Now, you’re a younger man — I mean, you’re younger than me. One of the angles on the declaration even includes the fact that it came out in the middle of another brother war between a couple guys, one in Germany and one in Texas, who were approaching, you know, a meme. A Hitler meme? A Holocaust meme?

Philip Yeah, I think it was like a Holocaust denial type meme or something.

Sean Okay, yeah. They had two different angles on that. I mean, whatever.

One of the things that came out of it is: how are you going to actually serve the young men in your congregation who are more politically right than you are? And if you’re just trying to be the containers, then you’re actually going to frustrate these young men, and they’re going to get more radicalized even by the people in the church, or they’re just going to stop listening to their pastors, or the older theologians, or whoever it might be.

But, so, like, you are a younger man. We have some younger men in our church, who — I don’t actually see a lot of political further-right radicalized rage. I don’t see that among our guys. Do you? And you don’t seem to be driven by rage.

Philip It’s Russian rage.

Sean Yeah. I mean — and I’m not trying to tell you what your answer is, but what do you think about that? Are we actually able to listen to what they have to say and help them work through it? Or do you think some of our people are feeling held back by our middling conservatism?

Philip Yeah. Well, about holding back young guys — and we had the episode about, you know, young snots and —

Sean — sanctified snots.

Philip That’s right, yes. And so we know all about that.

But, so, in one sense: how is that different than any seeker-sensitive approach? You know, well, you’re going to scare them away. You’re going to disattract them from the church. They’re going to just go follow this worldly manosphere, because the pastors have pushed them away. That sounds like any kind of seeker-sensitive worship approach, which most of these kind of people are against.

Sean Yeah.

Philip So, appealing to people’s emotions — I don’t think ever works well. I mean, you have this gentle parenting approach now with three-year-olds or five-year-olds, because you want them to express their emotions, or to affirm them in some way.

So you do have a lot of — and I’ve held back on Twitter. I hold back on Twitter all the time. It’s because I’m not an anon. People see my name, so I care about my reputation.

Sean Sure.

Philip No, but yeah: you have this kind of pastoral gentle parenting to the young men on the right, which looks like a lot of coddling. It looks like a lot of mama nurturing. And people would be angry if they actually listened to this podcast — but because we have minimal listeners, I could say provocative things.

Sean Yeah. Maybe we should start giving ourselves anonymous names at the beginning of the podcast.

Philip That’s true.

Sean So you’d know which anonymous label goes with which voice, but not actually who it is.

With what you’re saying — I’m not actually opposed to all anonymous accounts. It’s been funny, even in one of the classes I’m teaching at ECS: literally last week and this week we’re reading the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers, and most of them were written under pseudonyms. Fine, great. Now we know in almost every case who it was that wrote it. But yeah, I’m not really opposed to anonymous accounts. But they have definitely shown good and bad.

Philip Right. For sure. I’m not opposed to the idea.

Sean Because people can do good and bad with their own name.

Philip Absolutely, yes. I’m not opposed to the idea, but there are plenty of individual accounts that I at least think would be served well if they had to be held accountable to something.

But again, apart from that, I think this kind of coddling to young men is not helping them. The older pastors who are doing that call themselves father figures, but this is not what a father does. This is what a mother does. A mother coddles and nurtures and holds close. A father draws lines and judges and determines what is right and wrong.

Sean I guess I was thinking more even of some of the younger pastor guys, who are not anonymous, who are saying the older guys, by drawing these lines, are going to push away the young guys. “We’re going to let them in.”

Philip Right.

Sean So the younger guys are coddling the other younger guys.

Philip Yeah, exactly right. And I think that is unhelpful. That is unhelpful for their own institution, but then also for these younger guys. If you’re trying to have them grow up into maturity, coddling is not the way.

Sean Yeah.

Philip There is a way when older men hold back younger men. Absolutely. When you see ankle biters who are coming up in the ranks, and an older guy is threatened by that in some way and wants to hold him back — that happens all the time.

But calling out a younger guy is not automatically that. I think there is a lot of good served when young men are quick to hear and listen to what older men are saying. Especially older men who have invested into growing up younger guys, who have invested — whether it’s personally or even on a certain kind of public platform. I think when those older men are pushing back on what you’re saying or doing, there should be somewhat of a hesitancy to disagree with anger or with impatience. At the very least, hesitancy, if not resistance, to that kind of sin.

