Theology in the Raw - S9 Ep919: NT Greek, Verbal Aspect Theory, Evangelical Tribalism, and Interpreting the Bible: Dr. Constantine Campbell

Episode Date: November 15, 2021

Constantine Campbell's doctorate is in ancient Greek language and linguistics (Macquarie University, 2006). He was a professor of New Testament studies for 14 years, having taught at Moore College in Sydney and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Chicago. Campbell is the author of 15 books, with focus on biblical Greek, New Testament interpretation, and the apostle Paul. His book Paul and Union with Christ was the 2014 Christianity Today Book of the Year in Biblical Studies. His latest releases are The Perfect Storm (with Buist M. Fanning & Stanley E. Porter; Peter Lang, 2021), Reading the New Testament as Christian Scripture (with Jonathan T. Pennington; Baker Academic, 2020), and Paul and the Hope of Glory (Zondervan Academic, 2020).  Campbell was co-chair of the Biblical Greek Language and Linguistics section of the Society of Biblical Literature, and is an Associate Editor of the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary series. He is an elected member of the preeminent scholarly guild, Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas. Campbell is also a highly regarded jazz saxophonist and is a visiting instructor at The Australian National University's School of Music. He is the presenter of two documentary series on the apostles Paul and Peter. Campbell lives in Canberra, Australia. Interested in designing the conference T-shirt for the Theology in the Raw “Exiles in Babylon Conference?” Submit your design to [e-mail] The top 3 designs will get free access to the conference (in person or virtual) and the #1 selected design will get free access to the conference and the afterparty and dinner at my house.  Designs must be submitted to Chris by November 26th. Feel free to use various slogans like “Exiles in Babylon,” “Exiled,” “Theology in the Raw,” “Raw Theology,” or other one-liners like “Allegiance to a kingdom not a political party,” “Jesus is political not partisan” or whatever. Or use no wording at all. Theology in the Raw Conference - Exiles in Babylon At the Theology in the Raw conference, we will be challenged to think like exiles about race, sexuality, gender, critical race theory, hell, transgender identities, climate change, creation care, American politics, and what it means to love your democratic or republican neighbor as yourself. Different views will be presented. No question is off limits. No political party will be praised. Everyone will be challenged to think. And Jesus will be upheld as supreme. Support Preston Support Preston by going to patreon.com Venmo: @Preston-Sprinkle-1 Connect with Preston Twitter | @PrestonSprinkle Instagram | @preston.sprinkle Youtube | Preston Sprinkle Check out Dr. Sprinkle’s website prestonsprinkle.com Stay Up to Date with the Podcast Twitter | @RawTheology Instagram | @TheologyintheRaw If you enjoy the podcast, be sure to leave a review.

Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. Again, as I said in the last couple episodes, we are asking for you creative types to submit a design for the conference t-shirt that sort of represents the theme, the vibe, the slogans, the logos of the conference. And so if you're a creative person who likes to develop designs that you want to go on a t-shirt, then you can submit these designs to chris at theologianarod.com. That's chris at theologianarod.com.com submit your designs before november 26th and then we will go through two selection processes the theology nara team will select the top three and then we'll submit those top three to my patreon supporters who will select the number one design that they like and if you get selected to the top three if your design makes it a top three you get free access to the conference if it gets selected number one you get free selected to the top three, if your design makes it to the top three, you get free access to the conference.

If it gets selected number one, you get free access to the conference and to the after party on Friday night and to my house for a private dinner with me and a few selected guests. So if that interests you at all, then please submit your design. All the info is in the show notes below. And if you want to find out more about the Theology in the Rock Conference next spring here on Boise, then you can go to pressandsprinkle.com. And I'm sure all that info is also in the show notes. Okay. Constantine Campbell, my word. Where do I start with this guy? This guy is a brilliant New Testament scholar and a professional jazz musician. Those are probably two professional expertises that have never been joined together before, but they have come together in Dr.

Constantine Campbell. His doctorate was in ancient Greek language and linguistics. He was a professor of New Testament studies for 14 years. He taught at Moore College in Sydney and at Ted's Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Chicago. He's written tons of books, including Paul and Union with Christ, which was the 2014 Christianity Day Book of the Year Award in Biblical Studies. He's written many other books, The Perfect Storm, Reading the New Testament as Christian Scripture, Paul and the Hope of Glory, blah, blah, blah. There's so many here. I can't even, it would take a whole podcast to go through his whole CV. Campbell is also a highly recognized, highly regarded jazz saxophonist, saxophonist, saxophonist, and is a visiting

instructor at the Australian National University's School of Music. Goodness. He's the presenter of two documentary series of the apostles Paul and Peter. He's walked on the moon. He's visited Pluto back when it was a planet. And I think he has a few stars named after him in the neighboring galaxies. I don't know. I'm assuming that all that's true. Anyway, I'm so excited to talk to Konstantin because the dude's just brilliant and just

invigorating and challenging. And yeah, you're going to love this. Well, most people will love this podcast. Some might be a little troubled by it because he's not afraid to spice things up. So please welcome to the show the one here with Dr. Constantine Campbell, whom I have known from a distance for a long time. So, Con, you know, we've been at conferences together. I don't think we've ever actually had, I don't think, a conversation together. But I've always seen you from a distance.

Like, oh, my gosh, there's like Con Campbell, like probably the sexiest New Testament scholar alive. Oh, man. And this dude, like, is a professional musician. You are, I don't know, maybe fluent in ancient Greek. Like you kind of do it all. So I'm a little intimidated, quite honestly, to have you on the show. We did meet once. I remember meeting you one time,

but I don't think we had much time to chat. Yeah, we were with Joel Willits, and I think Katja introduced us. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But that's the only time. And I've been aware of you too, of course, and following some of the stuff you've been doing.

