Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas
Jeremy approaches Bible teaching with a passion for getting the basic doctrines explained so that the individual can understand them and then apply them to circumstances in their life. These basic and important lessons are nestled in a framework of history and progression of revelation from the Bible so the whole of Scripture can be applied to your physical and spiritual life.
Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas
NT Framework - Philosophy & Biology Combined in One
The Incarnate Christ is the basis for biology and philosophy. Do you believe this?
More information about Beyond the Walls, including additional resources can be found at www.beyondthewalls-ministry.com
This series included graphics to illustrate what is being taught, if you would like to watch the teachings you can do so on Rumble (https://rumble.com/user/SpokaneBibleChurch) or on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtV_KhFVZ_waBcnuywiRKIyEcDkiujRqP).
Jeremy Thomas is the pastor at Spokane Bible Church in Spokane, Washington and a professor at Chafer Theological Seminary. He has been teaching the Bible for over 20 years, always seeking to present its truths in a clear and understandable manner.
Welcome to Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas and our series on the New Testament Framework. Today a smaller, bite-sized piece from the larger lesson. We hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 2:The point here, right A, is that the basic categories of thought should be set up according to Christ. Well, who's Christ in apostatic union? He's the Creator and he's the creature. Right, the creator-creature distinction, which is the first thing you learn in the Bible in the beginning, god, and then he created. So you got God, he's the creator, and then everything else that he's created, the creation. So the creator creature distinction is always there, right? Who is Jesus Christ? He's the creator and the creature in one person. Is that what Paul means here? Yes, look at the next, verse 2.9. Why? Because in him, that is, in Christ, all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form. Do you see the creator and the creature in verse 9? All the fullness of deity, that's the creator. Bodily form, that's the creature.
Speaker 2:What is this saying? This is saying that the basic categories for human thinking always have to start with the creator-creature distinction, the most fundamental distinction in the entire Bible. It is there from verse one and it is forever there, to the end of the entire Bible, and it never goes away. And it's saying this is where you start in your thinking. You start with the creator and the creature in one person. That is Christ, and that is what controls your thinking and your outlook and everything about the way you reason, okay, and develop what I would call a Christian philosophy, a Christian way of thinking. Why do we have to have Christian philosophy? We have to have it because it's the way we interact with people in the world.
Speaker 2:Okay, so this isn't a lecture on Christian philosophy versus pagan philosophy, but there is such a thing as Christian philosophy, but it's controlled by theology. If put in an analogy, it could be put this way If the hand is theology, the glove is philosophy. So philosophy is not something independent of theology. The glove is philosophy. So philosophy is not something independent of theology. It is, in fact, simply an expression of what is already there theologically and it forms to it like a glove. So, yes, we have to, and you do.
Speaker 2:Whether you think, you philosophize or not, you have philosophies and ways of thinking. You don't even know, perhaps, but you use reasoning and ways of thinking. You don't even know, perhaps, but you use reasoning. He's saying the starting point for that reasoning is to take every thought captive to Jesus Christ. Okay, we could go to 2 Corinthians, 10, 3 through 5, show another passage that shows essentially the same thing. But the point is the Scriptures are saying look out Christians, do not be taken captive by the stoichia of the world. And that can happen to any Christian. They can start going down this path in middle school and high school and into college and they get into what I just today call scientism and they think science is knowledge. And this is how you know. I mean it's Latin right, scientia, which means knowledge. So, and it is very alluring.
Speaker 2:And most science today actually I don't want to get on a rant, but most science today is politicized science. By that I mean a lot of things, but primarily that there are agendas by political people that are designed to fund and grant research of scientists who will support the political agenda. And if you're not on that page with whatever the governing authorities, the politicians, want, then suddenly your grant money dries up and then you can't finish your research and you can't get everything you want as a professor and all that kind of stuff. So most science today is politicized science. We saw this a lot with anthropogenic global warming, so-called climate change, all of that stuff. 20, 25 years ago this became very obvious that what was going on was politicized science. Just select the people that will actually present data from scientists to give it credibility that this is actually taking place and we need to therefore become a third world country so we don't destroy the ozone layer. Okay, whatever, you go back to the 1400s. Now.
Speaker 2:Third point, under the danger of setting up false categories of thinking, the starting point take every thought captive to christ. Christ is the creator and the creature in one person. That's hypostatic union. So this is fundamental to right thinking. Okay, you don't see it yet, that's okay, we're going to get there. The image of god is the setup for all this. What do I mean by that? The image of God is only one creature in the entire universe is made in the image of God, and it's not angels, it's not animals, it's you, it's you.
Speaker 2:Now I understand that theologically, a lot of people say well, it's a spiritual aspect of man is made in the image of God because God doesn't have a body. So our physical bodies are unrelated to the image of God. This is essentially the way the argument's gone. And if you think it is, then maybe you're a Mormon or something, because in Mormonism, of course, god is a physical being. Now I's not. I'm going to say that the human body, the human form, is not just an afterthought, but that it is actually made in the image of God. But what I mean by that is this If God were to incarnate himself, it would be in the human form. In other words, when God created Adam, who did he have in mind? Jesus christ? That is why our form has upright standing, two arms, two legs, opposable thumbs, eyes, nose, ears, what what we have?
Speaker 2:And then when we read the bible, right, right, and we see God saying things like at the Exodus, my mighty arm delivered you. Or with an outstretched arm, we don't say, well, that means God has an arm, he has a physical arm up there. No, but we know the outstretched arm is what we use to deliver with. It's a powerful instrument. And so we make a connection between the physical appendage that we have right and something in God, his power. And if we didn't have that connection, we wouldn't know what it was talking about. If we didn't have an outstretched arm, what would that mean? You couldn't know anything about God. So we are constructed in His image, to reveal even in our physical selves who he is, and everything that we have is that way. When the Scriptures say that God looked down and he saw what man was doing. You know eyeballs, right? If we didn't have eyeballs, what would that mean? That sentence wouldn't mean anything to us because we would have no contact point with sight. But it does convey something to us about god. It means that god is interested in what's going on in the creation and he's observing it without physical eyes, of course. So this is the setup for all this.
Speaker 2:Now here's what happened. The Lord Jesus Christ comes into the world. Okay, he's material and immaterial. He has a true human body. He's got a true human spirit. He's a human soul, right? So you've got material and immaterial in one person. I mean, just like you, right, you're material and immaterial in one person. The Greeks could never get this together. That's why almost all Greek philosophy, it's always dualistic. You've got to keep material away from immaterial. You can never get these together. Okay, in Greek thought, because they basically said that if anything's material, it's inherently evil, intrinsically evil, and the Spirit, that's totally good. So they said you can never get these together. It was a dualism. But didn't you have Jesus Christ? Material and immaterial together? And it wasn't intrinsically evil, but he was in fact intrinsically good.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us on Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas. If you would like to see the visuals that went along with today's sermon, you can find those on Rumble and on YouTube under Spokane Bible Church. That is where Jeremy is the pastor and teacher. We hope you found today's lesson productive and useful in growing closer to God and walking more obediently with Him. If you found this podcast to be useful and helpful, then please consider rating us in your favorite podcast app, and until next time, we hope you have a blessed and wonderful day.