But yeah: rebuke not an older man, but encourage him the way you would a father. That applies to your Twitter interactions. The Bible has something to say about how you interact online as well.

But yeah, so I do think in our church, at least from what I’ve seen, we don’t have any — I can’t point to any examples of older men disrespecting and holding back younger guys. I think we have a lot more of the other side, where older men are encouraged by the young man’s energy, ambition, and are encouraging more of that in them. And so I think that does win a lot of loyalty from young guys in our church to the older guys. And there is a lot of this kind of intergenerational collaboration that continues to happen.

And so, as we’re raising up our sons today — we’re having, going to have, the Six Pack and Sing with all of our boys, so both my boys, eleven and eight, will be there. And so we have this kind of intergenerational approach to men working and singing and drinking together. That’s why, in some sense, I think we also don’t have that approach of a divide between the young and the old. We value an intergenerational approach to all of life.

But also, coming back to the declaration and the people who are asking us about signing it — why are we not, or should we? So, in our case, I do think, again, because the issue stems from supersessionism. The issue stems from — whatever you want to call it — but it stems from a covenant theology that even the drafters of the declaration acknowledge is right, acknowledge is good.

And when you do that, even in a declaration, you are drawing lines. The whole point is to draw lines. That’s what any declaration is for. And so when you’re saying “covenant of grace,” you’re saying “true Israel,” you know who you’re drawing a line with there. And so what they’re saying is: we are not dispensationalists. We are not distinguishing between Israel and the church in that way. And then also, we don’t want to have the extreme of what we’re seeing elsewhere.

So yeah, I mean, if somebody signs it from our congregation, or as any dispensationalist — I’ve seen other dispies promoting it online. Sure, right, I don’t have a big problem. I do think there is inconsistency in the language, being a dispensationalist and signing something that calls out a totalizing bond of the kingdom of God through the covenant of grace.

Sean Right.

Philip You know —

Sean “The ultimate bond or good for temporal human life is the covenant of grace.”

Philip Right. That’s what the statement is saying.

Sean Capital C, capital G. So it’s not like — it’s referring to a very specific thing.

Philip Right.

Sean Which: covenant of grace, covenant of works, covenant of redemption usually is the third one that’s thrown in there. Covenant of grace is the thing that is the human bond.

Philip Right.

Sean I could see describing the totalizing bond in some other ways. And obviously even “elect” — I mean, if we’re going to say God’s elect in a way. Or even in God’s grace, lowercase. Sure.

Philip Right.

Sean But covenant of grace is a framework that, again, I understand why people come up with it. It’s ironically not found, by name, in Scripture, even though there are other named covenants. Without trying to pick on them — just can’t agree to own that as the category, the framework through which to read the rest of the things. Because, I mean, this is just beating the same drum, but that is what has opened up the door to, well, if we have replaced Israel, then why are we looking for them to have anything? It’s the same trajectory, further extreme down the road, of, well then let’s hate them.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean So, not everybody — obviously these guys are trying to have walked down the road of, we’ve replaced Israel, Israel is not as important as it was, but we don’t hate them.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean I mean, that’s good.

Philip Right.

Sean But we don’t actually even think that’s the right road to go down.

Philip Right.

Sean And so, we don’t at the end of our road — maybe you could say there’s too much love for Israel? Like —

Philip Right, on the dual allegiance.

Sean Yeah, the unconditional dumb-dumb love for Israel. Maybe that’s our problem. But hating is definitely not our problem.

Philip Right. Yeah, they have in the statement that they affirm that in God’s good time, Jews will come to be added to the true commonwealth of Israel, inheriting the same blessings as Gentile believers.

So that phrase, “true commonwealth of Israel,” “true Israel,” is a distinct phrase for covenant theology, meaning that the church has replaced Israel, the church has superseded Israel, that Israel as a nation is no more, and so those blessings belong to the church. And so soft supersessionists are saying that Jews will be a part of this true Israel, which the church is.

And so again, these kinds of phrases are specific. They’re clear. And so this is —

Sean — and annoying.

Philip Annoying, right?

Sean Because — shouldn’t that be — it should be the true, like, what is true Israel?

