Episode 133: Interview with Dr. Brad East

In this episode, we talk with Brad East whose book The Church's Book (Eerdmans Press, 2022) explores the relationship between the church and scripture. It was an illuminating book and conversation where Dr. East expounds upon the book and how Robert Jenson, among other theologians, can help us understand what the bible is. 

Timestamps:

13:37- Scripture Out of Context

35:26- The Role of the Church in Interpretation
41:27- The Thief on the Cross

Episode Transcription:

Charles Kim 0:00

Hello and welcome to history of Christian theology. My name is Chad Kim. This week I'll be talking with Dr. Brad Easton. Dr. East is Professor of Theology at Abilene Christian University. He is also the author of the church's book, the theology of Scripture and ecclesial context out recently with Erdman Xpress. And it's a very fascinating book, I enjoyed both getting to talk with Brad, and also to read through a lot of his book, where he helpfully elucidates a connection that's not often named the the connection between how one understands the church and how one understands scripture. And so the Scripture doesn't just come out of nowhere, it has a relationship to Christ's body. And Brad helpfully talks through what the theological relationship is between the theology of Scripture and one's ecclesiology. One's theology of the church. So very thankful to have Brad on. Also, my apologies. In the recording, I was just getting over a sickness, and my voice is not very strong. But But yeah, so I appreciate your understanding on that. I also wanted to say thank you to our two newest new Patreon supporters. One, Brian better has been a supporter in the past. And he recently donated on Patreon. And we want to say thank you to him, as well as a Tyrell Newell, who is our newest supporter, and very grateful to both of you all, for helping keep the podcast running, and for just, you know, helping us keep this back catalogue alive so that other people can listen to the, to the although all the episodes that we have done to this point. So if you'd like to support us, we would really appreciate it. We're on patreon.com Just search for history of Christian theology. And, yeah, we have other podcasts that will be coming down the pike, we have another conversation between Tom and Trevor and I, on the nature of hope, as well as in some other interviews. And we look forward to sharing those with you as well. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Brad east. All right. Well, today, I'm very happy to welcome Brad east to the podcast to a history of Christian theology. Brad recently wrote, like as you actually have two books that are connected, but the one that we're primarily going to talk about today is urban is the church's book, theology of scripture in ecclesial context, with Erdman Xpress. But your other book that is, I remember, at one point in the book, you mentioned it, but what is the other one that kind of relates to this?

Brad East 2:50

The other one is called the doctrine of Scripture, and it came out just about six to eight months before.

Charles Kim 2:55

Okay, and that one is more of your own dogmatic proposal or, and this is kind of the groundwork or,

Brad East 3:02

yeah, it came out in reverse order. The the first book I wrote after the dissertation, and the Urban's book that just came out is the dissertation that basically lays the groundwork, or the scaffolding for the, the first book is both shorter, but also 100%, sort of constructive, positive, dogmatic argumentation, whereas the one that we're gonna be talking about, is longer, denser, a lot more exposition, a lot more academic theoretical type questions.

Charles Kim 3:35

Okay. And the, so just to get get us going, the kind of the main argument of this book is, well, Ken, why don't you say in your own words, like what is what are you trying to establish in this in this book, as far as the relationship between the Scripture and the church?

Brad East 3:57

Yeah, I just frame it in terms of a question. What role does ecclesiology have in bibley ology, where biblically ology is the doctrine or theology of Scripture and its interpretation? And ecclesiology is the doctrine of the Church. That's the that's the overarching question that I'm trying to that I'm trying to investigate in the course of the book.

Charles Kim 4:24

Okay. Yeah, very good. Very good. And just as kind of like a background question. I think if I have this right, are you're at Abilene Christian, and of Church of Christ. Yeah. So I don't think you've met. I mean, you mentioned the stone Campbell movement, at some point early on, but I don't know that you talk too much about your own ecclesial background, at least in this book. So I did sort of have the question as I was reading through, I guess, you know, at one point, you set out these typologies of the relationship between scripture and the church, and one of them is kind of that that artistic typology, which I guess would be yours, but But you were, but maybe more of a student of Jensen, right? Like, isn't Jensen closer to your? Well, I don't know, it's Could you say something about where you fit within the kind of topologies that you lay out? Maybe say, I guess we could say what the typologies are first, just so people have an idea, but I was curious. I was like, well, where's Brad in this?

