Theology in the Raw - What Does it Mean to Be "Biblical?" Dr. Kevin J. Vanhoozer

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

Dr. Kevin J. Vanhoozer is one of the leading Evangelical theologians of our day. He’s taught systematic theology and hermeneutics at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Edinburgh University, and Wheaton College. He’s currently a Research Professor of Systematic Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He’s the author of many groundbreaking books, two of which are important for this conversation: Is There a Meaning in this Text? and Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What it Means to Read the Bible Theologically. Join the Theology in the Raw community to listen to our "extra innings" conversation about "inerrancy" and whether this is a legitimate description of the Bible. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology and DeRah. I am so excited about my guest today. Kevin J. Van Hooser is one of the leading evangelical theologians of our day. He's taught systematic theology in hermeneutics at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He's the author of many groundbreaking books, two of which are important for this conversation. Is there a meaning in this text? And his more recent book, mere Christian hermeneutics. And be sure to stay tuned for our extra innings conversation where we discuss the highly sensitive and controversial concept of inerrancy. Is the Bible without error? Kevin and I go into great detail on that sensitive question in our extra innings portion of this conversation.

If you would like to listen to that portion of the conversation, you can go to patreon.com forward slash theology in the raw and become a member of the theology in the raw community. Okay, please welcome to the show for the very first time, the one or only Dr. Kevin J. Van Hooser. All right, Kevin Van Hoosier, thank you so much for being a guest at the Algerian Raw. I am so excited about this conversation. I'm so blessed that you agreed to come on this show.

I didn't expect to, you know, sometimes I'll reach out to people. I'm like, I don't know if they're going to respond, let alone be able to come on the podcast. but you did both. So thank you so much for your time. Thanks for the invitation. And I look forward to seeing what you have in store for me. You're about to start your semester right now. What year is this for you as a professor? It's hard to calculate because I, well, I guess I've been teaching since 1986. Oh, my word. Okay. And what's your current position right now and title? I'm a research professor of systematic theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School,

currently in Deerfield, Illinois. And you have, I mean, you were that Ted's before and had a stint, Wheaton. Is that right in between? And then back to Ted's. Oh, I've been back and forth to Ted's three times. The first time I left in 1990 to teach for eight years at the University of Edinburgh and Scotland. And I came back in 1998, stayed for about 10 years, and then had a brief sojourn in what we called the Southern Kingdom, Wheaton College. And then in 2012, returned to Trinity. My

eschatology is all messed up because we have to speak of my third coming. Well, Trinity just can't get rid of you, I guess. Is it true that Trinity is, or maybe it's the undergrad, is relocating to Canada? Did I hear that? Well, news flash, the underground, the college, the underground, the undergrad has gone underground. It's buried. It's dead. I mean, the program has ceased. And so what's moving to British Columbia is actually Ted's, the seminary. Oh, so are you moving to Canada? Or are you, could you stay where you are? That's uncertain. I'm currently in a season of vocational discernment. Okay. I first heard about your name through, I mean, you've published many many books, most of the ones that I know, are pretty groundbreaking and conversation shifting or

conversation establishing. The one that I'm most familiar with, and I think a lot of people are, is your book, is there meaning in this text? Oh, that's a work of historical theology written way back in 1998. 1998, okay. I think I heard about it. You know what it was? Okay. I took a theological German class from Fuller Seminary taught by a postmodern Catholic who didn't believe in absolute truth. One of the fellow students in there was a huge fan of yours. And he kept pushing back on the teacher's postmodern theory with, yeah, but Kevin Van Hooser says, whatever. So they would have this ongoing dialogue and the professor was a joy. He was a delight. He would love to have fun. He wasn't militant at all. But he would often say something,

then turn to the student and say, well, what would Kevin have to say? So this is before I even knew who you were. So I had this imaginary friend, Kevin, who apparently did not agree with the professor's postmodern theory. Can I just say, Preston, it's interesting you say that because I wrote that book, is there a meaning in this text, during the years I was in Edinburgh, where I encountered postmodernity for the first time among my students. And so I wrote that book in part to explain how we could still consider the Bible authoritative and true, given all these, you know, criticisms from postmodernity. And at the time, in the 1990s, I was not finding any answers.

