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Can what you read change your life? Absolutely! Today, we have a conversation with Dr. Derek Thomas about his life, testimony, theology, and what books have impacted him over the years. As of recording this episode, Dr. Derek Thomas is the Chancellor’s Professor of Systematic and Pastoral Theology at Reformed Theological Seminary.
Episode Transcription
Note: This transcription may vary from the words used in the original episode for better readability.
Marlin Detweiler:
Thank you for joining us again on another episode of Veritas Vox, the voice of classical Christian Education. Today we have with us Pastor Derek Thomas. Dr. Thomas, I didn't even ask you in our preliminaries, how do you prefer to be called?
Dr. Darek Thomas:
Derek.
Marlin Detweiler:
Well, that's easy. I can do that. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Maybe you can give us a little bit a bit of background on your growing up, your family, educational background, even your career.
Dr. Derek Thomas:
So, I'm the product of parents who were in the Second World War. And I think social historians in Britain will tell you that that generation, the Second World War generation identified with the church, even if they didn't attend it. So my father identified himself as a Congregationalist, and my mother was an Anglican, but I have no memory of them ever attending church. But my generation didn't identify with any church at all.
So I grew up in a fairly secular, but, you know, it had some values, it had some Judeo-Christian values. You know, things that were right and wrong. And there were moral absolutes. But I was a child of the fifties, so as a teenager in the sixties, in the revolution era. I was a science-math guy. I was a math major at college. And in my first semester at university, my best friend, who had gone to study physics at a different university, sent me in the mail John Stotts’ Basic Christianity.
Marlin Detweiler:
Really?
Dr. Derek Thomas:
And he said I want you to read this because I've become a Christian. And I just didn't understand how you became a Christian. I mean, you lived in a Christian society, at least in the sixties that was the case. But how did you become a Christian? So I read the book, and within probably three days I was on my knees praying the sinner's prayer. And I knew immediately that something had happened. The next morning, I told my mother –
Marlin Detweiler:
At this point you're what, 18, 19 years old?
Dr. Derek Thomas:
I was 18. And this was the Christmas break in the first semester at university. I knew, you know, in Britain you can drink when you're 18. So, the center of a British university is the student union bar. And I knew where that was. And there was a sign on the door that something called the Christian Union InterVarsity Fellowship. Christian Union met upstairs on a Saturday evening. So I went I walked in, and I saw the girl that became my wife.
Marlin Detweiler:
Boy, things happened fast!
Dr. Derek Thomas:
In my first math class, there were, I think, eight math professors, and two of them were very strong believers. And this was an age when college professors wore a gown, a robe, and came in that.
Marlin Detweiler:
You haven’t named it, I'm curious what school it was.
Dr. Derek Thomas:
Aberystwyth in Wales.
Marlin Detweiler:
Okay, very good.
Dr. Derek Thomas:
And he came in like Batman with his robe. And he went to the front and said, “Thomas, you have something to tell the class.” And I thought, “No, I haven't got anything to tell the class.” Anyway, I stood up and I told them that I'd become a Christian over the Christmas break. He was a strong believer, and he said to me afterwards, “I just wanted you to nail your colors to the mast.”
And I've always been grateful to him for doing that, I became the the President of the Christian Union, became a deacon at Alfred Place Baptist Church in Aberystwyth, where Geoff Thomas was the pastor, and he's is now in his in his mid-eighties and still preaching. And he was it was here in the States last week and I did a sort of internship in a church in Oxford for a year and then I went to the Banner of Truth conference in 1976 in England and met two people. I met Sam Patterson, the President of Reformed Theological Seminary, which was then about six or seven years old.
Marlin Detweiler:
Okay. And the campus, I assume, was in Mississippi at that point?
Dr. Derek Thomas:
Jackson, Mississippi. And I wrote, I had lunch with them, asked what were the prospects– I had no money. What were the prospects of coming to study at RTS, and this was before email. So about three weeks later in the mail, a letter came offering me a scholarship. So I called him on the phone, and it was a big deal in the seventies to call America. It was expensive. And so I had 6 minutes to get my point across. The point that I wanted to get across was I had been dating Rosemary for three years or so, and I wasn't sure about leaving her behind for two or three years. And Sam Patterson said, “Well, marry the girl and bring her with you.” So that was in mid-May. And on August– we got married in July the 31st, and August 16th, we flew to Jackson, Mississippi.
Marlin Detweiler:
What a story. Oh, that is wonderful.