Brad East 5:24

Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah, I kind of I'm hiding behind my figures. You get you get more of me, if not my ecclesiology in the in the first book, but to your question about the types. Yeah, for listeners who have not read the book, I lay out at the beginning, a heuristic for thinking about Western Christendom. And I don't align the three types of church with any one particular tradition or denomination, what I say at all, all three types are sort of lowercase types. So I say small, C, Catholic, small are reformed, and small b Baptist. Catholic would include not only the Roman church, but the Eastern Orthodox and the other separated Eastern churches, I think, arguably Anglican. The Anglican Communion in certain of its expressions are historical modes. That would be sort of number one. So think high church think, emphasis on sacred tradition, think priests think bishops think etcetera. Second, for small are reformed, I have in mind, specifically magisterial Protestants rooted in the great figures of the early and middle 16th century Calvin Luther brucer, at all. But not what many Americans and certainly American evangelicals think of as Protestantism. I mean, it's it's an it's an interesting argument whether Protestantism has ever even existed in North America, in that particular mode. And so then the third category is my catch all that I take from James McClendon, who proposed he was a capital B Baptist, but he suggested that a small b Baptist encompassed the Anabaptist tradition primitivist traditions, the various English, English as well as American forms of Baptist tradition, it could even encompass Pentecostals and evangelicals. Basically, it's a big tent for low church types of one kind or another, who, you know, typically do not have formal processes of ordination, or at least have ordained authority, who are Bible alone in the strict sense almost to the point of new does Scriptura rather than sola scriptura, as the slogan, and I use that as my heuristic to say, these are, these are the three main divisions or the three main families of Western Christendom as I see them. And then as you know, from the book, I read, a representative of each tradition. And I mean, I assigned them to that tradition, of course, since it's my typology. And then I say, look at what happens to their accounts of Scripture, when you understand their ecclesial commitments, and I want, and I want that to illustrate the thesis that ecclesiology it doesn't always determine, but it's sometimes determines and always informs and influences. One's account of Scripture. Yeah.

Charles Kim 8:49

And again, I guess maybe just to keep up with a little bit of background, you're you sort of you clear some groundwork with Bart, right. So you have these typologies. But you sort of begin with because to some extent, everyone kind of has to do theology in the wake of BART, I guess, in the late 20th, early 21st century, kind of American context, or English speaking context, as you say, which I actually when you said that I originally thought it is fascinating. I think you're right. But I was like, also, it's just funny that he wrote in German, and I, you know, and I was like, you know, I was just thinking to myself, like, I spent some time in Berlin, but it doesn't, I don't even know does this German speaking world. You know, do they feel the same? Kind of looming shadow of BART, I'm not even 100%. Sure.

Brad East 9:37

Yeah, that's a good question. I'll say in a moment why Bart shadow lingers over this project. I don't have I don't have any read on the German theological scene, but certainly the German the Germans, the theologians I know who write in German today. Do still take Bart as a primary interlocutor. I think the brown question would be Bart's role in German church life or German intellectual life, which I don't have a clue about, I would have to imagine that it is small in the same way that it's small, that the influence of theologians in the West in any context is quite small. But part of the reason why Bart is a kind is a partial fourth figure in the book is the question that I that I gave at the outset, that became the governing question for this project was rooted in not a frustration, but a prior question about a movement in the American or English speaking, Theological Academy called theological interpretation of Scripture, which, broadly speaking is probably about 25 years old. You can see you might date it to Stephen phallus book, engaging scripture, which I believe came out in 1998. And it says a kind of ragtag, not especially unified movement, more a kind of protest against the hegemony of historical criticism and biblical scholarship and scriptural interpretation. And it, I don't know if it's, there's a sense in which it's already done, but what it did, and it gathered up a lot of energy, a lot of publications, there are journals, et cetera, et cetera, people are certainly still writing about it. It wanted to imagine a way beyond the sort of sterile dichotomy between historians reading the Bible like it as if it were any other book, on the one hand, you know, in a purely historical or literary mode, and systematic theologians just ignoring the Bible entirely, or when they look at the Bible, maybe not doing, giving it the kind of sustained textual attention that biblical scholars are rightly renowned for. And the frustration or question that I saw in the literature was that it did not seem like the folks in theological interpretation, were really talking to each other, it seemed like they were talking past one another. And my thesis was, they their disagreements above the surface about the Bible, were rooted in prior and more fundamental disagreements about the church below the surface. And that led to the investigation. And I hope in the book, I hope I demonstrate that thesis. I mean, in a sense, it's a it's a self evident thesis, it doesn't need that much demonstrating. It's more I'm trying to show the logical and theological connections between different types of claims one might make in either locus that is the doctrinal locus of the church or the doctrinal locus of Scripture. It's a very, in essence, a very, it's a very modest argument. What you think about the church matters for what you think about the Bible. The the practical upshot, the scholarly or disciplinary upshot is much of the time, perhaps most of the time when two people are disagreeing about hermeneutics. They might actually be airing airing disagreements in one in one facet of theology, that, really they should focus on another. They have disagreements about the church, they belong to different streams of the church, and the Scripture stuff is downstream of those disagreements.

