Holy Joys Podcast: Recent Episodes
Johnathan Arnold
A discussion of theology and ministry practice, all for a holy, happy church. A ministry of holyjoys.org.
Johnathan Arnold and David Fry discuss catechesis and the forthcoming New Methodist Catechism.
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Johnathan and David discuss some of their favorite online resources.
Johnathan’s list:
- ccel.org — a wealth of free Christian books; allows you to make an account so that you can save notes and highlights
- newadvent.org — especially newadvent.org/fathers, which has the full text of many patristic works
- stepbible.org — Step Bible by Tyndale House, my favorite online Bible
- wesley.nnu.edu — Wesley Center Online with the full text of Wesley’s sermons, Notes on the Bible, etc.
- bestcommentaries.com — commentary recommendations on each book of the Bible
- thevcs.org — Christian art in conversation with Scripture
- bibleproject.com — a wealth of free Bible study resources (e.g., animated video overviews of each book of the Bible)
- bcponline.org — the Book of Common Prayer online
- lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu — the Revised Common Lectionary with readings and other liturgical resources
- biblehub.com — some free commentaries (e.g., Calvin’s Commentary) in an easy-to-read format
David's list:
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The Wesley Center Online (free)
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A database of Wesleyan and holiness materials created by Northwest Nazarene University.
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I like it because it has some hard-to-get resources.
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Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL.org)
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Searchable
- Includes Schaff’s 38-volume Church Father’s series
- Calvin’s Commentaries
- Works of Arminius (3 Vol. Nichols ed.)
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No page numbers
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NewAdvent.org (free)
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Similar to CCEL
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More readable in my opinion
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The Revised Common Lectionary (lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu)
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Papalencyclicals.net (free)
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Every important document ever put out by the Roman Catholic Church
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The search feature is difficult to use because titles are often only in Latin.
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Perlego.com ($18/month)
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This would be in my top two or three if it still had the daily subscription option.
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Tons of contemporary books.
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Wesley Scholar (wesleyscholar.com) (free)
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An independent collection of Wesleyan-Methodist and early Christian works.
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Contains articles as well as original works.
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Open Access Digital Theological Library (libguides.thedtl.org)
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Contains some free material
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Contains PhD dissertations
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Books.Google.com
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Used to be able to download as PDFs.
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Gives all the information about a book including the nearest library or where to get it online.
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Gutenberg.org (free)
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Over 70,000 of free ebooks
- Christian and secular books
- Several different formats including actual facsimiles of pages
- Everything is public domain
- Searchable
Honorable Mentions:
JSTOR.org (fee)
- Usually accessible through a student library account
- Not really affordable for individuals.
Academia.edu (fee and free)
- Up-to-date scholarship
- Pay by subscription or by item
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David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss their experience at the recent Holy Joys Healthy Church Conference in Frankfort, IN. Visit holyjoys.org/conference for more info about the conference and next year's dates.
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Joey Ratcliff joins Johnathan Arnold and David Fry to discuss restoration assessment—what to do if someone's sin comes to light in the local church.
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Visit holyjoys.org/books-pastor-library to see David and Johnathan's lists.
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In this special episode of the Holy Joys Podcast, Johnathan Arnold teaches through an early draft of the New Methodist Catechism in preparation for a baptism and church membership class at Redeemer Wesleyan Church, where he serves as Senior Pastor.
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David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss the relationship between the church and theology, using John 21:17* as a starting place and drawing from William Burt Pope's Compendium on "Theology in the Church."
*In the discussion, the verse was accidentally cited as John 21:21.
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In this special episode of the Holy Joys Podcast, Johnathan Arnold teaches through an early draft of the New Methodist Catechism in preparation for a baptism and church membership class at Redeemer Wesleyan Church, where he serves as Senior Pastor.
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Johnathan Arnold and David Fry discuss why ecclesiology (the study of the church) should be of central importance to every Christian, especially pastors, and explore several key concepts that are neglected or misunderstood.
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After a three-month hiatus, Johnathan Arnold and David Fry discuss why they were gone and what to expect from Holy Joys going forward.
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Todd Hains, Associate Publisher at Lexham Press, joins Johnathan Arnold and David Fry to discuss children's catechesis and the FatCat series of children's books. Todd is the author of Martin Luther and the Rule of Faith: Reading God's Word for God's People. See also his recent article "Family Discipleship: 5 Easy Things You Can Do with Your Kids."
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Eric Himelick and Andrew Graham join David Fry and Johnathan Arnold to discuss their experiences at Asbury University and the theology of revival.
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After a short break, Johnathan Arnold and David Fry get back to the podcast with a casual discussion of ministry, books, and the work of Holy Joys.
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In this special episode of the Holy Joys Podcast, Johnathan Arnold offers a primer on two key terms in the doctrines of the Trinity and incarnation: "substance" and "person."
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Johnathan Arnold continues his series on the church and sacraments by looking at how baptism is the sacrament of our entrance or initiation into the church.
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Johnathan Arnold continues his series on the church and its relationship to the kingdom.
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Johnathan Arnold and David Fry discuss the article "Theological Triage: Unity in Essentials, Charity in Nonessentials," and the attached triage chart.
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In this episode of the Holy Joys Podcast, Johnathan Arnold teaches the first lesson in a six-week class on the church and sacraments.
Topics addressed include:
- The evangelical emphasis on personal salvation
- Corruption and hypocrisy in the church
- Attitudes towards the church today
- The Bible as a story about God and his people
- Personal and corporate salvation
- Acts 2:47 and 1 Jn. 2:19
- Luther, Calvin, Augustine, and Cyprian on the church and salvation
- Recovering a biblical vision of the church
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Johnathan Arnold and David Fry continue their discussion of William Burt Pope's Doctrine of the Church.
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David Fry and Johnathan Arnold continue their discussion of William Burt Pope's doctrine of the church, looking at the second half of his section on "The Preparations in the Gospels."
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David Fry and Johnathan Arnold continue their discussion of William Burt Pope's doctrine of the church, looking at the first half of his section on "The Preparations in the Gospels."
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David Fry and Johnathan Arnold begin a series on Methodist theologian William Burt Pope's doctrine of the church. Read along: holyjoys.org/the-christian-church/.
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At our 2022 Healthy Church Conference, David Fry spoke in the third, Friday morning session on the topic of Healthy Membership. His points were drawn from Colossians 2:19, Ephesians 4:16, and the book of 1 Corinthians. Church membership is designed by God to increase harmony and holiness in the church.
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At our 2022 Healthy Church Conference, Sarah Fry spoke in the first Saturday session on how to be an emotionally healthy church. A healthy church is one where people are learning both how to regulate their own emotions and treat lovingly other people’s emotions. We easily fall into a “fix-it” mentality. We love one another by listening and letting others know that we are safe for them.
