Outline

Christian’s Reservations about Scholarship

1. Liberal
   • In my experience, scholarship tends to move people more toward the middle than to either extreme. 
   • There are conservative scholars. 
   • Perhaps if the scholarly consensus is too liberal or conservative for you, you are too far to one of the extremes.
     • Don’t have to agree with every scholarly consensus
2. Overthink
   • In what other professions do we believe that the more a person studies the less they know? 
   • In actuality, the more you know the more you realize you don’t know. The less you know, the more you think you know everything. 
   • Neil deGrasse Tyson – How sad life must be to believe that everyone who has spent their entire living studying something is trying to deceive you. 
3. Threaten Inspiration
   • If your view of inspiration cannot hold up to critical evaluations, then you might need to change your view of inspiration. 
4. Question Traditional Beliefs
   • Questions are essential to the scholarly process. 
   • If your belief cannot withstand criticism, then you shouldn’t believe it. 

How Weak is Our Faith?

• If our faith cannot stand up to critical examination, historical analysis, and the findings of science and psychology, then we probably shouldn’t hold our faith in the first place. 
• I believe the truth and richness of our faith is found in the intersection of all God’s truth. God’s truth, not only in Scripture, but also in the natural world. 

Attacking “Experts”

• Regarding biblical scholarship, likely began with the rise of liberal scholarship in Germany.
• It has become increasingly popular to attack experts.
  • Postmodernism 
  • Conspiracy Theories
    • Anything can look like a conspiracy theory if you are uninformed.  
• Generally, this is because we have preconceived beliefs that we highly value that are contradicted by experts.
• However, most people still live based upon the teachings of experts.
  • You generally follow your doctor’s advice. 
  • You believe the earth revolves around the sun, even though you’ve never seen it. 
  • You let your builder build your house. 
• Why is it different when it comes to faith?
  • We don’t have to blindly believe. It is ok, and even good, to verify. 
  • However, why should we start with the assumption that experts don’t know that they’re talking about? 

Scholars Are Not Necessary for Salvation

• People do not have to be biblical scholars to be saved. The foundation of the Gospel (i.e., salvation through the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus) is intentional not complex. 
• However, there comes a point where the average Christian’s knowledge, without the ability to read the original language, know the historical context, or the hours spent studying the Bible full time, will hit a wall. 

Contribution of Scholars

1. English Translation
2. Historical Context
   • No one can be an expert in everything
3. Church History
   • Preserved documents
   • Translations
   • Interpretations 
4. Community Prevents Misinterpretations
   • Also allows you to interact with different traditions and scholars with different backgrounds and experiences

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Transcript

I think there will come a time in every Christian’s life where their knowledge will hit a wall. That is, they’ve grown to know all these things, but now they’re at a point where they, since they don’t know the original language, they don’t know the historical context, they don’t know very much about church history, that they can’t spend all day, every day reading the Bible.

That continuing to grow, they’re going to need assistance from others, from the church, from ministers and I think also from scholars.

So hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Thinking Theologically podcast show, where we teach you how and why you should think theologically. I’m one of your hosts, Jack Dodge, and joined, as always, by the master Resident Theological Training, Spencer Shaw, whose ears I nearly blew out. Yeah. First. Yeah. This is our second time to try to get this started.

And he might be a little deaf. So, we’ll see how we got to use to the reverse. So now that we’ve undone, although we’ve brought it back to, the right way, we’re having our struggles again. We haven’t recorded an episode like this since a month ago, leading into all of our politics. Yeah, yeah. So at the we we were together at the doing an episode at the beginning of October.

Right. And then we did so there was solo stuff throughout the month of October. I did, an interview in there. And then I’ve been planning we’ve got a couple of exciting ones that will be coming up over the next couple of, of months, and hopefully beyond that, a couple more things that yeah, will hopefully be in the works.

So I don’t know. It’s it’s kind of weird not just because it’s been a while, but I know my mind’s been like in conversation interview mode, which is a very, hosting is one thing. And, you know, Jack and I have flip flopped and doing that, being kind of the, the primary voice, I guess you could say is another thing.

But then doing like an interview or a conversation is a third thing. So kind of you have to kind of switch modes of, well, what am I doing? So but it is kind of nice to get back to, I don’t know, I guess you could say our roots or something like that. The world where we where we’re used to, where it all started, however brief that is.

Yeah. Because like the politics thing or we did an episode, laying a foundation for the solo episodes in the interview that were to come. This is this is a similar sort of thing, where you’ve already seen the title. We’re talking about scholarship, and the importance of, scholars when it comes to church growth and how we think about them and all of this.

But this is another foundation kind of episode as we set up, not solo lessons from Spencer. And I like last time, but actually have some interviews, lined up, some that have happened, some that are going to and some that, we hope will happen as well. And I think we’ll have some of our stuff sprinkled in there.

But also heading into the holidays, have a little more interview episodes and, share some of our, more popular episodes throughout this year as well, with all the travels and things, like that. So, hopefully going to give you good interviews to, you know, get away for a little bit. If you need a break during the holidays, just go listen to a couple people talk, fall asleep to it or whatever.

Just let it sink into your brain. That’s what I do with a lot of interviews. But that’s what we’re doing today is laying this foundation about scholarship, and, the importance of those things, maybe how we think about them in both, negative and positive ways. Before we do that, I want to encourage you to go check out the Facebook page, Thinking Theologically, as well as our website, thinkingtheologically.org, where you can find our previous episodes.

You if you’ll have to scroll a little bit because the, the politics stuff is the most recent and I’m sure you’re done with that now, just like everybody else is on at least in America. But we have tons of episodes that are on there. Tons of stuff for you to read as well. If that is something that, that you are into there.

So be sure to check those out and reach out to us, anywhere on whatever social media for Spencer. And then you can get Ahold of me on Facebook as well. If we’re, we’re friends there and stuff. Send us messages, email us at Strong Church Ministries at gmail.com. And be sure to sign up for our newsletter to start a newsletter.

So not the first one. This past month, with all the politics stuff, I think there’ll be some fun things, happening with that in the future. So look for more of that. Definitely subscribe to that. Jack kind of mentioned at the end of the year, we’re going to do the our top episodes of the year, and we’ll have a newsletter that will come out about that as well that will have all of those we’re starting this series on, or kind of biblical scholars kind of preparing, as he said, for some conversations next year.

And so we’ll have one that will come out with all of that group together as well our discussion and interviews with biblical scholars. And so, it’s a great way to kind of keep up with what we’re doing in general, but kind of some of the themes and stuff that we hit because we’ll try to kind of consolidate a lot of that together of, hey, here’s what we did on politics, and here’s what we did on biblical scholars, and here’s our top stuff from the year and all of that fun stuff.