Charles Kim 13:37

Yeah, interesting. Well, one way that I, and this may be getting into little sort of nitty gritty details, but I, so actually, I'll two things. On Twitter, I saw someone make a post about how they learned to memorize Scripture. And it was all out of context, like a strand of three chords is not easily broken. And the person was making the point that this sort of phrase was taken to have to do with how in a relationship God is the third party, and it's this sort of image of marriage. And, and this person, as far as I know, is sort of raised more evangelical, but he'd become kind of part of the scholarly Guild and sort of saw this as ripping it out of context. And when you actually look at the real context, you would know that that that's not what that verse means. This verse means that you know some other I don't even remember what she proposed that it actually meant, but it has nothing to do with marriage and with God and relationships and all these sorts of things. So I want to contrast that with I'm also curious it you know, you begin in your your dedication is to miss Tony Mo Mom, I don't know if I'm pronouncing your name, moment, moment moment. Tony to the countless children who first heard the name of Jesus had her feet, dedicated teacher, fellow theologian, and lifelong lover of the church and the church's book. So I don't I don't know that I've memorized that cord of three strands is easily broken, but I've memorized lots of Scriptures, the one that came to my mind was Jeremiah 2911. For I know, the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. And when we you know, we were all told that that meant that God had a plan for us. So how do those two strands of like ways of reading scripture in should have shaped this question of like, what is the role of the church to help us think through what the text means? What does Jeremiah 2911 mean for, you know, for someone like Miss Tony, versus what is what what might it mean for an academic? And how did how does that relate to your question of bibley ology. Alright, but yeah, Billy ology and ecclesiology?

Brad East 15:51

What a wonderful question. Miss Tony will be delighted to hear that you that she's the pump for this question. So I think I will say two things about that. So the first is, I am just not at all interested in correcting, quote, unquote, Miss applications, or misunderstandings or misuses, of verses and passages from Scripture. The question to me is not whether those are taken out of context? Of course they are, they can't, they can't be useful to us unless we take them from their contexts and apply them in our own. And that's always going to involve degeneration or production of new meanings. So I have I just have no time and no business for you. No, you know, the one true lasting meaning of a text is what it originally meant, in its original context to its original audience, no, thanks like that just that keeps the Bible reserved in an archive, you know, 10 storeys below ground and only the scholars can access it, they can go down, do some excavation, come back and tell us what it means, you know, not only no thinks, but in terms of like, that's not useful to any ordinary Christian ever. But that's never been how the church has ever read the Bible until the last couple 100 years, and for the most part, still not the last 200 years. That's a that's a actually a minority, academic strand. So okay, so then you say, Well, what about the Jeremiah passage? You know, every commencement and convocation, you know, you've ever been to at a Christian university or institution, somebody's going to quote it. They mean it very earnestly. Is that a good use? Or? Yes? Is that a good deployment of that verse? No, although I'm not that I have to confess I'm not as aggravated by it, as many of my colleagues and peers are. But no, it's not a good use. So then you say, Okay, well, sounds like you said, it's all up for grabs, on the one hand, but then you said, No, that's not a very good use? Well, it's not a very good use, not because you're using it in a different context, or because the PERT the person who has memorized it does not know, sixth century, Hebrew Zelich contexts, et cetera. It's because as you allude to, I'll put it in one of two ways. One is it's bad theology, which is just another way of saying, the church's faith, the church's tradition is not controlling the interpretation. It's not controlling the usage. It's bad theology, because we know from scripture from the faith from sacred tradition, whatever, that that's not actually that's actually how God works in relation to us. We look at the person of Christ, God's beloved son, and what happens to him is rejection, exclusion, torture, and a humiliate a humiliated, a humiliating public death. What happens to His Apostle to the Gentiles? Well, Jesus, Jesus says, So, in the book of Acts, I will show him how much he must suffer for my name. And so, you know, the wider context of Jeremiah 29, of course, will also give you that, you know, you're going to die in exile. This is bad news, but encompassed or surrounded by good news, there's good news, the good news is that the Lord is still with you and he hasn't abandoned you and your children are going to return but you're gonna die, right? You're gonna die there. That doesn't require a historical critic to tell you. The Pat, you know, the, the the context of the passage will tell you that but again, I want to be clear because I feel I can almost feel myself turning in the direction of saying you can't quote a passage It's sort of unrelated to its original context, the street, the three strands thing. I'm just not worried about that. I think that I think that scripture should saturate the, the minds and the language, and the euphemisms and everything that Christian people are about the way they talk the way they think, the way they live. And so taking, taking a proverb that has one sense, and dropping it down into a new context and finding another sense, yeah, I'm just not worried about it. And be precisely in that context, because it doesn't imply anything in Apt, theologically, but I'll stop myself. I'll stop myself there.

