Episode 102: Interview with Dr. Matthew Emerson

Today's guest is Dr. Emerson who is the Dean of the Hobbes College of Theology and Ministry at my alma mater Oklahoma Baptist University. He discusses with us his interest in the Great Tradition, the Doctrine of the Descent, hermeneutics and much more.
He is also the founder of the Center for Baptist Renewal so check that out if you are Baptist and interested in the Great Tradition of the church.

Timestamps:

10:03- Baptists and Philosophy

19:37- Hermeneutics

42:44- Uncomfortable Interpretation

Episode Transcription

Charles Kim 0:00

Hello and welcome to history of Christian theology. My name is Chad Kim. With me this week will be Dr. Matthew Emerson. Dr. Emerson recently wrote a book, he descended to the dead and evangelical theology of Holy Saturday with InterVarsity press. Dr. Emerson is the dean of the Hobbs College of theology and ministry at Oklahoma Baptist University, which is also my alma mater. So it was a pleasure to talk with Dr. Emerson, both about his book, he descend to the dead, as well as the Center for Baptist renewal, which I will link to, in the notes to this podcast on Facebook and Twitter. But Dr. Emerson tells us a little bit about the genesis of this initiative, that that basically supports and encourages Baptists to consider their part in the great tradition of Christian theology. And so that is to consider sort of the broader history of the church and to see themselves as part of it. So I had Dr. Emerson on because this has been something of a return recurring theme in the podcast, as I myself am a Protestant and evangelical and so broadly speaking, and so connecting myself to this tradition, it has been a it's been an interesting endeavor for me as I personally think about my own sort of journey. And I was also a graduate of OB you. So it was fun to have Dr. Emerson on, although he was not a professor when I was there. So it sort of connected me back to my Baptist roots. And, and then so yeah, so it was a it was a great conversation that we have together. And so he talks a little bit about like, what does it mean to interpret Scripture? How does what does that do for our understanding of this doctrine of the descent to the dead and the Apostles Creed? And it happens to be a very autobiographical episode for me, just because it connects so many different aspects of my life, and especially my life as a theologian. So I hope that you appreciate this episode, please let us know in the notes what you think. And if you have any comments or questions, and and please, please leave those on Twitter or Facebook. And yeah, we appreciate you listening. We'll be back later with more interviews. We're interviewing Matthew Wilcoxon on divine humility. We've got Hans Bergsma is coming up. And we have a few other things on the docket. So please keep keep tuned in. And we appreciate you listening. So this week on a history of Christian theology we have with us, Dr. Matthew Emerson, who is the professor of religion, and Dean of the Hobbs College of theology and ministry, at my undergraduate alma mater, Oklahoma Baptist University. So this is fun for me to get to interview Dr. Emerson, although I did not have Dr. Emerson at ODU. I've got to know him through his latest book, he descended to the dead and it is a it's let's see, I was trying to say, he descended to the dead and evangelical theology of Holy Saturday. So it's a little bit of a retrieval of the doctrine, that from the Apostles Creed, the lion from the Apostles Creed, and so we'll talk a little bit about that today. I also wanted to have Dr. Emerson on because he is one of the cofounders of the Center for Baptist renewal. And so this, this center piqued my interest, I think, actually, it was my father in law, who is a he's at California Baptist University. He's on the board there. And he said something about your work to me. And he said, Were you familiar with the Center for Baptist renewal? I'm I wasn't. And so. So I went and looked you guys up. And I thought, well, this is pretty cool. This overlaps with my interests as someone raised Baptist but studying the Patristics at St. Louis University. So I and I've met a lot of people at my time at SLU. And just in the last several years of people who were like, concerned that they couldn't be interested in early church history, or even sort of broader theological trajectories if they were Baptist. So I've known lots of people who've said, Okay, I need to become Catholic or become orthodox. And I don't want to, you know, I'm not here to have Dr. Emerson on to like, critique anyone's journeys. But just to say that there are Baptists who are interested in the broader, let's say, small see Catholic tradition, sometimes called the great tradition. So I wanted to have Dr. Emerson on to give us a little bit of a perspective on this and what his journey has been like. And so, Dr. Emerson, thank you very much for coming on. And maybe tell us a little bit about how you what is the Center for Baptist renewal and how did that come about?