And I imagine certain people listening to us talk about this thinking, one, some of them are like, get over this part of the conversation. Others are like, well, this is why we don’t like what you’re saying.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean But “the multitude of Jews are going to inherit the same blessings as Gentile believers” is kind of backwards. Like, the Gentile believers, having been grafted in to blessings — we’re receiving blessings that were originally promised to the Jewish patriarchs. We’re getting their blessings.

Those blessings are substantial and, obviously in Christ, they are eternal. They are wonderful. And we don’t want Israel to have our blessings, per se. We want them to have the blessings that they could have had in Christ to begin with.

So it’s not like we then become true Israel to provoke Israel to become true Israel. That’s backwards. And so annoying.

Philip Right. So I do think that these phrases are in there so that the haters cannot throw the drafters and signers under the bus of dispies. They cannot call them dispensationalists, because they could point to these phrases.

Sean Because that’s the worst.

Philip That’s right. Yes.

Sean Father — that’s what the “Fr.” stands for — Father Calvin Robinson.

Philip That’s right, yeah.

Sean Who recently enjoyed the Moscow mood.

Philip Yeah.

Sean Tweeted a couple Saturdays ago that dispensationalism is the problem.

Philip That’s right.

Sean So at least the Antioch Declaration guys don’t have to be the problem like that. Like us.

Philip But yeah. So here’s maybe a wrap-up question. We’re not signing it, the Antioch Declaration. And also, we would prefer, if there was going to be a victor in this battle, we’d prefer the soft supersessionists to win over the hardline supersessionists.

Sean They are a higher percentage of consistent with what —

Philip That’s right. Yes.

Sean — God’s covenants are.

Philip John Calvin does have some of that kind of soft supersessionism as well. And John Murray, right, does have — yeah, is that the commentary you were going off of at that time as well, that you were quoting?

And so, again, we think both of them are wrong. One of them is a lesser evil. Or maybe it’s more upstream; it hasn’t realized all the consequences of the principle.

So, us sitting out of something like this — how is that not us bunkering down? So, you know, it’s Trump and Kamala, and we’d prefer Trump over Kamala, but we also don’t like Trump, so we’re just not going to vote at all. Us not getting into the bloody red ocean — how is that not negligence on our part?

Sean Yeah, well, because not only do we not hate Jews, we think that we have responsibility, like, for the next part. At least in the Romans 11 description, the next thing is for God to be blessing believers in Christ — so much, many of whom now are Gentiles, until the fullness of the Gentiles comes in. And somewhere in there, the blessings that God is giving to the Gentiles is what he chooses to use to grant that revival and restoration to Israel.

So we’re not sitting it out. We’re trying to be more provocative.

And even recently, I know you asked the question, like, well, how does dispensationalism provide a motivation for culture building? How does dispensationalism provide a reason to care about business or family? Well, like, this is the whole thing. Because it is not just our awesome Bible studies that we get to have that are provoking Jews to turn to Christ. It is by God giving us the blessings that come by grace through faith, in the good works that he’s prepared for us to walk in, as we then receive his blessings and turn profit on those blessings for even greater blessings.

Then he chose — that’s not our evangelism plan, that’s his evangelism plan — to then bring about the next parts on his timeline. So however soon that is, however far away that is — I mean, it could be imminent, could be still generations to go. We’re not told the day or the hour. We’re told to be faithful where we’re at. But we’re promised that that faithfulness is going to be provocative in the right way.

So that’s not sitting it out. That’s not red ocean, or the shore. That’s swimming in the blue ocean and trying to make some progress.

Philip Right. So it’s like, they’re fighting out in the battlefield; we’re going to the capital city to light it on fire there. Up to the source, the source of the wickedness.

Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense, where even the terms of the battle — what we’re saying here in this episode, in this Antioch disagreement — the terms of the battle are drawn downstream, too far downstream. We’re saying we’ve got to pull it upstream, up to the foundations of even the definitions of things like the church and Israel. So at that definitional level, that’s where the war and the battle is won and lost.

And even signing on to soft supersessionism is a losing battle. You’ve lost at that point. And so that’s why we keep banging that gong of a contextual hermeneutic, a consistent hermeneutic, lived out in Scripture, in the world, taking it all in in that way.

Sean Amen.

Philip All right, there you have it. Episode 13 in the books. Boom.