Charles Kim 20:43

No, yeah, it energize me, too. And I think in part it energize me because I have some similar, like, questions. So you know, I mean, if I think about my own kind of trajectory, like I was, I feel like actually, and maybe this is, this is where I want to put the question to you, though, like, I was sort of raised in a kind of a context that wasn't, I was raised in a church, a Southern Baptist Church. But we were like, you know, when people told us to memorize passages, we weren't taught also the historical critical method. We were just taught that these passages were meant salvation for us. They were good news for us. And so what we memorize, we memorize because it was our salvation. And I think that that was exactly right. Like, I wouldn't want to discredit that or disclaim that, just because I later then went to an undergrad, Baptist undergrad, and that later, you know, kind of a more liberal, but ultimately, not all that different. Seminary where they said, No, what matters is the original intention of the author, or what matters is the ancient context around, and that is what is going to save us from Miss readings. So I wondered as I was reading, even your typologies I did wonder like, you know, there there is a kind of like, there's a there's almost like a full core common sense, or I don't I don't know what the right phrase is a way of like evangelical way of reading scripture that isn't actually concerned with the original intention of the authors, because they know that the scripture is salvation. And so what I don't know, how would you respond to that? Because it does seem like to some extent, it is this worry of an more academic worried when you go to seminary, then you learn to be concerned about the original intention of the author?

Brad East 22:33

Yeah, that's right. No, that's well put, I mean, I couldn't agree more with the way you were putting it in. In the first book, The doctrine of Scripture. I have a chapter on the NS end s of Scripture, and I make I make pains there I go to great lengths to show that what seminary or Academy trained pastors and scholars think of the point of Scripture, think, think, the point of Scripture to be, it's just it's not nothing. It's not insignificant, but it's not the main it's not the main thing. You know, the Lutherans the squat, the Lutheran scholastics, in the 16th and 17th century had a wonderful way of describing the twofold authority of Scripture. Its primary authority, was sacramental, is sacramental, in that it is the vehicle of the living and Saving Word of God. The living God speaks through these words to reach out and touch you. It is a means of grace. You hear the gospel preached, when you go to church and you hear the word of the Lord read aloud in the assembly. The spirit is bringing the grace of Jesus Christ to you through the spoken word. And you're like, Okay, well, what about like teaching, you know, reproof, all the all the Second Timothy three stuff. So well, the its secondary authority is as a statutory norm. So whenever someone raises their hand, you know, Arias raises his hand and says, you know, hmm, maybe there was maybe there was when the sun was not. And the church the church looks at looks at the Bible as a statutory norm, it says, Nope, you know, we're gonna we're gonna address that question. And then when it comes up again, it's asked and answered, you know, that's behind us. And I think we flip those around. We that is in the academy, the what the well trained academic types, who think know, the sort of point is to understand it, but Of what use is understanding the Bible on that sent to miss Tony, or to my mom who's woken up and read the Bible devotionally every morning of her life for the last 35 years. I mean, am I supposed to tell her like He's, like, you know, I regret to inform you that you've never understood the Bible. You know? No, she reads it as God speaking to her every morning. Now, do we want to nuance that both theologically and hermeneutically? I'm sure, do we want to do we want to offer a sophisticated account so that we, you know, to guard to create guardrails? Yes, you know, I this, this is a deeply in one sense, this book, both of my books are deeply Catholic in the sense that like, we are not meant to be. individual Christians are not meant to be a theological Descartes sitting in a room alone with the Bible thinking Christianity up from scratch. So to the extent that any of our people in the pews have imbibed that message, you know, I'm going to sit down and be the first one to figure this out. Because that's the point, then we've gone seriously wrong. But the way you were raised, in a similar way, the way I was raised, I wouldn't have used that language as a child or a teenager. But I would have, I would have just said, this is sustenance, like this, this is here. For me, as a Christian, it's my lifeblood. And if I don't go to it, then I'm not going to be receiving what I need for the journey of following Christ. And I think in a very simple way, that's true in all of our technical jargon and sophisticated theological theories exist to show why that is the case, rather than to undermine it in any way. Yeah.