Matthew Emerson 4:49

Yeah, so thanks for having me on. Chad. Glad to glad to talk with you for a bit. So CBR. We are a group of theologically conservative, evangelical Baptist who are committed to retrieving the great tradition for the renewal of Baptist faith in practice? And by renewal? We don't mean, you know, it's in disarray. And we need to tell Baptists what to believe or do rather we what we mean by retrieval and renewal is simply that the Christian tradition has resources for us, that can benefit us today both doctrinally and practically. And so what we want to do is connect Baptist churches, pastors and laypeople to historic Baptist, historic Christian beliefs, including historic Baptist beliefs and historic Christian practices that they can, they can retrieve and appropriate for their own local autonomous churches. So that's what CBR is. And just very briefly, the way that we came about this project was, rather, I was pretty independent from one another. Luke stamps Brandon Smith, Winston Hartman and I, I did a Masters and a PhD at Southeastern during my doctoral work. I had grown up in a mainline denomination very liturgically oriented, but also spiritually dead, at least my local congregation was, in many ways, and so I always sort of wanted to move away from anything liturgical during my college and seminary years. And then during PhD work, I encountered some different different scholarly works as well as just worshiping with other believers who weren't Baptists and recognize the beauty of liturgical practices when there's spiritual vitality to them. And so began to think more about what that would look like for Baptists life also had a couple of Anglican buddies who prayed with me and talked with me and read with me who, who of course, wanted me to become Anglican, but I've never been convinced of the biblical rationale for paedo baptism or for some other non Baptist distinctives. And I'm convinced of Baptist distinctives biblically including credo baptism, including local church autonomy. And so, you know, I appreciated that kind of liturgical emphasis from them also really wanting to remain Baptist. And so, all that to say, after that, I went to California Baptist University for my first four years of full time teaching after I finished my PhD, and there I met Luke stamps, who I hired the year after I got there. And I found a person with common interests. He was also an Auburn grad, which is the most important one, but we also had interest in the same thing. So we had interest in doctrinal retrieval. We had interest in early Christian hermeneutics, and we had interest in liturgical retrieval. And so we began talking about what it would look like to think through Baptist retrieval of the Christian tradition. Through social media and other things. We ran into Brad Smith and Winston Hartman, who, at the time were at Criswell college. And again, who had arrived at similar interests independently of us, and so we just got together and said, Hey, what would this look like? And that's, that's when we started dreaming up CBR. And long story short, we, we took a couple years gathered fellows organized, wrote, wrote founding documents and then launched in early 2017, I think it was so maybe 2018 It's hard to remember now. Yeah, so that's the that's the gist of it. Um, just just for guys who want to help Baptists connect to the Christian tradition. That's as best I can summarize it.

Charles Kim 8:50

Very good. Well, that's a it's a little more recent, actually, than I had thought you were gonna say, 2017. I had, I hadn't seen a timeline. So wow, that's not long ago.

Matthew Emerson 9:01

Yeah, that's right. It's I think it's almost positive as 2017 which is hard to believe. So yep.

Charles Kim 9:09

Very cool. Yeah. I, I was at a conference, the North American Patristics society, and I heard a talk being given by someone from California Baptist, and I said, Well, I just have to meet this person. I didn't when I was there, I wouldn't have realized that there were any other Baptists. So I went and talked to a guy and his name is Shawn Wilhite. Yeah. And he turned out to be my sister in law's Bible Study leader. Oh, wow. Okay. But yeah, it was pretty, pretty funny because like, I hadn't really been involved in sort of Baptist circles for a long time in my own journey. And so, you know, it was kind of cool. I was like, Oh, wow, I had no idea that I would see a Baptist that that this Patristics conference. But anyway, that's that's pretty cool.

Matthew Emerson 9:58

Yeah, definitely. It's a small rolled in Baptist life. Yeah.

Charles Kim 10:03

Well, and so my my second question, as I was thinking through, just, you know, what I'd like to talk with you about, like, when I was at OB, you this, what you're discussing would have been, I'd never heard anything like this, like I did philosophy. And I, we felt like we were the black sheep, because we wanted to ask other questions than the rest of the theology department. But you know, so but you're talking a little bit about bringing in these things that might otherwise be construed as sort of broadly Catholic or not really part of Baptist life. So do you ever get pushback? If the Center for Baptist renewal for not being Baptist enough, or, you know, other kinds of like, sort of like veil? You know, I don't know, I don't know what the criticism might be. But I could see that, you know, the way that I was raised this, this was not at all part of what it meant to be Baptist, at least at least in St. Louis, Missouri, or it really even in my time at ODU, then maybe there were people I just didn't know them. I was fairly secluded, but Right.

Matthew Emerson 11:01

Yeah, I would say that. We have not received a lot of pushback. But that's also, in part because not a lot of people know that we exist. So I did early on, when we first launched this, I did a podcast with Timothy George, who then was the dean at Beeson Divinity School, and who is in many ways, one of our primary influences in in starting CBR. And so he had me on his podcast, and I think after it was over, he asked me the same question. And he basically said, you know, once you, once people hear about this, you will get pushed back. And I think that's probably right. The the sort of thing is not necessarily in the in the mainstream of Baptists thought and culture right now. You know, there's, there's, there's historically, in the last 50, at least, maybe two 100 years in Southern Baptists life, the emphasis has been on our own distinctives. And some would say Baptists is ion where, you know, the Baptists are the ones who have kind of a claim to getting it. All right. And so the the push to recognize where we what we have in common with others has not been as strong. So I think that's still fairly prevalent in Southern Baptist life, particularly. But I also think that there's a kind of commonality among my generation and younger where there, there's a spirit of, you know, principled ik unicity. And I don't mean a humanism in a kind of way, where it's this squishy, malleable wax nose, where we just all want to get along and sing, sing Kumbaya, I use the word principle, for a reason we have a we haven't a piece on that on the website. We're talking, we're talking about what it means to be principally, principally ecumenical. And I do think that among younger evangelicals, there is an attempt to make that a priority to see what we have in common with each other, through the lens and under the authority of Scripture, absolutely. But also without pushing one another to the margins as, as fellow Christians. So when I say a humanism again, I don't mean what this is kind of a, you know, a dirty word for, for some older evangelicals, I don't mean some kind of squishy, malleable wax nose, I mean, principle to humanism, where you're recognizing what you have in common under the authority of God's Word. And I do think there's a push towards that among younger evangelicals, for sure, maybe among older evangelicals as well.