Dr. Derek Thomas:
So, in the course of events, I remained a Reformed Baptist throughout my seminary time until the final semester. And I did an elective with one of the Old Testament professors, and I had to write a 25-page paper on why I am a Reformed Baptist, which I did, and defended it before him. And then two or three days later, I came back to him, and I said, “Oh my, my argument is crumbling. And I became I became a pedo-baptist.
And when we went back to Britain, I taught math for a year because the Baptists didn't want me, and the Presbyterians just didn't know who I was. And I taught for a year. And then I got a call to a church in Belfast, which is where my wife was from, in Northern Ireland, the minister was in his mid to late seventies. He'd been there since 1931, 1932. He'd been there for 50, 60 years. And he had studied at Princeton when Gresham Macon was there.
Marlin Detweiler:
Oh, wow!
Dr. Derek Thomas:
So he had lots of stories about Gresham Macon, which were which were fascinating. And I went in 1979, I was ordained in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Northern Ireland, and I was there for 17 years. In the course of which I became very, very close to Sinclair Ferguson.
And we've known each other for 40 years now. And I regard him as probably my closest friend, and he came and stayed with us. I think he came for a conference, stayed with us, and persuaded me that I should do a Ph.D. on Calvin's understanding of the book of Job, and I resisted for a while. I really had no ambition to do a Ph.D., but eventually, I did, and that got me back in touch with the Academy. And in 1996, I accepted a call to become a professor at RTS and in Jackson. And I was there. I was the evening preacher at First Pres. Jackson, where Nixon Duncan was the senior minister, and I preached in the evenings for sixteen years and then 12 years ago I accepted the call to come here as the evening preacher for Sinclair Ferguson. And I kind of swapped. I was a full-time professor and a part-time preacher, and then I became more of a full-time preacher again and a part-time professor.
And then Sinclair retired two years after I came here. And then I became the senior minister ten years ago, ten and a half years ago.
Marlin Detweiler:
What a wonderful story. And to have had a friendship like that with Sinclair Ferguson, where you all were able to be mutually encouraging and supporting, I'm sure has been a wonderful aspect to your life as well.
Dr. Derek Thomas:
And I'm 26 days away from retirement.
Marlin Detweiler:
Well, we're not going to tell anybody what the date of this is. I don't know when it's going to release, but they're going to have to do the math on their own. But congratulations!
Dr. Derek Thomas:
I will continue I'll continue working for Ligonier and I'll continue working for RTS. And I'll do some preaching on Sundays for sure.
Marlin Detweiler:
Will you stay in Columbia?
Dr. Derek Thomas:
Yes, it's home, and I'm too old to make new friends! We'll stay here.
Marlin Detweiler:
Wonderful. Well, one of the things that I know that is of interest to me, and I hope of interest to our listeners as well, is that you have taught on various categories of pastoral theology. And I love the idea of having these terms understood better by us because I think it's important. And so I'd like for you to take from your really vast experience to talk to us about the differences between what I understand to be more theological categories of understanding: biblical theology, systematic theology, historical theology, and practical theology. Help us understand those so that we are better able to understand how we should live.
Dr. Derek Thomas:
So when you open your Bible at random, you're opening your Bible, say, to the book of Joel and you study what Joel is saying as his nuances, inflections, the context in which he's writing. And so you can have a biblical theology and Old Testament theology and New Testament theology. You can study the differences between Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
And they all have a different sort of perspective. You can talk about Paul's theology, particularly on things like justification or the doctrine of propitiation and so on. But at some point, you have to get this plane up to 36,000 feet and ask, what does the entire Bible have to say about X, Y, or Z?
What does the Bible teach about heaven? What does the Bible teach about death? What does the Bible teach about sin? And so you have to collate lots of information and harmonize it because of a doctrine of inerrancy, all truth has to be harmonized. And so you develop what is a systematic theology, and you talk about the doctrine of man, the doctrine of Christ, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and the doctrine of eschatology or whatever.
But then you have to ask yourself, because theology is a living organism, and there's always new light. So you have to ask how is this being understood? What is the doctrine of the person of Christ in the Bible? And you realize that in Nicea, in 325 or in Chalcedon and in 421, these doctrines were hammered out. The doctrine of the Trinity was hammered out the doctrine of the person of Christ. Two natures in one person of the Hypostatic Union. And over 1500 years, no one has improved on that. So you need to know you need to know how systematic theology has been understood in church history.
You could take the doctrine of adoption. The doctrine of adoption in the Reformation was a footnote to the doctrine of justification. You can even go to the 19th century to Louis Birkoff, and he has one paragraph in his entire systematic theology. He has one paragraph on adoption. But in the 20th century, you and I think of Ziglar’s book, the Children of God, for example, the doctrine of adoption has significantly grown.