All right, the title for this one a little longer than normal. But why biblical scholars and PhDs are essential for the church’s spiritual growth. A pretty big assertion there from, from the title. So that’s, that’s what we’re going to discuss today, a little bit about scholarship and all those things. Spencer. Some Christians I know some I know several, you know, several, Christians who are pretty, concerned.

They have a lot of reservations about scholarship. Why what do you why do you think that is? So, as those of you who know me personally or who have listened to our episodes probably know that, discussion of, biblical scholars, PhDs is something that is important to me as someone who engages in the scholarly side, is getting ready to start PhD work.

And so it’s it shouldn’t be a surprise that I would want to assert that what scholars like myself and others, in a much greater degree than myself do is important and helpful for the church. I actually think it’s essential for the church’s spiritual growth, and we’ll kind of that’s where this episode will end. But as Jack said, a lot of people have some reservations about the scholarship.

I know, as I’ve produced, pursued scholarship, that I, I hear a lot of those reservations because some people have some reservations about what I do and what I’m engaged in and what I pursue. And so I wrote down for that immediately came to my mind. These aren’t the only four. I guess these are probably the four that I hear the most often about people’s concerns.

And reservations. Like I said, a lot of people, some just outright want to get rid of scholarship, but most that I know, it’s more of a reservation. It’s not a well, let’s, attack and get red and burn scholars at the stake or something like that, but it’s more of I have some concerns about what I know in my experience with biblical scholarship.

The first thing that I wrote down is that a lot of people feel that biblical scholars are, all liberal. And so to become a scholar, to listen to scholars, what that’s going to do is it’s just going to turn you into a liberal. And for some, at that point, there’s nothing left to save you. So my first response to that is that in my experience, the scholarship doesn’t turn people from conservative into liberals, or vice versa, from liberals into conservatives.

It actually moves people more towards the middle. And again, in my experience, most people that go into scholarship as conservatives remain conservative. They just move a little bit towards the middle. Those that go into scholarship liberal tend to stay liberal. They just move a little bit towards the middle. And I’ve seen that firsthand of when I went into school.

I saw this with people that were coming into school very, very conservative, very, very traditional and people coming in very, very liberal, very progressive. And I watched them move more towards the middle and become a lot more similar than they were going into school, though the people that I knew that were on the Liberal side continued to stay on the liberal side, and the people on the conservative side continued to stay on that side.

Now there’s exceptions of people, I guess, flip flopping the aisle, that does happen. But generally that’s not what happens is people move towards the middle. But I think sometimes we get stuck in our mind. People who do flip flop or who were Christians and engaged in scholarship and are no longer Christians because there’s examples of those out there.

I know, Bart Ehrman, he’s actually one of the best scholars when it comes to the Gospels and the, context of the first century of when the Gospels are being written. Though he went into scholarship as a conservative Christian, and now he is no longer a Christian. So people, I’ve seen people hold him up and see, like, that’s what scholarship does, too, you know, that’s what it can.

But that’s what any type of studying can do. You can give somebody a Bible just to read, and it can change them into all kinds of different people or different beliefs, but generally for the vast majority of people and scholars, that is not what happens. It’s not a I’m just going to become liberal. It’s moving more towards the middle.

And with that being said, there are conservative scholars. There are a lot of conservative scholars. A scholarship is not just something that that liberal people do. There are tons of conservative scholars and conservative scholarly institutes. So all over the country there are Baptist seminaries, like in almost every decent sized city, there’s some kind of Baptist seminary, and they’re all conservative, and they’re filled with scholars, some who are very renowned in their fields.

And it’s all conservative scholarship, all connected generally to the Southern Baptist Convention, all pretty conservative. And so there are conservative scholars out there. You can actually, if you’re ever looking for like a scholarly, commentary, there’s a website. I think it’s like Bible commentaries.org or something like that. You can Google it. But they first off they rank commentaries.

So, people rank them and big-time scholars will put together they’re lists. So like, Scott McKnight has a list of his favorite commentaries. Jay Gupta has his famous commentaries. Patrick, Shriner I believe it is. He’s a conservative scholar at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. I believe he has a list of his favorite commentaries.

But they also note what’s a Catholic commentary? What’s an evangelical commentary, which is a conservative scholarly commentary. And I say that to say there’s a lot of them if you ever want to go in and look into it. And so because of that, because there are conservative scholars as well as liberal scholars, because scholarship tends to move people more towards the middle then towards the extremes.

I would say that perhaps if the scholarly consensus is too liberal or too conservative, then you’re likely too far to one of the extremes. If all of scholarship you think is way too liberal or way too conservative, it’s probably because you’re at some extreme. Now, I mentioned the scholarly consensus. This is important to me. There are consensus among scholars about things that doesn’t mean that that’s correct.

And one of the jobs of scholars is to, test the consensus is to question the consensus. And we’ll have more to say on that as we move through it. And every scholar believes things. That is not the scholarly consensus, like that’s what makes them a free thinker of all of them. Have something of. Yeah, most scholars don’t believe this, but I do.

And so your views don’t have to agree 100% with scholars, because scholars views don’t even agree 100% with scholars. And so we need we do need to be free thinkers and not just accept everything that scholars have to say. But if the all of the scholarly consensus or the majority of scholarly consensus is way too far, one way or the other, for you, I would say nine times out of ten, your theology has probably, unfortunately, found its way into a liberal or conservative ditch and a little bit too far to one of the extremes, which is why I one of the reasons I would recommend reading scholars, because it helps us move a little bit

more towards the middle, move out of some of the ditches we all have ditches that we fall into from time to time. And some of that reading I know in my own experience has helped kind of move us out of some of those extremes. The second thing that I’ve heard people say is to accuse scholars of just overthinking that scholars have all this time on their hands to study the Bible and they think and think and think about it, and it leads them to overthink something that we believe is very, very simple.

And it leads them to all kinds of crazy interpretations of the Bible, simply because they have thought about it too much. And to me, this is the funniest one that I hear, because we don’t act like this with any other profession. So think about it. What other profession do we believe that the more a person studies, the less they know.

Most of us wouldn’t think, well, I don’t want to see this doctor because they study medicine too much or I don’t want this person to build my house because they know too much about building a house or whatever profession it may be. Typically, we think that the more the person studies someone, the more they know, and the more they can make educated decisions or come to educated conclusions.