Charles Kim 13:57

Yeah, I was just, I don't do too much on Twitter, but sometimes I kind of watch conversations. And there was just something yesterday or the day before about a lot of young, a lot of people who are becoming sort as I described, sort of becoming Catholic or becoming orthodox. And so it seems that there is sort of an interest in this greater church tradition, one way or another. And, you know, so I don't know. But what was coming up on Twitter was like, what kind of numbers are these? Is this happening on mass? It's always hard for me to tell. Because I don't, you know, in some ways, the kind of people that I tend to converse with our students at St. Louis University. I also teach at a Catholic University Catholic seminary, which I tend to think is pretty funny. They hired a Baptist, Catholic priests out to do Latin. But, but aside from that, those are the people that I tend to know. So it's, you know, I'm not really sure if this is a representative sample, but it would be interesting to know how many sort of broadly evangelical or Baptist or non denominational type people like myself, who got interested in church history have become, you know, one of the sort of more apostolic churches and or, you know, Roman Catholic orthodox. So anyway, I don't know what those numbers are, but it would be curious.

Matthew Emerson 15:18

Yeah, that's it's purely anecdotal when I say we have this kind of movement towards these things, but it's not something that we alone have noticed. Anecdotally. You know, it's I mean, there was actually a piece in the Atlantic. Okay, years ago about millennials going more liturgical. So other people are noticing and well, which, you know, again, it may just be confirmation of my own priors. But I tend to think that it's more than that.

Charles Kim 15:44

Yeah. Well, I think some of this will, hopefully, give us some background to the book that you've recently written on the doctrine of the descent, he descended to the dead. So what what got you interested in this question? This last this little line in the creed? Why? Why the descent?

Matthew Emerson 16:04

Yeah, so a few different things. I mean, one the work with CBR, you know, I'm always, always is a is too big of a word, since my PhD work, sort of in the middle of it. My supervisor was actually a medievalist who studied Anselm. And so he got me reading, early Christian hermeneutics, both primary and secondary lit. And so since my doctoral work, at least, I've been intrigued by early Christian hermeneutics, and then when, when Luke and I connected at CBU, you know, begin to be more interested, but already was but then then grew my interest in early Christian doctrine, which of course, those two things are closely related. Then, another another way that this was prompted was via simply using the prayer book for my spiritual life. And I would, every year, I would come across the college for the for Holy Saturday, is this beautiful prayer about, you know, what Jesus was up to? And I thought, hang on. All we have on Saturdays during Easter, during Holy Week is an Easter egg hunt. But clearly, the church thinks there's more more going on than that. So that that got me interested. And then the other the other piece that got me interested in this was thinking through the authority or derivative authorities, I put it of creeds and confessions for especially Baptists, but other evangelicals. So what's the what is the authority of crazy confessions, for those of us for Protestants really, especially for for evangelicalism. So in that regard, I first actually started working on some, some pieces related to the doctrine of eternal generation, because there are a number of conservative evangelical theologians who have either questioned or rejected the eternal relations of origin in their articulation of the doctrine that Trinity in the last quarter century, and so wrote some, some pieces on that. And then that, all that plus, what I've already mentioned, led me to think, Okay, what other creedal lines are always being slammed. And the dissent clauses, the obvious contender for that, so I just started thinking about, you know, what, what would it look like to retrieve this doctrine? What does it actually mean? Is there a scriptural basis for it? Because, you know, when I was in seminary, it was a doctrine that was very much associated with sort of deviations and soteriological and ecclesiological thought related to Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. And so, you know, I thought, all right, is that all there is to it? Should we just should we just abandon it like, others have suggested? And I, you know, once I jumped into it, I thought, no, there is biblical warrant for this. There is historical warrant, there is the logical rationale. So I argue that we should retain it and and proudly declare it.

Charles Kim 19:21

And one of the words that you used well, a couple of things. You talked about the prayer book, I assume you mean the Book of Common Prayer?

Matthew Emerson 19:29

Yes, yeah. Okay. I was using the BCP for my very biblical readings for the day and prayers. Yeah.

Charles Kim 19:37

And then we have not talked so much about hermeneutics. So one of my question, actually, sort of basically, maybe a few of them deal with this question of hermeneutics. So, what what exactly is hermeneutics and what what makes the hermeneutical approach of the early Christians maybe even, like, you know, I and one of my questions was about how Peter and X read So, the Psalms, what is what is hermeneutics and what what's going on there that you were talking a little bit about this sort of different hermeneutic in the early in early Christianity?