Charles Kim 26:44

It's, it's interesting, I keep I keep hinting at the question of your, your own ecclesial background. Because in part, because I'm curious how it has formed you. But it also helps me think about the ways that I was formed. But I Jordan Jordan would was on the podcast, he just wrote a book on Maximus, the confessor, and he was raised Church of Christ as well, or in the stone Campbell movement broadly. And we were, we were talking about how both of us had this sort of sense, that, that we did almost have to make up Christianity on our own. And it felt like almost every generation, and there was this sort of, there was this sort of tension of, like, you know, you wanted to conserve, in some sense, what you you know, what, the scriptures as they are, but you also wanted to, you know, figure out everything for yourself, like you had to, you know, you couldn't rely on anyone else, you had to do it. And, and we were just talking about how exhausting that that was for, you know, sort of the 1617 year old Chad and Jordan. And it, you know, and then once I sort of it for me, my epiphany came when I was in Israel with Jewish rabbinic students. And they would talk about the Talmud, and I thought, Oh, you just added all this stuff to scripture. But then they were like, you know, but then I was like, oh, but you have a whole way of thinking through what the text means for you, and a whole conversation that you can enter into. And so then I was like, well, am I supposed to become Jewish? That was my first thought. I was like, Oh, I guess I'm Jewish, because this is cool. And then then I was like, no, there has to be a greater tradition in the Church of Christianity of saying, No, I don't have to make everything up on my own, like, I can enter into a 2000 year conversation. That doesn't sort of just require me in my room alone. So yeah, I don't know how, if you care to respond to that, but but I do feel like there's something sort of interestingly, like, similar even, you know, even across like, sort of broadly, I know that stone Campbell, I still aren't exactly evangelical. So I know that there's some differences, but, but there's some some of those threads that seem to be similar.

Brad East 29:02

No one that's, that's well, well said. And I had a slightly different experience for me, it wasn't I did not have the anxiety of having to make it up for myself. I had some sense that it pre you know, the sense that Christianity pre existed, me and doesn't depend on me, etc. And so so when I came upon the tradition, instead of being a kind of shock to my system, it was like I've been waiting for this my whole life, you know, that I'm coming home, you know, that like these are these are my people. These are these are these are my mothers and fathers in the faith and I just need to sit at their feet. You know, I don't need to, I need to unlearn. If I have learned at all I need to unlearn this, this scholarly script To call sorry, excuse me, sorry, I just started getting a call and want to make sure that wasn't a 911. I, in terms of coming to the tradition, I wanted to unlearn those habits of suspicion and skepticism. And so in that sense, yeah, I'm a very, I'm a very unrepresentative stone, Campbell light. I mean, I would I would not identify as a stone Campbell, like I was raised in churches of Christ. I worship at a church of Christ. And I am very happily placed at a church of Christ institution here at Abilene Christian, and, you know, many low church types, whether they're evangelicals, whether they're Baptists, whether they're COC types, like me, have that kind of mixed legacy or baggage. I am very fortunate, I would say, I'm very blessed because I did not come with any of that baggage. And I just, I grew up with a love for the church, a love for Christ, and a love for scripture. And reading Agustin and Aaron as and Ignatius and Aquinas and Maximus and the rest was just finding other I was gonna say like minded not like minded I'm not like them at all, but finding like hearted people, these are these are the teachers that I that I have to learn from. So it was a very smooth and continuous rather than discontinuous or bumpy introduction for me. Yeah,

Charles Kim 31:43

that's, that's helpful. I mean, I guess it I guess it's probably for me, it would depend on where, where I'm thinking about it being in the journey at times. It felt very bumpy. At times, it felt smoother to but yeah, oh, that. Yeah, that's interesting. And so you know, so you, you've put a great emphasis on the church, and you felt like this was continuous. I couldn't help but thinking like when I was reading going through your, so you use John Webster as the representative of the magisterial Protestants use John Howard Yoder, as the representative of the kind of Baptist ik type. And then you use Robert Jensen as kind of the Catholic type. And with your emphasis on the church and all of this, I couldn't help but wonder if your horse was kind of Jensen. Was that like, that was maybe where you identified closer than with these other fingers. But I don't know say a little bit about how Jensen and maybe all three of them, though, helped you recover this sense of how the church shapes how we understand the Bible.

Brad East 32:47

Yeah, great question. You're right. My Jensen probably is my horse in this three horse race. But I hope that so for readers who come to the book, it goes the sequences is Bart is kind of casting a shadow, which I realized I never actually explained. I never actually explained why he cast this shadow. Let me say that real quick, and then I'll explain the three. The three horsemen I guess maybe it could be for with Bart. The reason for BART, by the way is because that movement I was referring to earlier theological interpretation really took its lead from BART on the one hand, so Bart is kind of the progenitor from afar of theological interpretation and this critique of historical critical approaches, and then on the other. Yoder studied under Bart Jensen studied under Bart and Webster in the 1990s and early 2000s was one of the world's premier English speaking exponents of BART Stott. So there's the sense of, okay, I've got three guardians who are receiving his, their three weird guardians receiving his influence, and then selecting it in certain ways and given his legacy for theological interpretation. Let's trace that out and sort of see what happens given they're given their respective ecclesial commitments. Webster, as you say, representing magisterial Protestantism, Jensen small see Catholic and Yoder the small b. Baptist, what I do need to the chapter just try to lay out fairly, their account of Scripture, their account of the church, the logical connections, and then and then I'm offering criticisms at the material level of particular claims and I don't have that much to criticize and Jensen's ecclesiology my criticisms, I do have one big one, but most of them come in, come in elsewhere, in other words, and you're right that once I get going concern are actively in the final two chapters. Might when I put my cards on the table, they are largely with largely with Jensen, but I do, I genuinely do believe because these are three figures from whom I've learned a great deal that Webster and Yoder also have much to teach us in both areas. And so I wanted to keep those gains in the final two chapters and not sort of pick the winner of the three.