If you go to the Westminster Confession of 1645, the doctrine of adoption is there, but it's a list of biblical texts. There's no theologizing. It's just a string of references to New Testament texts that refer to adoption, which tells you that in the 20th century, the doctrine of adoption was significantly advanced.
Now, I tell my students all the time that I'm really not interested in theology that can't be preached. So, for example, when the works of Bhavik have become very important in the last ten, 15 years, and partly because his four-volume systematic theology has now been translated into English. When I was at seminary, my professors would quote Bhavik, but they would quote it in Dutch and then translate it for us in the class. But now, we have four volumes of systematic theology. Well, the first volume is all about polygamy.
And I can't preach polygamy. You’d have to handcuff me to read through Volume One of Bhavik.
Marlin Detweiler:
I appreciate that very much!
Dr. Derek Thomas:
I've read volumes two, three, and four. They're absolutely wonderful. But I can't preach polygamy.
I think a theology that simply hangs in the air is deeply suspicious. I think you always you always have to ask, how does this truth affect my behavior? What does this truth say about what it means to be Christlike? How does this truth help me to mortify sin and to mimic the fruits of the spirit?
Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah, I'm even a bit more cynical when somebody wants to do that. I want to ask the question, What are you hiding? So that's good. So can you provide some definitions between these four categories of theology as we think, What is biblical theology compared to systematic theology compared to historical theology, compared to practical theology? Or am I getting it wrong by trying to think of them as two distinctively separate?
Dr. Derek Thomas:
I think that they're symbiotic. They they depend they depend on one another. I think that biblical theology is always trying to correct and sharpen systematic theology, provide nuance to systematic theology. William Perkins, who lived in the latter half of the 16th century and died in the first decade of the 17th century, he taught systematic theology at Cambridge University, and he defined systematic theology as the art of living blessedly forever, which was a very telling description that theology was about living a holy and blessed life.
So, the truth was always to be applied to daily living. Now you can imagine a sort of cartoon figure of someone who's got a big head and a very narrow little body and there are folk who are interested in theology, but it's all it's all cerebral. It's all in the mind.
Marlin Detweiler:
I'm getting this picture of the workout guy who's got a great upper body and no legs because you skip legs day.
Dr. Derek Thomas:
And I think that I think that truth is important. The mind is important. I think that the Bible teaches a faculty psychology that suggests that the mind governs the will and the affections. Now, there's debate about that, of course, but I think the New Testament is constantly addressing the mind. What you know, what you think, what you believe.
But all truth is in order to godliness, as Paul says, and I think that's very important when you're looking in a seminary classroom of future preachers and leaders in the church that this is not just an academic study. It's a study that improves you and makes you more like Christ.
Marlin Detweiler:
But that is that is wonderful. Thank you. Let me let me change here for the last few minutes and ask you, you've written an awful lot over your career. What motivates you to write, and how do you determine what you think needs to be written?
Dr. Derek Thomas:
Books are important, and they've been very important to me. I can give you moments in my life when I read a book and it changed the way I thought about something.
Marlin Detweiler:
Boy, is that true!
Dr. Derek Thomas:
There are books that you read once. There are books that you skim through and you just read bits and pieces of it. But then there are books that you read over and over. I mean, Jim Packer's Knowing God, I must have read it 25 times.
Marlin Detweiler:
You're answering the question I was going to ask. I wanted to ask you some of the books that changed you and you just did that, thank you.
Dr. Derek Thomas:
Well, obviously, John Stotts’ Basic Christianity was very important to me. I had the privilege of meeting John Stott and telling him that, from a human point of view, I was a Christian because of him. I've majored, of course, in teaching systematic theology. So, a lot of systematic theologies are important. Calvin's Institutes I teach regularly as a course. I've probably read it 25 or 30 times and, Pilgrim's Progress. Of course, I tell people that you will need a card signed on. And when you enter the pearly gates saying, I've read not just Volume one, but volume two.
I jest, of course, but Pilgrim’s Progress was in every Christian home in the 17th and 18th centuries. Sadly, we now have generations of seminary students who've never read it, and I urged them all the time to read it because it's full of practical theology.
Marlin Detweiler:
One of the books that I would list that was a real watershed moment was Studies on the Sermon on the Mount by Martin Lloyd-Jones.