And we've got so many mutual friends. It's crazy that we don't know each other. So many. And a mutual editor. So Katja, who is one of the main kind of academic theological editors at Zondervan, both you and I worked together. And I do vaguely, I do remember that. And then Joel Willits, yeah, Joel Willits is another hot shot, man. That guy is something else.

Um, yeah. Yeah. Well, man, it's, it's such an honor to have you on the podcast. Can you just give us a, maybe just a broad snapshot of your, your life story as it pertains to biblical scholarship. And I know, when I think of your name, I primarily think of your knowledge of just the Greek language and New Testament Greek and verbal aspect theory, which we might get into. But man, you've done so many other things too. But yeah, just give us maybe a running start of who you are and we'll go from there. Yeah. Well, thanks for having me, man.

I began as a jazz musician. So my great passion was to become a professional jazz saxophonist or saxophonist, as you tend to say in the US. But when I was at music school, just nearby where I live now at the Australian National University, I became a Christian through a university church that was meeting on campus there. And pretty much as soon as I finished, I sort of wanted to pursue serving God in a full-time capacity and teaching the Bible and telling people about Jesus, stuff like that. So after a ministry apprenticeship for a couple of years, I went to study in Sydney at Moore College. And it was really there that I discovered the world of academic theology. I'd studied jazz performance, so I'd worked hard at that. I practiced a lot, but I wasn't really a bookie kind of degree. So I didn't really do research. I didn't really write serious essays, things like that. But when I got to more college, this academic world just opened up,

and I fell in love with study. I fell in love with the languages, Greek and Hebrew. with study. I fell in love with the languages, Greek and Hebrew. And even though I went in there with the intention of becoming a pastor or a preacher, that sort of thing, along the way, I started to think, you know, maybe there's an academic side to this for me. And after my studies there, I moved back to Canberra, where I'm'm living now and served in a church, the church where I had become a Christian, and did a PhD on the side on ancient Greek, on the verbal aspect stuff. So I got into being interested in verbal aspect while I was a student at Moore College. And at that time, it was one of those issues that our lecturers, our professors were like, look, this is what's happening. This is the conversation. There's no real resolution. There are lots of

questions, problems, things like that. And I was just super intrigued by it. And so I ended up doing a PhD on that. But my interest in Greek, even though I really love Greek and Hebrew, and I learned Aramaic and a few other things as well. But the real love is for exegesis, like reading the texts as originally written. As you know, there's such a joy in seeing the actual language that biblical authors use and then being able to access the discussions about what they're writing rather than relying on translations. And our translations are good. You know, they're writing rather than relying on translations. And our translations are good. You know, they're amazing, really. But there's nothing like reading Paul's letters in original Greek. And so my fascination with Greek, it's a standalone love,

but it's really for the purpose of reading the texts. And so I did my PhD in Greek verbal aspect, and I ended up teaching at Moore College for a number of years and wrote some books on that. But I didn't want to get pigeonholed as the language guy, you know, because that's what happens when you do a PhD on pretty much anything. You become that guy, you know. And so my goal with the language was, as I said,

always for reading the text for exegesis. So I started writing on the text and especially Paul and some commentaries and some extended studies and things like that. And so in recent years, I've been much more in the Paul scholarship kind of world than Greek. Can you explain, you've mentioned verbal aspect a few times. I think obviously, I mean, 95% of my audience will know the New Testament was written in Greek. They might even know there was a certain kind of Greek, Corne Greek. Can you explain to a lay audience what verbal aspect theory is? Because I imagine 90% of people listening don't know what that means.

Well, I mean, in short, it's a different way of understanding the way that Greek verbs do what they do. And in the study of ancient Greek, it's been heavily influenced by the study of Latin. In the study of ancient Greek, it's been heavily influenced by the study of Latin. And especially for the last 500 years, after the Renaissance period, all languages were studied through the lens of Latin, which was kind of the lingua franca of academics at the time. And so lots of unhelpful comparisons were made between Greek and Latin, and including the way we understand the way that verbs work. So especially thinking of verbs primarily as tenses, you know, indicating

past, present, future. And we're so used to thinking of verbs that way as English speakers, because our verbs do in part signal time. But they do more than that as well. And the problem right from the start, like I remember in the first couple of weeks of learning Greek, reading Mark's gospel and finding an heiress in verse 11 of chapter one, that doesn't refer to the past. You know, Jesus is baptized and a voice from heaven says, this is my son with whom I was well pleased. If you take it as a past, it's I was well pleased. And you're like, what?

What does God mean by saying he was pleased with Jesus? Is he not pleased? And none of the translations, it's not a past tense, even though it's an heiress and it's supposed to refer to the past according to the rules. And then the more you get into it, the more you see that those old rules actually don't fit the evidence, not well enough. There are about 15% of aorist indicatives that don't refer to the past. There's about 30% of present indicatives that don't refer to the present. And there's about 60% of perfects that don't communicate a past action with present

consequences. So, you know, those rules just don't really work. And that sparked scholars for 150 years, really, to re-evaluate how Greek verbs are actually communicating. And the consensus today and the research that I've been involved with is this thing called verbal aspect, which is where we are saying, look, these verbs, their main purpose is not to communicate time, but to communicate aspect. And an aspect is a way of using a verb to portray how you're viewing an action.

