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Academically Informed Preaching - Raleigh Clay (Pistis with Us Podcast)
95 Plays1 year ago
Can Biblical scholarship and the tough questions it forces us to ask actually bring a benefit for pastors and churches? In this episode, Nick and Matt chat with Raleigh Clay, pastor, Bible enthusiast, and host of the Pistis with Us Podcast about why scholarship matters, how to make it practical, and signing on the dotted line.
Resources Referenced: Pistis with Us Podcast by Raleigh Clay, Nobody's Mother by Sandra L. Glahn, Salvation by Allegiance Alone by Matthew Bates, Wisdom for Faithful Reading by John Walton.
Theme Music: "Believe" by Posthumorous. More at https://linktr.ee/posthumorous
For more fun, check out www.reparadigmed.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:01
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Repaired Eye of the Podcast. Today we interview Raleigh Clay.
Journey to Seminary
00:00:06
Speaker
He's the pastor of English Ministry at Formosan Christian Church of Dallas, and he's the host of the Pistis With Us podcast. How are you doing today, Raleigh? Very well. Thanks, Matt.
00:00:30
Speaker
I knew Raleigh back when we lived in Dallas. And at that time, you were not in seminary. You were out working, you know, doing all kinds of jobs. What got you to go into seminary maybe a little later than a lot of people do? Yeah, that's, it's a great question. I'll try to, I'll try to be somewhat brief, but I'll give you the context. So I never intended to go to seminary. That was never a life ambition of mine.
00:00:53
Speaker
I make the joke with the pastor that married my wife and I over 21 years ago now that we were living in Alabama. I used to joke with him that if ever I went to seminary, I would go to Dallas Theological Seminary because that's where he went. He was very influential in my life, all that kind of stuff. It was always just a joke. That was never the intention.
00:01:15
Speaker
And then so fast forward, like 16, 17 years later, we end up in
Transition to Pastoral Role
00:01:19
Speaker
Dallas. I was working for a sports supplement company that brought us here and started just meeting people that were going to DTS or went to DTS within the church that we serve that together, Matt. And it was constantly encouraged by people that I should attend seminary and increase my biblical knowledge, theological knowledge and that sort of stuff. And so Ashley is a no person.
00:01:44
Speaker
And so i know that if i'm gonna ask her something i don't really want to do and she definitely does not want me to do it that she'll just say no. And then i can move on from it cuz the wife said and blame it on her or whatever and so when i when i mentioned it to her is a couple months after i started talking to some people like our friend elijah and and so i mentioned it's actually like i think i think i want to.
00:02:06
Speaker
go to seminary and she didn't say no. She, uh, she said, well, uh, what would that look like? And so I had to start figuring out what that would look like and talking about that. And, and then she said, well, just go through the process. See if you get accepted. And there was all kind of, uh, hurdles and obstacles there. And, and so, yeah, like it was, it was almost an eight month process between the time that, that I applied, got accepted.
00:02:32
Speaker
And then four and a half years later finished. And yeah, so there was never a big idea of what even to do afterwards within my first.
00:02:42
Speaker
Then my first two semesters of seminary, like I've always, I've always enjoyed teaching. I'm just kind of, uh, feel like I'm naturally bent that way. And, and it's, it's really what I enjoy. And so, uh, I was speaking to a couple of my professors pretty early on about just continuing on PhD studies and go into professorship. And that was just Ashley and I were both just on board.
00:03:04
Speaker
Then I started interning at our church here at Formosan. And again, without any intention to go into pastoral ministries, it was just they asked me if I'd be interested. And so we went. Again, Ashley didn't say no. And so after, I don't know, I guess it was within my last two semesters of DTS, they asked me if I would apply for the English ministries pastor position, which we can talk more about if you want.
Interest in Systematic Theology and Philosophy
00:03:32
Speaker
I said, yeah, I guess I'll apply. I talked to Ashley about it. She didn't say no again. And she's like, well, if it wasn't this, she never wanted to be a pastor's wife ever. And I didn't want to be a pastor. And so I applied, the church accepted my application and actually called me to be the pastor. And so it's like, well,
00:03:52
Speaker
Things have got to change at seminary. I was doing all like very scholarly academic work and going in that direction and research and all of this stuff. And I was talking to my mentor and said, well, I should probably take some counseling classes or something like more counseling class. I'm going to need. And so the whole trajectory within my last year changed. And I think I took like four or five counseling classes instead of some more of the systematic or philosophy classes where I was going.
00:04:21
Speaker
It was a long answer, but it's kind of how to end it up in seminary and coming out of seminary. So did you imagine yourself going into academia kind of until you made that switch? Yeah, that was that was our whole focus towards like my internship with DTS was was just to continue on in PhD studies pretty immediately after the master's program and go into academia.
00:04:42
Speaker
Was there a specialty that you had imagined you'd go into, or what did you think that might look like? Yeah, it's a great question. So, systematic theology, it was my emphasis in the master's program, or major, and philosophy. And so I thought I would just continue on in that. And I
00:05:01
Speaker
Still enjoy it and so we don't know what the future holds with all of that but it's not completely off the radar for us and looking at that as well and so.