Charles Kim 35:26

Yeah, that's interesting. And so I just maybe thinking a little bit about the role of the church and why Jensen was so important. At one point, when you were defining the, the the theological interpretation of Scripture, and you put the emphasis on God, the speech of God in the church the whole time, I'll just see if I can remember. But I had I had a note in in in there about, you know, why? Why it seems that for like, you know, a lot of American you said, a lot of American Protestants are, um, I need to cut this hang on, let me look through this where it was like, Oh, yeah. So you define the theological interpretation of Scripture. And approach to Christian reading of the Bible canonical holy scripture that relativizes historical critical methods, foregrounds theological convictions and interests and assumes the scripturally mediated community give relation between the Triune God and the church. And then, you know, when you're going when you're explicating, Jensen, you have the same or similar emphasis on the church. And I couldn't help but thinking for a lot of American Protestants, of which I am one, we have a hard time when you start talking about the church. Right? So you know, and I've, I guess, because I've been reading Augustine for so long, or because I was trained by a Jesuit. I'm more than happy to think about, you know, Christ's relationship to his church. But why is it that a lot of American Christians might find that emphasis on the church? So get a little squeamish about, you know, how important the church is for you in this in this work?

Brad East 37:17

Yeah, that's a great question. Two ways of answering that. One is to answer the question as asked and want to answer the question that you didn't ask. And I'll see if I can do both. But the emphasis is on the church is because that is the, the, the, it's the theme of the Bible. It's the, as I tell my students, I teach a class and, of course, an ecclesiology, every fall semester, and I tell them, the story from Genesis 12, through revelation 22, is God's calling information of a people for Himself. There's not a verse in that, between Genesis 12 And Revelation 22, that is not somehow related to God's election of a people. The business of the Bible is the calling and formation and mission and purpose and destiny of God's people. So the reason why the emphasis is there is because that's the whole shebang. Right. That's, that's it's the family of Abraham, whether whether by birth or by baptism, you know, the tolziens line, more than one line, you know, extra Ecclesiam, nulla Salus, there's no so there's some salvation outside the church, but also, you know, he who would not have the church for a mother would may not have God for a father. As you know, from your reading in patristic theology, this is just a given. It's not it's not argued for it to premise because the church fathers read their Bibles. They knew they knew that this was the whole deal. This is what Paul's letters are about start to finish there about the formation of a new community, a new covenant community centered on Israel's Messiah, and how Gentiles can join Jews as children of Abraham, and therefore children of God, you don't get you don't get God is your Father without Abraham as your father. I mean, all of these things are intertwined. I'll go ahead and plug. plug my next book, it comes out in about a year it's in the lexham Christian Essentials series, Ben Meyers had a book on the Apostles Creed. And there Peter lighthearted had a couple books in there, Wesley Hill had one of the Lord's Prayer and mine is on the church. And it's a more more popular level not scholarly. And so this is I'm revising the manuscript as we speak it so it's very much on my mind. That's why I wanted to answer the question you didn't ask. So the to the to the cultural question. I'm all the all the answers that come to my mind are the obvious ones. I mean, Americans we Americans are small d Democrats. We're egalitarian. We're levelers and we're individualists, and all of our, all of the religions, all of our homegrown religious traditions. Have that hyper Protestant, hyper evangelical hyper enlightenment date, Cartesian notion that it's me. And it's God. And there's nothing in between. And the whole point is God wants to save a bunch of individuals. And that's not true. That's not That's not the framework. That's not the framework as the church has ever understood it. It's not the framework. If you read the Bible, and it makes nonsense out of the church, which is why you can have why I can have very serious committed 20 Something college students who are Christians asked me, like, why, why am I supposed to go to church? Like, if I've already got, I've already got the thing? Like, I've got Jesus like, that there's this kind of optional extra, I guess, if I need friends, or I need support, but like, why is it there? And that question could not occur to anyone, until very recently, certainly. Yeah, it's a question not generated by North American contexts, but incubated I'll say, incubated on our shores. And that's a it's a real problem.