But for some reason, when we go to biblical scholarship, we think, well, no, the more that you study, the dumber you become. And I just I don’t get it because we don’t believe that in any other aspect of life. Interestingly, we in our teen class on Wednesday nights, we’re working through parts of C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity. And so before we were recording, I was reading a section of that to prepare for discussion tonight.

And Lewis actually argues that we should expect things to be complex because of our understanding of God. And that’s not him saying that, like the plan of salvation, you have to be a biblical scholar to understand. We’ll talk about that more here in a minute, too. But he’s like our understanding of God. We should expect things to be complex, and he gives us example.

He talks about the desk that he’s sitting at and writing. He’s like, we may say, explaining it as simple. I’m sitting here looking at a brown desk. But he said, if you ask a scientist and they what’s going on? And they explain how the photons of light are coming and coming into our eyes, and the way that our eyes understand the imagery and transmit it to our brain, and it becomes a very, very complex thing.

And he argues that life is complex and we should expect it to be complex. And so we shouldn’t oversimplify things. And he takes that into the Christian realm. And so, like so when we’re talking about our faith, we should expect things to be complex. Not that, again, you have to be a biblical scholar to be saved, but we should expect a certain level of of complexity and this is something else that I found to be true.

Engaging with scholars is that in actuality, the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know. So you ask a scholar who studied the Bible their whole life, they’re going to be much more aware of the things that they don’t know than the things that they do know it. People who think that they know everything tend to be those who have the least amount of knowledge on the subject, because the more that you know, the more it opens up to all the things that you can know or you wish you should know, all the things that you don’t know.

And so for scholars, it’s typically not even to think of. They feel like they know it all, but they feel like they don’t know very much at all. And that’s why most scholars have a very fine area of expertise, like a New Testament scholar is probably not going to be an expert in the entire New Testament. They’ll be on Paul and even within Paul, typically like one letter of Paul, like they’re an expert in Romans.

And they might talk about Paul, but they’re going to be most comfortable talking about Romans, because that’s the one thing that they study or a Gospels person, but they’re going to have one gospel that they spend the majority of their time in because they not only realize, I can’t know everything, but I if I want to know anything about something I have to focus in.

And so they’re going to realize, yeah, I’m a New Testament Gospels guy, but don’t talk to me too long about the Gospel of John, because I’m a Gospel of Matthew scholar. And so it really doesn’t bring them to think that they know everything, but that they don’t know a whole lot. This is a quote, or a paraphrase, actually, of something that, Neil deGrasse Tyson said now he was poking fun at a particular politician.

We’re going to leave that part out of of what he said. But the first part of what he said, that I’m going to kind of paraphrase here, I think I found tremendously insightful. He said, how sad life must be to believe that everyone who has spent their entire life studying something is trying to deceive you, and it’s kind of the world that we’ve come into.

But it I think that’s a good point about how sad it must be to go through life, to think that everybody’s out to get you, particularly those who devote their life to studying the Bible or studying science or whatever, and just want people to know what they found. And everybody thinks, no, you’re just trying to trick me for some nefarious reason.

It’s just, it’s not true. At least I haven’t seen it. The third thing is, sometimes, people are concerned that scholars threaten inspiration, that some of the things that they believe a particular Lee, when they don’t believe what someone understands as the literal meaning of the text. Which is funny because the literal meaning of the text is typically determined by the person who’s defining what it means for something to be literal.

There’s not a hard and fast rule for what a literal reading of the text looks like. Part of that’s because you actually have to classify what kind of literature we reading. So like is the story of Jonah poetry or history that’s going to determine the literal meaning. If you define it as poetry, a literal meaning is going to be figurative.

If you define it as historical, a literal reading is going to be historical. And we could dive into that more. But, some people think that because of what scholarly consensus is on things, it threatens the fact that Scripture is inspired. And I think part of that is because a lot of scholars, the subject is approached a lot of the times historically.

So I know some of what I’m wanting to do with the historical. Jesus is thinking about the Gospels not as a Christian, but as a historian. And so that comes off to people of, well, you don’t think the Bible is inspired? No, I do, but if I’m going to be a historian, I have to set that a try as best I can.

I can’t do that perfectly. But to set that aside so that I don’t read the history as a biased observer and make it say something that it’s not trying to say, because my faith makes me want to say it. And a lot of the times that’s what scholars are doing. And we think, well, that threatens inspiration. And we’ve talked about inspiration before on the podcast and kind of argued of if your view of inspiration can’t hold up to some of the historical and scientific things that have been proven to be true, then you might need to change your view of inspiration.

And we’ve argued in previous episodes about some of what we think are actually better ways of thinking about inspiration that better fit into what we understand the Bible doing. So I’ll leave it to you. You can go back and listen to some of those discussions we’ve had on inspiration. I don’t want to talk about that too much.

The fourth is that, I’ve heard people say that scholars just question traditional beliefs. And so kind of the fear of, well, scholars are going to destroy everything that we’ve traditionally believed and held, and even sometimes IT scholars kind of make up new ways to think about Scripture. And sometimes they do. More often than not, when we hear something new from a scholar, though, it’s actually something very old that they’re retrieving for us because they spend the time reading the church fathers and church history, and they’re reviving some ancient beliefs for us that we have lost sight of.

But I would also point out that questions are essential to the scholarly process. The whole point of scholarship is to question the scholarly consensus, to question what we believe, to question what we practice, and to see if it holds up and if it doesn’t hold up, it’s probably wrong. Like, that’s a whole point that we have scholarly journals that are peer reviewed.

And it’s I’m arguing something a bunch of my peers that are also experts are going to read it and see if the argument holds up before it’s published, like we don’t just publish stuff that somebody made up, but it has to go through a peer reviewed process to make sure that it reaches the level of what scholars are trying to achieve.

And so I would say that if your belief cannot withstand criticism, it if you believe something and it immediately falls apart any time it comes in contact with the scholarly argument or historical argument or a scientific argument, then you probably shouldn’t believe it. And the whole point of scholarship is to spend time challenging beliefs and to see which ones stick, which ones hold up.

And as someone who engages in scholarship, I don’t believe in any way that scholarship destroys our Christian faith. Our Christian faith holds up very strongly in the face of criticism. Historical criticism. Theological criticism. Philosophical process. Some scientific criticism. The problem is sometimes some individual beliefs that we hold dear don’t hold up. And that’s what gives us reservation about scholars, because we don’t want to give up something of, well, I’ve believed this my whole life.