00:05:12
Speaker
So with your interest in philosophy, were you pretty into like apologetics and things like that? Not necessarily, to be honest. Epistemology or what? Yeah. Well, I'm really interested in what the philosophers are saying or what the philosophers have said throughout history and how in some ways they've come to those conclusions in the intersection within Christianity.
00:05:36
Speaker
Or the worship of yahweh just as a whole and what how some of those things are quite similar even though they're approached from completely different perspectives and. I like you have some of the philosophers pretty early on that start to have this trinitarian concept of the powers of the world.
00:05:56
Speaker
Now they're gonna approach that differently than they're gonna call them different things but it's really trinitarian in nature and that just fascinates me that these these atheist.
00:06:07
Speaker
philosophers are in some ways thinking about, and I say atheist, not the term that we would use it today, but not believing in the God that we believe in is probably, but they're coming to conclusions about these powers of the world that are really trinitarian in kind of thought.
Translating Theology to Congregation
00:06:23
Speaker
And so I just find that kind of stuff fascinating and how we know what we know, where knowledge comes from. So when you speak of epistemology and that kind of stuff and anthropology, which none of those things are outside of the realm of theology, those are all theological discussions.
00:06:37
Speaker
And so I'm really interested in the intersection between what we would consider like more secular philosophy and then theology and how that works together and then how it's separate and different. Well, I think it's interesting if I was going to try to describe you to somebody. I feel like I would describe you as kind of like maybe a scholar who has turned into a pastor. Is that a fair way of describing kind of how you've gotten to where you are?
00:07:01
Speaker
Yeah, and I would use the term scholar for myself like on the lowest means of that. But yeah, I'm still like very academically minded. And so how that translates within pastoral ministry sometimes is quite interesting and trying to think how to speak with my congregation in a way that's
00:07:27
Speaker
not heady or overly heady and just for the sake of that and how that looks especially like within preaching and the teaching that i do within the church so yeah it's a tension for me and it takes a lot of intentionality then to.
00:07:44
Speaker
to think through how that's going to look in a church setting, that as most churches in the West, or a lot of churches in the West, that maybe not be incredibly biblically literate or theologically literate in how to kind of draw that out, but in ways that people can understand. And that's always a tall task.
00:08:07
Speaker
my experience growing up in churches, I'm kind of used to seeing pastors of churches as being the ones who are sort of trying to protect their flock from the scary ivory tower ideas that come down from academia and scholarship. And there's kind of some, I don't know, distrust or maybe some hesitancy there to share these ideas. Do you feel any of that tension kind of walking these two worlds?
00:08:31
Speaker
Oh, that's a great question. So yes and no, I'm not scared of it. And so I think it's good that we engage in those things. And so there are different Bible studies that I teach in the church or theological studies that I teach within the church that kind of exposes some of those ideas. Because what happens, so think of it, think of the theological world or the scholarly world as like the fashion world.
00:08:59
Speaker
So what happens in like the upper echelon and in the catwalks and all the fashion shows that you would never see anybody in public wearing that stuff. Not on purpose. Right. Right. It influences everything that comes down the line. So whether you're buying it at Walmart, Target, Nordstrom, you know, wherever all of that has been influenced from from the top down. And so whether you recognize that or not is a different story, but you're going to get those influences.
00:09:28
Speaker
It's the same thing I think in academia, particularly in theological studies and biblical studies, is what the biblical scholars and theologians are doing is going to influence what's coming down to the churches by the time it gets there.
00:09:43
Speaker
whether you can put your finger on that or not. Archaeological studies or deeper research into contextual issues or stuff like that is going to influence how people start interpreting the Scriptures, and sometimes rightfully so.
00:09:59
Speaker
But it can be really waiting for a lot of people and they're like what i'm gonna leave that to the to the scholars to the theologians. By making that comment they don't realize that they're not really leaving it to them because they're gonna come to face base decisions within that influence and so you can't really separate the two it's how we go about bringing the church and academia together.
Assessing Theological Ideas for Relevance
00:10:22
Speaker
And how that works and acting as pastors in some ways a bridge for those things to where we're not like pushing either side yeah every idea that gets discussed and believe today in churches is an idea that was once a scholarly idea.
00:10:37
Speaker
people may think, oh, I don't want to listen to scholars, I just want to listen maybe to the reformers. Well, the reformers were in a lot of ways the scholars of their day. Yeah, Calvin was an incredible scholar, I mean, and an incredible researcher and biblical theologian on top of being a systematic theologian. So do you think being in this pastoral position, are you able to kind of shorten the amount of time that some of these ideas take to go from academia into typically getting shared in churches? Because from my perspective, it seems like that process usually takes a long time.