So I really wrote the book to answer my own questions to, for on behalf of my students who were raising these issues that represented the postmodern suspicion that, all claims to truth are actually power grabs. Let me begin with a very basic question. I think everybody listening will resonate with. Is the Bible absolute truth? When we read the Bible, are we reading absolute truth? Yeah, interesting question. And I'm not going to avoid it, but I will just say it's a little bit of a trick question

insofar as you haven't defined. the term absolute or truth. And so when we're having the conversation about this important matter, and I agree, it is important, we quickly run into complications if we don't define our terms. You may suspect I'm big on definitions. The book you mentioned is entitled, Is There a Meaning in this text? And that raises the question, so what's meaning? So I guess the first thing I would say is what does that qualifier absolute doing to the concept of truth? Could you simply ask the question, is the Bible true? What's the difference between the two questions in your mind?

Can I throw it back at you? I wasn't ready for this. That it's not, that the Bible is not just, hmm, not a guy, try to sound more sophisticated than maybe I really am. No, no, it's okay. Look, I mean, you weren't ready for that. But there's a serious point, right? Because I'm not sure that my definition of truth requires that qualification because I would say that truth is what can be relied on at all times by everyone everywhere.

And so my definition of truth, it kind of makes that term absolute a little redundant. And the problem with that term absolute, if I can just say so, or at least give you my concern about it, is that it almost sounds as though you don't want to talk about context, you don't want to acknowledge the fact that the Bible was written in context. Absoluteness kind of seals it off from the contingencies of contexts. I don't think we need to be afraid of those contingencies. I think that's what the Bible is. And so we have to be honest about it.

And that's one thing I will say. I want to affirm the Bible's truth as honestly as possible, which means admitting there may be difficulties that I may need to qualify it. And so that's just the part of the humanity of Scripture. So to say the Bible is absolutely true, I think I agree with what you want to say with that term, but I don't want to give the misleading impression that somehow the Bible isn't a human. human book. I just want to acknowledge how excited I am that you ask for definitions of every term because people often do the same in areas that I work in and people get annoyed.

You know, they say, you know, is homosexuality a sin? I'm like, well, what do you mean by homosexuality? What do you mean by sin? People get upset. Like, you know what I mean? I'm like, actually, these terms are really valuable used in different ways. So I need to know exactly what I'm responding to. Let me get an example of absolute truth because I think as you're talking, I'm like,

oh, I got a couple really clear examples on the matter of sexuality. some people, and I encountered this all the time in the work that I do, they say, no, yeah, Paul absolutely believe that same-sex sexual relationships were sin, that marriage is between a man and women, but that was first century stuff. Every Jew in the first century believed that. But that doesn't mean what was true for Paul then, according to his very limited ancient knowledge, is true for every culture of all time. We could also talk about, you know, science and creation. Like the ancient authors were dealing with an ancient cosmological. They didn't know all that we know about science. So what they say about the world and the ancient cosmology is just, it's not absolutely true. It was true according to their limited knowledge, but we can't take that, you know, as comprehensive or absolute truth. And those are kind of two different categories that I brought up. But I would love, yeah, to help you navigate. So, again, I think it's really important to tie truth to meaning.

In other words, something can only be true if we first determine what it means. In other words, when we're asking these questions and you are right to raise these two excellent examples, sexuality and creation, before I say it's true, I have to know, so what does it mean and what are the authors actually claiming? And those are the hard questions, and they're irritating questions, right? like the question about what do things mean because we have to think a little bit. And that's what's irritating about asking for definitions or asking about meaning. What is actually being claimed in scripture? What is Paul actually saying? So we first have to talk about meaning.

And only when we get the meaning clear can we then say, yep, I think it's true. And I mentioned this because I want to affirm that the Bible is true. in everything that affirms when it's making an affirmation. And that's a really important qualification. I don't know that every sentence in the Bible is making an affirmation. In fact, I don't think they are. So we have to make sure that we're affirming the truth of real affirmations in Scripture rather than something else.

Can you unpack that a little bit? It made me think of like poetry when David says, God, where are you? You're distant from me. Like, is that true or not? It's like, well, you'll see, yeah, you're right to mention poetry. There's a lot of figural speech. There's a lot of metaphor in scripture. And it's important to just unpack it. I think it's all meaningful. I think what we have in scripture is exactly what God wants us to have. And I don't think metaphors are a problem with language. I think they're very enriching. And it doesn't mean that somehow we can cop out when it comes to the truth question either. It's just we have to make sure

what is being affirmed. Scientists use metaphors and models all the time. So it doesn't mean you can't make truth claims. But we just have to be sure that we understand what is being claimed. And that's the hard work of interpretation that can't be glossed over when we're talking about truth. Okay. Can we dive in a bit deeper into that cosmology question? Because I think this does come up quite a bit. Like, my view, I think the Bible's true. Now I'm not being careful with my words, but yeah, I think Bible is true. And yeah, I do think the ancient writers had an ancient cosmology. And somebody could push back. And I haven't really had to really defend this, but somebody could say, okay, well, that means it's historically or scientifically inaccurate,

therefore the whole Bible is not really true. Maybe the ethics are, maybe the history is, but the science is flat out untrue. Is that? I'm familiar with the argument, and it's problematic, right? Because you could say, well, the theology is as primitive as the science, and so that can't be true either. I don't want to be a chronological snob here and write off what an author. author says simply because, you know, they come from a different culture or a different historical era. I still think we need to know, though, what they're actually claiming. You know, if we,

for example, I don't know what they thought about the earth, whether it was flat or round. There's some psalms that indicate that maybe they thought it was round, but what if they thought it was flat. My point would be, I'm not sure that I know that there's a claim in scripture that the earth is flat. In other words, there may be a general assumption, but in God's providence, that assumption, that cosmological assumption about the flatness of the earth, maybe the biblical authors assumed it, but they never asserted it as something that people of faith must believe. Again, I'm not saying that that was their cosmology. It's just an example. that we're all familiar with. I don't think any of us would want to affirm the flatness of the earth.

So it's just an example. Maybe it's not inappropriate, but do you see what I mean? I think you can have an assumption, but you're not necessarily asserting that assumption. Maybe you're actually humble enough to know that the nature of creation is beyond you at the moment. I think what we have in Genesis are theological claims in the first instance. That is, the physical world did not pop into being in and of its own, you know, it didn't, there wasn't some contingent physical accident. No, God spoke it into being. I firmly believe that because I think that's what Genesis is really claiming. I don't know that when we read and God said let there be light, I don't think I'm being told anything about an ancient cosmology in that claim. What I'm being

told is God spoke light into being by speaking. And that's what I think is true. That distinction between an assumption and an assertion, that's incredibly helpful. It's not mine. You know, I'm poaching from all sorts of people here. But John Collins has written a book while reading Genesis well. And he's very alert to this distinction. He's alert to the fact that we need, first of all, to decide what is Genesis? Is it a scientific textbook? And, you know, he has a view of it as exalted prose. And we really do need to pay attention to the intricacy of the structure of Genesis 1 and 2. It's a very complex text. I want to say it's true. I believe it. I believe in God, the Creator. I believe the physical universe was created. But then everything else,

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assumptions versus assertions versus, et cetera, et cetera. Can you impact, yeah, help us understand that. So, again, you're raising questions in a sense that allow me to tell the story of my life. So thank you. But, you know, when I was a seminary student, I quickly learned everybody wants to be biblical, right? You want to say my position is biblical. Whether you're conservative or liberal, your view is biblical, whatever you think about God as being supported by Scripture.

And so it quickly became apparent to me. I needed to work on answering the question, what does it mean to be biblical, right? Are you biblical if you simply quote verbatim the text, which translation? you know what what does it mean to be biblical and you can work a variation on that idea and then ask well the bible's a text so what does it mean to be textual and then i realize it's not enough just to cite the text you have to understand it you have to know what it is and that's a difficult definition as well what is a text but whatever it is i want to be biblical i want to be textual I don't want to impose my own best thoughts onto scripture. I want to understand. I want to stand under the authority of scripture. So C.S. Lewis says that when you're reading a text, the first thing you have to ask is, what is it? What kind of a text am I reading? And that's the genre question. And that to me was so helpful when I was in seminary and in my doctoral studies.

because I was coming across critics like James Barr who said that evangelicals assign the wrong kind of truth to texts. Like they'll read myths as if they were histories and so on. And I don't, I'm not saying that Barr was right in his particular judgments, but in that concern that we could assign the wrong kind of truth. to particular texts, he absolutely convinced me. And the first thing I published, I don't know, I was in my 20s, was a take on his book, The Semantics of Biblical Language. And my little essay was called The Semantics of Biblical Literature. I wanted to say even then that the meaning

is important. And part of what determines the meaning of the Bible is the kind of literary form it is. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. So give us a couple examples of how to read in our search for truth, how a couple different genres will maybe reshape how we even think of that question. Yeah. So Jonah, the book of Jonah, it's commonly thought of as prophecy. And it is true that it is about a prophet. it's about Jonah, but what kind of a text is it?