It doesn’t hold up very well when scholars analyze it. So I’m going to it’s easier for me to reject the scholar than it is to try to change my own belief. And so we just say, well, you know, they’re liberal or they’re overthinking, or they don’t believe the Bible’s inspired or they just like questioning traditional beliefs and in reality, from someone that is and some degree a part of the field, that’s just not what happens nine times out.

There’s bad scholars, just like there’s bad plumbers and bad doctors and, bad whatever job we can think of. But the majority, that’s not what’s happening in scholarship. And again, most scholarship that’s put out that goes through a peer review and editing process is to root out that bad side of scholarship and to keep that from actually getting out to the public.

Yeah. A couple of things come to mind. So first, best commentaries.com. That’s what you were. There you go there. Yeah, I use it all the time. It’s very helpful resource. So there’s that. I was thinking about the, that last one there about questioning traditional beliefs and thinking through, having just done all the Unseen Realm stuff this year, Doctor Michael Heizer s book and several books that he’s published, he is a big fan of, footnotes.

In fact, sometimes the page he wrote would be this much, and then he would have all these quotations at the bottom underneath, that he’s referencing. But the reason I like that is because you would constantly see, like, it’s not just this scholar’s thoughts on thing, it’s his thoughts based on these other individuals that he’s read or sources like when he would go to the Eucharistic texts or the pseudo pig or full texts to say, look, this is what these ancient writers were writing.

This is what they were saying about these things and bringing all of that in. I had access to that material, but I never really went to that material until this scholar brings this material in and says, hey, the biblical authors, the biblical audience, they were thinking of these things. And so we should have an awareness of them and an understanding of those things.

Well, he’s and he presented what to me was a new thing. But it wasn’t really a new thing. It was something that’s rooted in all of this older stuff that has written that he did the work of studying and bringing to the attention of, the masses, quite frankly, because it’s become a lot more popular as, as a view, but that’s, we have to be careful in understanding that new to me does not equal new belief.

Entirely. There are there are things that I’ve heard that other groups teach that I go, well, I’ve never heard that in my life, and they’ve been teaching it for hundreds of years. I guess it’s a different it’s a way they think of the Bible in a different way. For me. I’m not saying that it’s right, wrong or otherwise, but that it’s new to me.

That doesn’t make it new necessarily. And so instead it’s yeah, sometimes they like here’s a new way that nobody’s ever talked of and whatever. Okay. And then others are bringing up this is how they used to talk about these things. And we lost this for this reason, that reason whatever. And we have to do the work of listening and then being skeptical ourselves, of there information, not just accepting whatever scholar A or B says, but also not going, well, I’m not listening to any of this because the scholar said that.

Now let’s do what they do. Hear what they’re saying, ask the questions, examine their what they’re bringing to the table. Look at where they’re getting this information from and doing that work. As well, which I think we’ll say a little bit more here, in just a moment. But don’t wholesale accept and don’t wholesale right off with, with scholars.

It’s just a mistake to do that. Even if it’s, that’s the easiest thing to do when your beliefs are, you know, offended or attacked or, questioned is to just write off the questioner. But don’t do that. Actually dig in and try to understand what’s being said and where they’re coming from and what merits, it may or may not have.

Okay. This kind of builds off the last thing you said about questioning traditional beliefs. This question of how weak is our faith. What do you want to add here to that kind of idea? I would say that if our faith cannot stand up to critical examination, to historical analysis, to the findings of science and psychology, then we probably shouldn’t hold on to our faith in the first place.

And I think sometimes, you know, we’ve talked about we’re scared of beliefs that we hold true being challenged or found to be untrue. And it’s easier to reject the scholar than to reject the belief. But I think sometimes what that shows is that we have a weak faith that our we don’t think that our faith can hold up to examination, so we don’t allow it to be examined.

And I don’t know about you, but if my faith quickly got destroyed when put under a microscope, I would want to know that because I’m wasting my time, placing my faith in whatever it is, not just in God, but in anything else that I want to place my faith, my trust, my belief in, I don’t want to waste my time.

And so we need to allow our faith to be examined and I also believe that the truth and richness of our faith is found in the intersection of all God’s truth. And every truth is God’s truth. So not just theological truth or biblical truth, but historical truth, scientific truth, a psychological truth. All of this is God’s truth and our faith becomes so rich when our faith is allowed to intersect and come in contact with all of these other places where we can find the truth of God.

As I said, not just in Scripture, but all throughout the world. When our faith can come alongside what we as human beings have discovered about history, or about science, or about psychology, anthropology, the human condition, it grows into a, a deeper and richer faith because we see how our faith connects with the rest of the world that God created.

And I would even argue that God created us to be human beings, that question and search like he. He wanted us to try to understand how our universe works. That’s science. He wanted us to understand how, we operate as human beings. So you think of things like psychology and medicine. God. God created us to desire that and to seek out truth.

We are to be truth seekers, not just theological truth, but all truth. And because God created us that way, and because all truth is God’s truth, when we allow all of these to be harmonized together, it creates something more beautiful then separating them out. But at the same time, I would say this just a little side note. We have to let each do their thing.

Like let the Bible do theology, let science do science, let doctors do doctor stuff, let historians do history, and then allow the truths that we discover in all these areas to come together and give us a fuller picture of God, a fuller picture of ourselves, a fuller picture of, of the world that God has created. And that does happen again, I would say that these things can be brought together and present a very beautiful picture if we allow them to.

But again, allowing them to do so might mean that we might have to let go of some things that we’ve believed for a long time and grab on to some things that are new to us. Because when everything is critically examined, it kind of forces us to say, okay, that doesn’t seem very plausible. This seems to be a better explanation of what’s going on here.

And by doing that, I think we actually grow in our relationship with God and our understanding of God. Not it doesn’t destroy faith, it actually enhances faith and again, talk to any scholar, any scientist, any historian who is a person of faith. And they will tell you that, like, yeah, for some it destroys faith, but so does going to church.

I mean, for some people going to church, especially if they had a bad experience, destroys faith. So if we think, yeah, generally going to church is a good thing and enhances your faith, it doesn’t destroy it. Yeah, that’s true. There are exceptions. The same thing is true when you engage in these other fields of generally it helps our faith, though there are times that it doesn’t.

But those you can’t make a rule based on something that seems to be a small exception. And we understand that when we’re defending our faith, we don’t understand it in some of the areas that make us a little uncomfortable sometimes. Yeah, yeah. To that point, like, Romans one comes to mind, but the discussion of the nature being this point thing that points to God, and there are a number of other play as seek and knock there.