00:11:07
Speaker
Yeah it really can and so not just to speak for myself but i think when pastors have a good footing especially if they're like academically trained and so like my time at dts prepared me to be able to interact well with research and what's coming out and be able to evaluate it well enough and that's really
00:11:28
Speaker
maybe the fear for some pastors is they're not quite sure how to evaluate it themselves because they weren't trained in particular ways sometimes. And I get that tension, and so I'm not disparaging anyone within that scene. But for myself, yeah, there are things within research that I find are absolutely practically, theologically very important. I was going to say crucial, but I don't want to say that. Very important.
00:11:55
Speaker
And there is a sense that keeping my footing in the academic world, keeping up with the research that's coming out, reading the journal articles, being able to evaluate some of that stuff, that can get to the church in a way that may be beneficial. And that's the tension, is finding out what's beneficial, what would even matter to say at some points. And I can give examples if you want. But yeah, it's, I think, really important for
00:12:21
Speaker
for people to be able to evaluate those things well instead of just presenting everything because not all research is great, not all the conclusions are right, even if people are trying to be faithful and working through some of those things. So is it fair to say for you that it's not that if a new idea comes out, there's like a certain amount of time where you're waiting to see if this gets received, but you can kind of actively go look at the methodology behind that research and determine for yourself, okay, is this something I trust enough to share with my congregation?
00:12:49
Speaker
Yeah what's really the focus for me because if it's published in a journal that's here reviewed and that's pretty pure reviewed the fact that it got published in most journals is the sign of a peer review and so people have already accepted it as.
00:13:04
Speaker
at least possible. So if there's an archaeological discovery or something like that, that's going to lend itself to understanding a passage. Archaeologists find inscriptions all the time that are enlightening some of the texts of Scripture. It might not change the complete meaning. It might change it some. It can be important in how we understand what's going on, particularly in the Old Testament text where
00:13:29
Speaker
We're so far removed and there's constant excavations going on, and so some of these idiomatic phrases that show up in the Hebrew that are translated in English and you might not even catch on, they're finding inscriptions of this stuff not even just in Israel or something, but from other ancient Near Eastern nations or territories.
00:13:50
Speaker
that then enlighten the text in the sense that, oh, that might be a polemic against what was going on outside of Israel. And so it can influence the text and how we understand it. It doesn't always completely change everything to where it's like new information, particularly besides like maybe more prominent revelation or something like that. So you wouldn't say that modern discoveries are changing the meaning of the text. You'd say they're possibly illuminating the original meaning of a text.
00:14:19
Speaker
Yeah, I would say that sometimes maybe they do change at least our interpretation. So they're not changing the text at all. And that's the difference that I would say is we can get to great interpretation, I think, without a lot of the extra-biblical stuff.
00:14:36
Speaker
But all of that enlightens some of our interpretation. And so if you think of just, I'll give you one example briefly, so it makes sense of what I'm trying to say. But if you have an understanding, say of the Artemis cult, that's in Ephesus or something like that, and maybe behind some of what Paul's doing in his writings to the Ephesians or to Timothy, and trying to understand what he's speaking against, he talks about the false teachers don't give in, and then somewhat even the imperatives that seem like
00:15:05
Speaker
That just seems odd, and it doesn't jive completely with all the scripture. Where you fall on the issue of women teachers or women in leadership positions within the church or something, it does seem odd that Paul says, I don't allow a woman to teach in the church in Timothy, but in Corinthians you have women prophesying.
00:15:25
Speaker
In the Old Testament, you have Deborah, who's a judge. And so there are women within leadership and in the early church, and they're not taking it completely that way. Some of them are, some of them aren't. So to wrestle with, well, maybe there's something going on with the prevailing cult of the time, particularly in Ephesus where Paul says some of those things.
00:15:44
Speaker
And so Dr. Glaun, who's a professor at DTS, she did her dissertation on Artemis, particularly Artemis of the Ephesians, and just wrote another book that's out now called Nobody's Mother, which is looking at the Artemis cult and maybe some misconceptions, misunderstandings that we have, that then once you understand what's going on and who Artemis is, the text can actually become a little bit more clear, especially on passages
00:16:10
Speaker
in Timothy where Paul says that women will be saved through childbearing. What in the world does that mean? Right, but when you understand the Artemis cult and who Artemis is, it actually starts to make more sense if she's the patron saint of Ephesus who saves women through childbearing and Paul's saying, wait a second, no, no, no, it's Christ who saves you through childbearing. And remember that he's only talking to probably about 20 women.
00:16:36
Speaker
The churches aren't the size of the churches that we have, and so holding some of those things, and that's just extra biblical knowledge that help enlighten the text. They don't change the meaning of the text. They change our interpretation sometimes. Yeah, and when our interpretations were maybe in the shadows, maybe we didn't have all the available background knowledge to even know what that original intention was within that audience.
00:16:59
Speaker
then you would expect that archaeological discoveries or more knowledge of the background would illuminate the original meaning of the text, which might be different from what we thought the text means. And so in that sense, maybe our interpretations have to change, but we're not saying they need to change to something new.