Matthew Emerson 20:11

Yeah. Well, hermeneutics is simply the art and science of biblical interpretation. Well, I should say biblical hermeneutics is the art and science of biblical interpretation. So how do we read the Bible? That's that's the basic question of hermeneutics. And for, for the early Christians, reading the Bible was first and foremost reading, to see and know Jesus Christ. And that makes a difference when especially when you're reading the Old Testament. We often read for other purposes, especially as moderns. But the early Christians read the Bible as a thoroughly Christocentric document. And they had theological warrant for that. And I would say exegetical warrant for it. exegetical meaning they saw it in the text, they weren't just sort of imposing their own views onto the text, at least in my mind, they weren't. So when you when Peter is preaching and Acts two, I think that's the passage you mentioned. And he quotes Psalm 16, is just sort of obvious to him and everybody else, at least all the other Christians that are there already there. And then subsequently, afterward the 3000 other Christians that that become Christians in that moment. It's just sort of taken for granted that of course, this is about Jesus, this Psalm. And so that makes a difference in in how you read the Old Testament, it makes a difference in how you understand the Psalms. If all the psalms are about Jesus, that tells us something, it makes a difference about how you read the stories that are all pointing forward to Christ story, it makes a difference how you read the, the, the prophetic texts? Yeah. So there's a big difference in how they're reading the Old Testament, how many of us choose to read the Old Testament?

Charles Kim 22:09

Yeah, that's interesting. So you, you know, on the one hand, if you told a group of people that you're looking at the Old Testament looking for Jesus, that might not seem so controversial. But on the other hand, if people have been fairly steeped in what we might call a historical critical approach, that might bring into relief, why even this is actually somewhat controversial. So why is it that we've allowed this this historical, critical, or historical grammatical approach to overshadow our concerns with finding Jesus? Or maybe it doesn't? But what what role does this this play of, you know, like when I was in seminary, so I went to a very well, I guess, sometimes it depends on where you're standing. But so I went to Princeton seminary, and we were taught to read the Old Testament, and never think whether or not the writer knew Jesus of Nazareth was going to fulfill these prophecies like it was, was our approach to say, Okay, you only consider the Jewish context, you know, from the exile or from before the exile, or whenever we think that they are writing, you know, in Isaiah, say, for instance, or in the south David in the Psalms, you don't you only ask about the ancient context, you never think about whether or not this has anything to do with, you know, Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth. And so that was like, we were taught to bracket that out entirely when we did Old Testament readings. So, you know, some, some people might say, why, why would that even be a practice? How do we get to the place where that is? How a lot of Biblical Studies is done?

Matthew Emerson 23:46

Sure. Yeah, that's a big question. So I'll try to be as brief as I can. But I think let me just think about how I want to say this, and if I can say it briefly. So, you know, that's okay. I would say that both the historical critical method and its Evan Jellicle cousin, the historical grammatical method, and there's a reason I say cousin, the historical grammatical approach has the same aims, in many ways as the historical critical approach, and which is to understand any given biblical text in terms of what the original author meant, and what the original audience would have understood it to me. That's the main aim of both of those approaches. I also call it a cousin because both of both approaches use similar tools in order to achieve that kind of understanding of the text. Tools like form criticism, source criticism, redaction criticism, literary criticism, etc. The difference between the main difference between the two I would say is that of course So the historical grammatical approach, which is practiced by evangelicalism believes that the text is inspired by the Spirit of God, which is important in which I affirm and that the traditional authorship, many, many proponents of historical grammatical method, at least historically would say that the traditional authorship attributed to particular books is in fact true. So Moses did write the Pentateuch, Isaiah did write all of Isaiah, Paul wrote all of the letters associated with him, etc. So that's very similar, the two are very similar in their aims, in terms of trying to identify what the original author meant, and what the original audience would have understood the text to mean. They both use similar tools, but there are differences in their fundamental commitments about the text. Now, the way that those two approaches arose, is I don't want to say this historical critical method arose, particularly out of the Enlightenment. So in the enlightenment, you had this attempt to this attempt to be enlightened that is to move from darkness to light. And in many Enlightenment thinkers, part of what held humanity in darkness was the church religion, Bish, bishops, Pope and the Bible. And so the historical critical method arose in part out of that kind of context in which the Bible as a source of unified and unifying authority, needed to be shown to be, at least imparts false. Now, that's not everybody's aim, when they use the historical critical method, it's certainly not the aim of most people who use the historical grammatical method. Nevertheless, that's the context out of which many of these biblical, critical tools are critical tools arose. And, apart from that, kind of, apart from that kind of motive, even more generally, and perhaps more neutrally, the Enlightenment brought with it an emphasis on objectivity. And so this emphasis on what the original author meant, and what the original audience would have understood the text to mean, arose. Even if it wasn't out of some kind of attack on the Bible. It wasn't enlightenment spirit of objectivity, in which these are the kinds of tools we can use to objectively arrive at what the text meant. Now, that's, so that's, that's historical, critical, historical, grammatical. And that's the aim, right? What it meant is what it means for us today. Now there can be some second step of application of the text. But what it meant is what the original author meant. And that's what it means for us today. And then we take the next step, which is not a step of meaning, it's a step of application to what is actually applying to our individual lives. And that's really only for the church to do. Now, that's very different from how the early church thought about things. They certainly thought that we need to understand what the original author meant that was important to them. The original languages, in some ways fell off, but in other ways were still important to them.