Okay. So an aspect is operative in English. It's operative in all languages, um, whether we realize it or not, but we, we're basically portraying an action as though it's unfolding before our eyes, you know, or looking at it from a distance, you know? So like I say, oh yeah, yesterday I went to the shops and i bought newspaper and i bought a bottle of milk this is all sort of looking at it from the outside it's like this happened then that happened then that happened and if i say well yesterday i decided to go to the shop so here i am i walk into the store and i think to myself oh i'm gonna'm going to buy myself a newspaper. So I buy a newspaper and then I buy a bottle of milk

and I walk out of the store. So that's a very different way of presenting the same events but as though you're seeing it unfold rather than in a summary kind of fashion. How would you unpack Mark 111 then according to verbal aspect theory? How would you expand on that translation yeah well i think uh because he uses an heiress the heiress is the classic verb in greek to portray a summary so you're not um trying to specify like when or where or for how long you're just saying

let's take the whole and talk about the whole. So when he's saying, I am well pleased, he's saying, this is my general statement of the whole situation. I am pleased with this, with this sun. And, of course, I take it, you know, for translation purposes, as a present, as all the translations do, because it's not referring to a temporal reality, but it's a summative, it's a summary of the situation. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it totally, absolutely does. So if, I'm going to try to get really salty here for a second. All right, yeah. Go ahead. I mean, and this isn't meant to be demeaning or derogatory at all, but if Christians hear a pastor who's had a year or two of Greek, went to seminary, kind of in a sermon, talk about a verse and the real meaning because of the Greek is past tense or past with present implications, the perfect tense, whatever. How do you – well, let me just keep it more personal. When you hear a pastor talk about New Testament Greek, are you typically like, yeah, you could use a little more work here? I mean, it's one thing to have a knowledge of verbal aspect theory and say, I still line up on the more chronological temporal side of that debate.

But to just simply say, well, this Greek verb is in the past tense, therefore, or this Greek verb is in the perfect tense, therefore, and come up with an interpretation. Does that bother you or do you have a certain level of forgiveness for that? It's a little bit cringe-worthy for me, yeah, I have to admit. The reality is, as I've often said to my students, the point of learning this stuff is not so that you can mention it in a sermon. That's not the point. The point is that you can read the text well. And as you read the text, your reading of the text will impact your sermon. Of course it will. It will inform what you do say.

But I think personally, I think there are very few reasons to mention Greek at all when you're preaching. preaching. There might be when maybe a particular interpretation of the way you're reading the text really hangs on a particular reading of the Greek text, and maybe your audience, say, like a university audience or something like that, they're up for that kind of technical detail. But, you know, most don't need to know, you know, what the Greek says. And the reality is most of our interpretation involves many other factors besides just a greek verb you know so i don't want to overplay the importance of this stuff and it's going to change the way you read the bible entirely but it will it it is one cog in the wheel of reading the text well yeah yeah no totally i mean even in my own experience, like when I preach, it's so tempting, right, to kind of pull the, well, here's what the – in the original language.

It's just so tempting to come off as sounding like elitist or smarter because you are – I mean, like when I preach, with any preacher, you're trying to convince somebody, a group of people of the truth, right? Yeah. You feel like you have a good grasp on the truth and you want to help your audience to embrace that. And it's so tempting. And that's not a bad motivation, I don't think. But it's so tempting to sort of like use some kind of knowledge of New Testament Greek to do that. I find myself all the time when I'm preparing sermons like, ah, but am I just falling into kind of this elitism or just like, do I need to say that? Do I need to reference something that doesn't need to be referenced? And I'm really just

doing to give the air of, I know more than you. you know, like it's so tempting, but yeah, I mean, I, I mean, I honestly feel like even having like a couple of years of New Testament Greek can almost be more dangerous than having no Greek at all. Like I'll never forget. I'm sorry. I want to hear you talk more than I talk, but I remember going to Aberdeen university where I was doing a PhD in New Testament. And there was a Greek reading group and we're reading through Philo. I had probably three years of Greek by this point. So I feel like I kind of got Greek. And they opened up Philo, which as you know, is written in more classical Greek, not this super easy kind of like just basic Koine Greek that the New Testament is written in more classical Greek, not this super easy, kind of like just basic Koine Greek

that the New Testament is written in. I couldn't read a line of Philo. I couldn't read a line. I was like, I don't even know what this is. And I remember at that moment, that night I went home super humiliated. And I said, I will never, ever say again that I know Greek. I can fumble through New Testament Greek with a lexicon. Yeah, I can do that okay. But when people ask me, do you know Greek? I will immediately say, nope, I don't know Greek. Because I don't know real classical Greek. It's so different.

It's such a complicated and beautiful language. It is. I don't know. like, do you, so I guess, let me ask you a practical question. Like when it comes to people who want to be a pastor, like I want to lead God's people, should they learn Greek? What kind of Greek should they learn? What kind of challenge encouragement would you give? I mean, cause I, yeah, I've talked to pastors that say, do I really need to know Greek? And I'm like, I'm like, yeah, you kind of do. But then I'm also like, but I don't want you to take a year of Greek cause that's almost more dangerous than not knowing any Greek at all. Do you have any thoughts on this? Yeah. A little bit of Greek is a dangerous thing for sure.

But I do, I've written about this. There's an essay in a volume on theological education that came out a couple of years ago, where I argue that pastors who want to take their preaching seriously really do need to learn Greek. But, you know, it's, I want to know that my pastor and preachers I listen to have read and studied the Greek text rather than just looked at translations and commentaries. The problem when you just look at translations, not that our translations are wrong or anything like that, but once you start to understand the way translations work, which only really happens if you do study the Greek, is that every translation involves a certain degree of interpretation. And that means that there are other interpretations,

other ways of translating that have been left out by the translation. Now, that's when we go to the commentary, and a really good commentary will say, well, the NIV says this, but the CSB says that, and that's probably better for these reasons to do with the Greek and various other whatever. So the pastor can figure that out. But what's happening there is that the pastor is really bowing to the authority of these commentators, rather than what I would prefer to see, have a conversation with a commentator. And so, you know, when I was teaching at Moore College and also Trinity,