And, in the sermon on the Mount, just these, ideas of go, go and pursue or look at the things around you. And that should drive you to God. You know, this all truth is God’s truth, idea. But then, and, I would struggle to name them specifically, but I remember, throughout a lot of the evidences, apologetics classes, books, things that I’ve read like that, how a lot of these, particularly like early scientists and things were motivated by their faith to find out how does how does the water system work?

How does the water cycle work, how to how are the planets stuff? Where how is the sun and all of that? It was their faith that motivated to to pursue those things. And again, yes, some people’s faith have has been lost in the pursuing of those things, but people’s faith has been lost over all kinds of things, things that just happened by chance in the world that we live in.

So you need to be careful, but you shouldn’t be terrified or rejecting of pursuit of truths in different fields, because if something is true, then it’s God’s because God is true. Okay. This is the opposite of the thing that I just said. We should listen and be concerned, be skeptical on all of these things.

But typically, you and I have both seen it. We see it all the time. Experts. We got to attack them. You know, if somebody says that they are number one in their field or they are professional in this field and know a lot about this particular thing, for a lot of people, that is. Okay. I’m on high alert.

I’ve got to go after this guy. So, where did that come from? Why why are we doing that? What do you what do you have to say on that? Yeah, and we could probably do a whole episode on where that came from. And maybe at some point down the road, we will, because there’s a lot that could be said.

But first, I want to talk about biblical scholars. I think a lot of our reservations and are attacking a biblical scholars, came as a result of the rise of liberal scholarship in Germany in the 19th and 20th century. And that’s might be interesting for you to hear, because most of you don’t know anything about liberal German scholarship.

But, interestingly enough, I think the way that a lot of Christians think about scholarship is influenced by that rise in liberal scholarship in Germany, because, what it did was it created a desire to be skeptical of the text, which I actually think is a good thing. Like, I think it’s good for a scholar to come to a text and not just say, well, it says so move on to the next question like that, that the whole point we’ve been talking about is that’s not what scholars do.

And that’s a good thing to want to critically examine things. But what that kind of change in scholarship did was it brought people like a Rudolf Boltzmann. Probably haven’t heard of him. He’s one of the most famous German theologians. But, Boltzmann was very and Thai supernatural. And so his questioning of Scripture kind of led to, well, we have to reject all of the supernatural.

So we reject the resurrection. We reject the miracles of Jesus. We reject these things that happened in the Old Testament as well. And you had a, a strain of scholarship for a while that kind of rejected all of those supernatural things. And there are still scholars today who will reject the supernatural rule, sometimes as a necessity for what they do.

So, for example, not to dive into it too deep, but a historical analysis cannot examine the reliability of a miracle, because historical analysis is based on understanding things that can be replicated and affirmed. And there’s no way to affirm historically, that Jesus multiplied bread and fish, for example, or that just that that is not something that we can ascertain through historical analysis.

So. So sometimes the rejection of the supernatural is not a scholar saying, I don’t believe it happened, but as a historian, I can’t make a truth claim about something that’s a miracle, because that is outside of what a historical historian is able to do. It’s kind of like a a scientist can talk about the world, but they’re limited in truth claims about like, purpose, like what is the purpose or what is the meaning of things like that’s not a scientific question.

It’s not that a scientist can’t believe that there’s a purpose in this, or there’s some meaning that God put into it. But science can’t prove or disprove that, like a historian can’t prove or disprove a miracle. That’s just not the way that history operates. But there are others that their belief is just don’t leave room for the supernatural.

We live in a Western world that tends to reject the supernatural as as a whole, but that this rise in that liberal form of scholarship, which I would argue is probably not the primary way that a lot of scholars, particularly like all conservative scholars today, would not think in that way. But it seems to me that sometime this liberal version of scholarship that arose in Germany that we’re not even familiar with, we kind of see all scholars through those lens and just kind of assume that, well, you’re going to reject the supernatural, you’re going to reject miracles, you’re going to reject the creation or the resurrection or whatever, and that’s not the case.

And we can’t just assume that about all scholars. I think that’s one reason we critique them. But also, Jack and I were talking about this a little bit before when the A scholar doesn’t read something in a way that we think ought to be read literally, we assume that they reject everything else. So if a scholar says, you know, world wasn’t created in seven days, or the story of Jonah is a parable or, you know, it was a localized flood, not a worldwide flood or something like that, we just assume, well, then you reject the miracles of Jesus, or you don’t think Jesus rose from the dead or something like that?

Or if a scholar says, well, when the Bible talks about this girl being demon possessed, it was probably just mental illness and they didn’t know what it was. And so they chalked it up to being a demon. And you’re like, well, you don’t believe in the miracles of Jesus. They very well may think that Jesus healed a mental illness instead.

Like, it doesn’t have to be. It’s not always, either or, but I think because there was kind of this thread of a lot of scholars just rejecting all the supernatural, we kind of tack that on to scholars as a whole, or we hear a scholar say something about one particular story, and we just assume they believe that about everything else, which is also not the case.

Like if you read scholars that that rises to the surface, it becomes pretty obvious. And just real quick side note, that would kind of lead me to recommend that you read scholars because of a lot of the things that we’re talking about, but a lot of the pushback I get against scholars or from people that I can tell haven’t read them, because when you just assume all scholars reject supernatural, it’s like, well, you haven’t read many, then because I can list off 20 for you that don’t approach it that way.

I can list off some that do. But, just the assumption that they all the other reason is that I think just we know this in our society today, it has become very popular to attack experts. That’s part of postmodernism, which we won’t dive too deep into. But when you start rejecting absolute truth and seeing truth post modernism sees truth claims as people trying to hold on to power and suppress people and force people to do their bidding, which unfortunately, a lot of the time is what people do, what people in power who claim truth claims even within the church they use them to.

Okay, let’s get people to do what I want them to do. Right. If I can get them convinced that this is true, if I can scare them enough, then I can get power and I can get them to do what I want to do. So it’s not at all an unfair critique of our world. It’s unfair in that not everyone who makes truth claims not everyone in a position of leadership does that, but some do.

So it’s not completely unfair to make that kind of assertion, but what it’s led to is kind of the extreme in the ditch of, well, every expert, everyone who makes a truth claim is just trying to do it for selfish reasons that have to do with power a lot of the time, and that’s just not the case. Sometimes it’s the case, but when we’re talking about scholarship, particularly biblical scholarship, I think it’s a small portion because something else to think about is most scholars, most scientists, most doctors, in my experience, do it because they love what they do.

They are so devoted to biblical scholarship that they don’t want to see biblical scholars misuse biblical scholarship for power, and will call scholars out for doing that. And you see it. If you read scholars, you’ll see scholars doing that. You have, scientists that are so dedicated to the scientific method that to use that inappropriately to deceive people makes even scientists upset when they see that because they’re so devoted to their craft, just doctors being the same way.