And I've become convinced that it's actually perhaps one of the genres. If it's, if it isn't the whole genre, there's a stylistic component, but it's satire. It's a story that's satirizing, making fun of Jonah's idea that God's purpose and plan is only for his tribe, Israel, right? He doesn't want to go to the Assyrians. He gets upset with God for showing mercy to another nation besides Israel. And I think that the whole book of Jonah is funny. It's comical. He has the animals of Nineveh parading around in sackcloth because they repent after his half-hearted sermon to Nineveh. I mean, there are a lot of funny elements. And the reason I chose Jonah as my example is that I was convicted. I wasn't a very good reader when I met someone in

Cambridge when I was doing my doctoral studies, and we were talking about Jane Austen. Everybody knows Jane Austen stories now because of the films, right? Pride and Prejudice. And when we were talking about Pride and Prejudice, which I had read years before, I realized that I hadn't caught the fact that it was a social satire. Oops. Arguably, I missed the most important thing Jane Austen was doing in the novel, which was satirizing social attitudes of her day. And I realized, huh, I think I might have missed the satire in Jonah as well.

Interesting. So does, I've thought about, I haven't done a lot of deep research into Jonah, but people ask me, well, is it a historical story or not? And I said, honestly, I'm kind of undecided. For me, the question always is it is whatever the author intended it to be. And the author will typically give clues what he intends it to be through the kinds of literary devices that he uses. I haven't really looked deeply into that. So I honestly don't know. I don't need Jonah to be a, historical account. I don't need to have a large sea animal, swallow a human and defend the miraculous nature of that. If that's what the author intended and that's, he wanted it to convey that, then, yeah, then I would say it was a miracle and it is what it is. But I don't need Jonah to be historically true or even accurate for it to be, well, sorry, yeah. I don't need Jonah to be historical for it to be true, maybe is to use your language. And I don't need it to be non-historical. That is, it's not because I have a problem with the big fish swallowing Jonah that I'm straining at gnats, you see, to try to read it in a non-historical way. I don't need to do that. I believe the

accounts of Jesus resurrection. I believe the account of God's deliverance of Israel from Egypt. I have no problem with God acting in history. I have a very rigorous and vigorous and I think fulsome understanding of God's providence. I have no problem with that. The only question is, is that the main point of Jonah? Or is it something else? So do you have a view on that? Do you think a big fish swallowed a prophet? I think it could. I think it could. I mean, I think it could be satirical history. I have no problem with that, and that may be the best way to look at it. You know, Jesus does refer to Jonah, and some people think that his reference to Jonah means that it was historical. Even there, I could go either way, right? Because he could be referring to Jonah as I did to the Jane Austen characters

and, you know, Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. Yeah, we can quote, I mean, people in sermons quote the lion, the witch in a wardrobe all the time, you know, just as. Yes, they do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and it does. And there's just kind of this, this underlying knowledge that, yeah, I'm not, you know, I don't think Aslan was an actual talking lion, you know. Yeah, yeah, I've never taken. I mean, at first, yeah, I don't think Jesus is reference to that, yeah, necessarily demands that it was historical in the same way that, say, First Kings is historical. So you don't, you know, you didn't actually directly answer the question. And is that because you don't think it's really. essential whether a big fish yeah yeah i don't think there's anything theological hanging on this question um and you know i'm i take i follow calvin really on lots of these interpretive issues he he and maybe augustin as well unless there's something doctrinal at stake you know i'm not