I'd try to encourage students to get to the point with the Greek where they could say, I'm going to have a conversation about the Greek text with the commentator, rather than just accept everything that the commentator tells me. And so then you're sort of more like equals. I mean, obviously commentators are vastly experienced and knowledgeable and so on, but it's still, you can actually critique what they're saying, or you can evaluate what they're saying because you're looking at the same text that they're looking at. And I think that's very important because if you take your job seriously as a teacher of the text, then, you know, you're kind of holding in your

hand these complex issues and you want to distill them for your congregation, for your hearers, but you want to do that with a kind of humble confidence that you've done your homework and you're not falling into some trap because you haven't really looked into the text as originally written. So I think it's important. I don't want to overplay its importance, you know, like you're not a pastor if you don't know Greek, this sort of thing. Yeah. But I think it's part of the basic competency along with studying the history of the New Testament text and along with studying, you know, the themes of the New Testament and those sorts of things. It's part of that competency to be an authoritative handler and teacher of

God's word. That's, that's my view. No, yeah, no, totally. You know,

I've often told people like, kind of going back to what I said earlier about just having a year of Greek or two years of Greek, like even that, as long as you acknowledge, I don't actually know Greek. I can read it. I can interpret it, whatever.

But even a couple years of Greek does give you the ability to interact with some of the best commentaries, like the ICC commentary series or the – what's the – NIGTC. Yeah, NIGTC, which is really based just on the Greek text or even the Zondervan exegetical commentary or others, they're primarily working from the Greek text. So if you have no knowledge of Greek, you can't even really participate in the conversation they're having. And yet these are typically some of the best commentaries in the Bible because some of the English-based commentaries, not to diminish them at all, but sometimes they don't get into some of the nitty-gritty aspects of the Greek New Testament. For me, my Hebrew, I used to know Hebrew pretty well, and I've lost so much Hebrew. But even now, I can look at a critical commentary on the Old Testament, and if they're talking about a Hebrew word, I can follow the conversation.

That's right. Old Testament. And if they're talking about a Hebrew word, I can follow the conversation. Sometimes I can recognize the word and I can even go to a lexicon and kind of interact with what they're talking about. And that alone just opens up a whole world of conversation with the New Testament. Yeah. Like I say, I think it's kind of basic competency. And I don't want to say that in a way that discourages people who might find it hard to learn languages. But if you were going to study ancient history, you know, where I did my PhD at Macquarie University in Sydney, if you're going to do an undergraduate, like a Bachelor of Ancient History, you would learn Greek and Latin because you're going to read the primary text. So this is not PhD level. It's just bachelor, undergrad level. You know, it's basically this is what we do in ancient history.

And so part of, not all, but part of what we do as we teach the Bible is we're engaging with ancient history because we're engaging with a text that's 2,000 years old. You can't teach that text without recognizing that it's an ancient text and therefore engage the tools of ancient history. So even just on ancient history standards alone, we should be really history would learn the original languages and they don't believe that those texts are inspired and Christians believe this is inspired by God and they're going to – I really don't want this to be offensive, but maybe just challenging. what God has said in Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic. And you have no knowledge of that, or even no desire to learn that. And again, I'm leaving aside people in certain circumstances where they just haven't had the financial or whatever opportunity to learn these languages. And I totally want to understand that. And I am not reducing pastoral ministry,

the knowledge of Greek language. Plenty sure abusive people are fluent in greek you know so i you know yeah but yeah to say that i have had the opportunity to learn these languages but i just haven't felt the importance of it and i'm still going to teach god's word from the original text like man i would just challenge people to at least revisit that. I totally agree. And I think, too, part of it is probably people's philosophy of preaching. Like for me, I gather from you, too, we want to preach in a way that is really expounding the text of the Bible, whereas not everyone wants to preach that way. That's true.

You know, and so, I mean, personally, I think they should. But you know what I mean. Like, so I guess there's a philosophy of preaching as well that's assumed in that conversation. Yeah. Yeah. So you're, I mean, okay, so your knowledge of the ancient Greek language is one of many talents you have. I don't know if we have time to get into your musical talents, but you're also very aware of and knowledgeable of kind of cultural Christianity or different cultural trends in the evangelical church.

And you have a forthcoming book coming out, right? That is addressing certain... Yeah, this is very different. Tell us about your new book coming out. And I'm sure that'll launch into probably several different possible strands of conversation. Well, it's quite provocatively titled. At this stage, I don't know if my title is going to get through with the publisher. We'll see. But it hasn't been finalized. But my working title is

Jesus v. The Evangelicals, a biblical critique of a wayward movement. And this is quite a departure from other books that I've done. It's not an academic book, for starters. It's for a kind of general audience. But I'm coming at it as a biblical scholar and having lived in the States and being, you know, quite aware, I think, of what's been happening there over several decades. what's been happening there over several decades. And feeling in myself, but also in many of my students and friends and colleagues, that something is really going wrong with evangelicalism. And especially, and not to throw stones, but especially in America. And, of course, I know many wonderful brothers and sisters in Christ

across the spectrum of the evangelical church. And it's a really broad tent. It's a huge thing. And they're wonderful. I wouldn't want to cause undue offense. But many of them, too, I think would resonate with the kinds of concerns that I'm trying to raise in the book. For one, and maybe this has become pretty obvious recently, but the politicization of evangelicalism, the assumption that if you're an evangelical, you will vote in

a particular way, that you'll be concerned about specific issues and political issues and not other issues, and so on and so forth. So there's a chapter in the book called God and Country. But I also address other things like judgmentalism. And there's a chapter on tribalism. There's a chapter on megachurches. There's a chapter on marriage and divorce, or divorce and remarriage, I should say. And so I'm really trying to get at what are evangelicals in general saying about these issues? And what does the Bible say about these issues and what does the bible say about these issues and where are they getting misaligned um and yeah and particularly focusing on the teaching of jesus so okay yeah what what differences do you see between like evangelicalism in australia versus america what are some big