Introducing New Biblical Interpretations
00:17:16
Speaker
They need to change to the original if we've got good evidence that the original implied something. Exactly. Yeah, absolutely.
00:17:23
Speaker
It's not my experience that a lot of people in the church are readily open to change. So if you're going to preach a passage where our understanding of that passage is influenced by more recent discoveries, how would you handle that? And would you expect maybe some pushback from people in your church saying, hey, this what you're saying here doesn't line up with the teaching I heard from, you know, whoever that I trust or it doesn't match up with this tradition we've held for a few centuries? Yeah, Matt.
00:17:52
Speaker
Matt and I have discussed this a little bit. There's a little bit of a dynamic within what we know, evangelicalism in the United States, where Bible reading or interpretive method for the Bible is basically to prop up the theological positions that one already has. And it seems like a lot of different traditions are teaching their people to read the Bible that way.
00:18:13
Speaker
It's not just like the one camp or the other. It's like a bunch of different ones. That's how we teach our people to read the Bible. Well, so long as you're getting this theological conclusion from the text, then your interpretation is good. So sometimes knowledge of context illuminates the meaning of a text and then we have a choice to make. Do we stick with our paradigm or do we? Name of the podcast. Do we re-paradigm?
00:18:36
Speaker
bonus points for working out in there so clearly. So I think there were kind of a couple of questions in there, so I'll try to get to. So one, how I handle that is delicately. I don't want to just present something because it's like, oh, look what I figured out. So I want to handle that delicately and in proper fashion and time. So like right now, I'm going through a sermon series in the Gospel of Luke.
00:19:05
Speaker
I'm not going to try to bring up Artemis in the Gospel of Luke, unless there's just something there. I mean, Luke was with Paul a whole lot, but I'm not going to just try to work it in for the sake of it. In Bible study, I have a little bit more of that opportunity because it's a conversation, and they can ask questions. I can bring up things if, again, not just for the sake of bringing it up and say, look, look at this new research that we've got.
00:19:28
Speaker
And so I want to handle that delicately. And even if I have something that I really think is influencing the text, and this goes on all the time, God is continuing to reveal who He is. We don't have perfect knowledge of that. And so there is a humility that we have to have that when we approach the text, that it can change us.
00:19:51
Speaker
And that it can change our minds when it's appropriate. And so we all approach the Bible with a particular lens and a particular worldview. And so if you hold on to a strict, reformed understanding of the doctrines of grace, when you read Ephesians 1 and you read called, elect, predestined, you're going to read those words in a certain way.
00:20:16
Speaker
which may or may not be how Paul is using them. And so what I encourage our congregation to, and anybody in biblical studies, is you can't just throw away your lens. We all have a lens through all experiences in life, what we've learned in the past. You can't just get rid of it, but you need to be open enough
00:20:38
Speaker
that when evidence for a particular position is presented and that evidence bears greater weight than previous evidence or whatever, that we're willing to say, okay, maybe I had it wrong. The problem is we want to be right all the time. In fact, I just spoke with Dr. John Walton and we were talking about some of this stuff and he promotes something that I think is absolutely right. And it's not
00:21:02
Speaker
Yeah, we want to be right. But we're going to have trouble trying to get there sometimes. We're followable humans. We have our own predispositions to things, our own propensities for certain things. But what we need to try to do within biblical studies is to be faithful. And being faithful and being right are two different things. If I'm being faithful with my understanding of a text and not trying to impose my own systematics upon it or my own biblical view of how things should be because that's the way that's
00:21:29
Speaker
If i'm really trying to read out what the scripture saying within its context within the larger context of the meta narrative of scripture and all of that. When i come to position that i've realized that i'm wrong on that i can just say i'm wrong that wasn't me that doesn't mean that i wasn't trying to be faithful in the past i'm just continuing to try to be faithful.
00:21:46
Speaker
And so I think that's so appropriate in the way that we approach Scripture and the humility with which we should approach Scripture and learning in general, that it's okay to be wrong in the sense—I mean, you're not trying to be wrong, but it's okay to admit that you're wrong. And I can do that a lot. Like, I think I admit that I'm wrong more than I admit that I got something right.
00:22:06
Speaker
So if it is possible for one to be wrong or to be less right than they could be even on the right track, if that is possible, that assumes that there is somehow a correct meaning of the text. So where in your mind, what do you believe is the is the grounding for the meaning of the text?
00:22:26
Speaker
Yeah. The way that I approach that is to really try to focus on what the author is saying. And that seems so simple, but it is really where we go wrong. We often approach the scripture again, having been taught. And so then we just go to the scripture to affirm what we think we already know. And so this is hard to do without an example, so you'll have to bear with me for an example, but I'll try to make it quick.
00:22:52
Speaker
So I brought up the Reformed understanding of Ephesians. And if you just go through Ephesians, Paul starts riffing. We've been predestined, having been predestined us to adoption through Jesus Christ according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his grace that he bestowed upon us and the beloved in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins. And he goes on this riff about being elect, being called, being predestined.