Sort of lexical observations like hey, this verb means this and it's related to the noun this way. I mean, those were those were important to them. They were discussed. The relation between paragraphs and sections of the book, all that was important to them. So the kinds of exegetical questions that we often asked, were still important to the early church. But they also read the Bible with different fundamental commitments. The fact that they believe that the Bible was one book inspired by one author, the Holy Spirit meant for them, that what it meant is what the Holy Spirit meant it to mean. And of course, the Holy Spirit is God. And so he knows everything. And he doesn't his his mind is not limited by spatial temporal concerns. In other words, he's not a he's not a finite human being situated in the 10th century BC, with limited knowledge and limited capacity. Right? Instead, he's omniscient and all knowing etcetera, etcetera. And so when he intends something in the Old Testament, he has, he has Jesus in mind. because as the Holy Spirit of God breathed out by the Father and the Son, yes, I'm a Western Christian. So I'm using the filioque way there. But because he's the Holy Spirit of God, his his mission in the economy of salvation is to testify to the sun. And so if every text of Scripture is inspired by the Holy Spirit, and we're asking what it meant to the original author, who ultimately is the Holy Spirit, then what it meant is for the spirit to testify to the Son, the incarnate Son, Jesus Christ. And so they read with that kind of commitment. It wasn't merely asking what does the original human author mean? Right? It was what does the Holy Spirit mean, through the mechanism. And I don't mean, they're at some kind of like, mechanistic view of inspiration. I just mean, he's using the human author to convey that meaning in this text. So those are two fundamentally different kinds of ways of approaching the task of interpretation. Prior to the enlightenment, there's a focus on the Holy Spirit as the original author, even though that that doesn't mean they forget about the human author just means their primary point of focus is the Holy Spirit. Whereas in the enlightenment, the sole focus becomes what the original human author could have meant and does mean. So I, I hope I've answered that question. That's as brief as I could do it. But there you

Charles Kim 31:29

know, that was that was brilliant. And I even asked it slightly different way than I think that I wrote. So sorry for catching you a little off guard. When I first when I first started my doctoral studies, Robert Wilkin came to Concordia Seminary. And where he actually that was one of his alma mater's as well. But, but he was talking a little bit about like, how do we sort of bring all of this stuff together? As in, like, what would it look like as the church in the 21st century? Well, I mean, Wilkin is now Roman Catholic, but like, what would it What would it mean to bring all of these things together? So in some sense, your book is, it does, in a way does exactly that. Right? You you ask some historical, grammatical or historic Well, yeah, you asked more historical, grammatical questions than historical critical questions as being part of this more enlightenment tradition. But you do kind of bring all of these approaches together. So I guess, you know, Wilkin, Wilkin talked a little bit about like, maybe we should call the now he would have probably talked a little bit more about the historical critical, but he would have said that this is this should be just one of the many sort of periods and traditions and parts of what it means to be Christian. So do you share a similar perspective? Well, maybe with respect to historical, historical, grammatical, that is, like, is this a worthwhile endeavor, as long as it is put into conversation with a whole history of interpretation? How do you see sort of all of these hermeneutical approaches coming together as sort of one way in which the church can read scripture, maybe x two or whatever? How, how do we bring all these together as as one? Or do we? Or do we just totally relegate? Like, sometimes I should say, I want to just totally be done with certain aspects of historical critical, maybe historical grammatical, too. But sometimes I get annoyed and bored by those questions. But, but but I think that they do have something to offer. So how do we bring all that together? There? There's another huge question solving three of tradition. And interpretation.

Matthew Emerson 33:49

Yeah. I mean, I think that it's, it's just what we would say about almost anything, which is that you, you plunder the Egyptians, you know, I mean, and of course, now we're talking about the Christian tradition. So we're not talking about the Egyptians. But you know, when when Augustine talks about plundering the Egyptians, he's talking about pagan philosophy. And what he says is that we should take the good out of pagan philosophy while leaving the the unChristian elements of it, basically. And it's a lot more simplistic, obviously, for the sake of this podcast. But that's kind of the idea is that we're trying to take the good out of what we are looking at whatever it is, and leave the bad behind. You know, another analogy would be putting the metal into the fire and letting the dross melt off and you're left with, you know, gold or silver or whatever. And that's kind of the idea, but just internally within our own tradition, which is, and this is true, more broadly of retrieval, as well, which is what we're trying to do. as, say, identify the places where the tradition has spoken rightly and say, Yes, this is correct, we should do this, or we should believe this, while also being able to say no, this is going too far in this particular belief, whatever it is. And so with respect to the history of interpretation, I think I would just say, there are elements of early Christian interpretation that we ought to be willing and able and enthusiastic even about saying yes to. And again, I know that you might have a sort of diverse audience here, but I'm especially speaking to theologically conservative evangelicals, right now, when I say we should not have to completely reject anything prior to the Reformation regarding biblical interpretation, or even regarding doctrine, just because it might be quote, unquote, to Catholic, that's not a reason to reject something. We can actually look at these things faithfully and carefully and say, Oh, look, this, this is actually a commitment we should share. And honestly, the commitment to reading the Bible, in a thoroughly Christian way, is not something we should be afraid of. Just because, you know, we think that say, Richard of St. Victor went too far in one of his commentaries prior to the Reformation. At the same time, we're retrieval doesn't mean, repressed analyzation. That is, we're not trying to say everything prior to X date is pristine. And we should just return to that, because there were, there were problems with early Christian interpretation. They did divorce what they were saying about the text from the text too often. And so we want to say yes, in the historical, grammatical or historical critical approaches, there is a right emphasis on being tied to the text. But we can we can do those two things at the same time. We can walk and chew gum at the same time, we can we can read the Bible as a thoroughly inspired Spirit inspired Christocentric text, that is also it also means something coherent, with respect to what the original human author meant. So I think we can do both of those things at the same time.