too concerned by differences in interpretation um you know i i think if someone were to mistake, read Jonah in such a way as to cause a theological error, I'd probably get more concerned. But I'm not sure that I see what doctrinally is at stake in this question. But your main thing is clearly the book has satirical elements that we, that are conveying the message that the author wants us to see and hear and obey. And that's really the Yes. So I think when we talk about absolute truth, truth, how we started this discussion. I get a little nervous when the people, if I feel that the people I'm talking with you and this present company accepted, but I get a little

nervous if people aren't well-lettered. That is, if they aren't literate, if they aren't good readers, because then the Bible can, you know, become a weapon in the hands of people who know not what they're doing. So I really think that it behooves everyone. who affirms the truth of scripture to achieve a kind of biblical literacy so that we understand what the text is, what it's for, and how it should be read. That to me is one of the hallmarks of discipleship. We need to help people become biblically literate. Another question related to what we're talking about, one that I've constantly wrestled with, is let's just say the Bible is, and I'm nervous about what term to use here, but you give what I'm saying,

you know, absolute or objective truth. Our access to that truth is really complicated. First of all, we have to, we don't know the original languages, so we're relying on human mediators to translate it correctly. We also have a lot of biases and baggage and context, our ethnicity, our geographical location, our gender, our, you know, list goes on. Also, we have pre-commitments, theological things that we want to believe and want to see the text affirm, but other ones we don't. And so even if it is absolute objective truth, our human access to it is profoundly complicated. How do we navigate that?

Because I could see someone saying, because of all the human elements that go into interpretation, we can never really know what that absolute, quote unquote, truth is. Great question. Again, story of my life. that is that is the question i think you know if we just look at the protestant church there are so many divisions that have stemmed from people disagreeing over what the bible is saying about a certain issue like baptism so we have a split of baptists and non-baptists and we could go down the line on various doctrines so i've i've tried to address this in my most recent book which is called mere christian

hermeneutics, and the mere is a way of kind of diffusing some of the disagreements. I'm following C.S. Lewis here on his idea of mere Christianity, and I'm assuming that all Christians, regardless of the century or the culture they're from, all Christians affirm certain things in common. So I agree with you. There's lots of differences that split the church. But we need to remember, especially in this anniversary year of the Council of Nicaa, 1700 years ago, that there is a lot of ground on which Christians agree. And that's important. Just to remember, as we get into the nitty-gritty of interpretive disagreements, let's not forget that many people affirm the Apostles' Creed or the Nicene Creed, and we're on the same page as far as Trinitarian theology and salvation in Christ

and no other name under heaven. There are many things we agree on. So let's just not lose that as we dive deeper into this topic. So how do we, okay, so there is a canon within a canon of Oh, right. So yeah, back to your question. So there are several, many, many, many things we need to remember here. So first of all, let's not forget that as Christians, we belong to a community of faith. One faith, one hope, one baptism, one church, the Catholic or universal church. And that's why I mentioned things like the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed, the whole church agrees. And in the early church, it's not just the 21st century. In the early church, it's not just the 21st century, in the early church, they had the same questions.

There were heretics. There were people reading the New Testament and the Old Testament in different ways. I mean, there were Jews as well as Christians. So whose reading is right? And in the early church, there was a consensus that formed around this thing called the rule of faith. It wasn't a human tradition. Rather, I think it was a spirit-led acknowledgement that there is a through-like, in the biblical story that connects the parts, the old and the New Testament, that explain

how Jesus fulfilled earlier prophecy, that is the rule of faith. And basically, it's the story of what the father does through the son by the spirit. And that is a large theological framework that we should never stray from, in my opinion. It is possible to get into debates about predestination, you know, reformed an Armenian, and to get so intensely involved in those debates that you feel like the person you're talking to is your opponent, you know. And we just need to remember the bigger picture we're in, particularly in an age of religious pluralism. I think it's, you know, we're really on the same side, I hope, the side of Jesus Christ, the side of Jesus Christ, the side of. of the truth. Yes, we have our differences. I don't know if you've had on your show, Preston, a theologian named Ryan Putman. No, huh? Okay, so you might enjoy interviewing him because he's

written a whole book about when the church divides over doctrine and the reading of scripture. It's an excellent book. Sounds kind of negative that is focused on disagreement, but his intent is positive. And one of the most important things he said, and you've mentioned bias, yourself, is that we need to become the kind of people who can have constructive disagreements. And I talk a lot in my books about interpretive virtue. In other words, it's one thing to learn the grammar. It's one thing to learn the vocabulary. It's one thing to follow these procedures for right interpretation. But it's something altogether different to be. become the kind of person who interprets well and who can learn from other person's readings

as well. Interpretive virtues like honesty, patience, attentiveness to detail, and most importantly, the biblical virtue of humility, not thinking too highly of your own opinion, but listening to what other people see in the text, what they've heard, especially people from other times and cultures as well, not just our own in-group, because that just serves to reinforce confirmation bias, right? We already know what people in our tribe think. We only hear from them. We're not going to be challenged.