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Johnathan Arnold preaches on Mary and Martha in Luke 10:38–42 and explains an ancient method for sitting and listening to Jesus through the meditative and contemplative reading of Scripture.
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Johnathan Arnold and David Fry discuss four questions about ordination:
- What is ordination?
- What does the Bible say about ordination?
- Who should be ordained?
- Who has the authority to ordain?
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Johnathan Arnold and David Fry continue to discuss modest clothing and biblical nakedness.
Topics discussed:
- Genesis 2–3
- A biblical definition of nakedness
- Nakedness in the law
- Cultural change
- Dressing modestly today
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David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss modest clothing and biblical nakedness.
Topics discussed:
- Genesis 2–3
- Nakedness
- Sin and shame
- Clothing as a gospel symbol
- Atonement
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Johnathan Arnold and David Fry discuss the church's social witness and how Christians can approach the issues of the day.
Topics include:
- Roe v. Wade
- Christian social witness
- 1908 Social Creed of the Methodist Episcopal Church
- Transitional Discipline of the Global Methodist Church, Part 2: Social Witness
- A Call to the CHM, "A Call to Christian Social Witness"
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In this episode, David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss tithing and the larger issue of giving generously from the heart because of God's inexpressible gift to us in Christ.
Topics discussed:
- Views on tithing
- Tithing in the OT
- Relationship of OT Law to NT believers
- Verses on tithing in the NT
- Tithing in church history
- Giving generously, cheerfully, humbly
- Supporting the local church
- 2 Corinthians 9
- 1 Timothy 6
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Johnathan Arnold and David Fry discuss "the gospel of the kingdom" (Mt. 4:23). Topics discussed include:
- The gospel
- The kingdom
- Dominion, reign
- The image of God
- Dwelling
- Exile
- Hell
- The kingdom and the church
- The Great Commission
- Heaven and earth
- The millennial kingdom
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Topics addressed:
- History of the altar call
- Altar call and baptism
- Altar call and the Lord's Supper
- Sacramental practice in church history and Methodism
- Church membership
- The office of the keys
- The church and salvation
- Suggestions for using the altar call
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In this episode, Johnathan Arnold and David Fry discuss why the church has lost its happy anticipation of heaven and how a robust theology of new creation can help to recover this vital anticipation.
Quotes from Fry:
- An experience that led me to preach a series on heaven was sitting through a funeral service in which almost everything that was said about heaven had to do with the material descriptions that Scripture gives us—streets of gold and gates of pearl—and there was nothing said about beholding the beauty of God. I began to realize that we really lack almost any understanding of the beatific vision that calls Christians to a happy anticipation of heaven.
- People have a hard time looking forward to heaven when they have bought into—or have been sold—a fairytale idea of what heaven is like. On a nice Fall day, I'd rather walk through the woods than walk through a massive city with streets of God.
- We need a biblically-based concept of what heaven really is in order for us to have a happy anticipation of it.
- People latch onto the biblical images and take one verse, one little element, and try to build a whole world based on that element, and make it something other than what it actually is.
- I have heard preachers say, 'We all want to go to heaven, but we don't want to go tonight,' and that's terrible. That is not the attitude of the New Testament believers, and it's certainly not the attitude of the saints throughout the ages.
- Who wants to be strapped to a rocket and thrown into outer space where there's nothing but space and spend eternity there? From a very young age, we are teaching our kids of a very nebulous idea of an ungrounded heaven, and for some reason we don't make the connection in our adult minds that there's a problem with that.
- We have been thinking unbiblically about this other-worldly heaven, and we need to think more in terms of the redemption of this earth, and what God's plan is for actually wedding heaven and earth together, which is the great image of the end of the Book of Revelation.
- One of the last stanzas of "O For a Thousand Tongues" says, "Anticipate your heaven below, and own that love is heaven."
- In Revelation 21, the dwelling of God is with us—not our dwelling goes to be with God. God is coming to us. That is the final image in the final chapters of Scripture.
- We are earthly creatures, and we were created to be earthly creatures. The creation story conveys to us a pure, holy place called the garden, in which God dwelled with Adam and Eve. That's a real, earthly place—not something beyond the blue. And so we have to ground our salvation in earthiness.
- Peter uses imagery that refers to the redemption of this earth, not God throwing something away and starting with something different. Once we have that as our framework for understanding heaven, it revolutionizes our thinking.
- If God plans to trash this earth, then don't let the meek know that. Because Jesus said that the meek will inherit the earth. If he means that, then he is talking about the earth that they know.
- There is more continuity between this earth and heaven—this age and the next—than there is discontinuity. Certainly, there is some discontinuity, but there's a hope that heaven is not a fairytale. It's real.
- To see the completion of God's vision for humanity or the world, we see that in Christ. We don't go back to the first Adam, we go to the Second Adam.
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In this episode, Johnathan Arnold and David Fry continue to discuss the church's happy anticipation of heaven and how it shapes our life in this world.
Quotes from Fry:
- In the end, heaven is a place on earth. Earth doesn't comprehend earth, but heaven comprehends earth.
- Simply put, heaven is the dwelling place of God.
- We have so separated heaven and earth that it leads us to a view that we can trash earth before God trashes it. That is not at all an orientation that God allows us to have towards the earth. And that's very dangerous. Christians need to recover a better ecology.
- My male body will be resurrected. We will be male or female eternally. We are not going to become angels. Jesus told us that there will be a particular way that we will be like angels, but that's not one of them.
- Anticipating the loss of the things that we take pleasure in now seems more like hell than heaven. The popular visions of heaven and hell are reversed—where hell is the place where you party and have all of the best of human experiences that we can experience now, and heaven is a place where you lose all of those things. But heaven is not the loss of all these things, it is the fulfillment of them.
- Whatever we have to say about heaven—as we study God's word and how Christian thinkers have reflected on it—we cannot leave out the importance of the resurrected, physical body of Christ which is the foundation of our faith. That's our starting point for thinking about things eternal, and that's a physical reality. That's where our physical theology has to start. But so many of our thoughts about heaven are spiritualized and disconnected and have really become more like fairytales than real, physical realities.
- Prolonging life at any cost actually takes away from the sanctity of the passing of a saint. That approach is grounded in the lack of belief in a physical resurrection. We go to an extreme to preserve bodily life as if we've given up hope of a bodily resurrection.
- In our great effort to prolong life, we actually end up making death worse than it is—more despairing.
- We are pilgrims and exiles or strangers. We are passing through this age. Kings come and kings go. And that's not to say that these things have no importance. But the basic Christian confession that "Jesus is Lord" ought to run through all of our public faith. It ought to dictate everything we do—from voting to living under authorities that perhaps we didn't vote for.
- Our thinking about heaven must translate into how we live in this world—a public faith that reflects careful, holy living and a passion for being creatures who are made in the image of God, conveying godliness. That has to be our guiding passion for thinking on these things.