Charles Kim 37:23

That's helpful. Yeah. And I should say, I may have heard it before. But I was not I appreciated the distinction between historical, grammatical and historical critical, I think I tend to use those as if they are synonyms, and they're not. And it's an important distinction that you made there. So that was appreciated that and I think that also probably shows the fact that for a while I've not been in, in like an Evangelical, university or seminary kind of setting. So I've not heard those terms in those ways. But, so let's just think a little bit about the book itself. So you know, when, when I came across this book, and I started reading your work it reminded me of, so when I was in sixth grade, my my Southern Baptist dad sent me to a Westminster Confession, Presbyterian school, and we had to learn the Creed's. And I remember the first time I heard, descended to the dead, you know, we with this great problem in our house, I ran home. And I said, Dad, what does this mean? I've never heard Jesus went to the dead or hell, I don't actually remember which one we used at the time. And so why is why is that the reflex of evangelicals and Baptists. So to think a little bit about the use of this word, tradition, I like, at least in this specifically, in Lynn Beck's the nature of doctrine, he talks a lot about learning to speak and part of the tradition. And I would say that in one sense, I was sort of very well traditions in the Baptist evangelical mill, you know, kind of mindset, such that, as soon as I heard that, I was like, Well, wait a minute. I've you know, I've never heard that. That seems strange. So if we take my reflex to be sort of representative of what a lot of evangelical and Baptists think just instinctively, why is that the instinct?

Matthew Emerson 39:21

Right? Yeah, that's a good question. I think there's a few different reasons for it. The primary one, I think, is very simply that we, we associate it almost entirely with Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. And that for many, especially again, Evan Jellicle Christians, that just shouldn't happen. We should we should not be believing something that is a Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox belief. And I'm not saying that's a right attitude. I'm just saying I think that is probably the right flex part of it. But there's other reasons. The Reformers for a lot of different reasons, undermine this doctrine during the Reformation, and specifically, John Calvin and Martin bucer did a lot to undermine this doctrine. Luther. Luther retained it for various reasons. And in various ways, I think he was probably the most faithful to the historic position on it, in his own articulation of it, even though his Christology is a bit wonky in my opinion, I think is the dissent is the most faithful to the early church's view the dissent in any case. But for the for the Western Church, for Protestants, even if and I don't mean this, like, you're a Calvinist, I just mean, most Protestants are in the reformed stream. So So Calvin, buttes, er, et cetera, and the post reformation reformed theologians are among the most influential of our theological ancestors. And Calvin, I think, it seems like it's hard to say, but it seems like he probably was worried about three tiered universe stuff. I think he was worried about the kind of gradations of Hell and Purgatory and heaven. I think he was probably concerned about purgatory. This is this is all speculation, by the way, I'm just sort of guessing here. But Calvin, Calvin just sort of reinvented what the claws meant, in his articulation of it, as did buttes are really both both of them, I think, are influenced by Erasmus, who was influenced by a wrong reading of rufinus. And so I just, I think there's a little bit of a mess, right at the beginning of the Reformation regarding this doctrine, and it's never really been worked out unentangled. And so I think that's a big part of it, as well. And so because of those two things, we associate it with Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy. And because the most influential reformer in terms of Western Protestantism, I guess it's all Western, but in terms of Protestantism, is he got it, he made a mess of it. And so we don't emphasize it, and we don't talk about it, and we don't that's, and that's why we don't see it in the Bible, which would be the third reason why we kind of reflex away from it. Wait a minute, I've never read that in Scripture. Well, of course, you haven't written scripture, because nobody talks about it because of those first two reasons. So I, there's probably more to it than that. But those are the big three that I can identify, I think,

Charles Kim 42:44

yeah, that's, that's helpful. This is sort of interesting, just hearing you explain some of this with, you know, trying to, like a lot of what you do in the book is trying to unpack both how we've gotten to the place where we are, how we've come to the place where we've come and what the different perspectives were. So at some point, you have a really helpful chart of all the different ways this doctrine has been taken. And and when you get towards the end, and some of these interpretive questions. And I remember, you know, and my apologies, I feel like this has been the one of the most autobiographical episodes, and it's just, it's just an interesting confluence of, of my life, like, oh, bu, and Baptist, and this kind of more Catholic, but also reformed doctrine. It's sort of funny, there's like, all the things that have influenced my life have kind of come together in a weird way that I wouldn't have expected. So my apologies for being too self referential here. But But it's, you know, it's interesting that you, you sort of say, Okay, how do we get here where this makes us so uncomfortable. And you have to go through this history of interpretation, which I would say was one of my biggest concerns about how I was sort of raised to understand what it means to read scripture we just talked about, well, if the Bible says it, that's, that's what we're concerned with. And I was fortunate to spend a lot of time with some, some Jewish, rabbinical students and Jewish friends when I was in seminary, and they would always talk about the Talmud. And, and I actually took some courses, oddly enough, in rabbinic biblical interpretation, because I was so fascinated by it. And I was like, I was so jealous of my Jewish friends who could say, well, we read the Torah in this way because of the Talmud, and because of the sages, and because of the, you know, medieval interpreters, you know, Rashi and all this. And so I was jealous because they knew how they got to where they were, and I didn't, and like I basically I was like, Well, I know that my pastor says this, or you know that, you know, maybe CS Lewis So who or something like that, but I basically didn't have an awareness of what you described in this book, which is essentially, you know, 17 1800 years of interpretation and reflection on this question. So why why is it that that is so? Yeah, I don't know, how do we get to that place? Where we're afraid of this? And and I should say, just as a, you know, I don't think it's necessarily, I don't think it's bad at all that we should say what the scripture say. And you do quite a bit of important work on that in the book, right? You're not trying to ignore that at all. You do, you know, very painstaking work to be sure that your your reading of the doctrine is grounded in scripture. But yeah, how do we I don't know, it's sort of a funny thing, that that we come to this place where we don't know how we've gotten to these positions, right?