differences i mean how do you because you've you're not just lobbing a bomb from Australia. Like you've, yeah, you've lived in America for a number of years. You've participated in, as an evangelical leader, training evangelical pastors at a major seminary in America. So this isn't just like some,

you've very much been immersed in both contexts. So yeah, what are some key differences would you see? I thinkian evangelicalism is certainly not perfect and we've got our own problems you know and we've got a more seriously our own blind spots and so some of our problems we're not even aware of by definition um but it's it's the heritage comes more from a british evangelicalism especially influenced by figures like John Stott. And so there is a kind of rigorous commitment to the exposition of the text and allowing the text to shape theological convictions and so on. But I'd say the biggest difference in Australia is evangelicalism is not a political movement. Now, sure, evangelicals may have things to say about

political issues and whatnot, but it's much more from the sense of a kind of prophetic role, calling government to account or calling out things in society that need to be addressed or that sort of thing, rather than alignment with a particular political partisan situation. And that's a very big thing in the US, obviously. With 81% of white evangelicals voting for Donald Trump, for example, something that, and I don't want to offend any of your viewers or listeners, but frankly, in Australia, we find that really hard to understand. And I think I understand it because I understand what issues, political issues, American evangelicals are most passionate about, namely, say, abortion and things like that. American evangelicals are most passionate about, namely, say, abortion and things like that.

And so there's an alignment with the party that is kind of promising to try to do something about those issues. But, you know, as I raise in the book, there are a whole range of other social issues that the other side pays more attention to that actually are real issues according to the Bible and according to the teaching of Jesus. And so there's a selective reading of the Bible that's going on in both contexts. America and Australia, we both do this. And this is more of a problem for evangelicalism in general, that while we say our highest authority is the Bible, it's actually a way of reading the Bible that is our highest authority, i.e. an evangelical hermeneutic or an evangelical interpretive grid. And if we actually let the Bible be the highest authority, then that grid gets a bit dismantled because some things don't

fit anymore. And like, it's clear if you read the Old Testament, God's very concerned about justice for the poor and for the oppressed and for the weak and the vulnerable. And yet those issues are regarded by many American evangelicals as if you're concerned about that, then you're a liberal, you know, theologically and politically because evangelicals care about other issues and i'm like wait look that's not what the bible says right in australia do you do you not have like the christian church aligning with a particular political party like it's yeah the church and you have politics and those are really kind of separate? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't be able to tell you what most people at my church – who most people at my church vote for.

Because there's not an assumption of political allegiance, and the churches are not – they're just not politically aligned. So there are issues that tend to bring Christians together, and, you know, abortion is one, but so are asylum seekers and things like that. Yeah. And there are sort of what I would call American-esque movements starting to happen in Australia, where there's the Australian Christian lobby, which is being more political and trying to gather Christians for a political agenda. But actually, I'm critical of that too. I think that's risky and a bit dangerous. Yeah.

Well, it depends. It depends how it works out you know um but i think like i said and the chief role that the church can be involved politically and socially is is in a prophetic way to witness to the truth of god in christ and the love of god in christ um rather than be aligned to a particular party or party. So you would, you would, I'm trying to formulate my question. You would, um, the church would have no problem protesting against something that they see

as just, or a problem with the way things are going, but they wouldn't have some kind of secular party line in order to achieve justice. Would that be the big difference? Whereas in America, a lot of Christians – and this happens on both sides of the aisle. They might align with the Republican Party to address abortion or they might align with the Democratic Party to address issues of maybe race or, you know, justice for the immigrant or whatever, rather than simply embodying justice as the church toward something that is an evil in society.

Yeah, I think so. And I think one of the interesting points I read about and then included in my book was that if you compare the civil rights movement of the 60s with the religious right movement of the 80s up until now, big difference is the civil rights movement never tried to achieve what they were doing by political power but instead it was by persuasion to persuade the public so that the politicians eventually had to fall into line with that whereas the religious right has tended to let's get political power then we can influence society through our powerful position but i think the results are very different because the gains of the civil rights movement are still with us and have permanently affected American society, whereas the religious right have, if anything, kind of undermined its own moral credibility by so ruthlessly pursuing power.

That's a huge – I've not thought about that distinction, but that's huge. Yeah. I mean, because the motivation, you can appreciate the motivation, let's say, again, from those on the left or the right, saying here's an issue of injustice that I want to address. But if you use the means of political power to do that,

that's just not going to – first of all, it doesn't reflect just the way of Jesus who kind of addressed that approach on many occasions. And you end up just kind of, I don't know, like creating more problems than you're trying to solve rather than you're saying like the civil rights movement. And that is true based on the knowledge that I have that they were primarily motivating. Well, they did address, I mean, unjust laws and other things, but it wasn't through like let's ram this politician into office and do whatever so he can start making – like that's just – it was more let's persuade the people to see the unjust laws that need to be reversed. That's right.

Man, yeah. That's – I need to think about that. That's good. Good stuff. Man, yeah, I need to think about that. That's good. Good stuff. Okay, so you taught at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School for how many years?

Six years. Six years, okay. What was your experience like there? I mean, that's one of the most mainstream, I would say, pretty balanced evangelical divinity schools in America. Like one of the most high – people don't know what that is. I mean TEDS is, I mean, one of the top five, I would say, go-to seminaries in America. Did you have a good experience there? Oh, yeah.

I loved it. Yeah, it was a real thrill. Amazing colleagues and amazing students. thrill um amazing colleagues and amazing students um and in many ways the the sort of problems in evangelicalism were things that we would talk about in class it's not necessarily things that i experienced by being at trinity um if anything trinity attracted people who sort of thought a bit like i did um you know within that kind of spectrum, you know what I mean? But so, but yeah, just wonderful people. And I love the combination there of like, really high level, serious academic work, combined with a real commitment to the gospel and the church.

with a real commitment to the gospel and the church. And for me, Trinity represents the fact that those things are not mutually exclusive. You don't have to choose between, well, I'm going to go somewhere with really serious academics or somewhere that really cares about the church. They don't have to be mutually exclusive. You can bring them together if you have the right faculty and the right leadership. That is possible. Yeah. Yeah. My understanding of Trinity is that it's, yeah, it's a high value on academics for the sake of the church. Like it's not instead of the church, you know, but it's like, no, because you want to be a church leader, therefore, let's take the academic journey extremely seriously.

It's one of the more academically rigorous seminaries in the US, I think. I mean, Fuller would be up there. I think Gordon Conwell might be up there and others. But yeah, you guys, I mean, people that come out of Trinity with an MDiv, they're further ahead than most people with an MDiv in America, I'll just say. You guys are crazy. Yeah, well, they have to study Greek and Hebrew for starters. And that's not true for all MDivs anymore. And Trinity seemed to balance some of these debates, even things like women in leadership

or the charismatic gifts or whatever. There's differences of opinion on these things or end times perspectives on the end times. Yeah, there's a statement of faith, but it's pretty broad. And within that, where the statement of faith does not specify particular issues like complementarian and egalitarian, there's freedom there. And I think I found that extremely enriching. And I think students do as well, even though it can be kind of confusing if you have one professor who thinks this way and another who thinks that way. But really, that's the real world. And it gives them the opportunity to speak to Professor A and Professor B in person, rather than, you know, if you're at a kind of school

where everyone thinks the same way, then what tends to happen is people who have alternate points of view are often treated in a kind of, maybe as a straw man sort of approach. Right. But also, they're out there, or they're're the enemy or it just, it sort of further entrenches the tribalism that's already inherent in evangelicalism. So I really value that freedom to, within certain parameters, like, you know, the scriptures are God's word and, you know, the Trinity and salvation by grace through faith and, you know, really essentials of Orthodox faith. and salvation by grace through faith, and really essentials of Orthodox faith.

But within those parameters, there's a lot of freedom, and I think that's really important. So I really love my time at Trinity. I was sad to leave. Do you think that kind of healthy diversity can exist inside of a local church? It's one thing in an academic institution to have one teacher's complementarian, one's egalitarian, one's amillennial, one's premillennial, whatever.

In a church, local church leadership, do you think that that would be healthy or more confusing or it depends on the church? I think it really depends on the church and the leadership, yeah. I think it's, here's the thing, like in the West, we have a major challenge against secularism, the new atheism, you know, and just the moral credibility of the church, we do not need to waste energy and time fighting ourselves over issues that really we might think are super important, but are really, in the grand scheme of things, not that huge. And I don't want to downplay, because I know

people are really passionate about this and that. But the reality is when you're talking about someone's thinking about, do I want to be an atheist or a Christian? Right. Then you don't want to be squabbling about premillennialism or amillennialism or complementarianism and egalitarianism. You want to say, you know, we believe that Jesus is the son of God raised from the dead, son of David, you know, and that by faith in him, you are spiritually raised from the dead and restored into a relationship with your heavenly father, and that he is the Lord of the cosmos. You know, that's the sort of big picture stuff that, like, we really need to be focusing on. So, I would love to see churches be able to cope with that sort of diversity and actually see that as kind of healthy within parameters of like – but these fundamentals of orthodoxy are what we all agree on.

Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. I mean I'm – like I personally am wired more towards like let's have diversity of thought. I'm not threatened by that. I will hold things loosely that I think I'm not sure on and think strongly, but I'm fine being in fellowship with somebody who disagrees on non-essential things. But maybe it is more of an American evangelical thing,

but it just seems like most Christians just can't do that. I don't know. Like there's just this tribalistic spirit from politics all the way down to different denominations and everything that just seems so pervasive. I remember when I did my PhD work in Scotland and Scotland's a very post-Christian country. And so if there's many many churches most of them were not like evangelical they're kind of left over church of scotland like nominal churches so when there was an evangelical church it didn't really matter that the denomination your eschatological views whatever

if you believe in the gospel and the authority of scripture like that was enough to unite you and i remember in aberdeen there was like a small handful of churches that were evangelical. Wide array of opinions on secondary matters, but there was such rich unity. Like the Free Methodists and the Presbyterians and the Baptists, if they're evangelical, they got along so well.

They almost didn't even care or talk about these secondary things while they valued them. But it was like, I remember that was so refreshing. And then I come back to America and it's like, man, we'll find stuff to just divide up. Yeah. Yeah.

Is it like in Australia? I feel like Australia is kind of like in between America and the UK to some extent. Would you resonate with that? Well, I don't know. I think we're pretty post-Christian here as well. It's pretty secular. So it's probably quite similar to the UK, but except for certain pockets, like especially in Sydney, where there's a really

very robust evangelical church within the denominations, like the Anglican Church, for example. But we do have the same sort of tribalism, and especially in those bigger areas like in Sydney where, you know, where I taught for a number of years and studied and I have great is the same problem in America, it's so big that you can afford to just exclude anyone who doesn't think the exact same way. But when you're in a minority, like in Scotland or whatever, then you don't want these little things to get in the way of your fellowship, of your union together. And I think that's the way it ought to be. or fellowship of your union together. And I think that's the way it ought to be. And the sad thing is if we're having these squabbles or if we're really doubling down in these tribes, then we're missing the opportunity to work together in a culture that is slipping further and further into secularism.