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We're pleased to announce a new Holy Joys Sermon Podcast. Click "Sermons" in the header menu at holyjoys.org or visit https://www.buzzsprout.com/1762957. The HJ Sermon Podcast is available on Spotify and Google Podcasts, and it's coming soon to Apple Podcasts.
David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss legitimate reasons to leave a church, and how to go about doing it in a way that honors Christ.
- What are acceptable reasons to leave a church?
- What are the characteristics of someone who is mature enough to leave a church well?
- What steps should be taken before leaving a church?
- What should you do after you leave a church?
Dr. David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss church manuals/disciplines, common problems and frustrations, and how approaching the discipline/manual in light of the church's disciple-making mission can help us work towards a healthier future for the church and its members.
Johnathan Arnold and Dr. David Fry discuss the biblical office of deacon (aka the diaconate). Key topics/passages include:
- 1 Timothy 3:8–13
- Acts 6:1–6
- Philippians 1:1
- Romans 16:1
- Female deacons (deaconesses)
- Deacons in the apostolic fathers and early church tradition
- Deacons in the Reformers and early Methodism
- Ordination
- Deacons in relationship to Elders
- Tips for implementation
Travis Johnson joins Johnathan Arnold and David Fry to discuss Matthew 27:46, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
- Why does Jesus quote Psalm 22:1 from the cross?
- Is there a break or separation between the Father and the Son on the cross?
- Does Jesus bear the wrath of God on the cross?
- Why is important for pastors to address the myth that the Father utterly forsook the Son?
Dr. Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss Bible study tools and methods. Topics include:
- Active vs. passive reading
- Pens and marking tools
- Wide-margin Bibles
- Inductive Bible Study
- Tracking themes
- Christ-centered reading
- Typological reading
- Big-picture reading and focused study
- Contemplative reading and memorization
Dr. David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss an article by Samuel D. James, "Why is 'Re-Converting' Easier than Repenting?" and discuss ways in which the church has made it difficult for sincere but struggling believers to confess sin and find help, restoration, and accountability from the church.
David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss what they are preaching: Philemon and the devotion of the apostles to prayer and the ministry of the word in Acts 6.
David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss plagiarism and the need for preachers to show integrity in their public speaking.
In this episode, David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss the doctrine of Mary.
- What is the Roman Catholic doctrine of Mary (four Marian dogmas)?
- Should we call Mary the "Mother of God" (Theotokos)?
- Should we venerate Mary?
- Did Mary remain a virgin (perpetual virginity)?
- Was Mary born without original sin (immaculate conception)?
- Was Mary a co-redemptrix?
- Was Mary assumed into heaven?
- Should we ask Mary to intercede for us?
In this episode, Johnathan Arnold and David Fry address four questions about the incarnation:
- Why did the Son come at Christmas instead of the Father?
- Would God have become incarnate if Adam had never sinned?
- Did Mary give birth to God? (Did God die on the cross?)
- Did Christ really leave his Father’s throne above?
Notes:
- It was fitting for the one who is divinely generated by the Father eternally to be humanly generated by an earthly mother.
- The Father is unbegotten/ungenerated/sends. The Son is begotten/generated/sent. The Spirit proceeds/sent.
- The Father and the Spirit are capable of being incarnate.
- God made us for Himself. We are made to live in holy fellowship with the divine nature, yet not without receiving grace to be made participants in the life of God. For us to live in holy fellowship with the Divine, perhaps it is necessary for God to subsume human nature.
- Is the incarnation merely a response to the fall of humanity?
- Would God have taken everything that is ours in order to give us what was not ours?
- Nicene Creed: “Who for us and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary.”
- Theosis according to Gregory of Nazianzus: We do not become God but we become (mysteriously) partakers of the divine nature.
- Athanasius, On the Incarnation 54: “He became man that we might become god”
- Athanasius, On the Incarnation 4: “We were the purpose of his embodiment, and for our salvation he so loved human beings as to come to be and appear in a human body.”
- Athanasius, On the Incarnation 5: “God created us … corruptible by nature but [capable of] escaping their natural state by the grace of participation in the Word, had they remained good.”
- Felix culpa? “Blessed fall”?
- Did Mary Give Birth to God? (Did God Die on the Cross?)
- Creed of Chalcedon (451): "as regards his Godhead, begotten of the Father before the ages, but yet as regards his manhood begotten, for us men and for our salvation, of Mary the Virgin, the Godbearer (theotokos)."
- Ambrose of Milan, The Sacrament of the Incarnation, 4.23: “I did not have what was His; He did not have what was mine. He assumed what is mine, that He might share what is His. He assumed not to confuse, but to complete it.”
- Ambrose of Milan, The Sacrament of the Incarnation, 5.36: “For the same one suffered and did not suffer; died and did not die; was buried and was not buried; rose again and did not rise again; for the body took on life again; for what fell, this rose again; what did not fall, did not rise again. He rose again, therefore, according to the flesh, which, having died, rose again. He did not rise again according to the Word, which had not been destroyed on earth, but remained always with God. Thus He died according to the assumption of our nature, and did not die according to the substance of eternal life.”
- Charles Wesley, “And Can It Be?” First stanza: “Amazing love. How can it be that Thou, my God, should die for me?”
- Charles Wesley “And Can It Be?” Third stanza: “He left his Father’s throne above...emptied himself of all but love."
- Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 8: “No part of creation is left void of him; while abiding with his own Father, he has filled all things in every place.”
In this episode, David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss resources for understanding the Christian calendar and preparing for Christmas during the Advent season. For links to resources, see "Q&A on Advent and the Christian Year." See also "Understanding Advent and the Liturgical Calendar" (previous podcast episode).
In this episode of the Holy Joys Podcast, David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss the Advent season and how it fits into the church calendar.
In this episode, David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss practical ways that Christian parents can nurture their children in the faith.
Topics addressed include:
- Praying the Lord's Prayer as a family
- Reciting the Creed at the dinner table
- Singing and memorizing hymns
- Scripture memorization
- Children's Bibles and translations
- Using the Proverbs
- Catechesis
- Deuteronomy 6
In this episode, David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss the salvation of children and the early Methodist practice of infant baptism, nurture, and confirmation.
Topics addressed include:
- Sunday School and Christian nurture movement
- Child salvation
- Infant baptism and communion
- Confirmation
- Christian parenting
- The church's role in forming children
Johnathan Arnold and David Fry discuss the long tradition of infant baptism in early Methodism, the Reformers, and the church fathers, its scriptural basis, and what it means for Christian parenting.
In this episode of the Holy Joys Podcast, Dr. David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss several views on Israel and the church, addressing the common accusation that those who recognize continuity between Israel and the church are proponents of replacement theology and somehow “anti-Israel.”