Matthew Emerson 45:48

Well, I think it's, again, the myth of the Enlightenment. It's this. It's this myth of objective neutrality, where I have nothing that's influenced me ever regarding my own understanding of the text. And I can just come to it with a blank slate, and interpret it fairly and faithfully without any outside influence. And that's just that's just an enlightenment myth. That's just modernism. What what this what the Bible teaches us is that only God can see anything objectively, because only God is omniscient. And, on the other hand, we are finite and fallen creatures. So our viewpoint is necessarily limited. We're creaturely, we're not infinite. We're not omniscient, we are viewing everything from somewhere. And our views on things are also fallen post, Adam. So, you know, I think this idea that we can just kind of come to the text and not worry about what anybody else has thought about it comes from this, this myth of the Enlightenment. I think the other thing to say in that regard, though, is that, despite our protest, to the contrary, we are necessarily, again, finite and fallen and therefore influenced by others, and what we believe and how we read the Bible. I mean, you think about what Paul says in First Timothy, and in second Timothy about, well, I guess particularly in Second Timothy, about Timothy's mother and grandmother teaching him how to read the Bible, to make him wise and the salvation in Christ Jesus, his mother, and grandmother taught him how to read the Bible, to see Jesus in it. We learn how to and to sort of broaden that out. We all learn how to read the Bible, and this is going to freak out every Baptist who's listening. But we all learn how to read the Bible from our own spiritual mother, who is the church. We are nourished by the Word of God. We are fed by it, we grow up in it, we grow from milk to meat. I mean, you think about all the metaphors in Scripture, Paul calls himself a nursing mother. You know, I mean, this is not an unbiblical concept. And it's not only a Roman Catholic kind of analogy. This is in the Bible, where the Bible describes our teachers, those who disciple us, as nursing mothers, literally their mothers who are discipling, right. And then you have the commands for older men to teach younger men for older women to teach younger women of faith. So the metaphor of motherhood for discipleship is not unbiblical. And in fact, I think helps us to think about why we should care about what other people think about how to read the Bible. Yeah, it's because we're being we're always being taught by somebody else. And you can either be taught by the voice of the enemy who comes into the garden and says, Did God really say, or you can be taught by the church who has been handed the good deposit and guards sound doctrine? Those are the, you know, those are your choices. And it doesn't mean the church is infallible, it doesn't mean that the church can't be wrong. But it doesn't mean that we learn from somebody and it's it we learn from the church. So I would just say, to make make it very clear that I'm a Protestant. Obviously, all of that happens under the authority of the only final authority, which is God's word. So none of that is actually contrary to sola scriptura commitment to it is just merely saying that we have to learn from somebody. And the somebody that we learned from ideally is the church when the church steps outside of the bounds of Scripture. It's then that she needs to be corrected by scripture, and can be and should be corrected by Scripture. So this is not a kind of Roman Catholic position. It's a thoroughly Protestant position. It's just one we've lost because of the enlightenment.

Charles Kim 50:01

Yeah, yeah, I think that's quite helpful. One of my other questions on here that I wasn't sure we'd get to, but this just reminds me of it is when I was starting this Ph D. program at SLU. We a few times mentioned the, the Vincentian canon, that is Vincent of Lauryn talked about what was believed everywhere and at all times, by all. And it and it sort of fascinated me, because I had never heard that I'd never heard that as a Canon as a as a rule. And also, as I studied Vincent, I realized that he actually has more of a place for Scripture than is often assumed. And also, I think that if we think of Augustine as a little bit of a as a corrective as well to Vincent, we can place an even greater emphasis on scripture in that, but it might be a helpful way to think about like, you know, how do we, how do we dig back through the tradition, we we try to look at what was believed everywhere and at all times. And I think the the sort of the simple, the simplistic interpretation of Vincent, a, basically sixth century Golic. Man, the sort of sin, the simplistic interpretation of him might be that, you know, well, obviously, we can't say what has been believed everywhere, and at all times by all people, but it's a helpful way to think through like, you know, we had like, the church is a 2000 year old institution, and in the churches, the new Israel is even longer, right. So, you know, we have this whole great tradition that we can draw from, and and find the great lights, but also have those grounded and corrected in Scripture, right. So have those also returned to this? You know, the ways in which scripture can continue to as the reformer has talked about, you know, be reformed and always reforming. But, yeah, I don't know, I'm not the vintage canon is an interesting one to me that I would like to do more work on. Basically, my, my dissertation just dealt with Augustine, but I got interested in Augustinian reception between between his life and basically the Reformation, because I knew I knew the way that Calvin read Augustine, but I didn't know a whole lot about anything in between. And so it seems that Vincent has some an interesting place in that story as well. But But be that as it may, that might be a place where we could go to sort of think about, you know, I don't know, some sort of like, broader rule or principle that help us think through where, how we're going to read scripture, and how that Scripture is also going to help us to, to read it better. Yeah,