00:23:20
Speaker
One of the important things there that for me to step out of our way a little bit is to understand who he's talking about. Who are the pronouns referring to? Of course you. But you're wrong. It's me.
00:23:38
Speaker
Paul is doing something particular there that's easy to miss. So if you read any other literature and it says we, us, our, are you in that group? No. And so, so Paul has this, this we, us, our group set up and we know for sure at least one person's in that group and that's Paul.
00:24:06
Speaker
And then we can kind of try to figure out, who else is he talking about? But he's going to riff through all of this of we, us, our, and all the way through verse 12. He's talking about that we have this knowledge, the mystery of the will of God and all of this stuff. And it's not until verse 12 that he says that we who hoped beforehand in Christ should be for the praise of his glory. Well, who's the we that we're hoping for the Christ?
00:24:35
Speaker
It wasn't the Gentiles. But then in verse 13, this is where it really switches and it starts to make sense, in whom also you.
Proper Reading Approaches to Scripture
00:24:44
Speaker
And so he goes on this big riff about, I take it that he's talking about the apostles because it just lines up with their vocation in the world that they were predestined in Christ to present this message of the gospel. And he's really backing up his authority through the whole beginning of the letter.
00:25:01
Speaker
and why he can write and say the things that he's saying and that's how he's defending it. But we put ourselves there and we think he's talking about salvation.
00:25:09
Speaker
with the predestined language, and he's not. And so sometimes just stepping back and rereading the text with maybe fresh eyes or whatever without our, okay, so every time Paul mentions predestination, he's talking about being saved. And that had to happen from the foundation of the world. And I'm not even arguing about that. I'm just saying that Ephesians 1 is not saying that.
00:25:33
Speaker
Yeah, you can do the sort of the similar type of thing with like, you know, Romans nine through 11. You know, this whole thing is basically Paul's Calvinistic diatribe. And it's like, is it? Because you can read it that way for sure. You can break and choose and kind of use these words that seem to have theological weight and then apply them to your systematic paradigm, sort of, sort of, and plug that in and say, you know, Paul is supporting this point.
00:25:56
Speaker
in this point of the Reformed tradition. And there's a reason why the Reformed tradition exists as it is, is because there's some like solid theology behind it that's mined from the Bible, but we can't then read that tradition into Paul or make him, you know, make his use of words be in support of that tradition. It's just very likely not what he's trying to do in any of his letters. I'm not saying he's speaking directly against it, but it's very likely not what he's talking about.
00:26:25
Speaker
Yeah, completely. So when I'm trying to get to what is the right interpretation, again, I want to hang on to I'm just trying to be faithful. But I want to make sure that I'm just reading well. I have a professor that used to say that he was a Bible Exposition professor, and he would just say that he's not teaching anything besides remedial reading.
00:26:51
Speaker
Because when we approach the scripture, we just forget how to read. I was going to actually press you on that a little bit because it seems like everything you said was just like how you read any other book. If you're reading an account, someone's wartime account of their battlefield log in World War II in Europe or something like that, and if they say, we did this, we did this, we did this, and then let's go, man, and let's charge up the hill and conquer the ranks.
00:27:17
Speaker
And none of us like put ourselves in there like, Oh yes, that's me. Yes. Or like we felt disheartened today because of a loss of a brother. None of us are like, yeah, I did too. Like we don't do weird things like that, except maybe vicariously just to experience the story. But none of us like has this weird self delusion, like we are the we. So why do we do that in the Bible? We put ourselves in as the we and we put ourselves in as the use.
00:27:43
Speaker
Yeah, I grew up doing that, so I don't know exactly why we do that, except for maybe that we've been taught for a long time that the Bible is God's love letter to us. Something within that vein. The problem with that is the Bible was not written to us.
00:28:01
Speaker
Yeah, none of us were camping out in Ephesus 2000 years ago. And if you were like, let me know, because I want to know the secret. I wasn't camping out at Sinai either. Yeah. Right. And so these are some of the issues that we want to place ourselves, particularly within the blessings of God and all of these things. We don't want to place ourselves in the curses of God. So we leave ourselves out of those passages. That's all the other people.
00:28:26
Speaker
Yep. But yeah, we just place ourselves where we want to within the Scripture, and we align ourselves with who we want to. We leave out the bits that we don't really like. I'm convinced that we just don't read well when we approach Scripture because of how we're approaching it.
00:28:45
Speaker
Do you think we perhaps start reading wrongly because of a good impulse? Because of the belief that God has somehow given us his words as a gift for our benefit? So then we maybe load into that. It's God's love letter to me.
00:29:01
Speaker
Whereas that second part didn't need to be there. That first part can be true that God has gifted us the record that is the Bible, the library that is the Bible for our wisdom. But then we download kind of the second part, which is, oh, God personally wrote this thing to me in my situation. That's maybe the false, that's where we go wrong. But it's almost birthed out of a good impulse because we believe the Bible is somehow inspired from, you know, from God, God breathed.