Dr. Derek Thomas:
Yes. I bought it when I was a college student. It was in two volumes, and it's it was Lloyd Jones at his very best. I think I had the privilege of meeting Lloyd Jones on a dozen, a dozen occasions. And one time, I was the person who was asked to introduce him while he was preaching to a large crowd of people in the summer and Aberystwyth and a college student was asked every year to introduce him. And I was the man. And I was petrified because I had to introduce him, and then I had to pray. And he was sitting right behind me. And, you know, he was a he was a giant of a man in my eyes. And definitely one of the best preachers of the 20th century.
Marlin Detweiler:
He was remarkable. Well, like I said, you've written a lot of books. Maybe focus on one or two, that you would consider to be the most important things that you've written, maybe most inspired. And what caused you to write them?
Dr. Derek Thomas:
Well, my very first book that I wrote, which is no longer in print, somewhere in the mid-eighties, and it was a book about Christian virtues and sanctification. And it was Sinclair Ferguson, he said to me, “Have you written anything?” And I said, “Well, yes, I have.” I said, “But I've put it in the drawer of my desk, and it's been sitting there for the last couple of years.”
And he said, “Well, give it to me.” So I gave it to him and he and about a week later came back in the mail full of red ink. I mean, seriously red ink. And I said to my wife, “What do I do?” And she said, “You suck it up and take it on the chin and agree with his corrections.”
Marlin Detweiler:
Boy, there's a helpmeet at work.
Dr. Derek Thomas:
I'm primarily a preacher, but I will get emails fairly often or at least once a week. I'll get an email from somebody somewhere that I've never met, but they've read one of my books and somehow or other they've managed to get hold of my email from the church website, and they'll write and thank me for how it has helped them.
And it’s that, that sort of motivated me to start writing. And I have a new book coming out in the spring on the life of Peter that Reformation Trust is publishing. And I want to write in my retirement. I've got a couple of books in my head that I think I would like to write and occupy my time.
Sinclair, of course, in his retirement, has written oh, I'm sure he's written a dozen books in his retirement. And Dale Ralph Davis, who has been the evening preacher here for five years and a dear, dear friend, he's continuing to write a volume on the Psalms, came to me, and he sent me one this week, which is just hot off the press.
And I think that books, you know, books last. Now, before recordings and live streaming and all of that, Of course, sermons didn't last. Now they do. And people can access sermons now so much easier. But there's something about a book. You know, you go on vacation, you take a book with you and read. You have a small group in the church, and they're studying a book.
We have a mentorship program here at the church with 100 men, mentors, and 100 mentees, and we assign a book for them to study. And this year, they're studying Sinclair Ferguson’s The Whole Christ, and they're having a tough time of it, I'm sure, but because it's not an easy book to read.
Marlin Detweiler:
But that's wonderful. So I can understand that kind of inspiration. When you hear from someone who says, “Thank you, you made a difference in my life,” doesn't that just keep you going? That's the fuel that is how God made us to be motivated in such a good way. It's wonderful to hear that you're.
But I'm curious, I don't know the answer to this. And it's a dangerous question to ask when I don't know the answer. I'm curious what familiarity and interest you have in classical Christian education and what you see going on there.
Dr. Derek Thomas:
Yes, I have no definitive view of classical education versus homeschool versus public education or whatever. And we don't take a view on it in the church. And we have we have children in all aspects of education, including classical education. But classical education is what I got in the sixties in public school.
I mean, it was reading, writing, arithmetic and philosophy and Latin, five years of Latin, and it was it was the curriculum more or less of classical education. The religious part was not there. But teaching history from a point of view of a Judeo-Christian sort of background was just part of I mean, that's not the education in Britain anymore. Britain has gone woke like, like the entire Europe and North America over these last few years. But there's an absolute need for children to be solidly educated if they're going to face a modern university. And it doesn't really matter where it is I mean, it can be in the Bible Belt in South Carolina, but they're going to hear postmodernity in all of its forms, and every single value that they have is going to be challenged. So they need a solid education and they need to know why they believe what they believe. Why is teaching Latin important?
Marlin Detweiler:
Right. Why is a very good question to ask when we're facing what we're going to do. That is wonderful. Thank you so much. Congratulations on your pending retirement! I look forward to seeing what your pen or keyboard produces. And I'm glad that you're not facing retirement with the day after getting up in the morning.
And as a friend of mine said recently, the reason I went on to do something else is because my wife told me I needed a project that she wasn't it.
Dr. Derek Thomas:
Well, I can sympathize with that for sure.
Marlin Detweiler:
Thank you so much, folks.
Dr. Derek Thomas:
Thank you.
Marlin Detweiler:
You’ve joined us again today on Veritas Vox, The Voice of classical Christian education with Dr. Derek Thomas. Thank you, Dr. Thomas. Derek, thank you.
Derek Thomas:
Thank you. Take care.