In this episode, David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss several questions about concerns about a recent article on "The Church’s Authority and Responsibility to Forgive Sins." Topics addressed include:
- The church's authority to forgive sins (John 20:23)
- The office of the keys (Matthew 16; 18)
- Corporate salvation
- The sacraments and excommunication
- Protestant vs. Catholic understandings of the church and its leaders
- Sacerdotalism
- The abuse of church authority
- Abusus non tollit usum ("abuse does not take away use")
- Spirit-filled exercise of authority
- Using authority for building up, not tearing down (2 Cor. 13:10)
- Eldership requirements
David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss the church's role in a believer's salvation and assurance, the church in God's plan of redemption, various images of the church in Scripture and the Great Tradition (ark, bride, guardian, mother), and the ecclesiology of the church fathers and Reformers.
In this episode, David Fry and Johnathan Arnold continue their discussion of holiness metaphors, focusing on what it means to be filled with the Spirit and how it relates to perfect love.
Sonja Vernon joins David Fry and Johnathan Arnold to discuss singleness, celibacy, and the church.
Johnathan Arnold and David Fry discuss several common metaphors for entire sanctification: eradication, cleansing or purification, the removal of the root of sin, and the removal of the bent towards sinning.
Johnathan Arnold and David Fry discuss ways in which the CHM is more Baptist than classically Methodist.
In this episode, Johnathan Arnold and David Fry discuss the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers and its practical implications for the life of the church, especially keeping and restoring one another from sin.
Quotes from Fry:
- Our authority as pastors is a derived authority. We are acting on behalf of Christ and his church.
- In our leadership-focused, hierarchical society, when you talk about rulership or dominion, immediately images of domination come to mind, instead of servant-leadership or service.
- Taking someone away from the local church and having a baptism is problematic. This is something that is to be taking place within the local body.
Quotes from Arnold:
- Christians are united with Christ and so share in his anointing as priests to God.
- When it comes to something as basic as dealing with sin in our lives, the priesthood of all believers does not mean that I just go to my prayer closet and sort out all of my sin issues with Jesus. I also need to go to others in the congregation and we need to serve one another as priests. I need to say, "I'm not okay, I need help, will you pray with me?"
- It's not about "every one of us is a priest," it's about "we are all priests to one another."
In this episode, Dr. David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss the church membership crisis and why the church needs to retrieve a biblical understanding of membership for every baptized believer. The relationship between church membership, discipleship, and church discipline is discussed.
In this episode of the Holy Joys Podcast, Johnathan Arnold and David Fry discuss moralistic preaching and related themes:
- Moralism in the Pelagian controversy
- Monergism vs. Synergism
- God as the initiator of all good
- Human cooperation with grace
- Premodern exegesis and the fourfold method of interpretation
- Examples such as David & Goliath and the Temptation of Jesus in the Wilderness
- Transformation through seeing God's glory in Christ
- Preaching as putting God's beauty on display
Quotes from Fry:
- Moralism comes down to a Christological problem.
- Probably the most glaring example of moralism is the “God will do his part if you do your part” mentality.
- Wesleyan Arminians are often considered to be synergists, but that can come out as “God does his part when we do his part,” and that’s not good.
- God is always the initiator of anything good—anything good in the world, anything good in me, any change of character for the good, is the product of the “God who works in us to will and to do.”
- Many Christian sermons are no more Christian than what some motivational speakers in some conferences might say.
Quotes from Arnold:
- It’s one thing to affirm that victorious living comes from Christ; it’s another thing for our Christological convictions to shape our approach to the text, our preaching and teaching, and our emphasis.
- Those with a moralistic tendency tend to be genuinely concerned for the transformation of Christians. But 2 Corinthians 3:18 tells us how we are transformed: by seeing Christ.
- We don’t want people who just conform to a list of rules; we want people to be changed. So moralistic preaching doesn’t even accomplish what some are setting out to do. It doesn’t accomplish real transformation because it’s more focused on us than on Christ.
Johnathan Arnold and David Fry discuss how the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers relates to our interpretation of Scripture, as well as related doctrines such as inerrancy, the clarity/perspicuity of Scripture, and the illumination of the Holy Spirit.
Dr. Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss a Christian view of caring for the environment and how it relates to a physical theology. The church's redemptive presence is discussed in relation to Earth Day and other holidays that many Christians avoid such as Halloween.
Dr. Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss the ascension of Christ and subsequent outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost.
Quotes from David Fry:
- If I am not in a series and I do not have a particular sermon that I want to preach, I always default to one of the lectionary readings for my Sunday preaching. I follow the Revised Common Lectionary.
- We live at peace because on the third day He rose from the dead and with the same body in which He suffered, He arose, and He ascended.
- Saints of God, we have peace because Jesus has overcome the world.
- What truth am I avoiding in order to give myself a false sense of peace? Isolating myself, stonewalling, avoiding someone—that's not peacemaking. That may just be flight.
- What am I willing to suffer for the sake of peace? We need a more robust theology of Christian suffering.
Quotes from Johnathan Arnold:
- The Spirit comes as the one who represents the risen Christ and fulfills Christ's promises to build the church and to be our comforter.
- The Spirit of the risen Christ creates the Church.
- The four marks of the church (one, holy, catholic, apostolic) are present at Pentecost.
- The Sunday sermon is not just a time to give people a nugget to get through to the next week. It is an opportunity to develop the church's theological thinking.
Quotes from David Fry:
- We must distinguish between BLM the concept, BLM the organization, and BLM the movement.
- Eyewitness testimony or video of an event doesn’t mean that there won’t be different interpretations. It's wise as believers to be patient, listen, and suspend judgment as long as we can.
- It takes patience to live in a multicultural context.
- Christians need to get out in front of these things and set the tone, rather than sitting back and always reacting.
- When I say that we need to pray for peace, I've always assumed that people assume that justice is entailed in that. But I've realized that people don't automatically think that peace requires justice. In Christian theology, there is no peace without justice.
Quotes from Johnathan Arnold:
- We need to be aware of lingering racial prejudices. These things are important to God. He’s a God of justice.
- We need a robust theology of justice because if we don’t then the world defines it in a non-Christian way.
- We want Scripture and Church Tradition to shape our thinking on these issues, not the broader culture.
In this final episode of a series on prevenient grace, Dr. David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss whether or not Wesleyan prevenient grace is biblical and what it means for something to be biblical.
In this episode, Clair Sams joins David Fry and Johnathan Arnold to discuss board culture and church government.
In this episode, Johnathan Arnold and Dr. David Fry discuss why the resurrection is the necessary for our redemption.
In this episode, David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss the Equality Act, its impact on churches and Christian organizations, and the void in our culture concerning what it means to be male and female.
In this episode, David Fry and Johnathan Arnold discuss a recent piece of cultural art and how the church can respond.
In this special Good Friday episode of the Holy Joys Podcast, Johnathan Arnold and David Fry discuss atonement theories: How does the death of Jesus on the cross accomplish our redemption?