But I think God uses the differences in the church to help us all grow more mature, not just because we're informed by different opinions, but because we become the kind of people who can listen and accept correction and learn or maybe challenge others. But we have to do this, always speaking the truth and love, as Paul enjoins in Ephesians, always speaking the truth and love, these are hard things to do. Speak the truth, love people with whom you disagree. All this to say, the best way to navigate interpretive disagreement is to be. become a person of interpretive virtue.

It's not a, it's not a Roman or Greek ethic. It's a fruit of the spirit. That's so good. So, so would you say then that this, I don't want to say chasm, this difference between, the separation between the objective truth of scripture and the subject of nature of interpretation, that that is mitigated when the subjugated, when the subjective interpretation is done within community and while that community is embodying these spiritual virtues.

Like if that's the manner in which interpretation is done, then the prospect of actually accessing this objective truth is much more possible? Well, yeah, the community. that you're referring to means that we're not just stuck in subjectivity. At the very least, we have intersubjectivity, right? We do have a community of learners. And that's what disciples, that's what the church is. It's a community of learners. And again, we see the same tensions in the early church, right? In Acts 15, the Jerusalem Church had to gather together to deal with an

interpretive disagreement, or at least the implications of what scripture says for the Christian life. This is about Jew-Gentile relations. And the community came together. They listened. They prayed. I believe they asked for the spirit's leading, and the spirit led them to a conclusion, and then they passed on that conclusion to the affected communities. So I think being in community is a help. It's not a panacea, you know, because I also believe as a Protestant, as a Protestant, I believe that interpretive communities can sometimes get it wrong as well. And so we need to appeal to the broader community. This is perhaps the principle of apostolicity and Catholicity when we have a dispute between two rival interpretive

communities, such as Roman Catholics and Protestants. Yeah. I had a, actually, I've gotten this question a few times recently based on some conversations I've had in the podcast. And just as briefly as I can, there's one conversation in particular where me and a guest were talking about the first century background of First Timothy and Ephesus, and you got, you know, the Artemis cult that was a big deal and all these things that, you know, scholars like to talk about and how this really kind of shapes how we read the text and um i got a

response there was a you know almost like in frustration but in a jet like of the most genuine kind of like well if if if if i'm not a scholar and you guys have all this knowledge of all kinds of stuff that i will never have like how can i even understand the bible and i i think i responded well as an individual you can't understand the Bible. I mean, let me unpack that just briefly. And it would love to your thoughts. I said,

I mean, for the first 1,500 years of the church, 90% of people were illiterate, illiterate. They couldn't understand the Bible unless somebody else read it to them. And even then, they didn't understand Latin,

so they're depending on somebody else to translate that, you know, Latin translation, which was translated by another human from the original Greek and Hebrew. You know, so already we have all these human mediators.

And then, yeah, I think that the Bible was designed to be interpreted within community. It was not designed to be readily, that's a vague word, I'll stay with it, readily understood by simply by individual Christians just sitting in a room, them and the Bible, like, apart from the community of the church, both tradition, both translators, both interpreters, teachers, and prophets and so on. was that how would you answer that question when there's all these scholarly things that go into how to understand a Bible like understand person without a degree to like how am I supposed to understand this thing great question it often comes up in relation to the reformation and what the reformers did and their claim that you know they were using scripture alone and then related claims that scripture was clear and sufficient and some people have said well clearly the reformers then were individualists. They thought that you didn't need tradition to read the Bible well.

That's a caricature of the reformers. So it is important to try to sort these things out. Let's see. So I think what I want to say is this. We don't always need scholars because what we're really trying to understand in scripture is the story of what the father is doing in the son through and by the spirit. There's a united story. I mean, you remember Carl Bart, his very complex theologians, summed up his whole approach by saying, Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible told me, though. And he went somewhere with that that I don't necessarily think we need to go.

But I love that last phrase. It's from the children's hymn, right? the Bible tells me so. And boy, I could unpack a whole doctrine of scripture and interpretation, just trying to unpack that phrase, for the Bible tells me so. I think you don't have to be a literate reader or a scholar to understand the story of the Bible. And the risen Christ appointed teachers and preachers and shepherds to the church. This is Ephesians 4. Mediators to some extent are not a problem. They're a gift of the risen and ascended Christ. It's entirely appropriate that we learn by being told a story. That's how children learn. That's how children in the faith

learn about God. So you don't need to have a, to become a scholar, and I don't think you need to recreate the details of the first century situation in Ephesus and so on. You know, we've learned a lot from that work, but there's also, there's also interpretive disagreement. You know, what was the situation in first century Ephesus? I think what we have in script, is enough to follow the story. The prophets and apostles tell me that God loves us in Jesus. This we know because we're told the whole story. We don't need to be scholars for that. Clearly, I believe in scholarship, in exegesis, in knowing theology, to go deeper. But this is the distinction between, you know, being nurtured on milk, which we need as children,

and then becoming adults in the faith and needing solid food. I, you know, I think it's so interesting that in Hebrews that distinction between milk and solid food is used. Precisely, you know, because we want mature disciples. We need to get weaned off the milk. But at the beginning, you know, you can, the story is. is so important. And again, I think even philosophers these days recognize that much of what we know we've learned by testimony. And that fundamentally is what Scripture is. It's testimony to what God has done in Israel and in Christ for the salvation of the world and for his church.

That's super helpful. And yeah, I didn't mean when I said scholar. I guess I meant to to use a more biblical category like teacher or, you know, somebody that God is gifted to the church to help others better understand the Bible and the story and the gospel and so on. Yeah, it does get tricky with like background because here we're going outside of the text to try to understand a text. And I just, I don't know, part of me is like, you know, as a solo scriptura guy, I'm like, ah, I get nervous about that. But I'm also, I believe what your former colleague, I believe John Walton said, you know, the Bible is not written to us, but it is written for us.

It was written to people in their ancient context, which, you know, is relevant and applies to people of all time, but to understand both the ancient writer and the audience and what was being said in that, you know, we have, you know, we're listening to one side of the telephone in conversation, you know, we do have to do a bit of digging, don't we? I mean, in the historical context? And I just seems kind of inevitable. And not that everybody will, every single individual Christian will have the same access to that knowledge. But again, that's why we do need to read the Bible and community and learn from others who do have that kind of knowledge. Yeah, it goes back to my original point about deciding what the Bible is. Obviously, it's human discourse is what

human authors wrote at a particular time, and so knowing something about their time is often very helpful, especially in determining the semantic range of terms, like what could a Hebrew or Greek term have possibly meant at the time an author used it? Even there, though, some authors may use a term in a slightly different way, and so backgrounds can only help you so much. I've also said that backgrounds can be contested, right? There's interpretive disagreements about what the background was. For much of church history, people did not have access to the historical background of many texts. Right. You know, it's just before the modern historical critical method came onto the scene.

But they still were able to understand the essentials of Scripture, and they were able to be built up in the faith. I think the canon is the most important context for understanding the story. So I don't want to downplay or I don't want to dismiss the historical context, but there are several contexts in Scripture, and the canonical context is one. That is, this is the relevant bit of information that will help you understand this testimony and the one to whom the testimony is directed ultimately, Jesus Christ, and you know the literary context of each book helps the historical context can help as well but but i think then one last thing about what the text is i also believe it's the word of god and i believe it is

written to the church because it also has god as its author i i hold to dual authorship so the human authors, I think, even the human authors, were writing for future generations. That's what Brevard Childe does in his canonical work, that the canon was so shaped, not just for the present generation, but for future generations. And I think there's evidence in the text that the authors intended it to be read and used as a norm, as authoritative scripture, not just for their own generation, but for generations to come. So in one sense, yes, it wasn't written to us, but in another sense, and in fact, Hebrews, when it quotes, Hebrews 3, Chapter 3, when it's quoting one of the Psalms, the author says, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart. anyway so i think that that's a that's a an indication that the author of hebrews is reading the

psalm as god's word speaking to him in that day and i think we can do the same no that's really helpful um yeah i read i read brevard charles long long time ago and got of the different approaches of scripture the historical critical the canonical i i yeah i kind of really started to resonate with of a canonical reading, but as a biblical scholar, we're just so like, we love the dirt and grime behind the text, the history, the background, and all that stuff. And I think sometimes scholars, biblical scholars can make a living off of sometimes painting an overly precise picture of the background. And I have to make sure, yeah, we don't. Some of my best friends and teachers are biblical scholars. And I have a high view of biblical scholarship. But

there is a way of inhabiting it where the biblical scholar becomes or forms a kind of new clericalism. You know, only we have the keys to the kingdom of the text. Most don't take that attitude, but some do. And this book that I wrote, Mere Christian Hermeneutics, one of my main burdens was to bring biblical scholars and theologians and the whole church into a healthier dialogue, and to bring up the point that all of us inhabit certain reading cultures. We've been taught to read the Bible a certain way, but our location may condition us to become a certain kind of reader, and we just need to think about that, right?

We need to think about what reading cultures we inhabit and what they're encouraging us to look for in the text. And then we need to ask why. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. So, okay, so somebody's listening. They're not a scholar. And now they're like, all right, but I do need to like kind of look to other, again, maybe scholars not the best term, you know, look to other teachers to help them understand the text, to fill in gaps of knowledge that they may not have. What are some qualities, what are some kinds of teachers, meaning, you know, yes, maybe scholars, writers, professors, people writing more academic books. Like, what are some things people should look for as people, in a sense,

place some trust in these teachers? I think you landed on it. Trust. What makes a scholar trustworthy? So for me, it would be someone who has, what I would say is an appropriately high view of scripture as not just a flawed and faulty historical record. written by flawed and faulty human beings, but someone who is actually trying to read the Bible as more than that, as the Word of God, as somehow inspired, as holy scripture, a writing that's set apart for a different purpose and may have different properties as a result. I think I would want someone to have that view. I would also want them to have, you know, the intellectual and interpretive virtues. I wouldn't want. them to think too highly of their own opinion. I would want to make sure that they were in touch

with the broader world of scholarship and not simply, you know, doing their own thing with their own constituency. So are they in fellowship with the broader church? Those are a couple of things I would look at. I haven't really asked myself that question recently, but those are things that come to mind right away. Yeah. Well, you even mentioned earlier, yeah, just like interpretive virtues of humility, you know. If a, yeah, if a teacher or even pastor speaker, whatever, if they're so overly confident what they're saying, sometimes I'm like, ooh, that makes me not trust you as much, you know,

because I know things are complex and, you know, a wise person will grow and mature and change his mind over, over time on things that he needs to change his mind on. So if I see someone that's overly confident, I get a little suspicious sometimes. Well, and again, you raise such an important question because in our time, knowing who to trust, what channel to turn to has become a huge issue. And some people say that because of this crisis of trust, we're in a knowledge crisis because we don't know whose words we can rely on. Obviously, scripture is trustworthy, God is trustworthy, and the big question then is, so who are the trustworthy interpreters we can listen to in expositing God's word? It's a difficult question, and I think being in line with the Orthodox faith is important,

and also being a person who is of good repute, who is not living in some kind of sin, who displays interpretive virtues, all these are very important. But I do empathize with new Christians who aren't quite sure whom they should listen to. In fact, just yesterday I was in discussion with some folk in the Lausanne theology working group, and the point was made that in many parts of the world, where there are new Christians, there's no tradition in their family or in their culture of handing the faith down. And so they do have the question to whom should we turn to understand our faith better. And unfortunately, there's a lot of health and wealth evangelists out there that are glitzy and

spectacular and they're getting a lot of attention, but they may not be the most trustworthy. Yeah, that's good. All right, I got one more question for you if you have time. this kind of shifting gears a little bit, and it has to do with inerrancy. This is a doctrine that I can sign the statement, especially, well, if it's a really kind of general statement, you know, but man, there's some different definitions of inherency that I'm like, I just don't know if I agree with what I think you're trying to say here. So, yeah, help us understand what is inerency?

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