And so I don’t think the majority are just using a truth to gain power. But because post-modernism pointed out that that happens, we get kind of a rejection of all experts. And with that, the rise of conspiracy theories and I’ve heard people talk a lot recently about when you’re uneducated about something then or when you don’t have knowledge, everything can look like a conspiracy theory.

When you don’t understand how it works, it must just be a conspiracy theory. And so we just assume that everybody’s out to get us, rather than actually studying the things that we’re talking about. And it’s kind of we live in a society where it’s popular to attack the experts. I think sometimes this is also because we have preconceived beliefs that we highly value that are contradicted by experts.

And we’ve talked about this a little bit about how if I hold something very dear, it’s easier to attack the expert or the scholar than it is to examine my own belief. We also live in a world of information overload. So if I don’t like what one person says, I can find someone who has the credentials that will tell me what I already want to hear, which is not helpful.

We do that when it comes to Bible stuff. We’re like, oh yeah, well, there’s this one scholar who says what I believe, and we hold this person up as if they’re like the second coming of Jesus. And it’s like, well, if you can only find one, there might be a problem with that. And we do that not just with the Bible.

We do it with science. We do it with health care. We do it with all these that, well, we just find someone that’s going to support what we already, believe. But this is kind of we’ve kind of laid out where we are. And now I kind of want to begin changing course to talk about where I think we need to go and why we need to go there.

So we like attacking scholars. We’re afraid of scholars. We have some reservations about scholars, but we all still live based upon the teaching of scholars, which is something to understand of if we’re going to reject scholars, we are being, we’re kind of living a double life. We’re being a little bit of hypocrites because you can’t fully reject scholars because it’s impossible to live without believing the teachings of scholars.

And so, a couple of examples is generally, we all follow our doctor’s advice, though, that’s becoming more and more questionable. And unfortunately, but generally, we trust our doctors. Most of us, again, unfortunately, there’s exceptions to this, but most of us believe that the Earth revolves around the sun, or that the Earth is round and not flat.

Most of us believe that. But why? Because most of us, the average person, can’t prove it. They can’t prove that the earth revolves around the sun. They can’t prove the Earth is a sphere. They can’t prove gravity. We don’t have the knowledge or the instruments to prove it. We’re not watching the earth revolve around the sun. We’re not going out to space.

Why do we believe that? Why do we believe that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell? You know why? Well, because experts have told us and we accept these things as being true as we should. We? It’s impossible to live in a world without believing experts, because we can’t hold all the information ourselves. We can’t. All the information that we want to know or need to know can’t all be held in our one brain, nor do we have the ability or the time to go and investigate and learn everything for ourselves every day.

Life requires us to believe experts. When you go to the store and you buy food because you believe the food is going to have some kind of benefit for you, why are you doing that? Well, you’re trusting some kind of expert because you don’t know that firsthand. What? Why do you a cook chicken to 165 degrees? Well, because some expert you have no way of knowing you’re not there with your microscope looking and seeing if all the salmonella is dead when you cook it to this temperature versus that, you do it because you’re trusting some expert.

And so it’s impossible to live in our life without trusting experts. So just saying that no, we’re going to discount all experts is illogical, because that’s not the way that life works. And so I would extend that and then ask why is faith any different? Why when we come to faith, do we think that we have to reject all scholars versus them having a central role in our understanding of the Bible and our growth, like they function in our everyday life, even if we don’t, believe it.

We don’t have to blindly believe things. Faith. Faith does go beyond what we can prove. Yes, but it doesn’t mean that we just have to blindly accept everything. It’s okay and even good to try to verify the things that we place our faith in, to critically examine them, to let them be evaluated. There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing that.
But why should we start with the assumption that experts don’t know what they’re talking about? Rather starting with hey, this person’s an expert. I should listen to what they have to say, but evaluate it, verify it, do some thinking of my own I, instead of just outright rejecting, everything that an expert or someone with a PhD might try to tell us.

Yeah, there’s, some of the things real quick that that come to mind here are the, the Jews in Thessalonica, versus those in Berea of the. Well, Paul is bringing this information to us. We can either form a mob because this goes against my established belief system or, I can go and evaluate these things. And then in some cases, you do have those that are like, yeah, I’m convinced, in the conversation.

But that’s what we’re talking about here. The same thing happens to Jesus. They’re constantly looking for these ways to, hey, we need to shut him down. We need to get him out of here. We gotta do something to this guy. That it might be fair to say that that is just a natural reaction that many of us have.

And especially when you think about culturally, for us, those of us who grew up with, 911 as part of a backdrop of our upbringing and, all the Covid stuff that is part of our life, but backdrop of the upbringing of some of these others, that were like, hey, maybe all the truth wasn’t there about these wars or this or how well we handled all this, that we have a lot of distrust.

And, I’m not going to again, we shouldn’t just completely accept right off the bat, but we shouldn’t completely reject either. Ask the questions. Jesus loved the disciples, saying, hey, what did that mean? And asking the questions. Paul loved the people that said, we want to. We want to hear more about this. Tell us a little more about this.

Let’s go a little deeper on this. And so, biblically speaking, just think about what camp you want to be in. Do you want to be those that that form the mob that stop their ears, you know, rushing toward Stephen? We don’t want to hear any more of this. You want to be those that are open to let me hear what you have to say.

But then I’m going to do the work to evaluate this stuff, and see where I stand on all of this. Where do you want to sit? As far as all of that goes, because we depend on some amount of information to get through every single day. That’s just the reality of it. We need to understand that that’s part of our normal everyday life and should be part of, our faith as well.

Though we do want to say this, we have this, this line here, and I’ll let Spencer, add to this, scholars are not necessary for salvation. So they’re important. They matter. That’s what we’ve discussed. We need to be careful about how we handle all of this. But they’re not necessary for salvation. What do we want to say about that point, Spencer?

Yeah. So this kind of leads us into a little bit of a discussion of. Okay, so if scholars are important, if we need them just for everyday life, but also our life in the church, we shouldn’t just reject them. We should allow our faith, to be, questioned and examined. This kind of leads us into okay, so what function should we carve out in our faith and in our churches for biblical scholars and those with PhDs and with education?

Well, the first thing that I would say, though, is that a people do not have to be biblical scholars to be saved. I’ve, I’ve heard people say, well, if scholars are right and how in-depth they think about these things, then to go to heaven or to understand God, everybody has to become a biblical scholar. And that’s just not the case.

That’s not true. No scholar would think that as well. I would argue that the foundation of the gospel. So we think of our salvation through faith in the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, I think is intentionally not complex. So like what you need to get to be saved is intentional, not complex. Now, you could dive deeper into some of those things and it does become complex.

So you think of like the life of Jesus. How can we conceptualize God’s nature and human nature coming together in Jesus of Nazareth? Like, well, what does that mean? Well, that’s pretty complex. The that the Trinity is, is pretty complex. What happened on the cross we’ve done an episode on that is pretty complex. The, theology of the Ascension can get pretty complex.

So, you want to dive deeper into those? It does get complex, but kind of just at a surface level of what we would say is necessary for salvation. And none of us need to be a biblical scholar. But as we’re going to argue, as we close to dive deeper into those topics, that’s where scholars can be very helpful for us.

And so, I would then say, no, they’re not biblical scholars are not necessary for salvation. But I do think that there comes a point where the average Christian’s knowledge edge, without an ability to read the original language, which most of us, both, preachers and people in the pew alike are experts in the original language, without our knowledge of in depth of historical context, the ancient Near Eastern context of the Old Testament, Greco-Roman context of the New Testament, or the hours spent studying the Bible full time.

Most of us don’t get the opportunity to study the Bible full time, like, ministers and scholars do. And so, I think there will come a time in every Christian’s life where their knowledge will hit a wall. That is, they’ve grown to know all these things, but now they’re at a point where they since they don’t know the original language, they don’t know the historical context.

They don’t know very much about church history, that they can’t spend all day, every day reading the Bible, that continuing to grow. They’re going to need assistance from others, from the church, from ministers, and I think also from scholars. And that kind of leads into the last thing that we’ll talk about, of the contributions of scholars that help us to grow deeper into our faith.

And that’s why. So that goes back to the title, why I said it’s essential for our spiritual growth, because while we can grow, if we want to prevent ourselves from becoming stagnant as churches and as individual Christians, there’s going to come a point where we have to engage in scholarship. And so that’s why I said the church is spiritual growth, because as individuals, we may be in a place where, okay, yeah, I, I don’t need that stuff right now like that.

We’re elementary principles, as the New Testament talks about. But for a church as a whole, if we want to dive deeper than just some of the stuff that’s on the surface, we’re going to need some help. We’re going to need some help in understanding the language, understanding the context. That’s where we can begin these deeper dives. Otherwise, we just end up sitting here and patting ourselves on the back because we’ve learned it all.

And there’s nothing more that we need to learn. And I think the only way to go beyond that is to begin to engage in some of the scholarly side of these discussions. Yeah. One thing I’ll say before we get to our concluding stuff here is, I hit a certain wall with baptism.

This is genuine. There’s a lot of things like this, but with baptism, of knowing New Testament things and those verses and being able to quote them or point you in the direction of them and things like that. And it was studying those who had spent more time with it, who, looked at some of the history of those things in the Old Testament, in relation to those things as far as how that that thread develops, where my overall position on baptism being necessary for salvation has not changed for me.

But you know what has happened? My arguments are a lot better because of the people that have gone deeper into this, because I’ve had to wrestle with questions of, why do those people believe differently about baptism and had to deal with the thinking through that and questioning and looking at that and, diving into all that stuff made me come out of it with a stronger belief and better understanding and better foundation, of that particular subject, which now I not a scholar, by the way.

But I absolutely take some of that and turn that around to the congregation that I’m a part of. And so whether the congregation knows that or not, the teaching, at least on baptism, some of that is scholarship is responsible for some of that through me because of the things that, it is a part of, what we do.

And it’s a part of, so probably your favorite preacher is bringing you some degree of scholarship, that they’ve spent time with because they weren’t afraid of those particular things. And I say all of that to say the this is the and this is the opposite of the. Yeah. But if you start studying these things, you’re going to lose your faith.

There are many, myself included, who, as you study these things, you go, man, I, I have I’m more entrenched is not. Maybe it’s the right word, but it’s not a word I like. But I have a greater understanding and appreciation and, even understanding of how this connects throughout the, the entirety of the Bible than I ever did, and have more of a belief, in these particular things.

That’s the alternative that happens to. And it was only because I allowed those things to be questioned and looked at and listened to those who maybe, you know, overthought the subject that I went, man, okay, this is actually way more important than I thought it was. Before I got started. Okay. Contribution of scholars, something I mean, I just kind of said this that, you know, some of the studies I’ve done through me, it’s coming out.

I know that happens in your congregation of some of the work you’ve done comes out. This is the case with, so many ministers, that I know, or other Bible students. Teachers that I know, there are a lot of things scholars have contributed to, that we may not realize that we’re standing on their shoulders in that sense.

What do you want to highlight here when it comes to scholarly, contribution? So, for, for me, there’s four primary contributions that scholars make that allow us to, to grow in our faith, particularly beyond kind of that surface level as, as I said. But this first one is kind of required for a lot of us in our faith.

Is that the I think the biggest contribution of scholars is our English translation. So, we wouldn’t be able to read the Bible in English if it wasn’t for scholars putting together committees in order to translate the Bible. And that’s true whatever English version you use, right? So, we could get into debate about what’s the best English version. Do we use, King James or we ESV or we Navy like all of that?

We can debate, but every single English translation we have because of scholars. Also, the only reason that we have the manuscripts in order to make those translations that are accurate or because of scholars. So, in essence, without scholars, we wouldn’t have a Bible to read. We wouldn’t have a Bible to base our faith on. We wouldn’t have a Bible to critique scholars with.

If it wasn’t for the scholars translating the Bible in the first place, so that the starting point of our faith, by pointing to the Bible that we have, is pointing to the contribution of scholars who have knowledge in the original language that you and I do not have, have, and have translated these works so we don’t have to go learn another language in order to come to church and read our Bible.

Actually, we’d have to learn three languages. We’d have to learn Hebrew and Aramaic and Greek in order to read the Bible. And so, we get to rely on scholars to even have a Bible. And so, there’s your biggest one. No Bible without scholars. A secondly, historical context, everything that we know about the historical context of any passage that we’re reading is because of scholars, typically, who have devoted their entire life to understanding a particular context.

And that goes back to I’ve mentioned that no one person can hold all the information in their own minds. And so, we have to understand that no one can be an expert on everything. So, you have people that are experts just in ancient Near Eastern culture, the context of the Old Testament. But even within that, you have people that are experts in like religious and sacrificial practices in the ancient Near East and not just the whole ancient Near East as a whole.