Philip Brown joins David Fry and Johnathan Arnold to discuss the rule of faith. The episode begins with a short current events segment on Rush Limbaugh and his impact on evangelical Christians.
In this episode, David Fry and Johnathan Arnold continue discussing Wesleyan Prevenient Grace in the thought of William Burt Pope. WPG is compared to the thought of John Cassian, Jonathan Edwards, Augustine, Pelagius, and Charles Finney.
Quotes from Fry:
- Arminians continue to be accused of being semi-Pelagian or perhaps even Pelagian for saying that we initiate our salvation.
- Our doctrine of grace has many implications for our pulpit ministry.
- The way we appeal to people to come to Christ matters. Those are delicate theological moments, and we need to make sure we are exalting grace in those moments instead of placing upon a person a burden that they can't carry.
- It very unfortunate that our revival theology has been shaped so much by Charles Finney who denied prevenient grace. Finney is not a friend to Wesleyans.
Quotes from Arnold:
- I hear things like "God is just waiting for you to take the first step towards you." God is not just waiting.
- Pope defines faith as a "divinely-wrought belief." Faith begins with the act of God upon the soul.
- We cannot schedule a "revival." "Revivals" are days when we pray for revival and humble ourselves to ask if God would graciously give us revival.
In this episode, David Fry and Johnathan Arnold continue discussing prevenient grace in the thought of William Burt Pope.
In this episode, Johnathan Arnold and David Fry discuss whether or not the church should offer virtual communion and how the rush to live-stream the Lord's Supper reflects a general over-spiritualization of the church.
Travis Johnson joins David Fry and Johnathan Arnold to discuss his recent article, "Ravi Zacharias and the Moral Failure of Spiritual Leaders."
Quotes from Travis:
- Victims need to know that it's safe. The church can be a safe place to come forward and share your experience so that you can get the help that you need. We in the church want to be a part of that healing process.
- We have to talk about this for the sake of transparency. People are struggling with this.
- Within the church, there are other victims of sexual abuse and they need to know we care. We need to be their voice. Many are afraid to come forward and they need to know the church can be a safe place to come forward and share your experience so you can get the help that you need.
- We need to talk about it because we learn from our mistakes. Other ministries will look at this and say, “What can we do to make sure that this doesn’t ever happen in our organization?" Churches will be learning from this, hopefully implementing changes that will strengthen their ministries.
- Our people need to hear from us that we care deeply about these issues. That we as leaders want to live lives of holiness and purity. They need to hear from us that we need their help in this area of accountability and transparency.
- If there are victims of any kind of abuse in the congregation, they need to hear our voice that we care for them, that we love them, and that we will always stand with victims.
Quotes from Fry:
- It ought to be a reminder to everyone that sin is never just about me and my private life. It always affects relationships and other people.
- As a church, we have to create a culture in which we are accountable, and have a culture and atmosphere so that if there is wrongdoing and lack of discretion, then that can be dealt with in a truthful and graceful way.
- When something comes to our attention, we have to listen to it. It doesn’t matter how impeccable someone may seem to be.
- A church should have a policy for how things are followed up. If there’s a report of any wrongdoing, there should be a procedure.
Quotes from Arnold:
- It’s important that we are theologically robust and defend the Christian faith with the best intellectual arguments. But if we are not living a life of integrity, then it doesn’t matter.
- This is something pastors should talk to their churches about.
Andrew Graham joins David Fry and Johnathan Arnold to discuss the recent news about Ravi Zacharias and what we can do in our own churches and institutions to expose abusers and help victims.
Quotes from Graham:
- People in Christian leadership are not exempt from temptation, not exempt from the possibility of falling. There needs to be structures in place that protect them and the people who serve alongside them.
- If we view this as an isolated, RZIM-specific issue, then I think we will be talking about the next one. Rather than each of us in our own context looking at what needs to be done differently moving forward.
- What systems are in place so when a ministry leader acknowledges I am not okay, there is a place for restoration and recovery? Rather than feeling like the only way forward is to continue to hide.
- Books like Becoming a Church that Cares Well for the Abused by Brad Hambrick and We Too: How the Church Can Respond Redemptively to the Sexual Abuse Crisis by Mary E. DeMuth are very practical resources that talk about what to do for the victim and victimizer.
- We need to listen to those who are victims. We need to hear their stories.
- Expressing your abuse narrative in a safe context is a significant part of beginning the healing journey. Identify someone who can help you.
- What am I doing and what are you doing in your context to make sure that the people who see you as a spiritual leader would say, “I know I can go to youand talk to you about this and you will handle it the right way."
- If someone identifies you as a safe person, you need to do the right thing.
Quotes from Fry:
- We need to be very intentional as Wesleyans that we do not develop theological misconceptions that become a part of a structure that ensures something will happen and it will be overlooked because it can’t count as sin.
- We do not want to provide a theological shield behind which those who possess power in a ministry can hide.
- Someone who is caught up in sin will find theological reasons to justify themselves.
- We have to be aware that we are naturally going to be defensive of the system within which we work.
- We need room in our theology to understand that our system is not perfect.
Quotes from Arnold:
- If we are serious about holiness, we must realize how we can undermine holiness by failing to call something sin that is sin.
- There are consequences for our theology. If we are not careful in the way that we preach and teach, real people get hurt.
- We’re unlikely to see red flags when our theological impulse is to justify those red flags.
- None of us are calling for the church to be weak on sin. We’re just calling for more nuance, more maturity, more carefulness, and more theological work. Because simplistic thinking hurts people.
In this episode, Johnathan Arnold and David Fry continue to discuss prevenient grace in the thought of William Burt Pope.
This is the first episode in a series on William Burt Pope's doctrine of prevenient grace.
In this episode, Andrew Graham and Johnathan Arnold continue discussing how to care for others in distress.
In this episode, Johnathan Arnold and Dr. Andrew Graham discuss helping others in distress.
Quotes from Graham:
- The best way to assess whether or not someone is in distress is to look at any changes in their mood, affect, behavior habits—eating, sleeping—and how these changes affect their functioning.
- There are people who are in distress while not yet disordered or dysfunctional or diagnosable.
- One detrimental mistake is to automatically assume that a distressed person has a spiritual problem.
- We can too quickly over-spiritualize distress or we can too quickly under-spiritualize distress.
- In addictions counseling, a frequently used adage is: Your past may explain your behavior, but it doesn’t justify it.
- Do not assume you know when someone is in distress or that you know the best way out.
- There is no situation beyond God’s power to redeem and restore for His glory and our edification.
- We can’t look at somebody and say that because they’re limping in the way that I limp, or because they’re going through a situation I went through, that means God is providing for them the same way out that He provided for me.
- We’re all called to come alongside those who are in distress.
- We need to support one another through relationship—through connection.
- How connected are you to the body of Christ? That is an important component to moving on and moving through times of distress.
- One of my passions is to help equip the church to provide soul care. There are situations where basic counseling skills can be used by laypeople—people who are not even naturally equipped in this way—to where they can impact their own church community and beyond.
Quotes from Arnold:
- Sometimes in our churches, we’ve created a culture where we feel like we need to have it all together, so it’s easy to hide our distress.
- Helping someone else can help the whole body.
- When one part of your body is hurt, it draws energy and strength from the rest of the body until it is healed. That’s one of the reasons why I think maybe we avoid this. It can be costly and messy to get involved in somebody’s life and walk with them through the distress that they’re facing.
- If my wife is in distress, I know it. I don't have to guess, because I live my life with her. Maybe the problem is that we’re disconnected in our Western model of church—we're consumer-minded, we come to get what we want and then go. Maybe we have a little clique, two or three people that we talk to every service, but we don't really have a community. We don't know when others are going through distress or how to help them because we don't really even know them. They’re not a part of our life. What if the church looked like Acts 2—breaking bread together and living life together?
- Creating a healthy church may be one of the first steps towards being better at helping people in distress.
In this episode, Johnathan Arnold and David Fry continue discussing the pastor as theologian.
Quotes from Fry:
- I want to challenge all of us to recommit ourselves to pulpit ministry—the preaching ministry of the shepherd. We are to feed our congregation with the truth of God.
- We are not going to grow personally, spiritually, or theologically by putting in the minimum study time—giving attention to everything else and just squeezing out the time we ought to be growing.
- Pastors, we must be growing ourselves if we expect our church to be maturing in Christ.
- The maturation we are after is opposed to get-big-quick schemes and methods. It requires long, slow, steady growth. It doesn't guarantee that we're going to go from a church of 50 to 500 in three to five years. But it does guarantee that we are going to shepherd people who are growing and in turn will shepherd others.
- We need to allow Christ to build his church his way rather than our own way. There are a lot of innovative ways to increase numbers, and it doesn't take a lot of skill to do those things, but it does take dedication and study to help people grow spiritually and mature in their Christian faith. As pastors, we cannot get sucked into this mentality of being a CEO who is tasked by our shareholders to grow as quickly as we can.
- Theologizing isn't just bringing up old dead people and reciting what they said. It is, this is why it matters to us who are alive today—this is what it means in what we actually face day in and day out.
- We need to be preaching about modesty because it is an opportunity to address a very important cultural issue from a deeply biblical and theological framework.
- The teenagers at our church really latch on to the theological rationale. They're convinced that immodesty is a serious issue. They cannot allow themselves to be immodest lest they live cross-way to what they believe about Christ, sin, and atonement.
- We need to know why we're doing what we're doing. Doing and believing is a connection that pastor-theologians must help people to make.
Quotes from Arnold:
- Pastors probably need to read the Bible more than they do. I know your practice is to read the entire Bible every 100 days. But we also need better reading habits. If we're not equipped with how to read the Bible, we'll have a tendency to skim until we find the verse that we're already familiar with or that "stands out to us." We must invest in our exegetical abilities, read the best commentaries, and take advantage of historical theology—read the Bible with the communion of the saints.
- If someone sits under our pulpit ministry for 15 years, what are they going to know? I think that answer is pretty embarrassing sometimes. In Bible college, I heard things like, "Bible college is a place where you can learn why you believe what you believe." I thought that was the church. What is a pastor even doing?
- Pastors ought to be modeling how to think through challenging questions.
- Someone recently asked me why it's important to dress modestly. What am I going to do in this moment? I'm going to give him a biblical theology of modesty. And when I was theologizing in that moment, I was pastoring.
- I want people to walk away from a conversation about an issue like modesty—not thinking about the standards of a particular faith tradition, or about me, or about John Wesley, or about what we've always done, or even about our culture and how bad it is—but first and foremost about Jesus. I want them to think, clothing is about Christ. Because it is. If we start there, that's a very healthy context for discussing the particulars.
- We have incredible opportunities to bridge from the cultural issues that people are facing to Jesus and the gospel—to give a theologically robust, Christ-centered, beautiful response that can bring great health to the church.
In this episode, Johnathan Arnold and David Fry discuss the lost vision of the pastor as theologian.
Quotes from Fry:
- Theology has been for generations separated in some ways—some formal ways, even—from the life of the local church. We need to bring those two together again.
- As we study God, we study all things in right relationship to him.
- As pastors, our task is to bridge the horizon of biblical truth with where our culture is. Pastors stand between Scripture and culture and we have to try to bridge that gap by informing culture with the truths of God and relating the truths of God to culture so that we are shaping culture as well.
- Being a theologian as a pastor is not an option—that's not even the question—the question is whether or not we're going to be a good theologian or a bad one. And that depends on our own willingness to know God, to study his Word, and to be increasingly better communicators of the truth about God and the world in relationship to God.
- Many pastors are heavily involved in many aspects of the church's business, administration, marketing, and graphic design—all of these various hats that pastors often put on that actually take us out of intentional, prolonged study of God's word, and even affect our prayer lives. They take our mind away from dwelling upon God and how we can make God known to our people.
- I have had people tell me that I am the CEO of the church. No. That's not how I view myself. Certainly, I have administrative responsibilities. But we need to change the way we think about the ekklesia. The church is not a business corporation. We are the flock of God. The pastor's role as a guide is about being a shepherd after God's heart.
- We are to give theological guidance that will help a person bridge the truth of Scripture with the facts of culture and life. A pastor-theologian is one who brings theology to bear on the daily life of the local church. It's making theology meaningful to the people not only when they are sitting in their pews but also when they go to work on Monday morning.
- Pastors have to get back to seeing ourselves first as guides in Christian faith. That means doctrine—explicating what Christian doctrine is, what it means, and connecting it to real life. That takes time, study, and focus—not being drawn into every other thing that we could be doing.
Quotes from Arnold:
- Some people think that to be a theologian is to be up in an ivory tower, separated from the practical stuff of real-life ministry.
- People are faced with many complicated issues—this has been amplified by social media—and they need someone to shepherd them through the questions they are wrestling with. This is why theology is right at the heart of what it means to be a pastor.
- Pastors are called to provide a certain kind of comfort—a substantive comfort. We are to help the flock become grounded in the deeper truths of God through their suffering.
- Pastors are constantly addressing questions, whether from the pulpit or around the dinner table, and the issue is not whether or not we are going to give a theological answer, it's whether or not our theological answer is going to be substantive and meaningful or if it's going to be shallow.
- I know so many pastors who eat up guys like John Maxwell for breakfast. They want to get a Leadership and Administration degree. But when you talk to them about theology, they say, "Well, theology is important, but...."
- Pastors who are neglecting theological study are not equipped to navigate the questions of culture, so they begin to fall back on programs and other means to see "results" instead of growing the church organically and theologically. This leads to a lot of the anemia that we are seeing.
In this episode, Johnathan Arnold and Philip Brown continue to discuss the relationship between wisdom and holiness.
In this episode, Johnathan Arnold and Darrell Stetler II discuss the kingdom of God as one of the most important yet misunderstood themes in Scripture.
Highlights from Darrell Stetler II:
- The kingdom is a mega-theme in Scripture.
- We tend to zoom in on particular elements of salvation, such as justification by faith, but forget the context of the kingdom.
- Our understanding of the kingdom is sometimes conflated with our understanding of heaven as though the kingdom of God is only what is going to happen at the end.
- What is the kingdom of God? It is the saving reign of God—that when God rules and reigns, he reigns in a saving way. It rescues us from all that is not holy, all that is broken, all that ends in futility. It rescues us to a safe and established kingdom that is a place of peace.
- When we start to see the kingdom in its beauty and comprehensiveness, we begin to see that it affects everything.
- To explain the gospel without the kingdom is like reading your favorite novel but only reading the top half of the page.
- The gospel of the kingdom—the good news that Jesus and the apostles proclaimed—is that the saving reign of God has come through the life, death, and resurrection of his Son Jesus for our sins and in our place.
- The theme of the kingdom makes heaven so much more exciting and glad. Heaven is not just a city with streets of gold or floating on the clouds in an eternal church service.
- Sometimes when the kingdom comes, it looks different than what we would have expected.
In this episode, Johnathan Arnold and Timothy Cooley Sr. discuss the central place of gratitude in the Christian life and in God's redemptive plan.
Quotes from Timothy Cooley Sr.:
- In Romans 1, before the giant steps downward, verse 21 points out that "when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful," and that alerted me to the possibility of unthankfulness being a first step away from God.
- True thankfulness should be the key to spiritual health.
- If I can help motivate my own thankfulness and other people's thankfulness, it's going to bring a lot of other spiritual values up.
- Make it a practice to begin each prayer with systematic expressions of thanks. Make it a basic pattern of life—I always start out thanking.
- When you are praying for someone else audibly, in their presence, a great way to start off is by giving thanks for them.
- We don't motivate people very much by scolding them. The inner kind of living growth that we're after, it's hard to motivate it by scolding.
- It's easy for us to think we can motivate someone else more by challenging them, scolding them, urging them, and that expressing thanks or compliments is the stuff that they don't need very much. But they do need it.
- Thankfulness is always good for relationships—both with God and others.
- Growing my relationship of love with God has to do with my thanking him and praising him—not that I have to motivate him to love me, but that my relationship grows through thankfulness.
- Sincere thankfulness tends to demonstrate that we value one another, which is so key in growing a whole, healthy church.
- As soon as I develop an attitude of suspicion towards somebody else, I will misinterpret all kinds of signals from them.
- The way we can thank God for all things is that he promised to work good out of it for us somehow. We're not thankful for an evil thing, but we're thankful that God has committed to work something good out of it.
- The Greek word for godliness has to do with regarding God in every part of life and knowing that all of life is under my Father's eye. Nothing happens that separates me from thinking about God. Where is God in all this? Where is God in this tragedy? I can't even explain it, but I know that's he's here. I know that he's with me. And I know that he's committed. This is not my imagining some cosmic teddy bear who makes me feel how I want to feel. This is what God revealed. This is what he says. This is the kind of God I am. Involving God in an underlying, constant awareness in everything we do—that's my way of thinking about godliness, and that connects very closely to thankfulness.
- There are people all around us who have not had the pleasure of someone saying "Thank you" in a sincere way that gives them the deep-down feeling that, "I can do this. I can do something. I do something that draws gratitude."
In this episode, Darrell Stetler II and Johnathan Arnold discuss leading the church through crisis times and the coronavirus pandemic.
- Flexibility and a can-do attitude is essential in the leadership of a church.
- I want to be the kind of leader who is a "Yes, and..." leader, not a "Yes, but..." leader.
- The paralysis of analysis is a real thing—where you get frozen trying to find the "right path." But in many cases, it's not about doing the "right thing," it's about doing something. A car is much easier to steer when it's moving.
- The biggest mistake that pastors can make in times of crisis is to not take any care of themselves—their own spiritual, physical, and emotional life. You're best equipped to help someone else in crisis if you have your foot on something solid.
- A huge mistake that pastors can make in times of crisis is to surrender to negative emotion—pride, anger, bitterness, or impatience.
- Don't quit in the middle of crisis. It's a huge abdication of leadership and responsibility. Running away when the wolf is coming is not a good plan.
In this episode, Johnathan Arnold and Michael Avery discuss holiness, spiritual formation, and the deeper life.
Highlights:
- "Spiritual formation is very simply a process of being conformed to the image of Christ for the sake of others." (Avery)
- "Behavior modification basically rests on your own human energy–what you can put into it or what someone else can threaten you to put into it. But spiritual formation comes from a very different approach. It is Spirit-enabled. We can only be formed into the image of Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit as we partner with the grace of God." (Avery)
- "Justification is by faith and faith alone. It's not performance-based, it's not what we can do or can't do. It is strictly by faith." (Avery)
- "Sanctification is a process. We engage it. Paul said, 'Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.' We are partnering with God's grace, but we are truly partnering. We are initiating effort on behalf of being conformed into the image of Christ." (Avery)
- "Even in the ways that we initiative growth in sanctification, that itself is a response to what God has already initiated by saving us." (Arnold)
- "We pursue holiness because of what God has done for us. It's a responsive love, not a burden." (Arnold)
- "Justification is not an isolated work alone. It is coupled with adoption and regeneration or initial sanctification. Born into the heart of every truly justified believer is a desire to be thoroughly good. They don't even know what to call it, maybe, but planted in our hearts through faith is this desire to be all that God wants us to be." (Avery)
- "Growing out the new appetite that God has given us in the new birth is the quest and hunger and pursuit to live a holy life." (Avery)
- "Union with Christ includes communion with Christ: that intimate relationship we have with Christ when we have experienced the new birth." (Avery)
- "All of the spiritual energy that I have flows from him and through him and by him as I am united with him." (Avery)
- "Spiritual formation is the natural outworking and outflowing of Christ in us. We can hinder or help the growth by getting involved and cooperating with the Holy Spirit." (Arnold)
- "Ceasing from sin is not a matter of me screwing up my courage and saying, 'This is gonna stop' in my own energy, because it won't happen. The only way to break deep, sinful habits in our life is through the power of the Holy Spirit." (Avery)
- "Through the power of the Holy Spirit in me, he can help me to be victorious over anything he doesn't want in my life." (Avery)
- "Because our context is increasingly similar to the one in which Paul wrote, we need to be increasingly sensitive to the way Paul frames moral issues." (Arnold)
- "If we jump from Romans 1 to Romans 12 and don't understand the 'therefore,' we're calling people to present their bodies a living sacrifice and to be transformed without a foundation." (Arnold)
- "Paul brings his converts to a deep understanding of who Jesus is and what it means to be united to him, and then there's a big therefore." (Arnold)
- "We want people to obey out of a motive of love for what God has had and what he's doing in my life." (Avery)
- "The concept of the 'higher life' or the 'deeper life'—those are old terms that have been tossed around for a long time, they are just broad terms used to describe those who actively embrace an aggressive sanctification process." (Avery)
- "Ultimately everything is of grace and by grace. But I also believe, as Dallas Willard coined the phrase, 'Grace is not opposed to effort; it's opposed to earning.'" (Avery)
- "We can either cooperate with the grace of God or we can resist it. And I believe cooperating's the best way to go." (Avery)
In this episode, Johnathan Arnold continues discussing the relationship between wisdom and holiness with Dr. Philip Brown.
Highlights from Philip Brown:
- To fear Yahweh is to do two things: to obey him by turning aside from evil and doing what is right, and secondly, to worship him.
- The word righteous in the Book of Proverbs refers to someone who is both in right relationship with God and living in accordance with his will.
- There is no part of life—from human sexuality, to finances, to interpersonal relationships, to the use of the tongue, to the interior life, to government—that Yahweh's way of thinking does not touch, and so Proverbs branches out like the many-branching roots of a tree into "every good path" to give God's people direction in how to live life God's way.
- Any time that Scripture talks about how we ought to live so that we are like God, it's talking about holiness. There is no part of Scripture that addresses human moral obligation that is not talking about holiness, though it often doesn't use that language. So the book of Proverbs is actually a manual on holiness on the mind, first, and then holiness of life, second.
- It is the interior life—the life of the mind—that is the ultimate location of battle.
- Many Old Testament theologians seem to think that a Christian reading of the Old Testament is an imposition of an alien thought framework. And sadly, that has been pretty characteristic of evangelical Old Testament scholarship. I believe that such an approach is flatly wrong. It's missing the way in which the New Testament, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, appropriates and reads the Old Testament.
- When we appropriate Proverbs as believers, we are following the direction of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament by reading Proverbs as directly addressing God's children at any age or stage of life.
- The contrast between the righteous and the wicked is not a contrast between the especially good and the especially bad, but between those who are in harmony with God's word and those who are not in harmony with God's word.
- Within the broad category of wicked, there is a gradation from the naive to the fool to the scoffer or scorner.
- The essential feature of the simple is that they are not able to perceive what lies below the surface of things. They are not able to penetrate beyond appearances. They tend, therefore, to operate on the moment and how they feel.
- The heart of folly is self-centeredness. Folly is bound up in the heart of every child, and I would identify that folly as what is essentially wrong with us. We're own-way people.
- Many people who have learned to live by rules—they can check all the boxes—but they have not learned to think like Yahweh, to think like Jesus.
- We tend to have clouded perception when we suffer. Suffering tends to turn us in-ward rather than God-ward, because of our fallenness.
- Everything that I have comes from God, is on loan from God, and God can take away and not be doing me wrong in any sense.
- The questions you ask yourself determine your focus. If we're asking, "Why this? Why me? Why now?" we're asking the wrong questions. But if we're asking, "God, what good are you planning? God, how can I reflect who you are in the midst of my suffering?" then we are focusing where God wants us to.
- You're not supposed to be looking for permanence in this life as a means fo judging meaning and significance, because there's nothing permanent in this life. Even when we work for God in the kingdom, we're not looking at permanence as the ground of our significance. This is a profoundly counter-cultural way of thinking.
- You will not find meaning or satisfaction in any of life's components, but only in life's Creator.
In this first episode of the Holy Joys Podcast, Johnathan Arnold and Philip Brown discuss the relationship between wisdom and holiness.
Highlights from Philip Brown:
- Wisdom is a lot like light. It can be broken into many different colors. Knowledge, understanding, discretion, prudence, and insight are all colors of wisdom.
- Wisdom is the skill of perceiving and navigating life in harmony with Yahweh's design. Wisdom is the way Yahweh thinks. It originates with Yahweh and he is the source of all wisdom.
- In humans, wisdom is the skill of seeing life the way God does. Wisdom's sight penetrates beyond appearances to the real nature of things and its choices reflect such penetrating sight.
- The fear of the Lord is the compass for wisdom. It guides, directs, and orients all of its perceptions and choices. If you don't have your compass oriented correctly, no matter how carefully you make your decisions, they are going to be taking you the wrong way.
- At the root of wisdom is the word skill. Anything that is skillfully done can be called wise in its most basic sense. There are skillful sinners, there are skillful cheats. That is the wisdom which is from below. But Proverbs says that there is no knowledge or counsel against Yahweh. So no matter how skilfully a person contrives their sinful plans, Yahweh's reality and plan will always triumph ultimately and thus their so-called wisdom will turn out to be folly.
- Holiness, like wisdom, is complex and multifaceted. In Scripture, it may refer to a person's status, behavior, or in the case of God—and I think humans as well—it can refer to a person's nature. In one word, holiness is separateness or set-apart-ness. Separateness always entails both a from and a to.
- When Yahweh says he is holy, he means that he is so superior to all other beings that he is separated from them.
- Holiness is first a status. It is a position or a condition that is the consequence of being set apart to God.
- We are to be excellent in our likeness to God to the degree and extent that he empowers us to be.
- God's glory is the unique excellence of his character and being. It is very closely related to holiness because holiness is God's transcendent separateness due to the unique excellence of his character and being. Wisdom is certainly a dimension of God's unique excellence. There's no wisdom that transcends or even compares with his wisdom.
- When you are skilled in thinking the way Yahweh does, that's holiness of mind, but it's also beautiful.
- When we see how all that God is is ultimately good for us and glorifying to him, what other response is there but amazed and awe-struck worship as we see that beauty?
- So many people who label themselves as "holiness" and want to talk about holiness and make it the flag that they wave, their lives are not beautiful—in terms of their attitudes, the way in which they present themselves and their opinions on social media or in public, and in their interactions.
- The mainstream of Old Testament scholarship would be to identify five books as wisdom literature: Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon. But on the basis of Deuteronomy 4:6–8, where God describes the Torah, the instruction that he has given to Israel, as wisdom and making them a wise people, I'm not sure that the Old Testament recognizes a wisdom genre. I am inclined to argue that the Old Testament sees all genres as subsets of wisdom. You get narrative wisdom, legal wisdom, poetic wisdom, proverbial wisdom, prophetic wisdom, and so on.
- What is typically designated as the wisdom literature reflects the heart, not the periphery, of the Old Testament understanding of right relationship with Yahweh. If law provides framework and guidance, wisdom literature is the beating heart—the passions, the affections, that live within the framework of instruction.