00:29:28
Speaker
And that's what can make the statement about the Bible's not written to us touchy for some people. Sure. That's not to say that the Bible wasn't written for us, but everything in its proper time and place. And so when we're reading the scripture, we should really be trying to get to not some esoteric idea that we can get inside the author's mind and know his intention.
00:29:47
Speaker
What we can read, and he has a literary intention, and if we get to read it well, I think that we can come to the literary intention. We may not understand completely everything, and that's a different idea in some ways, but what we've done is we've amalgamated this idea of reading the Scripture with correlation of the Scripture.
00:30:07
Speaker
And so we haven't done good interpretive work up front. And we've just gone right into what does this mean for me? And so we've missed the argument of the author, and we've just inserted ourselves into this thing. And so that's when it becomes, yeah, we just jump into correlation and application. And we leave out just reading well through observations and trying to get to, what does the author say?
00:30:33
Speaker
read the literary intention of the author, hold his argument in good, firm grasp, and then start to correlate how that works with our world 2,000 years later, and then how it comes to me, or even a more communal idea.
Exploring Theological Ideas in Church
00:30:47
Speaker
You mentioned as a pastor, you lead Bible studies with your church. Is this the kind of thing that you spend a lot of your time focusing on with people, is trying to help them to kind of take up this methodology and make it
00:30:59
Speaker
something they're used to? Yes. And I think my people have bought in, but it is a slow process. It's still something that I'm firmly convinced and it's still something I have to back myself out of from time to time. And so it does become like you're reading it and I'll get questions. I'm like, do you want, we should think through that question again, maybe before we ask it. Oh yeah.
00:31:24
Speaker
And so it is something that I'm starting to see our people within our church, at least the ones that are coming to some of the Bible studies that I'm teaching, because this is just something that we're going to do is practice over and over and over again and hold ourselves accountable to it. So don't get to application way on this side. Application or faithful response is going to come way over here. We have to know what it's saying to be able to respond to it.
00:31:50
Speaker
That's encouraging because it does seem to me that the method we're describing to rigorously, contextually read the Bible and to respect what the author meant as best as we can get to the author's mind, which is hard to do, but that is the method to try to get there. It does seem like that's pretty uncontroversial once you kind of explain it.
00:32:10
Speaker
to people and people are like, yeah, that's intuitive. Oh, yeah, that's got to be right. Otherwise, the text would be, you know, the meaning of the text would be found within Raleigh's brain or my brain. And that can't work if it's God's word to us. So the method seems pretty clear, but it's like getting into it when you start to do it. And then it can lead to some conclusions that might not be popular with our theological paradigms.
00:32:32
Speaker
That's where it gets a little bit tough, so I'm encouraged to hear that people are accepting it, rolling with it a little bit, and it's landing with them, I suppose. Yeah. At least willing to explore the ideas. Yeah. This is another thing Nick and I have talked a little bit about. It feels easy for the two of us sitting here. We're not in professional ministry in any way.
00:32:53
Speaker
For us to explore ideas really has little cost to us, right, wrong, indifferent, whatever. It seems to me that when institutions get involved, and especially when theological systems start to get institutionalized, it becomes a lot harder for the people within those institutions to have that same kind of freedom to explore and question ideas that are, maybe they've signed on the dotted line in their paycheck,
00:33:19
Speaker
is now dependent on them continuing to teach that set of ideas. You're stepping on toes now. I'm sure Raleigh has signed on a dotted line and his paycheck is somewhat dependent on him staying within a certain framework. Yeah. Well, I guess that's my question is, do you think being in an institution like a church, does that limit in any way the sort of questions that you're able to ask?
Handling Theological Differences Gracefully
00:33:41
Speaker
My church and the leadership of the church particularly is very open with
00:33:47
Speaker
me being able to say some things that even if we come to different conclusions and disagree on, I'm not in any danger.
00:33:58
Speaker
And again, I would go back to if we disagree, I'm never I'm never fine with agreeing to disagree. We just haven't done good work if we're just saying, OK, we're going to agree to disagree. I think that we should just sit in disagreement and continue conversations that are productive and for the edification of everybody involved.
00:34:17
Speaker
And again, when we talk about trying to get too close to right or less wrong that we can be, what brings us there is the amount of evidence that is provided for a certain view. And so we can talk about possible views and a lot of people hold possible views. Is it possible to understand it this way? I'm not satisfied with possible. I want to get to at least probable.
00:34:45
Speaker
Based on the evidence, this is the most likely. So within my context, other institutions are going to be different. My church doesn't have an affiliation. We're a completely independent church. And so there's no denominational influence. And so I have a lot more freedom within that. But I'd like to say that when we disagree, I'm allowed that freedom based on the evidence that I think I can provide to support the view that I take. And there's a lot of grace that's involved there.