You move to the times of Jesus in the New Testament. You have people that are experts in Greco-Roman culture, but generally not the culture at all. You have people that are experts on slavery and Greco-Roman culture, that experts on letter writing in Greco-Roman culture that are experts in Second Temple Judea, some that existed in the time of Jesus.

And my point is, is that even within scholarship, they know one scholar is an expert just on everything of one culture. It’s typically a piece of it. And so, you’re reading the letters of Paul, and you want to understand them better. You read someone who’s an expert in letter writing in the Greco-Roman period, and you get a better understanding of Paul’s letters.

But how did that scholar become an expert in letter writing? In the Greco-Roman period? It’s because they have literally spent their entire academic career studying letter writing in the Greco-Roman period. To be able to write maybe just one book that helps us better understand Paul and you can go down the line. There’s all kinds of aspects of the Greco-Roman time period that there are particular experts who are seen as like experts on hospitality.

So, you want to understand hospitality? Well, there are scholars that have devoted their scholarly life to understand hospitality as a social convention and institute in the Greco-Roman world, so that we better understand what the New Testament is talking about when it talks about hospitality, or when Jesus comes in contact with Pharisees. They’re experts on Pharisees, but we actually don’t know that much about the only reason we know anything about the Pharisees is because of scholars who have spent their entire life trying to understand the Pharisees.

And so, we kind of get spoiled of where we’re reading about Paul. And I can take, you know, this little sentence about Pharisees in this little sentence about letter writing, in this little sentence about honor, shame, and get a better understanding of these ten verses that I’m preaching on. But the only reason that I can do that is because three different scholars have spent their entire life studying those three different topics.

For me to take a sentence from them to help me better understand Paul, which is something that you and I can’t spend our entire lives studying. All three of those things to better understand one passage and you think from a preaching perspective of all the different passages that we preach throughout the course of a year, all the different scholars we have to rely on that have spent their entire life in this particular aspect of their field.

And that’s the only reason we get a historical context. Third is church history. So how do we know anything about how have we come to believe what we believe? Like, how has the church gotten to this point? Well, the reason is because we’ve gone through this long history of beliefs and discussions and synods and splits and Protestant Reformation and all of these.

Well, how do we know how we’ve gotten to where we are, how we’ve come to believe, what we’ve come to believe so that we can analyze it? How do we know that? Well, it’s because of scholars. It’s because of scholars that we have preserved all these documents. How can you read Augustine? How can you read Augustine? How can you read Martin Luther?

How can you read the Alexander Campbell? Well, because scholars, historians who have cared about these things have preserved them. How can we read them in our language once again because of translations, because not all these people spoke our language. So, these things have to be translated from other languages so that we can read them and how do we interpret and understand them?

Again, they’re writing in very different contexts. So how do we know what Martin Luther is talking about? How do we know what Thomas Aquinas is talking about? Again, because we have scholars who are experts in that time period and can explain them to us. And the final thing that I’ll say, number four, is that community prevents misinterpretations. We’ve talked about this before.

Do not interpret the Bible in isolation. If you go in, interpret it by yourself in a back room, you can come to all kinds of crazy interpretations. We do it in the midst of community, and the most important community is your local church community. I firmly believe that. But the second community I think that’s helpful to be involved in is the scholarly community engaging in dialog with what scholars are saying on a particular topic, on a particular passage, on a particular book or particular author.

Again, it’s not that you have to agree with the scholarly consensus for everything, but I think it’s important to engage in the conversation because it does a couple of things. It allows you to interact with different traditions and scholars with different backgrounds and different experiences. So, for example, a, white conservative evangelical is going to read a passage differently than a, someone from the Eastern Orthodox Church or a, someone who is African American or someone who is studying the Bible in Africa.

A man’s going to read it a little bit differently than a woman. And so, engaging in the community of the church, as well as in scholarship, lets us broaden the way that we think, and particularly outside of the church. It gets us outside of our tradition. So, we’re not just in our echo chamber of how people in churches of Christ read it, but how do Eastern Orthodox read it?

How do Catholics read it? How do Anglicans read it? And so, for example, I don’t know if I’ll ever get around to doing this, but Jack and I have talked about, you know, I’d like to do commentaries at some point on the Gospels. And when I do so this is what I look at. If I say, okay, so I’m reading Mark as a white evangelical man.

So, I’ve got that Dan, like, I know how we read the Gospel of Mark. People like us. So, if I was to write a commentary, I’d go and I’d find a commentary by Catholic someone outside of my tradition. What? How do they read it and engage into a dialog with them, and maybe even learn something from them, or even find things that I want to say, no, it’s not doing this because of.

I would find a commentary written by a woman. How does a woman read this differently than I do as a man? I would find a commentary that is written by someone who’s not white, or maybe even from another part of the world. How do they read it? With their background, with their history, with what they’ve been through? How do they read some of these themes in a way that I don’t?

And what allows us to do that is scholars who study and write and publish allows us to expand our community beyond just the ones that we live in, and dive into a deeper understanding of Scripture. I think that’s one of the biggest, advantages of modern scholarship and internet and books and libraries and all that is that it’s no longer just who are the people within walking distance of me that I can talk to, as important as that may be.

But we the way we can expand and our community to dialog with about these passages is endless. Because of the internet and the fact that we don’t want to use that, to me is not only troubling, but also very unhelpful for our growth as churches. So, you want to talk about what I think is essential for our churches to grow and as a group, not be stagnant.

We have to allow ourselves to be challenged and we have to have our English translations, our historical context. We have to know church history. We have to be able to engage with people outside of our little community in order to continue to grow. And what allows us to do that is because of the contribution of biblical scholars. Well, all right, there you go.

That was, a long episode, but again, a foundational episode. That’s why, because we have interviews with scholars coming up, and so be sure to check out Thinking Theologically for our Facebook page Thinking Theologically. Be sure to sign up for our newsletter as well. To be notified of these things in any additional stuff that comes up.

And, yeah, we hope you hope you enjoy. And maybe, approach those who spend their lives in different areas with, still skepticism, but a healthy amount of it, evaluating what they have to say instead of rejecting what they have to say, or just accepting it right off the bat, you can think through things.

That’s what we’re talking about here. But listen to those who have spent time thinking about those things, as theologically as they can for as long as they have, and see what they have to contribute to, your beliefs, to the beliefs of others and how that ultimately affect the way that you live. That’s this episode.

I hope you enjoy the interviews that are coming up, as a result of this discussion here. And we’ll look forward to the next time that we, host together an episode like this. I’m Jack, and that’s Spencer. We’ll see you next time.