And so I think we in Scotland, the UK, we're further ahead than the US in secularism, but I think it's coming in the US. And you really need to be thinking, look, if I have this Christian brother over here and we don't agree on these issues, but we're brothers in Christ, we can work together to reach out to these people because, you know, in 30 years' time, you're not going to have the same size advantage that you have now, I think, you know, and who knows what God will do in the sovereignty of God, you know, and all that, but the way it looks, the way the trends are going. So, stop squabbling over this stuff and stop being so tribal, but, you know, reach out to your neighbor and join in fellowship with those that we have so

much in common. We have so much in common in Christ. Yeah. Yeah. So that's. Yeah. Yeah. I spent some time in Melbourne and Brisbane and Sydney and other areas. I've never been to your city though. Canberra, is that right? Canberra. Canberra. It's or canberra canberra what's what's it's the capital i know i know but it's not like a major tourist destination i feel

i feel like people either go to yeah sydney or cans or uh melbourne or whatever um what's the church like in canberra is it uh pretty small or it's it's it's um I'd say it's it's for Australia it's not small um but it's not huge but it is pretty diverse okay and so um it it doesn't have there isn't the same sort of tribalism because you can't afford it in Canberra. So that diversity exists and there's fellowship across. There's a much more ecumenical vibe here. Yeah, so I think it's pretty exciting what's happening in Canberra, though, in the church. There's been a lot of growth in the last 20 years.

And Canberra used to be a sort of place where evangelicals were not welcome at all really especially in the Anglican church which is what I'm part of ordained in the Anglican church but that's changed and evangelicals have certainly not taken over but they've become a vibrant part of the Anglican scene here and but But that's partly because the evangelicals here are not the hard-nosed kind as well. They sort of want to get along with everybody and have that fellowship across the different types of Anglicanism and different denominations.

My perspective on the Anglicans in Sydney in particular are that it's a very conservative branch of Anglicanism. Is that right? Yeah. Is that what it's known for? It is. But, you know, I was heavily influenced by the Sydney Anglican Diocese, even though it was in Canberra. And I trained at Moore College, which is the Sydney Anglican Seminary. And I taught there and preached in hundreds of churches throughout the diocese. And, you know, I'm very fond of many people there and whatnot.

But I do think, and I used to say this when I was there, the greatest enemy is within because there's this infighting, there's a politicization, not with secular politics, but in the church itself. Yeah. And a kind of unhealthy tribalism. And that's probably the greatest threat, really, to what's happening there. But, yeah. are you teaching at a school in canberra or no i'm i'm actually teaching music at the australian national music australian national university um yeah so i'm teaching in the jazz department yeah what um okay yeah so give it give us i mean this is like a almost like a schizophrenic

podcast but like so you had this whole other side of you that's like a professional musician can you give us a snapshot of that and I'm gonna be at a lot I don't know what to ask I'm not a musician at all like my oldest daughter's a wonderful But yeah, give us that whole trajectory of your story. Well, you know, as I mentioned earlier, I originally studied jazz performance. That was my great love. And when I became a Christian, I wanted to go into full-time ministry. But I thought that I would have to give up jazz to do that because I thought I've been practicing six hours a day, you know, and I'm not going to be able to do that anymore. So I'm probably not going to be able to play anymore.

But as one Christian friend said to me, it's like I gave up jazz for God and then God gave it right back. And I discovered I could still play. I was still being booked for gigs. And I was improving and getting better. So the jazz thing has been percolating all along my ministry and study and academic work the whole time. And actually being in Chicago when I was teaching at Trinity was fantastic for my jazz because the jazz there is, you know, second only to New York.

And I played in a lot of jazz clubs and met a lot of great players and it really improved my playing. So I had a lot of street cred when I came back to Canberra, having been in Chicago for six years. But a lot of my old friends were here and they were teaching where we had studied 25 years ago. And, you know, one thing led to another, and I was invited to do some teaching there.

And I'm spending most of my time writing, researching and writing with the New Testament stuff projects that I'm doing. But the teaching side is jazz right now. So your full-time job is teaching jazz at a university? Yeah. I'm not teaching full-time. I'm not teaching full-time. I'm just teaching full-time. Okay.

But yeah. And that pays the bills and then you're still writing and researching in this New Testament side. How do you make that shift? That's like, man. To be honest, I feel like I don't really have a choice. I kind of have these passions that compel me and uh I always have to play jazz you know uh we've been in lockdown here for a couple of months I got my first gig back next week and I can't wait you know I'm just

it's a maybe it's a left brain right thing brain thing I don't know but like there's an emotional fun artistic creative thing to playing jazz with other people that you know i it's like a drug for me i guess a healthy drug does your does your music background help shape or inform or or contribute to your theological academic work? Yeah, it absolutely has from the beginning. You know, like even when I was studying the languages for the first time, I took a lot of the things that I'd learned from practicing saxophone and apply that to the languages. Like for starters, the daily discipline was very important. to the languages like for starters the daily discipline was very important but also you know i would treat um paradigms you know writing out the greek verb paradigms or whatever like they

were scales and what my teacher at university used to say to me was your scales have to you have to know them so well they become your friends um and so when i'm playing saxophone i practice them so much that they become like my friends like i i know them inside and out and that's that's how i approach the languages you know the vocabulary the paradigms i have to become my friends i'm going to know them so well um and um so that was a real kind of practical way that that jazz influenced my study, but also theologically and exegetically. I just love to improvise and create and try to think outside the box. And so in interpreting the text or whatever, I'm trying to think,

what's the interpretation no one's thinking of here? You know, try to break out of the box here like you know um what aren't i seeing you know and there's this i don't know this creative impulse in me that's being fostered by playing jazz that that i really affects everything i do yeah that makes sense the reason why i ask is i feel like like there's you know some of the biblical interpreters that are super good at the languages and everything and just super left brain, very cognitive, very rational.

Sometimes they're not the best interpreters. There's more to the text than just kind of adding up the numbers and spitting out an interpretation or whatever. There is a lot of creativity, just even in understanding the genres and getting just in tune with the rhythm of poetry and apocalyptic literature and so on. There's just, it's a left and right brain thing, right?