Matthew Emerson 52:39

yeah. I mean, the Vincentian canon is not canon, right. But I think there's precedent in Scripture for the kind of attitude that the Vincentian canon promotes, which is an attitude of number one, seeking unity within the body. An attitude of seeking unity, specifically, via Secondly, doctrinal faithfulness, and an attitude of humility. Number three, so those are definitely scriptural principles. So you know, for the first one, John 17, for instance, for the second one, the pastoral epistles for the third one, Philippians. Two, let's just say that. I mean, there's a lot more than that. But there's biblical rationale for thinking it's important for us to be unified, specifically unified doctrinally. And for us to approach these questions with humility, with respect to what other people think. And so, you know, I think, I feel like I've kind of hammered this unintentionally, but the Vincentian cannon is to me, again, another way to combat the myth of the Enlightenment, which is that we are all autonomous, individual, objective observers of reality, who have neutral viewpoints. And the vincentine Cannon says, Hey, listen, you should listen to other people. You know, again, it doesn't it doesn't mean and perhaps Vincent wouldn't say this, but I am. It when I talked about this, it doesn't mean that I'm saying, We you should just automatically accept whatever everybody else is, no, of course not. If the Bible says that this is not something that we should believe, then don't believe it. Or if there's no biblical support for it, don't believe it. But if you know, there are, there are a lot of things that the church hasn't talked about a lot. But there are a couple of handfuls of things that the church has been very clear on throughout space and time. And when we're talking about something that the church has, historically, through two millennia, almost been clear about, we need to pay attention. What I tell my students is, if you believe something that the church has never believed, or if you reject something that the church has always believed the chances are that the likelihood is a almost entirely that you're wrong, not literally everybody else. Yeah, but But it's this kind of, again, it's this, this enlightenment myth that that I alone and left in my Bible reading will be sufficient to overturn 1000s of years of church doctrine. No.

Charles Kim 55:23

Well, I mean, my, you know, it's sort of it's sort of like the problem of solipsism, you just end up utterly alone. I don't even know, you know, and on the one sense, I understand it from wanting to come to object to objectivity. Like I understand that impetus. But on the other hand, I think, yeah, well, that would just be a sad place to be.

Matthew Emerson 55:41

Right. And again, just to make sure everybody knows, I'm Protestant on here. You know, people often bring up Luther and the Reformation here. And what I would say, is two things in that regard, at least. First of all, it seems quite obvious that scripture had a number of things to say, against and I, you know, of course, on the other hand, I'm gonna offend my Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox friends. But the Bible had a number of things to say, against prevalent Roman Catholic doctrine in practice at the time. And so I think the Reformation was warranted, biblically speaking. But I also think what you saw in the Reformation was not Luther standing alone by himself, but confirmation via the Word of God, calling others to the same kinds of reforms as Luther. And so, you know, I do want to say that the creeds and confessions and councils are not infallible on their own. They are authoritative only insofar as they are faithful to Scripture. And if scripture ever is shown to correct or condemn a particular credo line or confessional statement, then we should change it. But the weight of change has to lie with first clear, exegetical rationale. And secondly, with the voice of the church, the whole church, and just sort of individual theologians in the 20th century and 21st century now, saying, I can't find biblical warrant for that when they haven't done the hard work of understanding the hermeneutical rationale that led to in the first place. And then they only go to one or two verses to overturn it. That's not sufficient, in my mind, even under Protestantism, to overturn a historic teaching of the Church.

Charles Kim 57:34

Yeah. All right, Mike drop. Well, I really appreciate it. Dr. Emerson, and I want to, you know, be be aware of your time. So we're getting up on an hour here, I would say I had of as usual, I had to like five other questions that I that I wanted to ask, but, you know, I really enjoyed this conversation. And I would recommend to anyone who is listening to go to the book, one of the some of the stuff that really surprised me was how much cosmology and anthropology was in here. So you know, you go through what what is the difference between descent to the dead descent to hell, you know, places in hell, what does it mean to die, you go through quite a bit of other work. So the I commend the book to those who are listening for, for a deeper dive into those things. So I usually view these conversations as sort of extensions of my reading, when I when I go through them, so I don't intend them to be straight read capitulations of what you've written. So I hope so. Like I say, I hope that is a way that this supplements other people and encourages them to actually go read it and buy it. And and then and then this can sort of help, you know, extend the conversation.

Matthew Emerson 58:54

Right? Yeah, absolutely. Well, I appreciate you having me on. It's been fun to talk about these. Yeah, recording issues.

Charles Kim 59:00

Well, very good.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai