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Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian on

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Speaker 1: Doctor James Spencer. I'm joined by doctor Hiesh Pharma, and

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Speaker 1: we're going to continue our series on the different diagnoses,

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Speaker 1: the forces and conditions that tend to narrow the Church's vision.

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Speaker 1: And so today we're talking about a phenomenon called inversion.

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Speaker 1: And what I mean when I say in version is

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Speaker 1: that our interpretive grids sort of take over authority from scripture.

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Speaker 2: So we've all tended to see this happen.

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Speaker 1: We've got some sort of a strong conviction about a

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Speaker 1: particular way of interpreting one verse or even the whole Bible,

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Speaker 1: and we decide that that interpretive grid is the only

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Speaker 1: interpretive grid. We start thinking in terms of absolutes as

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Speaker 1: opposed to thinking in terms of plausibility structures. And so

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Speaker 1: I have a lot of convictions about different Biblical verses.

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Speaker 1: I'm sure I Shoush, you do too. But I also

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Speaker 1: recognize that a lot of times I I don't have

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Speaker 1: everything figured out. And so I may think that a

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Speaker 1: particular interpretation is plausible or even more probable than others,

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Speaker 1: but that doesn't close off space for other interpretations to

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Speaker 1: come in there.

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Speaker 2: And so it was interesting this week.

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Speaker 1: I was just having a little back and forth conversation,

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Speaker 1: which I very seldom do on social media LinkedIn if

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Speaker 1: LinkedIn even counts as social media anymore.

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Speaker 2: This gentleman was asking.

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Speaker 1: About the difference between Jesus and the Word of God. Right,

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Speaker 1: don't we put our faith in Jesus and not put

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Speaker 1: our faith in the Word.

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Speaker 2: And how does authority work? And you know, those kind

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Speaker 2: of things.

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Speaker 1: And I gave an answer, and then he came back with, well,

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Speaker 1: what happens when Christians disagree? Who's the authority then? And

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Speaker 1: I said, well, the authority doesn't actually change, right, God's

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Speaker 1: Word is the final authority for life and faith, So

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Speaker 1: the authority doesn't change.

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Speaker 2: We do.

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Speaker 1: And what we recognize is that even though we may

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Speaker 1: have convictions about these various texts, we may ascribe to

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Speaker 1: a particular tradition that holds to a one position or another,

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Speaker 1: and in that sense, we put ourselves under the authority

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Speaker 1: of that tradition.

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Speaker 2: But at the end of the day, we need to be.

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Speaker 1: Recognizing that the Bible is the final authority for life

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Speaker 1: and faith, and that doesn't change just because we can't agree.

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Speaker 2: And in those.

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Speaker 1: Places where we can't agree, we need to be thinking

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Speaker 1: through whether or not we can actually.

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Speaker 2: Negotiate with one another.

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Speaker 1: Appropriate ways for us to think through the text and

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Speaker 1: come out the other side with disagreements, but not disunity.

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Speaker 1: And so I think that there's a sense in which,

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Speaker 1: as we ask these questions, we are really talking about

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Speaker 1: the authority of scripture in a lot of ways.

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Speaker 3: And my.

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Speaker 1: Discomfort a lot of times is that sometimes we take

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Speaker 1: scripture and we subsume its authority under a particular interpretive grid,

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Speaker 1: or we hook them so closely together that you couldn't

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Speaker 1: pull them apart, and I think that creates more factions.

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Speaker 2: Within the community of faith than we really need.

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Speaker 1: So I'll leave it there and let you kind of

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Speaker 1: wax philosophical for a minute.

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Speaker 2: They're ashes.

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Speaker 3: Philosophical is the word that comes to mind. The strength

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Speaker 3: I think of the way that you're describing inversion is

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Speaker 3: that it gives us a picture that.

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Speaker 4: There's a lot to work from here. Yeah, because there's

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Speaker 4: a lot of things that can immediately come to mind.

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Speaker 3: Right when we think of inversion, we're thinking maybe upside down,

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Speaker 3: we're thinking of the wrong thing on top, And I'm

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Speaker 3: not sure that that's necessarily the way to think about it,

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Speaker 3: right though. I get the benefit of that because it

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Speaker 3: can be really easy to say, well, your tradition or

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Speaker 3: your interpretive framework, or your imagination what have you.

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Speaker 4: Has a lot of baggage time to it. So we

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Speaker 4: just have to get back to the text.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 3: The way that people tend to think of the reformations

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Speaker 3: sola scriptura, right, that it's scripture and only scripture. We're

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Speaker 3: getting rid of all these other things, or the way

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Speaker 3: that as much as I like him, sometimes I fear

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Speaker 3: and t Wright when he does is well, you're asking

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Speaker 3: Reformation questions and I'm asking first century questions. Okay, maybe,

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Speaker 3: but you're doing so from the for him twenty to

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Speaker 3: twenty first centuries, and so you're really asking twenty the

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Speaker 3: twenty first century questions too, right. And what I want

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Speaker 3: to emphasize here is in version can't mean everyone else

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Speaker 3: has interpreted baggage, but me and my crew we got it,

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Speaker 3: that's right. I think what it points to is a

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Speaker 3: failure to recognize that there is Okay, here's the fancy

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Speaker 3: philosophical word forgive me everyone. We have a hermoneutical spiral

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Speaker 3: or circle or feedback loop that's at play right where

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Speaker 3: hermonutics says. The primary question is not necessarily how do

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Speaker 3: I know that I know? But what is the process

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Speaker 3: of understanding? And the way that I understand is inherently

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Speaker 3: the drawing of things into my categories, my linguistic my

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Speaker 3: language based categories. Right, So when I look at the

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Speaker 3: lawn and identify something as a weed, I'm not saying

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Speaker 3: anything actually about that green leafy thing with that certain

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Speaker 3: kind of flower over and against the other green leafy

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Speaker 3: thing with the flower that I do want or that

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Speaker 3: I deliberately planted. Right, That those entities, those creatures in

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Speaker 3: the garden and in the lawn, don't communicate with each

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Speaker 3: other or view each other in those sorts of ways,

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Speaker 3: or view themselves. It says something about me, says something

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Speaker 3: about more than me, my community that has come up

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Speaker 3: with a certain way of categorizing some of these versus others. Now,

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Speaker 3: the goal here is to say, well, let's do away

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Speaker 3: with the weed. Obviously there are reasons we've come up

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Speaker 3: with the category, some better, some worse, Right, But the

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Speaker 3: bigger question, hermoneutical question, is how did we arrive at

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Speaker 3: this point and how does it affect that.

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Speaker 4: We read the text?

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Speaker 3: So I think when we're talking about this feedback circle.

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Speaker 3: When you say in version, what I hear as having

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Speaker 3: gone wrong is a failure to recognize that we have

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Speaker 3: this feedback loop. Right, I encounter the text, but I

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Speaker 3: already already encounter it from somewhere with some set of linguistic, conceptual, whatever.

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Speaker 4: Categories that I inherit.

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Speaker 3: Right, But those things can hopefully be challenged by the

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Speaker 3: text and therefore begin to morph my categories, or maybe

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Speaker 3: over time, as I engage with others interacting with the

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Speaker 3: same text, even add new categories, or change categories or

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Speaker 3: remove some categories. But then that should always lead me

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Speaker 3: back to the text. And I think that that feedback

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Speaker 3: loop is what's broken in what you're describing as inversion. Right,

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Speaker 3: there might be the naivety of how I come to

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Speaker 3: the text next, and there's a presumption of what I

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Speaker 3: see in the text must obviously and clearly be true. Right.

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Speaker 3: What the height of American evangelicalism in the early teen

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Speaker 3: hundreds in Upstate New York would say, it's me and

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Speaker 3: my Bible and the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit has

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Speaker 3: led me to all truth. And this is what I

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Speaker 3: have the Holy Spirit, and this is what I've come

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Speaker 3: to understand so this must be the truth, and it

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Speaker 3: doesn't work out so well when you have one hundred

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Speaker 3: people saying that same thing and coming to one hundred

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Speaker 3: two different conclusions.

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Speaker 1: I agree that that is an excellent way of describing

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Speaker 1: what I'm talking about when I'm talking about conversion or

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Speaker 1: I'm sorry inversion inversion.

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Speaker 2: And part of what I like about it is that.

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Speaker 1: And I think this has always been a tension as

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Speaker 1: I've thought about this issue.

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Speaker 2: We always have to hit the ground.

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Speaker 1: So when I was when I was an administrator in

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Speaker 1: higher ed right, I knew that there were times when

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Speaker 1: I just had to make a decision, and even though

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Speaker 1: more discussion would ultimately be needed, you never really got

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Speaker 1: to the bottom of an issue. In other words, there

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Speaker 1: were always going to be some questions that were left unanswered,

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Speaker 1: some perspectives that could be explored more deeply, you know,

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Speaker 1: some areas of thought that we didn't, you know, just

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Speaker 1: drill down to the very bottom of.

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Speaker 2: But you didn't always have that kind of time. You

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Speaker 2: had to do something.

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Speaker 1: It couldn't just all be sitting around and thinking philosophically about,

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Speaker 1: you know, what we should do next, Like, sometimes there

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Speaker 1: just had to be a decision made and I tend

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Speaker 1: to view what we do with scripture in sort of

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Speaker 1: a similar manner, in that we are asked not just

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Speaker 1: to know things and master scripture in a way that

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Speaker 1: doesn't leave any room for doubt about what we understand

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Speaker 1: about it or the interpretations that we have of it.

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Speaker 1: We're asked to live it out, and that living it

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Speaker 1: out requires us to wrestle with texts. It requires us

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Speaker 1: to be in conversation with others. But then it also

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Speaker 1: requires us to sort of put boots on the ground

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Speaker 1: and actually move a bit. And I think that what

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Speaker 1: you're describing that sort of hermeneutical spiral. It doesn't deny

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Speaker 1: that you have boots on the ground, but it does

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Speaker 1: require you to say, just because I put boots on

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Speaker 1: the ground doesn't mean that I never circle back and

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Speaker 1: reevaluate what's going on. It doesn't mean that I have

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Speaker 1: to just keep trotting this way for the rest of

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Speaker 1: my life, that this was the final decision I've ever made,

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Speaker 1: and now all I have is this trajectory and this

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Speaker 1: cadence and this way of walking. Right, you can always

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Speaker 1: turn around and reflect and realize, oh, I should have

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Speaker 1: been going ten degrees northwest as opposed to ten degrees northeast,

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Speaker 1: and you can make those adjustments. And I think that's

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Speaker 1: a crucial part of what I wanted to get at

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Speaker 1: with invert, because I feel like sometimes we're closing ourselves

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Speaker 1: in right. That problem of narrowing applies here to this

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Speaker 1: notion of an interpretive grid, because these tend to close

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Speaker 1: us off from opportunities that may actually be there. We

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Speaker 1: just can no longer see them or unwilling to entertain them,

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Speaker 1: because we become more committed to a system of thinking,

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Speaker 1: a system of understanding the text, a set of interpretations

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Speaker 1: of various texts that then require us to think of

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Speaker 1: various aspects of the world as more relevant than others,

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Speaker 1: and we close ourselves off functionally to almost everything else.

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Speaker 1: And so I'll use a weight room analogy because that's

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Speaker 1: what I do.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: It's similar to going into the gym right and just

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Speaker 1: doing beach muscles, but realizing that you also need to work,

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Speaker 1: you know, some of the smaller muscles of the back

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Speaker 1: and show because those are actually going to keep your

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Speaker 1: joints healthy.

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Speaker 2: And so even if you just want beach.

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Speaker 1: Muscles, like big arms, you know, big chests, big shoulders,

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Speaker 1: whatever you still have to do some other things to

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Speaker 1: make sure that as you're building those other muscles.

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Speaker 2: Your body doesn't just fall apart.