Charles Kim 41:27

I just was teaching a class at my church, and I have a lady who is very sharp, and she's always quick to ask me sort of hard questions. And I use the line outside the church, there is no salvation. And she perked up real quick. And, you know, it was like, whoa, wait a minute. And, and, and then she brought up and I thought it was interesting. She and I, she brought up the thief on the cross. And, you know, and I was like, Man, that is such a go to passage for us. Like, we want to make sure that that person is the you know, is we have an account for that. And my response was something like, Well, I'm not sure that we need to do all of our theology based on this one very specific instance of which there can't be any other given, you know, Christ's incarnation, and how all of that sort of thing, but I was like, but also, I think he is a part of the church still, like, I was like, I don't, you know, but anyway, it was just sort of funny. I was like, Man, that was the that was like, Where were we like, I feel like that's where we reach as Protestants. Like, it's like, oh, yeah, we would rather identify with the thief on the cross, than have to talk about the importance of the church.

Brad East 42:41

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Well, and it is this strange, Protestant, or certainly American, Protestant and evangelical habit of mind to take exceptions as norms, rather than as exceptions to the rule. I mean, the premise of ever, as I tell my students in when they ask these hard theology questions, the premise of every theological answer is God can do whatever God wants. So we're not placing limits on God's salvific power? Or will, we are describing what God has revealed to us about the ordinary way of God's saving work, and the ordinary way is belonging to Abraham's family, as the family of God, and how do you do that if you're a Gentile because you're not born into it through Christ. So but but of course, Jesus is God incarnate, can save whom He pleases. And moreover, as you say, he's not not adding him to God's family by declaring his salvation he is including and incorporating him into God's family. It just doesn't look like quote, unquote, going to church because he's literally on a cross. Right?

Charles Kim 43:58

Yeah, yeah. I got I don't I don't know. I gotta be honest. I don't know Jensen very well. And so I, I was tracking one of your, like footnotes. And I ended up reading some article that Jensen wrote about why he didn't become Catholic. And so I was just sort of curious, because like, there is, you know, another another sort of, again, this is more anecdotal. I've never seen anyone tried to run the numbers on this. And maybe it's because the kind of people that I encounter at university and stuff are a weird sort. But it does seem like there are a lot of evangelicals, a lot of American Protestants who do the kind of theological education that we do, broadly speaking, I know yours is different than mine, but end up going to Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic. And so I was curious that Jensen, your, your course, representative of the Catholics actually had a piece about why he didn't become Catholic. Yeah. Would you say that? about like, what is what was the resistance there? And why not? Why should you know? To some extent why shouldn't we actually take the small see and make it the big? See?

Brad East 45:08

That's a great, that's a great question. So okay, so in my mind, what I want to say is about the trends, that the trends that you're identifying Jenson himself, and then Jensen as a model, okay, so if I, if I get off the beaten path, the path, bring me back. Okay. So I couldn't I couldn't agree more about the trend lines in theological education. In North America, it seems to me that for the most part, if you come in and you remain a Christian, you go high church, you become you become Anglican, Anglican, Orthodox or Roman Catholic. That's it, by the by droves. And often often it's not. It's folks coming from an evangelical background. And, you know, the question is why? Well, it's what we've already said. It's like if you were raised to think that Christianity was born yesterday, and then you are introduced to the tradition and the tradition is not this scary, Papist nightmare of corruption, but rather this beautiful storehouse of treasures for every bit every for all the baptized, then you're like, Well, where can I find that? Where can I find icons? Where can I find the intercession of the saints? Where can I find the Creed's? Where can I find the councils? Where can I find the memories of St. Maximus, and Pope St. Louis with a great and St. Gregory of Nazianzus, and so on? Well, really only two or three communions at least as represented in the West. And typically, a certain kind of person goes to Rome, a certain kind of person goes to Orthodoxy and Anglicanism is sometimes for traditional types. And sometimes for folks who love the liturgy love tradition, but are a little bit more progressive. That's how kind of I see it. Right. That's, that's what I think is going on there. So turning to turning to and I will at the end of this, finally answer your question about me that the burning the burning question about me, the Jensen, Jensen, in terms of his own personal journey, he was deep by the influence of his wife, Blanche. He was deeply committed to communism. And the ecumenical project, which really was, as he was going into his master's and doctoral work was kind of at its peak in terms of influence and energy drawing people into its orbit. And he got involved in this because he saw the divisions of the church as a fundamental theological problem and a threat to the witness of the gospel in the world. And he spent decades on Lutheran Catholic dialogues Lutheran other dialogues he was he was a Lutheran by confession, for folks who don't know and what he reflects on in that Christian century pieces. He could be Catholic, nothing doctrinal, nothing sacramental, was keeping him from swimming the Tiber and he had many friends and colleagues who did and he blessed and affirmed their decisions. What he wanted to do, he did not perceive his salvation to be at stake. If he did, he would go. As it stood. He was born into the Lutherans that has training among the Lutherans and did most of his teaching and writing. Among the Lutherans, he was ordained, as were Webster and Yoder. And he said, This is what God has placed me in his wounded body. And what I want to do is to be a tool in the hands of the spirit to further or to bring about some future arrangement or settlement, where in Christ's body is reunited partially or fully. So I want to be part of the solution on this side of the divide, imagining an unimaginable future rather than go solo and leave my sisters and brothers in Christ among the Lutherans behind. He didn't think that was the quote unquote, right choice just that that was what he felt he discerned his calling was. And so third, I've ever since I read Jensen for the first time and saw his approach to a humanism and the divided church. I've always taken it as my own personal model. That is, however convinced that may be by the great tradition, however drawn I'm in I may be to the liturgy and the sacraments and the Creed's so long as I don't discern, that my salvation is at stake, like Jensen did. What I'm going to do is toil in the field I've been placed in because as I said, I've been nothing but blessed by my tradition. And I don't have all that baggage I need to get away from. And I will tell you, I don't know what your experience has been among my people, there is just enormous hunger and receptivity to this stuff. There's no resistance, you know? No, it's not a prophet is not without honor except situation. I teach Sunday school as well in my local church and folks eat it up. They want to know about Augustine, they want to know about the council's they want to know about the creek, they want to think theologically. And so long as I can both bless and be blessed by the tradition in which I was placed by God, trusting and Providence, then I'm going to keep doing that. And I take Jensen as my lodestar there. Yeah.