00:35:13
Speaker
So is it the shared methodology and commitment to that methodology? Is that really the required shared belief there? Our leadership would likely not hold to the same methodology. And that's not a disparaging comment, but I don't think that they've thought through it quite in those ways. And so how I'm approaching scripture or theology just in general,
00:35:38
Speaker
We're probably not thinking along the same lines in a lot of ways. But I think what really holds it together is the grace that's involved for somebody to be able to take a different position. And so our methodologies could be very different. And I think in some ways they probably are.
00:35:57
Speaker
And I don't get to talk with our really elders because they're all Taiwanese. And I don't speak very much Taiwanese. And so trying to get in technical discussions, I'm not positive, to be honest with you. And so I'm trying to answer that question the best I can. Within the English congregation, myself, our associate pastor of youth ministry, she's a DTS grad as well.
00:36:17
Speaker
And we're going to have the same methodology. So CBOC, if people have watched the podcast or something, we're going to have the same kind of methodologies of how to approach scripture, even if we come to some different conclusions. And again, it's the grace that's involved in just going, I mean, I think you're wrong.
00:36:33
Speaker
But at the same time, I know that you're trying to be faithful to the text and we can come to just different conclusions and continue the conversation and work through it that way. And sometimes it's more tense than others, depending on the subject. And so within certain institutions, whether it's seminaries or churches, depending on where you fall on the issue of women leadership in the church or something,
00:37:00
Speaker
you've signed on the dotted line on, this is what the institution believes, our church doesn't hold those kinds of things. So we have a pretty basic doctrinal statement, more of like following just the ancient creeds and we're going to hold ourselves accountable. And then we can have freedom within some of these other things, even if the church kind of has a position, it's an unspoken one.
00:37:21
Speaker
Yeah, I appreciate that because I think what that actually does is it provides theological life and theological conversations to flourish. I think if you put too many things in that doctrinal statement, what that ends up doing is it actually shelves all those issues as available topics to discuss.
00:37:36
Speaker
because if you don't come to the right conclusion, now your danger is an overstatement. You used it earlier, but you get the idea. There's cost to disagreeing with that. So if you're smart, just in the back of your mind, you probably don't even make the conscious decision. Most people just don't talk about them anymore. They're settled and we won't debate them anymore. And therefore there's not a whole lot of theological discussion in life, which can have a negative effect on people, I think.
00:38:02
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I agree. And just to just to expound that a little bit further, what we do with doctrinal statements, especially like if we consider ourselves a reform church or Arminian based church or something like that, and we start making those our doctrinal statements. Guess who's coming into the church?
00:38:17
Speaker
Everybody that's just like us that believes like us that isn't going to challenge us. And I'd much rather have people gracefully challenge, but challenge theological notions or even biblical interpretation or something. All of this is supposed to be done within community. And if your community is set up with everybody that's like you, it's not a true community that's working through some of these things together.
00:38:39
Speaker
The chance that a closely knit insular group that doesn't allow any other outside influence or questions in the chance that that group has the truth a hundred percent is next to zero there's thousands and thousands and thousands of different groups like that.
00:38:56
Speaker
What are the chances that I just happened to stumble upon the right one that had everything right? Like, Oh, great. Good for me. You're the only one that's right. I mean, you and your few, I do not have the confidence at all to, you know, to make
Fostering Open Conversations in Church Culture
00:39:09
Speaker
that claim. Yeah. Me neither. So.
00:39:11
Speaker
Well, I'm curious about that. I don't imagine there's a lot of people, if they are looking for kind of a specific church that meets a specific set of beliefs that they share, that they're going to walk into your church and go, okay, Raleigh falls neatly into this box that I'm looking for. Is that something you've found that maybe people who are looking for a specific
00:39:29
Speaker
set of beliefs maybe don't like what they see. So our church may be a little bit different because we're predominantly Taiwanese speaking. We're the only church in the DFW area that speaks Taiwanese. So they don't have options. So they're stuck there is what you're saying. Well, most of them speak Mandarin, so they do have options with there's a lot of Mandarin speaking churches in the area.
00:39:50
Speaker
But what I would say is, so a lot of the folks, not all of the folks, in the English ministries, we get a variety of folks. Some of them don't even know if you were to say, like, reform theology, they would have no clue. Now, they've been taught things. But again, we go back to the conversation of this comes down from the top down. They've been taught things. And so, but they don't hold on to those things as like the absolute only way you can understand things. Most of our folks have been really open. Now, I have gotten a couple of folks that have visited
00:40:20
Speaker
And I've talked about issues of justice, social justice, and justice in general. And that's a hot topic. And I've said some more provocative things, I think, that nobody's said anything about. And I've said something about justice and this. You got some woke label? Oh, yeah. And like big time. And I'm like, well, if woke means that I understand there are some systemic issues in our society, then like, OK.
00:40:47
Speaker
Gladly take that label. Right, right. That just means I recognize things and I'm not blind. I just believe in Mishpat, I'm sorry. But with that, one of the most hurtful things I've heard being a pastor was they said they were scared for the health of the church.
00:41:07
Speaker
because of my view on social justice. And I was just sitting there like, and I was preaching from Amos. And I'm like, I don't think I said anything that Amos didn't say of what was going on there and the threshing of women and children and the innocent. But we have these, and that's going to fall within a certain tradition that is going to talk about stuff in a certain way. And so I knew where they were coming from. And so like,
00:41:30
Speaker
Those are the conversations that I'm just like, well, I'm sorry, you feel that way. And it's just not going to be the time and place to try to argue. Yeah, it sounds like far from kind of the normal fear that people have of disagreement, that the disagreement over these issues has actually helped the conversation within your church. And it's maybe allowed you to work through conversations that if it had just been a, hey, this is what we believe, and everybody kind of chance, okay, discussions you never would have had.
00:41:59
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. I'm very thankful for the culture within our church that we haven't aligned ourselves too strongly. Our church is 40 years old, and I'm just coming into this thing, that the church hasn't aligned itself so strictly with a certain doctrinal stance on all of these issues.
00:42:17
Speaker
that we can't have those conversations anymore.
Podcast as a Platform for Diverse Conversations
00:42:20
Speaker
Because as soon as you make that, the doctrinal statement to change that is an act of Congress. And not just that it's difficult, but people get really, really, really upset. Yeah. Who even wants to be the one to suggest that change? All of a sudden you're making it clear that maybe you don't fall neatly inside the camp that everybody's agreed to. Yep. Yeah.
00:42:39
Speaker
So you have a podcast too? You're a pastor? You have a podcast called Pistis With Us? Translate that for me. A lot is riding on this. Faith With Us or Faithfulness With Us?
00:42:51
Speaker
I would say allegiance with us. Oh, Matthew Bates, I like it. Yeah, so the idea is just faith-based conversations, the faith that we hold together and then we can talk about what faith means. But that's the idea of the podcast, just something laid back that we can have these same types of discussions, all this stuff that we've been talking about with disagreements.
00:43:14
Speaker
You know, I have people on the podcast that are kind of all over the spectrum on on different issues that that they probably disagree with each other about. And it's just been really edifying conversations and enlightening in a lot of ways. And yeah, it's been beautiful, I think. And it's still new. And it's but it's been a lot of fun. It's kind of learning on the fly as you deal with technical issues and then a member.
00:43:41
Speaker
I mean, it's just the reality of it, and I always tell my guests this is not my full-time gig, so just bear with me. In my podcast subscriptions, I've got kind of my category that are more the biblical studies, scholarly type podcasts, and then I've got my Christian living podcast. I don't quite know where to fit PISTAS with us. It seems to go back and forth. Yep. Raleigh, why will you not create a podcast that fits neatly into one of these two categories for me?
00:44:07
Speaker
Right. If you haven't figured it out yet, I'm not a categorical guy. Uh, I don't fit within any categories and, but yeah, that's the, that's the idea that anybody can listen to the podcast. Hopefully that just about anybody can listen to the podcast and, and have something
Faith Unity and Conclusion
00:44:22
Speaker
take away. Sometimes we get kind of technical. Hopefully that's not like too much at one time to where you can't start to digest the larger conversation within the technicalities, but also like, uh, really lay level.
00:44:37
Speaker
practicality within those conversations as well. And yeah, I enjoy all of it. And so that was the idea of the podcast is let's just see who will come on, who wants to talk, and we can bring up some topics of our current situatedness and talk about those things and hopefully have really good conversations and see where we can come together and not find so much where we disagree, but look for the places that we agree.
00:45:04
Speaker
And I think that's, you know, if I were going to say one thing that I've learned in all of Paul's teaching is his main focus in so many ways is the coming together of Jews and Gentiles. And in our context, we separate, we divide ourselves based on doctrine, based on certain issues of the faith, based on nationality, based on language, based on musicals. We'll figure out every way to divide ourselves.
00:45:32
Speaker
very good at it. Really, really good. We've become experts in this thing and we're missing the point completely.
00:45:42
Speaker
And we all do it. Like, in some ways, they're innocent, I think. Like, if you don't speak English, like, well, maybe having a church that speaks your language would be appropriate. But we're always having these defining things that we're making descriptors for the church, and whether that's a doctrinal issue, or we're Reformed, or we're Southern Baptists, or whatever, and all the things Presbyterian and Presbyterian USA, or like, whatever. And we're dividing ourselves based on doctrinal issues.
00:46:10
Speaker
Instead of going, how can we come together and just have these conversations and continue to have the conversations as brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus, incorporated into who He is, but we just keep ripping that thing apart. And it's really sad.
00:46:26
Speaker
Raleigh, I thank you so much for your time. A lot of what we're trying to do is encourage Christians to engage in these discussions, and PISTIS with us is a place we would eagerly point people, because there's a lot of fantastic conversations going on over there. I appreciate that, yeah. And if you happen to be around Dallas, go check out Formosan Christian Church. Yeah, we'd love to have you. Excellent. Thank you so much, Raleigh. Good talking with you guys.