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Speaker 1: Those other pieces have to be there, and I think

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Speaker 1: that what happens sometimes is that we go full force

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Speaker 1: on the beach muscles neglect everything else, and that is

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Speaker 1: going to produce to in some degree, a broken body.

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Speaker 1: It's going to give us more aches and pains than

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Speaker 1: we really need when we could just throw in a

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Speaker 1: few other of these exercises and attend to them appropriately

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Speaker 1: and realize more than we're.

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Speaker 2: Getting out of our current quote unquote workout.

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Speaker 3: So I'm intrigued by that analogy. I'm trying to think

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Speaker 3: as I think about the theoretical weightlifting that I'm not

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Speaker 3: really going to do, that makes a lot of sense

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Speaker 3: when I think about hermeneutically what that entails. Do you

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Speaker 3: have some carryovers to our conversation that would we immediately say, yeah,

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Speaker 3: I get that.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, let me think through Deuteronomy. I believe it's twenty

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Speaker 2: nineteen and twenty. I think I'm getting that right.

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Speaker 1: I don't have my Bible pulled up right here, but

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Speaker 1: maybe i'll check it real quick while well hand the

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Speaker 1: mic over.

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Speaker 2: But in Deuteronomy. I believe it's twenty nineteen and twenty.

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Speaker 2: Israel has given instructions regarding conquest.

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Speaker 1: They're going to go in and they're going to take

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Speaker 1: over these other lands. They're supposed to conquer seven other nations.

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Speaker 1: And at the end of these instructions, God says, by

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Speaker 1: the way, you're going to find these fruit trees, don't

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Speaker 1: destroy the fruit trees. You can eat the fruit trees,

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Speaker 1: but don't just destroy the fruit trees.

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Speaker 2: What a fascinating little verse.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I believe that's Teronomy twenty. I recall that.

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Speaker 2: Okay, so fascinating little verse. Right.

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Speaker 1: My guess is that people did not memorize that verse

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Speaker 1: in I Wana. My guess is that it's not one

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Speaker 1: that's going to roll off the tip of people's tongues.

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Speaker 1: Even I have trouble, and I've been studying this, I

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Speaker 1: couldn't remember what chapter and verse it was. Right, This

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Speaker 1: is not John three sixteen, this is not Romans twelve

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Speaker 1: one and two. This is this odd little verse buried

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Speaker 1: down deep in the conquest narratives of Deuteronomy that gives

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Speaker 1: us so much to reflect on and think about when

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Speaker 1: it comes to what dominion is, How Israel's movement into

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Speaker 1: the land was to preserve the natural elements of that

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Speaker 1: land so that they could survive there. It just gives

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Speaker 1: us all these different elements of theological reflection that most

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Speaker 1: of us it is not intuitive that we would do

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Speaker 1: just like hopping in and reading the letters of Paul. Now,

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Speaker 1: what am I not saying. I'm not saying that there's

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Speaker 1: a problem with the Letters of Paul, right. What I

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Speaker 1: am saying is that you have all these other little

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Speaker 1: muscles that if we read them, you know, if we

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Speaker 1: worked them out right, if you went in, hopped in

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Speaker 1: and read Deuteronomy, read some of those laws in Leviticus,

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Speaker 1: read the weird sections of numbers. We usually think of

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Speaker 1: those as negligible. But what I'm suggesting is, I think

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Speaker 1: their core, because what they would do is they would

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Speaker 1: add texture and challenge some of our settled interpretations when

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Speaker 1: we run into a verse like that, or even believe

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Speaker 1: it's Deuteronomy seven.

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Speaker 2: I've been studying some of the conquest narratives.

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Speaker 1: Deuteronomy seven talks about God is going to give the

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Speaker 1: Israelites the land little by little, why so the wild

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Speaker 1: animals do not outnumber them?

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Speaker 2: What is that?

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Speaker 1: Like those are interesting things that take a settled opinion

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Speaker 1: where we think, oh, I got this, I know what

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Speaker 1: the Bible's about, and then you run into these verses

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Speaker 1: and you go or maybe I don't. Maybe I don't

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Speaker 1: fully grasp everything that I've got there, And now I

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Speaker 1: have more room to think.

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Speaker 2: I can open up my interpretive grids.

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Speaker 1: Can I can re evaluate those texts and my understanding

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Speaker 1: of the Bible as a whole. So that's one example

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Speaker 1: of this sort of not working out the beach muscles.

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Speaker 2: In this illustration.

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Speaker 1: The beach muscles would be something like Romans, right, and

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Speaker 1: the smaller muscles that still need to be there to

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Speaker 1: keep the joints healthier, like Deuteronomy seven and twenty.

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Speaker 4: Okay, this is good. So the Deuteronomy twenty one.

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Speaker 3: The reason I was able to say that's Tudoriny twenty

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Speaker 3: is I actually used that passage. I'm sure it shocks

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Speaker 3: you that I was using God's care for trees with

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Speaker 3: my class, but I wanted to try to make the

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Speaker 3: point because we have these questions, legitimate questions that surround

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Speaker 3: the conquest narratives, and especially in a postgenocidal age right

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Speaker 3: where we've seen so many atrocities in the world. It's

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Speaker 3: an understandable question that arises as God commanding genocide. And

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Speaker 3: we have this strange dynamic that appears in Deuteronomy twenty two.

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Speaker 3: Strange dynamics. One is this near far business or perhaps

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Speaker 3: that starts in chapter nineteen that I wanted to highlight students.

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Speaker 3: But the other one was the trees one, because I

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Speaker 3: could guarantee that these students who are familiar with these

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Speaker 3: debates never once noticed this strange tree command. Yeah, and

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Speaker 3: I think you're right about that, and I want to

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Speaker 3: see you and I want to raise you even a

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Speaker 3: little more to the beach muscles that we often tend

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Speaker 3: to include worksite Galatians. Yeah, I forget the exact chapter.

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Speaker 3: It's the chapter Paul is recounting the Jerusalem Council and

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Speaker 3: that he had to confront Peter and he was then

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Speaker 3: given a commission by Peter and James to be the

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Speaker 3: one who takes the message of Jesus to the Gentiles,

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Speaker 3: and that part we know. But at the conclusion of

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Speaker 3: that same section, at the end of the chapter, and

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Speaker 3: forgive me, it's what chapter four or something like that,

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Speaker 3: Paul also says, and they instructed me to help the

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Speaker 3: poor m which I already do.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, that's like.

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Speaker 3: A double thing there, Like no one that I ever

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Speaker 3: here preached this passage or talking about this passage ever

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Speaker 3: mentions that tag at the end as if it's just

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Speaker 3: an adendom add at on and not part of what

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Speaker 3: Paul saying and what the commission to him was. Never mind,

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Speaker 3: the second part of that is, by the way, I

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Speaker 3: already do that, So I'm just gonna keep doing it.

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Speaker 3: But they just affirmed that might doing that is good

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Speaker 3: and right, and to your point, we think in terms

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Speaker 3: of doctrinal flexing. But that changes a lot, right because

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Speaker 3: the ways that I've heard presidents of Bible colleges, pastors,

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Speaker 3: Christian leaders talk about such things as helping the poor,

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Speaker 3: they're always at best, extra things when we have our

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Speaker 3: other ducks aligned. At worst, it's what those liberals do.

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Speaker 3: And here we have Paul, you know, the chief the

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Speaker 3: chief trainer in our Biblical weightlifting project, telling us, not

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Speaker 3: only is that something that the commission that the council

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Speaker 3: commissioned him to do, but he already doesn't.

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Speaker 4: Right.

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Speaker 3: So I think that's that's a beautiful way of saying it,

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Speaker 3: and I think that changes everything, not just because it

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Speaker 3: adds more to our picture, but it actually to your

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Speaker 3: point of recalibrating. Might mean that we have to actually

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Speaker 3: rethink what we're doing with these passages that we see

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Speaker 3: them as first and four almost about some sort of

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Speaker 3: abstract doctrinal discussions. Now, don't hear me as saying no,

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Speaker 3: discussions are important. But I'm not sure that they have

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Speaker 3: the level of intensity in the Biblical text, maybe not

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Speaker 3: even in the imagination of these Hebraic thinkers who aren't

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Speaker 3: thinking as Greek philosophers that we've given them to be

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Speaker 3: in subsequent church history. But when we think about your

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Speaker 3: inversion category and what that might mean in terms of

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Speaker 3: the hermeneutical circle or spiral, however we want to put

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Speaker 3: it again, it tells us that what we're doing with

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Speaker 3: the text has to be attuned in some ways to

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Speaker 3: hearing from the text, and not just simply going in

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Speaker 3: with our lenses attuned to the sorts of data that

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Speaker 3: we're looking for. Right, you're inclined to see only the

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Speaker 3: things you're looking for, if you're inclined to only see squares,

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Speaker 3: if your glasses are shaped, your lenses are shaped like squares. Right,

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Speaker 3: But there might be a lot of ovals and circles,

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Speaker 3: and you know, various other polygons that we're missing out.

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Speaker 3: I think is kind of the point.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, just to sort of dovetail a little

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Speaker 1: bit more on this, I had a conversation on Christian

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Speaker 1: nationalism and dominionism here fairly recently, and one of the

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Speaker 1: texts that I brought up was Deuteronomy too. Deuteronomy has

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Speaker 1: a lot of rich texts related to the conquest, but

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Speaker 1: Deuteronomy too is actually God saying you shall not go

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Speaker 1: in and dispossess the Moabilides. And so what we see

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Speaker 1: here is at the beginning of these sort of conquest narratives,

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Speaker 1: the instructions that are given, at least with regard to

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Speaker 1: the conquest, is that one thing that is often missing

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Speaker 1: in Christian nationalism and dominionism is what are our limits?

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Speaker 1: What aren't we supposed to do? That It's almost always

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Speaker 1: framed in terms of the positive. Here's what we're supposed

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Speaker 1: to do. We know what we're supposed to do, but

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Speaker 1: there's never any thought given as to what we're not

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Speaker 1: supposed to be doing. What are we supposed to restrain

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Speaker 1: ourselves from? Because God has given that to another people,

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Speaker 1: and the fact that we can't answer the question should

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Speaker 1: give us pause about how sure we should be about

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Speaker 1: the positive aspects that we're asserting. This is what we

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Speaker 1: should take over, this is how we should proceed. If

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Speaker 1: we don't understand what the limit is, it's unclear that

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Speaker 1: we really understand what the movement forward should be. And

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Speaker 1: I think Deuteronomy two and then into Deuteronomy seven and

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Speaker 1: Deuteronomy twenty, that whole conquest sort of all those different

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Speaker 1: conquest texts woven together. What you begin to understand is

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Speaker 1: that that the Israelites conquest instructions can't really form conquest

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Speaker 1: instructions for us, That these are very different things, and

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Speaker 1: that because we don't have the full picture, it's it's

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Speaker 1: very difficult for us to sit back and say, oh,

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Speaker 1: this is something we should be doing now. I use

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Speaker 1: that as an illustration just to say this is I

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Speaker 1: think that there's a way in which that sort of ideology,

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Speaker 1: that interpretive grid of dominionism and Christian nationalism have inverted,

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Speaker 1: and so they no longer have to check in with

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Speaker 1: the text. Deuteronomy too means nothing to them right there,

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Speaker 1: It doesn't factor at all. And if it does it's

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Speaker 1: it's quickly addressed and then swept under the rug. There's

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Speaker 1: no wrestling with it. And and I think that that

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Speaker 1: is a that is a good illustration of the way

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Speaker 1: the way I see inversion working a lot of the

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Speaker 1: time is that you have these counter narratives within the

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Speaker 1: text that are not that are explained away. And now

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Speaker 1: all I have to say. Sometimes I think it's very

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Speaker 1: difficult to interpret the Bible and not have some of

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Speaker 1: those texts right, and it just is like none of

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Speaker 1: us have a full handle on this thing we call

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Speaker 1: the Bible. At the same time, when I come to

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Speaker 1: a verse that I can't explain, I think I tend

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Speaker 1: to lean on the side of restraint. Let me not

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Speaker 1: advance as quickly as I might have on the things

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Speaker 1: that I felt sure about, because I've got this piece

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Speaker 1: over here that is really telling me something very different,

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Speaker 1: and I don't know how to explain it yet. And

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Speaker 1: so I think there's this sort of on the gas

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Speaker 1: off the gas kind of analogy that we need to

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Speaker 1: have right that we're on some level, we've got to

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Speaker 1: move forward in advance. We're trying to follow God somewhere,

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Speaker 1: and you know, when we think we're following along with him.

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Speaker 1: It's appropriate for us to make those steps. But at

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Speaker 1: the same time, I think there's a way for us

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Speaker 1: to sort of zoom past God, decide what our trajectory

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Speaker 1: is going to be, and ignore all of these other

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Speaker 1: texts over here that are saying something completely different to us,

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Speaker 1: then go full speed ahead. And that subtle inversion puts

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Speaker 1: us in the driver's seat. It sets our agenda as

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Speaker 1: God's agenda right in a bad way.

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Speaker 4: And.

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Speaker 1: It almost makes it so that God's word is not

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Speaker 1: determining our steps. We're determining our steps, and then we're

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Speaker 1: justifying it with God's word. That to me is sort

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Speaker 1: of the essence of conversion of inversion.

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Speaker 3: So I think on a parallel round that also entailed

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Speaker 3: the attempt avoid inversion or to counteract in version, entails

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Speaker 3: not just looking at these smaller muscles and Deuteronomy and

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Speaker 3: Leviticus and taglines andificaalations, but also interpreters that sit outside

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Speaker 3: of our traditions, both today and in the past. Right

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Speaker 3: because I think one of the things that you mentioned,

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Speaker 3: which was that we can't fit every single one of

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Speaker 3: these these little narrative structures into our theories or interpretive grids.

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Speaker 3: And the reason for that is frankly, because it isn't

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Speaker 3: it is an interpretive framework, right to take something that's

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Speaker 3: a collection of wisdom, literature and narrative in letters and

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Speaker 3: parable and some history like thing. And only what I

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Speaker 3: mean by history like is it's not doing the history

439
00:25:52,640 --> 00:25:55,400
Speaker 3: the way that we see the modern enterprise of historians

440
00:25:55,440 --> 00:26:00,560
Speaker 3: doing history. That's all I mean by history like apocalyptic literature, revelation,

441
00:26:00,880 --> 00:26:04,879
Speaker 3: like all these different sorts of modes of discourse that

442
00:26:04,920 --> 00:26:11,600
Speaker 3: are joined together in one larger narrative continuity, let's call it.

443
00:26:13,080 --> 00:26:16,320
Speaker 3: None of those things are philosophical discourse meant to give

444
00:26:16,359 --> 00:26:21,600
Speaker 3: us abstract principles, whether ethical or doctrinal. That's a megaframework, right,

445
00:26:21,720 --> 00:26:23,440
Speaker 3: the sorts of things that we think of in terms

446
00:26:23,440 --> 00:26:27,600
Speaker 3: of our modern rubrics that we use to discern whether

447
00:26:27,680 --> 00:26:32,720
Speaker 3: things are good or bad, theology right or wrong, theology right, orthodoxy,

448
00:26:33,080 --> 00:26:37,800
Speaker 3: orthopoxy versus heterodoxy and heteropraxy. So to arrive at those

449
00:26:37,840 --> 00:26:40,920
Speaker 3: other structures, it is an interpretive process. And those are

450
00:26:40,960 --> 00:26:43,800
Speaker 3: interpretive frameworks. And because of the nature of them, they're

451
00:26:43,800 --> 00:26:48,400
Speaker 3: not able to hold together. These various kinds of let's

452
00:26:48,440 --> 00:26:50,800
Speaker 3: call them genres or forms of discourse.

453
00:26:51,480 --> 00:26:51,760
Speaker 4: Right.

454
00:26:53,400 --> 00:26:57,040
Speaker 3: But what's interesting is that what often distinguishes these interpretive

455
00:26:57,080 --> 00:27:05,880
Speaker 3: frameworks is which elements or which directions or pathways within

456
00:27:05,920 --> 00:27:09,280
Speaker 3: the text one group ends up taking hold of and

457
00:27:09,280 --> 00:27:13,600
Speaker 3: holding as primary, and doing so can radically change the

458
00:27:13,640 --> 00:27:15,480
Speaker 3: way that we see in the text, right, whether that

459
00:27:15,520 --> 00:27:18,600
Speaker 3: be how do we understand justification by faith? Is it

460
00:27:18,720 --> 00:27:22,119
Speaker 3: justification by faith alone? Does that mean faith and belief

461
00:27:22,160 --> 00:27:24,680
Speaker 3: for themselves intellectual works that need to be done away

462
00:27:24,680 --> 00:27:27,800
Speaker 3: with as well, right, like that's a luther thing. Or

463
00:27:28,520 --> 00:27:31,720
Speaker 3: is justification by faith such that you show your faith

464
00:27:31,760 --> 00:27:34,720
Speaker 3: by doing as especially James, but also.

465
00:27:34,520 --> 00:27:36,600
Speaker 4: Really Paul talks about it, and Jesus talks.

466
00:27:36,440 --> 00:27:39,200
Speaker 3: About going to lend us to this broadly speaking Roman

467
00:27:39,200 --> 00:27:41,639
Speaker 3: Catholic way, right, And we can go on and on

468
00:27:41,680 --> 00:27:44,720
Speaker 3: and on. I think what's important within this is that

469
00:27:45,680 --> 00:27:47,879
Speaker 3: we have to be able to have the discipline to

470
00:27:49,080 --> 00:27:53,200
Speaker 3: hear those from other traditions without that immediate knee jerk

471
00:27:53,240 --> 00:27:56,840
Speaker 3: reaction of writing the snarky notes in the margin, so

472
00:27:56,880 --> 00:28:00,479
Speaker 3: to speak. And I have in my mind the image

473
00:28:00,480 --> 00:28:03,280
Speaker 3: of myself in grad school where I hated a particular book.

474
00:28:03,280 --> 00:28:04,200
Speaker 4: It was a history program.

475
00:28:04,280 --> 00:28:07,320
Speaker 3: I hated this historical work that I was working through,

476
00:28:08,800 --> 00:28:11,159
Speaker 3: and I wrote these snarky notes in the margin, and

477
00:28:11,240 --> 00:28:13,720
Speaker 3: years later I went back to it was thoroughly embarrassed

478
00:28:14,040 --> 00:28:18,240
Speaker 3: as I looked at it, and I said, snarky, My

479
00:28:18,280 --> 00:28:22,840
Speaker 3: snarky notes betrayed that I didn't actually understand fully what

480
00:28:22,880 --> 00:28:25,400
Speaker 3: this historian was saying. Because I actually think this historian,

481
00:28:25,520 --> 00:28:27,280
Speaker 3: whether or not I fully agree with them, was onto

482
00:28:27,280 --> 00:28:30,320
Speaker 3: something here, and I failed to be able to understand

483
00:28:30,359 --> 00:28:35,280
Speaker 3: it because I was too busy with engaging in some

484
00:28:35,320 --> 00:28:39,120
Speaker 3: sort of apologetic exercise with him, but without him present.

485
00:28:39,360 --> 00:28:43,080
Speaker 4: Right. But I think that that's how this inversion happens.

486
00:28:43,120 --> 00:28:44,400
Speaker 4: We're so worried.

487
00:28:46,040 --> 00:28:48,440
Speaker 3: About the other or even that third group, right, and

488
00:28:48,440 --> 00:28:50,920
Speaker 3: that third group is probably the one that needs the

489
00:28:50,960 --> 00:28:56,280
Speaker 3: advocating for right interpretively without saying everything goes right.

490
00:28:56,320 --> 00:28:59,000
Speaker 4: But that's the juxtaposition. That's the back and forth.

491
00:28:59,040 --> 00:29:02,200
Speaker 3: That's that we take, we get shaped, we take back

492
00:29:02,240 --> 00:29:04,400
Speaker 3: to the text, we get shaped again, right, so on

493
00:29:04,400 --> 00:29:05,000
Speaker 3: and so forth.

494
00:29:06,160 --> 00:29:07,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think this is largely what we mean

495
00:29:07,960 --> 00:29:10,600
Speaker 1: when we say the Bible is, or at least this

496
00:29:10,640 --> 00:29:12,280
Speaker 1: is largely what I mean when I say the Bible

497
00:29:12,320 --> 00:29:13,960
Speaker 1: is the final authority for life and faith.

498
00:29:14,960 --> 00:29:15,680
Speaker 2: It's final.

499
00:29:17,200 --> 00:29:20,200
Speaker 1: I don't know that we ever reached that finality, but

500
00:29:20,320 --> 00:29:23,560
Speaker 1: it does provide a set of constraints and guardrails for us,

501
00:29:23,600 --> 00:29:26,400
Speaker 1: and we need to be able to discern when we're

502
00:29:26,440 --> 00:29:31,320
Speaker 1: outside of those constraints and outside of those guardrails. Oftentimes

503
00:29:31,360 --> 00:29:34,760
Speaker 1: we think about that in terms of just strict heresy.

504
00:29:35,640 --> 00:29:39,040
Speaker 2: You know arianism or you know modalism.

505
00:29:39,400 --> 00:29:44,120
Speaker 1: Like my mind goes back to that fantastic little video,

506
00:29:44,280 --> 00:29:47,920
Speaker 1: the animated video the two Irish guys talking about the Trinity, right,

507
00:29:48,520 --> 00:29:50,520
Speaker 1: like one of my favorite videos of all time, I think.

508
00:29:51,920 --> 00:29:55,840
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, I think there's

509
00:29:55,920 --> 00:30:00,760
Speaker 1: also another way to air. I won't call heresy, but

510
00:30:00,760 --> 00:30:03,640
Speaker 1: there's another way to err in this, and that is

511
00:30:03,800 --> 00:30:07,400
Speaker 1: being too narrow. I think we see this in Act seven.

512
00:30:08,400 --> 00:30:11,760
Speaker 1: It's a passage I think we've talked about on another podcast.

513
00:30:11,800 --> 00:30:16,680
Speaker 1: But essentially what happens there is the people are accusing

514
00:30:16,800 --> 00:30:20,200
Speaker 1: Stephen of preaching against Moses and the temple and the law,

515
00:30:21,280 --> 00:30:24,040
Speaker 1: and Stephen, instead of addressing those points one by one,

516
00:30:24,120 --> 00:30:26,720
Speaker 1: comes back and says, well, let's just take a look

517
00:30:26,720 --> 00:30:29,760
Speaker 1: at this. Let's look at all the different times that

518
00:30:29,800 --> 00:30:33,280
Speaker 1: God interacts with his people and works on behalf of

519
00:30:33,320 --> 00:30:39,640
Speaker 1: his people outside the land. Abraham's called outside the land,

520
00:30:39,880 --> 00:30:44,040
Speaker 1: Moses's call from Midian. There's holy ground in you know,

521
00:30:44,080 --> 00:30:48,600
Speaker 1: in the under the burning bush in Midian. Right, even

522
00:30:48,640 --> 00:30:52,560
Speaker 1: when Solomon builds the temple, we all know that God

523
00:30:52,600 --> 00:30:55,760
Speaker 1: does not actually dwell in a house made by human hands.

524
00:30:56,360 --> 00:30:59,680
Speaker 1: God transcends these human structures. And so what are we

525
00:30:59,680 --> 00:31:03,360
Speaker 1: really talking about here? This is all within our tradition.

526
00:31:03,800 --> 00:31:06,000
Speaker 1: All of that should have been a parent It wasn't

527
00:31:06,000 --> 00:31:10,160
Speaker 1: anything even radical. Right, He's basically showing different place names

528
00:31:10,200 --> 00:31:16,040
Speaker 1: and going God did stuff in Egypt, for instance, And

529
00:31:16,120 --> 00:31:18,720
Speaker 1: so he's showing them, like all these different times that

530
00:31:18,760 --> 00:31:23,360
Speaker 1: God works outside the boundaries that they themselves have set.

531
00:31:23,800 --> 00:31:26,680
Speaker 1: And he's trying to help him understand that they've narrowed

532
00:31:26,720 --> 00:31:31,040
Speaker 1: God too much, that their interpretive lens has become like

533
00:31:31,160 --> 00:31:35,680
Speaker 1: blinders essentially. And at the end of that.

534
00:31:37,040 --> 00:31:40,400
Speaker 2: Speech that he gives, what's fascinating is Stephen looks up

535
00:31:40,440 --> 00:31:45,920
Speaker 2: and sees Jesus standing next to the throne, glorified his opponents.

536
00:31:46,880 --> 00:31:49,880
Speaker 1: It says, they shut up their ears, run toward him

537
00:31:49,880 --> 00:31:54,120
Speaker 1: and stone him, and so they clog up their sense

538
00:31:54,240 --> 00:31:56,280
Speaker 1: organ so they can't hear.

539
00:31:56,480 --> 00:31:57,000
Speaker 2: They can't.

540
00:31:57,120 --> 00:31:58,840
Speaker 1: They don't want to hear this from him, They don't

541
00:31:58,840 --> 00:32:01,520
Speaker 1: want to see this anymore, they want this to be gone.

542
00:32:02,360 --> 00:32:04,920
Speaker 1: And I think that's the opposite error that we don't

543
00:32:04,920 --> 00:32:10,160
Speaker 1: often really deeply consider. There's certainly a going outside of

544
00:32:10,200 --> 00:32:14,920
Speaker 1: the boundaries sort of heresy that creates its problems, but

545
00:32:15,000 --> 00:32:19,280
Speaker 1: I think there's also a resetting the boundaries to narrowly

546
00:32:20,280 --> 00:32:23,840
Speaker 1: problem that we don't often address. But that is I

547
00:32:23,880 --> 00:32:29,800
Speaker 1: think well illustrated in scripture and part of what can

548
00:32:29,840 --> 00:32:32,920
Speaker 1: come out in our interpretive process if we're not careful.

549
00:32:33,560 --> 00:32:35,960
Speaker 1: I think we have to sort of balance and negotiate

550
00:32:36,040 --> 00:32:39,800
Speaker 1: these boundaries in a way that we're not on the

551
00:32:39,840 --> 00:32:44,840
Speaker 1: other side of the fence outside in heresyland, denying something

552
00:32:44,840 --> 00:32:49,960
Speaker 1: that Scripture is saying from an assertion perspective, like I'm

553
00:32:50,000 --> 00:32:52,200
Speaker 1: going to say that the Bible teaches X, Y or Z,

554
00:32:52,320 --> 00:32:55,320
Speaker 1: and it really doesn't. But we also need to be

555
00:32:55,320 --> 00:32:59,120
Speaker 1: careful not to be so far inside the fence where

556
00:32:59,160 --> 00:33:02,080
Speaker 1: we're saying we're going to say that the Bible can't.

557
00:33:01,800 --> 00:33:05,480
Speaker 2: Teach X, Y and Z, that it can only teach

558
00:33:05,560 --> 00:33:06,520
Speaker 2: these things.

559
00:33:06,480 --> 00:33:09,600
Speaker 1: And creating a little box for scripture to sit in

560
00:33:09,680 --> 00:33:14,840
Speaker 1: both ways are diminishing of scriptures authority in ways that

561
00:33:14,920 --> 00:33:17,600
Speaker 1: I think Christians want to avoid.

562
00:33:18,720 --> 00:33:22,800
Speaker 3: Yeah, agreed. And a further note, I think regarding our

563
00:33:23,560 --> 00:33:29,040
Speaker 3: quick footedness to arrive at conclusions of heresy, along with

564
00:33:29,240 --> 00:33:33,400
Speaker 3: the way that we tend to minimize the ways in

565
00:33:33,480 --> 00:33:37,160
Speaker 3: which scriptural narrative is a development. And I don't mean

566
00:33:37,200 --> 00:33:40,320
Speaker 3: that as a development from all the New Testament. I

567
00:33:40,360 --> 00:33:43,720
Speaker 3: mean even the writing of Galatians is one whole letter.

568
00:33:44,040 --> 00:33:47,680
Speaker 3: Writing Romans is one whole letter. To understand the conclusions

569
00:33:47,720 --> 00:33:50,200
Speaker 3: that Paul's making, you got to understand the development, right,

570
00:33:50,200 --> 00:33:55,000
Speaker 3: the same with every book in the Bible. Well, Similarly,

571
00:33:55,400 --> 00:34:01,520
Speaker 3: the conclusions of heresy in church history, they're developments. There

572
00:34:01,600 --> 00:34:06,920
Speaker 3: are no historical heresies even in the period, especially in

573
00:34:06,960 --> 00:34:10,840
Speaker 3: the period of the Unifying Church, that the church arrives

574
00:34:10,880 --> 00:34:14,160
Speaker 3: at that conclusion overnight, every single.

575
00:34:13,840 --> 00:34:14,200
Speaker 4: One of them.

576
00:34:14,239 --> 00:34:19,839
Speaker 3: We're talking quite literally years of discourse, involves many, many

577
00:34:19,960 --> 00:34:26,880
Speaker 3: voices in a church far less fractured, expanding many geographical

578
00:34:27,080 --> 00:34:31,880
Speaker 3: places to arrive at those conclusions, and sometimes even quite

579
00:34:31,880 --> 00:34:36,759
Speaker 3: literally decades of discourse and revisiting and lots of councils. Right,

580
00:34:36,800 --> 00:34:40,960
Speaker 3: even when we think of the Seven ecumenical councils. There

581
00:34:40,960 --> 00:34:44,680
Speaker 3: are dozens of councils in addition to those, often that

582
00:34:44,840 --> 00:34:48,520
Speaker 3: lie in between the ecamenical councils in which these things

583
00:34:48,520 --> 00:34:50,680
Speaker 3: are being hashed out, and the conclusions aren't always the

584
00:34:50,680 --> 00:34:55,200
Speaker 3: conclusions that the ecumenical councils eventually end up reaching. Right,

585
00:34:55,840 --> 00:34:57,600
Speaker 3: So I think we need to be slow with that heresy.

586
00:34:57,640 --> 00:34:59,640
Speaker 3: It doesn't mean there aren't such things as heresies, but

587
00:34:59,680 --> 00:35:02,520
Speaker 3: I think to your point, heresy should not be that

588
00:35:02,560 --> 00:35:05,880
Speaker 3: first button we reach for, and we certainly shouldn't be

589
00:35:05,880 --> 00:35:10,000
Speaker 3: the ones who live in our in our armchair, or

590
00:35:10,040 --> 00:35:12,960
Speaker 3: in our traditions, who get to decide once and for

591
00:35:13,000 --> 00:35:16,560
Speaker 3: all time for the Universal Church what is and is

592
00:35:16,600 --> 00:35:17,920
Speaker 3: not heresy, right.

593
00:35:17,800 --> 00:35:19,520
Speaker 4: Because it's never how it was decided. Right.

594
00:35:19,520 --> 00:35:21,760
Speaker 3: The people of Antioch didn't get to decide what heresy

595
00:35:21,880 --> 00:35:23,880
Speaker 3: was anymore than the people of Alexandria, anymore than the

596
00:35:23,920 --> 00:35:30,799
Speaker 3: people of her own But secondly, to your point, there's

597
00:35:30,800 --> 00:35:33,200
Speaker 3: always been variety in the readings.

598
00:35:32,880 --> 00:35:34,000
Speaker 4: Of the text.

599
00:35:34,520 --> 00:35:37,680
Speaker 3: Right, I'm go and even think one of the passages

600
00:35:37,719 --> 00:35:44,239
Speaker 3: that stands out to me Thomas Aquinas's commentary Hebrews, the

601
00:35:44,239 --> 00:35:47,759
Speaker 3: ways that he marches through that and he says, here's

602
00:35:47,800 --> 00:35:50,600
Speaker 3: what and he'll often say, here are four other interpretations

603
00:35:50,600 --> 00:35:54,600
Speaker 3: of this passage, and he'll make it very clear none

604
00:35:54,600 --> 00:35:57,360
Speaker 3: of them are heretical, even if he doesn't agree with

605
00:35:57,400 --> 00:35:59,279
Speaker 3: some of them, and he explains why right.

606
00:35:59,280 --> 00:36:02,320
Speaker 4: If you've ever read it, you know he's never.

607
00:36:02,200 --> 00:36:06,680
Speaker 3: Afraid to go into incredible depth and analytic clarity to

608
00:36:06,680 --> 00:36:09,560
Speaker 3: show you why he doesn't agree with something. But he's

609
00:36:09,680 --> 00:36:12,560
Speaker 3: very clear at distinguishing between when he doesn't agree with

610
00:36:12,600 --> 00:36:15,839
Speaker 3: something because he thinks he has good biblical and philosophical

611
00:36:15,840 --> 00:36:22,640
Speaker 3: and theological reasons to disagree, and those conclusions that the church,

612
00:36:22,800 --> 00:36:27,520
Speaker 3: not him, has declared his heresy. And he airs much

613
00:36:27,680 --> 00:36:30,880
Speaker 3: more on the side of if you disagree with me,

614
00:36:31,200 --> 00:36:35,560
Speaker 3: I think you're wrong. And here's why heart stop right

615
00:36:35,760 --> 00:36:38,440
Speaker 3: than he does. I'm saying, oh, you're outside the boundaries

616
00:36:38,480 --> 00:36:42,160
Speaker 3: and heresy things that are heresy more than him and

617
00:36:42,239 --> 00:36:43,239
Speaker 3: more than his place, and.

618
00:36:43,320 --> 00:36:46,719
Speaker 4: Time got to decide that. And I think that's instructive, right.

619
00:36:49,840 --> 00:36:52,360
Speaker 1: I think so too, I think, and you'd probably know

620
00:36:52,440 --> 00:36:53,640
Speaker 1: the history better than I do.

621
00:36:54,120 --> 00:36:57,480
Speaker 2: I I've always sort of wondered and never bothered to

622
00:36:57,560 --> 00:37:02,680
Speaker 2: check some of the quote unquote.

623
00:37:02,440 --> 00:37:10,480
Speaker 1: Heresies and the quote heretics that advance them. My impression

624
00:37:10,560 --> 00:37:13,239
Speaker 1: is that they were part of these conversations ongoing, and

625
00:37:13,280 --> 00:37:16,280
Speaker 1: then ultimately, as the church decides these things are heresies,

626
00:37:16,360 --> 00:37:19,280
Speaker 1: they either opt to change their views or not change

627
00:37:19,280 --> 00:37:22,600
Speaker 1: their views. In other words, they're they're convinced by the

628
00:37:22,680 --> 00:37:26,160
Speaker 1: dialogue that they're in the wrong, and they pivoted so

629
00:37:26,200 --> 00:37:28,880
Speaker 1: that what they once thought became a heresy, but they

630
00:37:28,880 --> 00:37:32,960
Speaker 1: don't actually become a heretic, or they decide to dogmatically

631
00:37:33,040 --> 00:37:38,080
Speaker 1: hold these things even after these decades long conversations and

632
00:37:38,320 --> 00:37:42,840
Speaker 1: ongoing dialogue, and then decide to stick with them and

633
00:37:42,880 --> 00:37:46,120
Speaker 1: become themselves heretics. I don't know whether you have any

634
00:37:47,840 --> 00:37:51,000
Speaker 1: insights on how often that happened or what right. I'm

635
00:37:51,000 --> 00:37:54,439
Speaker 1: not asking for stats, but I can envision people sort

636
00:37:54,440 --> 00:37:57,160
Speaker 1: of as they're navigating these things and trying to figure

637
00:37:57,200 --> 00:37:57,920
Speaker 1: all this out.

638
00:37:58,320 --> 00:38:01,640
Speaker 2: There are some really tough questions, and so it's not

639
00:38:02,000 --> 00:38:05,880
Speaker 2: odd to me that people would come up with ideas

640
00:38:06,239 --> 00:38:09,520
Speaker 2: that end up once they're sort of worked through, they

641
00:38:09,560 --> 00:38:14,439
Speaker 2: don't actually work. This isn't what we were saying. That's

642
00:38:14,480 --> 00:38:16,799
Speaker 2: not odd to me. Yep.

643
00:38:17,120 --> 00:38:23,440
Speaker 3: So two examples chiefly come to mind. I'll start with

644
00:38:23,480 --> 00:38:27,320
Speaker 3: the later one first, and that that's the Augustine versus

645
00:38:27,320 --> 00:38:33,160
Speaker 3: Pallagious dialogue slash debate that turns into the Church's declaration

646
00:38:33,239 --> 00:38:38,520
Speaker 3: in the West, especially on original sin and the way

647
00:38:38,520 --> 00:38:40,279
Speaker 3: that it's taught, the way that I've often taught it,

648
00:38:40,280 --> 00:38:42,200
Speaker 3: because it's shorthand and you're trying to move through a

649
00:38:42,239 --> 00:38:47,080
Speaker 3: lot of material. It's Augustine versus Pallagius, Augustine's arguments when

650
00:38:47,880 --> 00:38:50,600
Speaker 3: Augustus is able to declare Polyagias a heretic, and that's

651
00:38:50,640 --> 00:38:54,520
Speaker 3: not quite right, right, it's not Augustine who got to

652
00:38:54,560 --> 00:38:59,920
Speaker 3: say Pelagius is a heretic. It's the Church that said ultimately,

653
00:39:00,480 --> 00:39:04,520
Speaker 3: Augustine's points are the ones that we feel make the

654
00:39:04,520 --> 00:39:08,799
Speaker 3: best sense of the Biblical narrative, and Pelagius's points, which,

655
00:39:08,800 --> 00:39:12,799
Speaker 3: in a nutshell, we're dismissing this idea that we ultimately

656
00:39:12,880 --> 00:39:16,480
Speaker 3: had some sort of impediment within ourselves to keep us

657
00:39:16,480 --> 00:39:20,399
Speaker 3: from the grace, from fulfilling the sorts of things that

658
00:39:20,520 --> 00:39:21,479
Speaker 3: allow the grace of God.

659
00:39:21,560 --> 00:39:21,680
Speaker 2: Right.

660
00:39:21,719 --> 00:39:27,200
Speaker 3: So, for Pelagius, the issue was singularly environmental. It's what

661
00:39:27,239 --> 00:39:30,120
Speaker 3: we needed was the right environment. If we fix the environment,

662
00:39:30,200 --> 00:39:32,239
Speaker 3: we fix the ability of people to be able to

663
00:39:32,280 --> 00:39:36,399
Speaker 3: make the right decisions and follow the right path to God,

664
00:39:36,960 --> 00:39:40,399
Speaker 3: which ostensibly makes grace outside of us. Right. Grace is there,

665
00:39:40,480 --> 00:39:44,279
Speaker 3: but grace is environmental, and Augusta's position was no, there

666
00:39:44,320 --> 00:39:47,120
Speaker 3: is in fact an impediment within us, whatever you want

667
00:39:47,120 --> 00:39:49,560
Speaker 3: to call it. Right for him, it's privation. Don't need

668
00:39:49,600 --> 00:39:51,760
Speaker 3: to go into that, but it's the lack of something.

669
00:39:51,800 --> 00:39:55,000
Speaker 3: We're missing something, and that's that fundamental connection to God

670
00:39:55,120 --> 00:39:59,480
Speaker 3: is severed because of the fall. But it's the Church that, ultimately,

671
00:39:59,480 --> 00:40:01,680
Speaker 3: over the course of a long period of time of

672
00:40:01,719 --> 00:40:04,840
Speaker 3: this debate happening, that ultimately comes to the conclusion of

673
00:40:04,920 --> 00:40:08,400
Speaker 3: we signed with Augustine. And the Pelagian view is a

674
00:40:08,400 --> 00:40:12,000
Speaker 3: heretical position, but Pallagius is part of that conversation, and

675
00:40:12,000 --> 00:40:16,120
Speaker 3: Plati just has the opportunity to say, okay, fair, the

676
00:40:16,239 --> 00:40:19,520
Speaker 3: church is spoken. Not to my knowledge, and I'm hazy

677
00:40:19,520 --> 00:40:21,240
Speaker 3: on this one. I don't think he took that option.

678
00:40:21,320 --> 00:40:24,480
Speaker 3: I think he chose to remain outside and that was

679
00:40:24,520 --> 00:40:27,200
Speaker 3: his choice. But the Church gave him an opportunity. But

680
00:40:27,280 --> 00:40:29,960
Speaker 3: equally as important to your question is that it's not

681
00:40:30,080 --> 00:40:32,640
Speaker 3: as if the Church then dug itself into the trench

682
00:40:32,640 --> 00:40:37,640
Speaker 3: of Augustine's position and held it thenceforth forevermore. In fact,

683
00:40:37,800 --> 00:40:42,280
Speaker 3: in many ways, what brings it's not the only issue,

684
00:40:42,280 --> 00:40:44,320
Speaker 3: but one of the things that brings up the theological

685
00:40:44,320 --> 00:40:47,600
Speaker 3: issues of the Reformation is a sense from some of

686
00:40:47,600 --> 00:40:51,120
Speaker 3: these reformers, especially the Luthers and the second generation folks

687
00:40:51,160 --> 00:40:56,319
Speaker 3: like Calvin, that Augustine's position had been compromised upon and

688
00:40:56,360 --> 00:40:58,920
Speaker 3: we'd slipped into a new kind of let's call it

689
00:40:59,000 --> 00:41:05,239
Speaker 3: semi Pelagianism, right, because that's the language that they were using. Now,

690
00:41:05,320 --> 00:41:07,400
Speaker 3: is it the case that the Church had slipped from

691
00:41:07,719 --> 00:41:11,719
Speaker 3: an entrenched position in Augustine, or in Augustine's theology, back

692
00:41:11,800 --> 00:41:15,640
Speaker 3: to Pelagius and reaffirm something theoretical, Or is it more likely,

693
00:41:15,719 --> 00:41:18,759
Speaker 3: which I think is the case, that the Church never

694
00:41:18,840 --> 00:41:22,120
Speaker 3: actually baptized, so to speak, Augustine's position. They saw his

695
00:41:22,400 --> 00:41:27,360
Speaker 3: arguments against Pelagius as setting up sort of the operating

696
00:41:27,480 --> 00:41:30,120
Speaker 3: terms aid to work through. But the Church in and

697
00:41:30,120 --> 00:41:33,680
Speaker 3: of itself, by and large took a variety of positions,

698
00:41:34,120 --> 00:41:36,440
Speaker 3: some of which were on one extreme Augustine, but some

699
00:41:36,520 --> 00:41:40,240
Speaker 3: of which were much softer, which they were still affirming

700
00:41:40,280 --> 00:41:43,600
Speaker 3: those basic tenets of the bondage of the will without

701
00:41:43,640 --> 00:41:48,239
Speaker 3: having this sort of hard line let's call them predestinarian,

702
00:41:48,480 --> 00:41:52,959
Speaker 3: sort of total depravity kind of positions that come out

703
00:41:52,960 --> 00:41:54,280
Speaker 3: of Augustine by the time.

704
00:41:54,160 --> 00:41:55,800
Speaker 4: You get to a Calvin for instance.

705
00:41:56,200 --> 00:41:58,960
Speaker 3: Right, I think that's really instructive, because that's that's a

706
00:41:59,080 --> 00:42:02,600
Speaker 3: long and implicated conversation that we can't do justice to here.

707
00:42:02,880 --> 00:42:05,000
Speaker 3: But it's to say that there's a lot going on,

708
00:42:05,719 --> 00:42:09,440
Speaker 3: there's still variety, there's far from an entrenched position, and

709
00:42:09,560 --> 00:42:13,000
Speaker 3: involves a lot of voices, right that passed through this

710
00:42:13,000 --> 00:42:16,480
Speaker 3: period that we think of as the Medieval Renaissance or

711
00:42:16,520 --> 00:42:21,000
Speaker 3: the Medieval an early version of the Renaissance that begins

712
00:42:21,040 --> 00:42:24,560
Speaker 3: to reignite these conversations. The other debate that comes to

713
00:42:24,600 --> 00:42:27,560
Speaker 3: my mind real quick is the one that we think

714
00:42:27,600 --> 00:42:32,040
Speaker 3: of as the Aryan heresy, where they in three twenty

715
00:42:32,040 --> 00:42:37,280
Speaker 3: five the Council of an Icia condemned the arian position,

716
00:42:37,440 --> 00:42:40,920
Speaker 3: but it does so using certain philosophical language that was

717
00:42:40,960 --> 00:42:45,960
Speaker 3: frankly loaded and not really settled as theological discourse, and

718
00:42:46,000 --> 00:42:49,840
Speaker 3: so that actually created bigger problems because now it sounded

719
00:42:49,920 --> 00:42:53,840
Speaker 3: like the Church was actually affirming some other version of

720
00:42:53,880 --> 00:42:59,240
Speaker 3: Arianism even as it was rejecting the full on Arianism,

721
00:42:59,320 --> 00:43:01,960
Speaker 3: so it gives to a neo Aryanan group that's much

722
00:43:02,000 --> 00:43:05,719
Speaker 3: more philosophically astute than areas. It gives rise to these

723
00:43:05,880 --> 00:43:09,000
Speaker 3: distinctions between what we think of as the Hamasseans and

724
00:43:09,000 --> 00:43:12,319
Speaker 3: the Hamoyusians, which the short version of that is it

725
00:43:12,360 --> 00:43:15,879
Speaker 3: was a language and philosophical category problem, and it didn't

726
00:43:15,880 --> 00:43:17,440
Speaker 3: take until it took until.

727
00:43:17,160 --> 00:43:19,759
Speaker 4: Three eighty one. So we're talking my Mathers r.

728
00:43:19,920 --> 00:43:22,240
Speaker 3: Fifty six years later where the church finally says, okay,

729
00:43:22,280 --> 00:43:25,319
Speaker 3: we get our missteps of the language, so now we're

730
00:43:25,320 --> 00:43:26,799
Speaker 3: clarifying our language.

731
00:43:27,360 --> 00:43:28,640
Speaker 4: And the clarified.

732
00:43:28,239 --> 00:43:31,400
Speaker 3: Position was actually far less precise in some ways than

733
00:43:31,400 --> 00:43:34,600
Speaker 3: the original, but it's because they recognize that more precise

734
00:43:34,680 --> 00:43:38,080
Speaker 3: position in three twenty five actually created a whole other

735
00:43:38,160 --> 00:43:40,560
Speaker 3: set of problems that they didn't mean to create.

736
00:43:41,200 --> 00:43:41,680
Speaker 4: So it was a.

737
00:43:41,640 --> 00:43:46,640
Speaker 3: Deliberate loosening of what they were doing with the language

738
00:43:46,880 --> 00:43:51,760
Speaker 3: while reaffirming what we're certainly not saying is that Arius'

739
00:43:51,880 --> 00:43:53,320
Speaker 3: position is okay.

740
00:43:56,200 --> 00:43:58,959
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's really helpful because I do think

741
00:43:59,000 --> 00:44:02,879
Speaker 1: it illustrates On the one hand, you know the fact

742
00:44:02,920 --> 00:44:07,720
Speaker 1: that they loosen the language back up suggests that they're

743
00:44:07,760 --> 00:44:12,400
Speaker 1: recognizing that they'd gone too precise, too narrow, they'd hem

744
00:44:12,480 --> 00:44:16,320
Speaker 1: themselves in too much, and that they were, we might say,

745
00:44:16,640 --> 00:44:19,760
Speaker 1: more sure about their position than they deserve to be sure.

746
00:44:20,400 --> 00:44:24,120
Speaker 1: And so that precision suggests that they really thought they

747
00:44:24,239 --> 00:44:27,600
Speaker 1: understood what was going on, or were really reacting to

748
00:44:27,680 --> 00:44:31,360
Speaker 1: something in their environment right in that discourse and trying

749
00:44:31,360 --> 00:44:34,879
Speaker 1: to close something down. But the willingness to go back

750
00:44:34,920 --> 00:44:38,520
Speaker 1: and fix it says an awful lot. I think that's

751
00:44:38,560 --> 00:44:43,480
Speaker 1: actually really helpful. And on the Augustine and the Pelagian

752
00:44:43,640 --> 00:44:46,480
Speaker 1: sort of piece of this, what I find fascinating is,

753
00:44:46,760 --> 00:44:49,040
Speaker 1: you know, the way you describe pelagiaus it's something in

754
00:44:49,080 --> 00:44:55,000
Speaker 1: our environment. We still have conversations today about something in

755
00:44:55,040 --> 00:45:00,160
Speaker 1: our environment. So while we don't I don't know that

756
00:45:00,200 --> 00:45:05,200
Speaker 1: we'd want to call structural evil conversations Pelagian. But my

757
00:45:05,320 --> 00:45:09,480
Speaker 1: guess is without having read all of Pelagius's stuff, right,

758
00:45:09,640 --> 00:45:12,520
Speaker 1: my biggest exposure is from the King Arthur movie that

759
00:45:12,600 --> 00:45:18,319
Speaker 1: Clive Owen was in. But I've actually read Augustine, but

760
00:45:19,400 --> 00:45:22,880
Speaker 1: I haven't read Pelagias. But my guess is that if

761
00:45:22,960 --> 00:45:26,760
Speaker 1: that's part of what he's talking about, he's also onto something.

762
00:45:28,000 --> 00:45:31,920
Speaker 1: But once you start pulling that stuff too far, it

763
00:45:32,040 --> 00:45:35,799
Speaker 1: becomes aberrant because you begin to leave other things out.

764
00:45:35,920 --> 00:45:40,040
Speaker 1: And so, just having read Augustine, for instance, his Confessions.

765
00:45:40,280 --> 00:45:42,440
Speaker 2: There's a line in there, it's one of my favorite lines.

766
00:45:42,480 --> 00:45:47,799
Speaker 1: He talks about these offices that men occupy, where they

767
00:45:47,840 --> 00:45:52,040
Speaker 1: are essentially drawn to the well done, well done of

768
00:45:52,120 --> 00:45:57,919
Speaker 1: other men. And so in that little statement you have

769
00:45:58,080 --> 00:46:01,360
Speaker 1: sort of the environmental because he is talking about this

770
00:46:01,560 --> 00:46:06,880
Speaker 1: office that exists, but he's also talking about the lack

771
00:46:07,400 --> 00:46:12,399
Speaker 1: within man. They're working together there, and so I think

772
00:46:12,440 --> 00:46:15,680
Speaker 1: that there's just a realization that we need to have

773
00:46:15,920 --> 00:46:19,600
Speaker 1: that we tend to think of these heresy orthodoxy as

774
00:46:19,600 --> 00:46:25,520
Speaker 1: really sharp lines, and we have the benefit of years

775
00:46:25,560 --> 00:46:29,640
Speaker 1: of discussion and dialogue to do that. But the reality

776
00:46:29,760 --> 00:46:32,080
Speaker 1: is that a lot of this stuff was wrestled to

777
00:46:32,160 --> 00:46:39,000
Speaker 1: the ground over decades and still leaves room for us

778
00:46:39,040 --> 00:46:43,080
Speaker 1: today to argue about the jots and tittles of it.

779
00:46:44,920 --> 00:46:49,160
Speaker 1: Even if we stay within a broad doctrinal position, there's

780
00:46:49,200 --> 00:46:51,319
Speaker 1: still a lot about those doctrines. I mean, I even

781
00:46:51,320 --> 00:46:54,919
Speaker 1: think about the conversations we've had recently about the Kenosis

782
00:46:54,960 --> 00:46:59,919
Speaker 1: and Gregory of Nissa's difference from more standard Canotic Christology.

783
00:47:00,840 --> 00:47:05,520
Speaker 1: It's fascinating stuff, and you can see how it would fit.

784
00:47:06,640 --> 00:47:09,600
Speaker 2: But nobody's denying the doctrine of an errancy or I mean,

785
00:47:09,719 --> 00:47:13,680
Speaker 2: the doctrine of the kenosis, right, They're both construing it

786
00:47:13,719 --> 00:47:16,760
Speaker 2: in different ways, and I think in some ways we've

787
00:47:16,880 --> 00:47:20,440
Speaker 2: lost the ability to do that, at least in certain circles.

788
00:47:21,360 --> 00:47:24,040
Speaker 1: I would say, just from my Old Testament theologian context,

789
00:47:24,480 --> 00:47:26,759
Speaker 1: the one that always pops into my mind is the

790
00:47:26,800 --> 00:47:27,720
Speaker 1: creation narrative.

791
00:47:29,200 --> 00:47:30,280
Speaker 2: The creation narrative.

792
00:47:30,840 --> 00:47:33,480
Speaker 1: You have some people who, if you're not a seven

793
00:47:33,600 --> 00:47:37,080
Speaker 1: Day you know, Young Earth creationist, you're reading the creation

794
00:47:37,200 --> 00:47:41,160
Speaker 1: narrative incorrectly, and just from an Old Testament perspective, I

795
00:47:41,200 --> 00:47:45,840
Speaker 1: sit back and say, look, I'm not sure that's the case.

796
00:47:46,960 --> 00:47:49,680
Speaker 1: I think this narrative is doing something quite different than

797
00:47:49,800 --> 00:47:56,640
Speaker 1: affirming a very specific historic, historic viewpoint of when the

798
00:47:56,680 --> 00:47:59,680
Speaker 1: Earth was actually created. I don't think dating was ever

799
00:47:59,719 --> 00:48:01,520
Speaker 1: the issue when these things were written.

800
00:48:02,360 --> 00:48:04,400
Speaker 2: And in saying that, I'm not trying to sidestep the

801
00:48:04,480 --> 00:48:08,040
Speaker 2: dating issues, although it's certainly not my specialty. But what

802
00:48:08,120 --> 00:48:12,080
Speaker 2: I am saying is that there's more here. There's more

803
00:48:12,120 --> 00:48:15,279
Speaker 2: here than that, and so just because someone doesn't come

804
00:48:15,320 --> 00:48:18,520
Speaker 2: to the same conclusion on that issue doesn't mean that

805
00:48:18,520 --> 00:48:21,839
Speaker 2: they're disrespecting the text. It may mean that they're looking

806
00:48:21,880 --> 00:48:23,080
Speaker 2: at the text in.

807
00:48:23,120 --> 00:48:27,640
Speaker 1: Its other in its sort of excess of that these

808
00:48:27,680 --> 00:48:30,520
Speaker 1: different ways of seeing it. And so I don't think

809
00:48:30,560 --> 00:48:32,719
Speaker 1: even the way that I would read Genesis one to

810
00:48:32,760 --> 00:48:35,480
Speaker 1: one through two three, which is not necessarily the way

811
00:48:35,480 --> 00:48:37,480
Speaker 1: that a Young Earth creationist would want me to read

812
00:48:37,520 --> 00:48:42,759
Speaker 1: that text, I don't see it as being an aberrant viewpoint.

813
00:48:42,800 --> 00:48:44,400
Speaker 1: There are a lot of scholars who read it in

814
00:48:44,440 --> 00:48:47,959
Speaker 1: a very similar way that I would, and I don't

815
00:48:47,960 --> 00:48:51,560
Speaker 1: really want to be closed in to the same ways

816
00:48:51,600 --> 00:48:53,720
Speaker 1: that Young Earth creationists read that text.

817
00:48:54,239 --> 00:48:57,879
Speaker 2: I think it's too narrowing. I think that creates more

818
00:48:57,920 --> 00:49:03,280
Speaker 2: problems than it solves. Isn't negating their position, that's suggesting

819
00:49:03,320 --> 00:49:08,000
Speaker 2: that their position is too close, and that if they

820
00:49:08,000 --> 00:49:10,840
Speaker 2: would open it up a bit, there's probably a richness

821
00:49:10,880 --> 00:49:14,040
Speaker 2: there that they would discover that is lacking.

822
00:49:17,400 --> 00:49:20,759
Speaker 3: Yeah, I appreciate your bringing up that conversation because I

823
00:49:20,760 --> 00:49:24,960
Speaker 3: think it helps me clarify to your point, the Augustine

824
00:49:24,960 --> 00:49:29,480
Speaker 3: Pelagious dynamic and that and in a way that carries

825
00:49:29,520 --> 00:49:35,600
Speaker 3: into that conversation to your point, the church wasn't saying

826
00:49:35,680 --> 00:49:39,520
Speaker 3: no to structural evil in our language. When they said

827
00:49:39,520 --> 00:49:45,920
Speaker 3: no to Pelagius, they were saying no to Pelagius stalling

828
00:49:45,960 --> 00:49:49,000
Speaker 3: the conversation and refusing to accept that there is an

829
00:49:49,000 --> 00:49:53,000
Speaker 3: impediment of sin that exists within us, right within our hearts.

830
00:49:53,640 --> 00:49:56,680
Speaker 3: That was the problem. It wasn't a rejection of everything

831
00:49:56,719 --> 00:50:01,919
Speaker 3: else Plagia says, right, And so to that point, to

832
00:50:01,920 --> 00:50:06,160
Speaker 3: this day, that's an important part in the way that

833
00:50:06,200 --> 00:50:09,480
Speaker 3: the Church articulates things that can't just be reduced to

834
00:50:09,520 --> 00:50:11,960
Speaker 3: Augustine's remark. Augustine's remarks to players, and.

835
00:50:11,880 --> 00:50:14,120
Speaker 4: It's not doesn't mean that Augustus was rejecting.

836
00:50:14,719 --> 00:50:18,200
Speaker 3: What we would think of as structural evil. His big

837
00:50:18,239 --> 00:50:21,120
Speaker 3: issue was to point to the impediment that exists within

838
00:50:21,160 --> 00:50:25,720
Speaker 3: our heart and the bondage of the will that eventually

839
00:50:25,719 --> 00:50:30,040
Speaker 3: the reformers also will take up and extreme forms. Right,

840
00:50:32,320 --> 00:50:34,880
Speaker 3: But that doesn't foreclose against being able to say there

841
00:50:34,920 --> 00:50:38,120
Speaker 3: are elements at play here that are important to the

842
00:50:38,280 --> 00:50:40,560
Speaker 3: I think that speaks to the creation element here, because

843
00:50:41,840 --> 00:50:45,000
Speaker 3: what's really interesting about this creation debate, as you know,

844
00:50:46,440 --> 00:50:49,560
Speaker 3: is that it begins in a particular time and place

845
00:50:49,920 --> 00:50:55,840
Speaker 3: that's politically and socially charged. If you go back to

846
00:50:55,880 --> 00:50:59,560
Speaker 3: the le even the late eighteen hundreds before this issue

847
00:50:59,560 --> 00:51:01,640
Speaker 3: was pulitic charged in the same way. The sorts of

848
00:51:01,719 --> 00:51:07,080
Speaker 3: figures that many many would see as traditionalist, right, the

849
00:51:07,160 --> 00:51:10,200
Speaker 3: Charles Hodges of the world, the bb war Fields of

850
00:51:10,200 --> 00:51:17,040
Speaker 3: the world, don't have the sort of emotional concerns at

851
00:51:17,040 --> 00:51:17,560
Speaker 3: play here.

852
00:51:18,239 --> 00:51:18,479
Speaker 4: Right.

853
00:51:19,360 --> 00:51:21,279
Speaker 3: In fact, Charles Hodge goes so far as just to

854
00:51:21,320 --> 00:51:23,839
Speaker 3: take for granted that the earth is millions of years old,

855
00:51:25,000 --> 00:51:26,759
Speaker 3: And yet he's one of those people seen as the

856
00:51:26,800 --> 00:51:30,080
Speaker 3: defender the old Princetonian right, the defender of traditional ways.

857
00:51:31,200 --> 00:51:33,759
Speaker 3: So what happens in the rise of the creation debates

858
00:51:34,320 --> 00:51:41,360
Speaker 3: is often less about textual engagement and more about broader

859
00:51:41,440 --> 00:51:46,640
Speaker 3: social movements that are underway that set up postures and defensiveness. Right,

860
00:51:49,080 --> 00:51:51,400
Speaker 3: there's a desire to say that the Bible is trustworthy,

861
00:51:51,440 --> 00:51:54,360
Speaker 3: and that begins to take the text to a degree.

862
00:51:55,600 --> 00:52:00,319
Speaker 4: That frankly just isn't done in the text. Right.

863
00:52:00,600 --> 00:52:03,719
Speaker 3: We've talked about in other context, Genesis won is a

864
00:52:03,760 --> 00:52:07,240
Speaker 3: sinatic text, right. It's a written to Israel and Sinai,

865
00:52:07,840 --> 00:52:11,040
Speaker 3: and it's written as a precursor to understanding who this

866
00:52:11,200 --> 00:52:14,320
Speaker 3: people group of biblical Israel is that God has called

867
00:52:14,360 --> 00:52:19,040
Speaker 3: out to do a specific work of redemption through that's

868
00:52:19,040 --> 00:52:20,800
Speaker 3: supposed to be not just for their good, but for

869
00:52:21,520 --> 00:52:26,279
Speaker 3: the ends of the earth, all the nations. Right, and

870
00:52:26,360 --> 00:52:28,480
Speaker 3: so the telling of the Creation story is in some

871
00:52:28,560 --> 00:52:31,920
Speaker 3: sense meant to be a telling of what God desires

872
00:52:31,960 --> 00:52:35,160
Speaker 3: as the way that He organizes the world that sets

873
00:52:35,160 --> 00:52:37,960
Speaker 3: itself in contrast to the ways that the kingdoms of

874
00:52:38,000 --> 00:52:42,640
Speaker 3: the Earth, especially Pharaoh that they're leaving has organized the

875
00:52:42,680 --> 00:52:47,000
Speaker 3: earth and setting up this contrast, then it helps us

876
00:52:47,040 --> 00:52:49,960
Speaker 3: understand what biblical Israel was supposed to be that arguably

877
00:52:50,040 --> 00:52:52,200
Speaker 3: never realized, arguably.

878
00:52:53,840 --> 00:52:55,839
Speaker 4: A very different conversation.

879
00:52:55,480 --> 00:53:03,280
Speaker 3: Than a modern conversation about radiocarbon dating or counting genealogical cycles.

880
00:53:03,520 --> 00:53:05,040
Speaker 4: It's just not the point of the text. Now.

881
00:53:05,040 --> 00:53:07,640
Speaker 3: It doesn't mean you can't have instillary judgments from that,

882
00:53:09,480 --> 00:53:11,920
Speaker 3: But to look at the text in those sorts of ways,

883
00:53:12,520 --> 00:53:16,920
Speaker 3: does that inversion work of it now ties ties textual

884
00:53:17,000 --> 00:53:20,840
Speaker 3: understanding and interpretation into social moments.

885
00:53:22,480 --> 00:53:22,719
Speaker 2: Yeah.

886
00:53:23,360 --> 00:53:26,239
Speaker 1: I used to try to illustrate this for students this way.

887
00:53:27,600 --> 00:53:31,799
Speaker 1: I would say something like, over the weekend, I went

888
00:53:31,840 --> 00:53:37,720
Speaker 1: to the hospital to visit my wife. Am I trying

889
00:53:37,760 --> 00:53:43,000
Speaker 1: to prove the existence of hospitals. With that statement, I'm

890
00:53:43,040 --> 00:53:48,640
Speaker 1: really not I'm conveying something that I did over the weekend. Now,

891
00:53:48,719 --> 00:53:50,520
Speaker 1: am I assuming a hospital exists?

892
00:53:51,200 --> 00:53:55,759
Speaker 2: Sure? I'm assuming that something there is something called the hospital? Right?

893
00:53:56,320 --> 00:53:58,480
Speaker 1: And then you notice, well, why was I visiting my

894
00:53:58,520 --> 00:54:01,080
Speaker 1: wife at the hospital? You know me well enough to

895
00:54:01,120 --> 00:54:03,680
Speaker 1: know that my wife works at a hospital, so you

896
00:54:03,760 --> 00:54:06,719
Speaker 1: might assume, oh, okay, she was working and James went

897
00:54:06,760 --> 00:54:09,440
Speaker 1: to visit her. That's nice, But she could very well

898
00:54:09,480 --> 00:54:12,279
Speaker 1: have been checked into the hospital as a patient and

899
00:54:12,320 --> 00:54:12,960
Speaker 1: I needed to go a.

900
00:54:13,000 --> 00:54:14,000
Speaker 2: Visitor for that reason.

901
00:54:15,120 --> 00:54:19,080
Speaker 1: There are these layers within this communication right where we

902
00:54:19,120 --> 00:54:23,400
Speaker 1: can infer things. There are reference there's a way to

903
00:54:23,480 --> 00:54:26,960
Speaker 1: which all these different words correspond to a reality behind them.

904
00:54:28,080 --> 00:54:31,160
Speaker 1: But unpacking them requires us to think through all the

905
00:54:31,200 --> 00:54:35,000
Speaker 1: different contextual clues. It requires us to think about the intention.

906
00:54:36,280 --> 00:54:39,680
Speaker 1: What was the intention of this speech? Many of the

907
00:54:39,719 --> 00:54:44,640
Speaker 1: times that's implied in the grammar. Right, If I don't

908
00:54:44,640 --> 00:54:48,120
Speaker 1: say there is such a thing as a hospital, I'm

909
00:54:48,160 --> 00:54:51,360
Speaker 1: probably not trying to demand that you accept that there's

910
00:54:51,440 --> 00:54:55,920
Speaker 1: this thing called the hospital. It's more of a passing reference.

911
00:54:56,520 --> 00:54:59,920
Speaker 1: And so I think that when I do that with student,

912
00:55:00,320 --> 00:55:02,839
Speaker 1: it sort of helps them understand that there are some

913
00:55:03,080 --> 00:55:07,600
Speaker 1: things that are layered into any of our communications that

914
00:55:07,640 --> 00:55:11,759
Speaker 1: we've got to unpack, but they still aren't the point

915
00:55:12,400 --> 00:55:15,680
Speaker 1: of what's being said. And so I think a lot

916
00:55:15,680 --> 00:55:18,120
Speaker 1: of times what ends up happening. And again I think

917
00:55:18,160 --> 00:55:21,480
Speaker 1: this has unfortunately been tied in with inversion in ways

918
00:55:21,520 --> 00:55:25,000
Speaker 1: that I don't think it necessarily needs to be, is

919
00:55:25,040 --> 00:55:28,719
Speaker 1: that as we're trying to determine the reference, once we

920
00:55:28,800 --> 00:55:32,560
Speaker 1: decide what that reference has to be, and being in

921
00:55:32,719 --> 00:55:35,400
Speaker 1: very intentional with that language, Once we decide what that

922
00:55:35,520 --> 00:55:40,200
Speaker 1: reference has to be, there's no other way to read it.

923
00:55:40,200 --> 00:55:44,920
Speaker 2: It just has to be this, And we begin to

924
00:55:45,080 --> 00:55:49,399
Speaker 2: lose then what's actually being done in the text? What's

925
00:55:49,440 --> 00:55:51,319
Speaker 2: the text trying to do to us?

926
00:55:51,400 --> 00:55:55,360
Speaker 1: That speech act theory would call it the ilocutionary force.

927
00:55:56,320 --> 00:55:58,160
Speaker 2: What is this text trying to do to us? What's

928
00:55:58,200 --> 00:55:59,879
Speaker 2: it really sort of pushing for?

929
00:56:00,680 --> 00:56:03,120
Speaker 1: That's it's much easier to do, I think, on the

930
00:56:03,200 --> 00:56:05,680
Speaker 1: level of a one sentence, just like the one I've given,

931
00:56:06,239 --> 00:56:09,000
Speaker 1: But when we start to look at discourses more broadly,

932
00:56:09,760 --> 00:56:13,319
Speaker 1: it's very difficult, I think, to discern how do we

933
00:56:13,400 --> 00:56:19,359
Speaker 1: parse out all of these different reference and understand how

934
00:56:19,480 --> 00:56:24,000
Speaker 1: these different discourses, longer passages Genesis one one through two three,

935
00:56:24,080 --> 00:56:28,200
Speaker 1: what's that whole thing trying to do to us? What's

936
00:56:28,200 --> 00:56:31,120
Speaker 1: it trying to convey? Whether, where's it trying to push us?

937
00:56:31,840 --> 00:56:34,640
Speaker 1: Those are the bigger interpretive questions that when we start

938
00:56:34,640 --> 00:56:38,560
Speaker 1: to close this stuff down, those I feel like get

939
00:56:38,760 --> 00:56:42,839
Speaker 1: lost first, and they may be some of the most

940
00:56:42,880 --> 00:56:45,200
Speaker 1: important things we could ever dig out of the text.

941
00:56:45,800 --> 00:56:50,399
Speaker 1: It's really understanding how these big swaths of scripture are

942
00:56:50,440 --> 00:56:54,840
Speaker 1: trying to push us towards something different. I think, you know,

943
00:56:54,920 --> 00:56:58,320
Speaker 1: if we were just to read, you know, that Genesis

944
00:56:58,360 --> 00:57:02,120
Speaker 1: one through four, let's say, which is usually the unit

945
00:57:02,200 --> 00:57:06,120
Speaker 1: in between those totodotes, if we were to read those

946
00:57:06,160 --> 00:57:11,400
Speaker 1: as just historical narratives, I think we're missing something, missing

947
00:57:11,480 --> 00:57:18,760
Speaker 1: something big. They're obviously symbolic and sort of forward looking

948
00:57:18,800 --> 00:57:23,120
Speaker 1: in ways that if we don't notice, we're really going

949
00:57:23,160 --> 00:57:26,120
Speaker 1: to miss a lot of what's going on in those texts,

950
00:57:27,400 --> 00:57:29,400
Speaker 1: and so I just think we have to be careful

951
00:57:31,240 --> 00:57:35,160
Speaker 1: not to There's this great book written by Ronald Bert.

952
00:57:35,200 --> 00:57:38,400
Speaker 1: It's called Brokerage. Enclosure has nothing to do with biblical studies.