So I always wonder, like interpreters that have the cognitive abilities to know the languages and everything, but also have this kind of creative side to them. Oftentimes, I find them the most exciting interpreters. Yeah. Me too. And I used to say to my students, you know, you don't do exegesis by the numbers. Right. It's not math.

Right. There is a technical side. Sure. But there's a creative side. And jazz is like that because you have a really highly technical side, but there's so much fluidity and improvisation in and around those parameters. So I call it freedom in the groove. There's a groove, right?

But there's freedom within it. a groove yeah there's a groove right but there's freedom within it and and that's that's the sweet spot you know yeah for jazz and for theology in my view no that's great and i and i say that as somebody i don't think i have well i don't think i'm typically a very creative kind of person in that sense but i've learned to kind of grow into that and appreciate it when it comes to language is where i feel like that's where, I don't know, like I really resonate with people who are extremely creative with the English language and know how to use words and like that kind of,

I don't know, like I've kind of fallen into a deep appreciation of that, but I'm typically, I'm typically very much a math kind of like rational thinker. And I've, but I've seen how that's a danger too. Like it's just like there's stuff going on in the text that I feel like I'm more blind to when I just get into that kind of 2 plus 2 equals 4 mode. I'm going to let you go in a second. But can you give – for our lay audience who doesn't know the languages and may not have opportunity to

know the languages, and maybe they feel a little shamed in our conversation, and I do apologize for that, but can you give our audience maybe some one, two, three tips on how to read and interpret the Bible, how to become good readers of the Bible? What are some things they can do in their kind of private study times of the Bible to read the Bible well? Great question. I think I'm a fan of big picture and micro together. So I love to, you need a picture of the whole. so read a book at a whole sitting. But I love the micro, read one verse and really think about the bits in that verse. What does that verse mean? And then go back and be again. Because the micro and the macro inform each other

and the macro gives you context so that you're less likely to misinterpret the micro, but the micro is often where the gold is, like these little nuggets of insight that, you know, maybe you've been a Christian for 30 years, but you never thought of it that way before, and it's not like you were wrong, you just didn't see this extra element, this hidden diamond in the rough. And so I think go micro, go macro, and read and reread. Because of that recursive process going from the micro to the macro, each rereading gives you a different reading. And so just keep reading and rereading. Yeah.

The rereading piece, I remember I took class on ephesians in seminary and before the class even started the requirement was you need to read through ephesians 30 times and i remember well i i and that was before getting into the text and then the whole semester was walking through verse by verse in the original languages and um i just remember reading it like after 15 times i'm kind of like come on i think i got this but i remember after about 20 times i'm starting to see stuff i didn't see before 25 times like i'm starting to just see nuances and emphasis and just there's just yeah yeah that that reading piece yeah so good i'm i'm writing a commentary on ephesians right now you are sweet

and and and this is a book that i've taught for over a decade, and I felt like I knew it pretty well. But right now I'm going, wow, I never saw that before. I never saw that. And I've been teaching the text for a decade, you know. So I totally resonate with that. And for me, that's really exciting. And I'd love for preachers to get hold of that because it can be really exciting for the person in your congregation who feels like they've heard it all before, you know,

and they've been a Christian a long time. But if you can bring something to them or show them something in the text they've never seen before, that's a real thrill for them. And it encourages them in their own personal Bible reading to get this still so much to learn for all of us is still so much to learn. That's so good. All right. Where can people find your work, Constantine? You got a website, right? I was just looking at... I do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. ConstantineCampbell.info is my website. Yeah. Or you can look me up on Amazon. I've got an author's page there. Okay. And you're active on social media as well? Yeah. I've got a Twitter handle, at Const Campbell.

Okay. And on Facebook. Yeah. Cool. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Encourage people to check out your work. I mean, again, for my listeners, Con has, I mean, all the way from high-level academic stuff that I could hardly understand all the way to super practical stuff. You've got some introduction to Greek.

If people want to actually learn Greek, don't you have a couple of textbooks that you've written? Yeah. There's a shameless plug here. Go for it. It's called Reading Biblical Greek. There you go. It's written for students. It's a textbook that breaks it down into little bite-sized chunks.

And there's also 83 video lectures that are available through Zondervan. With yours truly talking my way through this. Yeah, but my co-author, Richard Gibson, he's really the master teacher in this volume. And so he's taught Greek for 20 years, and just his pedagogical insights are all through that book. So you can start there if you want to take it up. Now, is that something that somebody has no knowledge of Greek, if they pick up that book and the video series, they can start with that? That's right. Yeah, you can teach yourself, and you'll be reading mark's gospel within a few weeks oh my gosh so i mean i again i don't i don't want to kick at that horse but i

mean like if somebody has is not a pastor not a leader not whatever like would you still say if you're a christian and you have the time and maybe a little bit of money it's never a bad thing to learn greek i don't want to put words in your mouth. Yeah. Yeah. And some people will get a real kick out of it and have a lot of fun with it. Well, I'm terrible. Naturally, I'm terrible at learning languages. So it was a chore for me to burn through Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and a little bit of Latin.

But there is an enjoyment there. Like after a while, once you start getting it and you read a verse, like, oh, my gosh gosh i recognize these words there's a joy that happens there that's hard to predict there really is and i love seeing that with students when they get their break past this threshold and they feel like they're they're actually reading the the new testament in greek and it's like wow this is so exciting their exciting. Their brains are like exploding, you know? So cool. Thanks, Con, so much for the invigorating conversation. Many blessings to you down under and your ministry there. And yeah, thanks for giving us an hour of your time.

Thanks, Preston. It's great to talk to you. Take care. Hey, friends, if you've been blessed, challenged, encouraged, or angered by this podcast, would you consider supporting it through patreon.com? That's patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw. All the infos in the show notes.

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