953
00:57:38,800 --> 00:57:44,680
Speaker 1: It's all about navigating organizations and what Ronald Bert says,

954
00:57:44,800 --> 00:57:49,240
Speaker 1: is the people who are able to broker the structural

955
00:57:49,280 --> 00:57:53,800
Speaker 1: gaps within an organization move let's say between when we

956
00:57:53,840 --> 00:57:57,920
Speaker 1: are in distance education, let's say distance education, between moving

957
00:57:57,920 --> 00:58:01,720
Speaker 1: in distance education to moving to the market department, crossing

958
00:58:01,760 --> 00:58:05,120
Speaker 1: that structural gap, moving from distance learning to the IT

959
00:58:05,480 --> 00:58:10,439
Speaker 1: department and crossing that structural gap. People who can do

960
00:58:10,480 --> 00:58:13,439
Speaker 1: that are going to be at a much higher risk

961
00:58:13,520 --> 00:58:17,800
Speaker 1: of having good ideas. That's almost a verbatim quote from

962
00:58:17,840 --> 00:58:20,680
Speaker 1: Ronald Burt. And I think we're in a very similar

963
00:58:20,720 --> 00:58:25,520
Speaker 1: situation here right when you talk about we've talked about

964
00:58:25,600 --> 00:58:28,840
Speaker 1: going to other texts, right, reading these other texts that

965
00:58:28,880 --> 00:58:33,080
Speaker 1: aren't usually read, incorporating those back in. We're talking about

966
00:58:33,400 --> 00:58:36,840
Speaker 1: looking at theologians that may differ from us, that hold

967
00:58:36,880 --> 00:58:42,960
Speaker 1: these sort of more you know, interesting positions than we do. Right,

968
00:58:43,080 --> 00:58:47,280
Speaker 1: they're different positions than we might hold, understanding them where

969
00:58:47,280 --> 00:58:51,080
Speaker 1: they're coming from deeply, you know, grappling with their positions.

970
00:58:51,640 --> 00:58:56,080
Speaker 1: Looking at the historical theologians, and you know this structural

971
00:58:56,080 --> 00:59:00,120
Speaker 1: gap in time that we have with them. I think

972
00:59:00,160 --> 00:59:05,280
Speaker 1: the better we can bridge those structural gaps, the better

973
00:59:05,400 --> 00:59:07,720
Speaker 1: ideas we are going to have about the Biblical text,

974
00:59:08,880 --> 00:59:11,480
Speaker 1: and to me, that's just sort of makes the whole

975
00:59:11,560 --> 00:59:14,880
Speaker 1: thing worth it. Even if you sit back and you say, well,

976
00:59:14,920 --> 00:59:17,640
Speaker 1: I feel kind of unsettled with all my you know,

977
00:59:17,680 --> 00:59:21,360
Speaker 1: I don't have like a clear interpretive grid that I

978
00:59:21,400 --> 00:59:23,640
Speaker 1: can hold on to and say this is mine and

979
00:59:23,680 --> 00:59:26,960
Speaker 1: it's closed off, and you know, I could put it

980
00:59:26,960 --> 00:59:30,400
Speaker 1: in a little lunch box and carry it around with me. True,

981
00:59:30,720 --> 00:59:33,440
Speaker 1: you do not have that, but I think you're at

982
00:59:33,520 --> 00:59:36,520
Speaker 1: risk of having better ideas about the biblical text, and

983
00:59:36,560 --> 00:59:38,520
Speaker 1: that to me seems like a great trade off.

984
00:59:40,960 --> 00:59:43,320
Speaker 4: This is very related to conversations and creativity.

985
00:59:43,560 --> 00:59:46,040
Speaker 5: At this point, we have no time to get into yeah,

986
00:59:46,080 --> 00:59:47,880
Speaker 5: but what I do want to say quickly is that

987
00:59:48,560 --> 00:59:50,920
Speaker 5: the idea of broker and gaps, the business of that

988
00:59:52,080 --> 00:59:54,480
Speaker 5: is very much related, I think to the ways that

989
00:59:54,560 --> 00:59:55,000
Speaker 5: we think.

990
00:59:55,240 --> 00:59:57,880
Speaker 3: You know, as you get older, you start to get

991
00:59:57,880 --> 01:00:01,160
Speaker 3: more solidified understandings, often reasons in the sense that you

992
01:00:01,200 --> 01:00:03,680
Speaker 3: have a greater and greater grasp on things. But as

993
01:00:03,680 --> 01:00:07,120
Speaker 3: you get more solidified understandings, your opportunity for creativity collapses

994
01:00:07,120 --> 01:00:11,680
Speaker 3: because you're no longer engaging as charitably with those things

995
01:00:11,680 --> 01:00:15,320
Speaker 3: that are outside of your systems. Right, And I think

996
01:00:15,360 --> 01:00:19,520
Speaker 3: about that in contrast to children who are often much

997
01:00:19,680 --> 01:00:23,720
Speaker 3: less sure about the definitiveness of these lines. Right. I

998
01:00:23,720 --> 01:00:27,200
Speaker 3: have a daughter who's incredibly creative and also incredibly analytic,

999
01:00:28,320 --> 01:00:30,360
Speaker 3: and we're taught that those things are two different ways

1000
01:00:30,360 --> 01:00:33,200
Speaker 3: of being, that the analytic ones are not the creative ones.

1001
01:00:33,240 --> 01:00:35,640
Speaker 3: But I think actually the creative analytic.

1002
01:00:35,200 --> 01:00:38,160
Speaker 4: Ones are the ones who do the most interesting things. Right,

1003
01:00:38,200 --> 01:00:38,840
Speaker 4: And I watch her.

1004
01:00:38,880 --> 01:00:40,680
Speaker 3: She'll walk over to the bag that has all the

1005
01:00:40,720 --> 01:00:43,240
Speaker 3: recycling stuff that is getting ready to go out, and

1006
01:00:43,280 --> 01:00:45,800
Speaker 3: she starts pulling them out, And my immediate inclination is, no,

1007
01:00:45,960 --> 01:00:48,080
Speaker 3: leave it alone. That's more garbage. I'm trying to take

1008
01:00:48,080 --> 01:00:51,240
Speaker 3: that stuff out. But you stop, you wait, you watch,

1009
01:00:51,280 --> 01:00:54,680
Speaker 3: you listen, and you realize she's doing some really interesting stuff.

1010
01:00:54,720 --> 01:00:59,240
Speaker 3: She's taken that recycling and she's made she's done her

1011
01:00:59,240 --> 01:01:02,960
Speaker 3: science experiment with them, or she's done crafty things with them.

1012
01:01:03,400 --> 01:01:07,520
Speaker 4: Incredible. But that's a capacity that we tend to lose

1013
01:01:07,560 --> 01:01:08,360
Speaker 4: as we get older.

1014
01:01:09,560 --> 01:01:13,400
Speaker 3: That maybe the commission to close us out is to

1015
01:01:13,440 --> 01:01:16,600
Speaker 3: fight that capacity, not because we don't want to have

1016
01:01:16,680 --> 01:01:20,080
Speaker 3: interpretive context, but because we need to constantly realize that

1017
01:01:20,120 --> 01:01:24,440
Speaker 3: whatever interpretive structures we're forming that are better and better informed,

1018
01:01:24,440 --> 01:01:27,560
Speaker 3: are still far from fully informed and need to be

1019
01:01:27,640 --> 01:01:28,440
Speaker 3: written in pencil.

1020
01:01:28,520 --> 01:01:28,640
Speaker 2: Right.

1021
01:01:28,640 --> 01:01:31,720
Speaker 3: We need to be able to erase them or erase lines,

1022
01:01:32,120 --> 01:01:34,520
Speaker 3: and to think about something new, right, not think of

1023
01:01:34,560 --> 01:01:39,000
Speaker 3: the newer work that's being done in crimodgy ways, but.

1024
01:01:39,000 --> 01:01:40,600
Speaker 4: Neither just simply accepting it. Right.

1025
01:01:40,680 --> 01:01:45,840
Speaker 3: That's the hermoneutical spiral of constantly reevaluating, constantly.

1026
01:01:45,400 --> 01:01:47,400
Speaker 4: Allowing the text to speak to the situation.

1027
01:01:48,840 --> 01:01:51,440
Speaker 3: And that's where the good creative energies will come back,

1028
01:01:51,880 --> 01:01:55,760
Speaker 3: and maybe we'll find there a fewer things to fight about.

1029
01:01:55,440 --> 01:01:58,800
Speaker 4: Without giving up the faith, without giving up.

1030
01:02:00,080 --> 01:02:04,560
Speaker 3: Scripture says as the place we turn to right as

1031
01:02:04,800 --> 01:02:08,800
Speaker 3: the authoritative voice and understanding what God is at work doing,

1032
01:02:09,800 --> 01:02:11,919
Speaker 3: but not necessarily assuming that we've got to figure it out.

1033
01:02:15,160 --> 01:02:16,919
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's right.

1034
01:02:17,200 --> 01:02:19,800
Speaker 1: I love the creativity angle, and we'll we'll have to

1035
01:02:19,800 --> 01:02:20,640
Speaker 1: talk about that more.

1036
01:02:20,560 --> 01:02:21,480
Speaker 2: In a different episode.

1037
01:02:21,840 --> 01:02:25,120
Speaker 1: I'm reading the book you recommend it on beauty, and

1038
01:02:26,520 --> 01:02:27,760
Speaker 1: she talks about in there.

1039
01:02:27,800 --> 01:02:29,200
Speaker 2: I'm blanking on her name right now.

1040
01:02:29,560 --> 01:02:35,600
Speaker 1: I apologize with Natalie Karn's Beauty. She talks in there

1041
01:02:35,640 --> 01:02:41,640
Speaker 1: about the shift from artists to artisans and the different

1042
01:02:41,680 --> 01:02:46,040
Speaker 1: ways that creativity comes to be not just what you

1043
01:02:46,120 --> 01:02:49,200
Speaker 1: can do with some you know, with raw materials, but

1044
01:02:49,320 --> 01:02:53,080
Speaker 1: how you can think something new into existence. And I

1045
01:02:53,440 --> 01:02:58,760
Speaker 1: think often as we consider creativity, we can fight that

1046
01:02:58,840 --> 01:03:02,200
Speaker 1: creativity because we are so afraid of bringing something new

1047
01:03:02,240 --> 01:03:05,600
Speaker 1: into existence. But the reality is that when we're doing

1048
01:03:05,600 --> 01:03:08,800
Speaker 1: this with biblical studies, we're always looking at the text.

1049
01:03:10,080 --> 01:03:12,680
Speaker 1: We're trying to look at the text with new angles,

1050
01:03:13,440 --> 01:03:16,880
Speaker 1: and in that way we are exercising this sort of interesting.

1051
01:03:16,440 --> 01:03:24,160
Speaker 2: Mix of analytical tools, analytical site with a creative mind

1052
01:03:24,240 --> 01:03:27,760
Speaker 2: that says, I know I haven't understood the full pattern

1053
01:03:27,800 --> 01:03:30,360
Speaker 2: that God has given me, and I sure would like to.

1054
01:03:31,600 --> 01:03:34,520
Speaker 2: I think there's something to that, so well, we'll have to.

1055
01:03:34,440 --> 01:03:36,600
Speaker 1: Get into that in another episode. But you're right, we're

1056
01:03:36,680 --> 01:03:39,000
Speaker 1: kind of out of time today. But Bro, this is

1057
01:03:39,040 --> 01:03:43,680
Speaker 1: a great discussion. I appreciate it. And inversion is I

1058
01:03:43,680 --> 01:03:45,560
Speaker 1: think one of those things that we have to watch

1059
01:03:45,560 --> 01:03:48,240
Speaker 1: out for, and I think especially we have to watch

1060
01:03:48,240 --> 01:03:51,080
Speaker 1: out for it as we amp up our technology, and

1061
01:03:51,080 --> 01:03:54,320
Speaker 1: that'll be the next episode that we address. The next

1062
01:03:54,320 --> 01:03:58,560
Speaker 1: condition we address is amplification and the way that technology

1063
01:03:58,600 --> 01:04:02,520
Speaker 1: tends to amplify us and amplify our capacity in good

1064
01:04:02,560 --> 01:04:06,640
Speaker 1: and bad ways. And so we'll think about application in

1065
01:04:06,720 --> 01:04:10,920
Speaker 1: the next episode. But thanks everybody for being here, Thanks

1066
01:04:10,960 --> 01:04:13,400
Speaker 1: Ashish again for the conversation, and we'll catch you all

1067
01:04:13,440 --> 01:04:15,360
Speaker 1: in the next episode of Thinking Christian.

1068
01:04:15,520 --> 01:04:15,960
Speaker 2: Take care,