Charles Kim 50:45

Yeah, that's beautiful. Well said, I, when I read that piece, and even just hearing you talk about it a little bit more, it reminded me, there was a, I think it was an autobiography that maybe hadn't been published. But if Thomas Odin, and I could do you know, Thomas Odin, and I couldn't help but think of some similar some similarities in the kind of, you know, the work that they both did, but But staying within their traditions, respective traditions, yeah, even with, even with their appreciation for the great tradition, but also the Ecumenical Movement. And I, you know, and when you were saying all that I spent some time in, in France at huize. And Franco shares famous for saying, How can we offer forgiveness to the world if we can't forgive each other? Right, so, so there's, you know, I sort of all this is just a way of echoing it's interesting how many theologians kind of make a journey like this, but, you know, feel their, you know, their heart breaks for the divisions, but also still feel at home? That's right. It makes sense. Yeah.

Brad East 51:54

And what I would add is, you know, I have a few I have some friends, you know, the quirky semi Trad Presbyterian reformed types who are fighting the losing fight in North America. There is this probably this fourth category, but to be honest, I've never encountered them in my studies, I encountered them after the fact. But I do think it's a kind of Sub Sub Sub Sub Sub movements, and within its own neck of the woods, it's having modest success. So I wouldn't want to sell them short because it's actually the way I try to lead my own students. You know, my students who are undergrads some bound for ministry, some not. I'm not selling them on like, small see Catholic tradition like that. That is like the all those words are foreign and pretty scary. And they come with a lot of baggage. Even if I kind of train them to see it. It's not scary. But really what I want for them is not to, per se, join one of those three great global communions though, that'd be fine. If they discerned that's what God wanted them to do. I want them to be the best possible Protestants that they can be ie magisterial Protestants, not lowest common denominator, DIY American Christianity, or evangelicalism where we basically treat church as like a local tech startup that will probably be dead in 30 years anyway, but we'll have fun while at last, like treating donors and elders as venture capitalists funding these little ventures that then die. No, like hook into sync up with the great tradition be like Luther, be like Calvin be like Millington be like Gary Hart, be like Turton be like Bart be like the be like these folks who are confessional Protestants. There's no bones about that, no question about it, and who read and value and have affection for the 2000 year family history, really 4000 year family history, but after Christ, the 2000 year family history that is yours by baptism. And I find I get a lot of purchase with that, because it makes intuitive sense. They know that Christianity wasn't actually made up three days ago. They know that it didn't begin the day before they were born. They know that these people that they are exposed to are wise and thoughtful and faithful, many of them died for the faith. And so if I gave a kind of the three strands high church, off ramp for academics, in my experience, there is a there is a fourth off ramp from kind of Normie low church, American Baptist or evangelical faith and that is to to find the fullness of Magisterium Austen teaching and to go deep on those sources in the 16th 17th and 18th centuries, but also to use them as a gateway into the patristic and medieval tradition and that that works well both for high minded or intellectual types, but also just for folks, ordinary 22 year old college students who want to have a deeper faith. Yeah.

Charles Kim 55:26

Well, that was very well said, I feel like that's as good a place as any, to end the conversation. And I hope you know, with most of my conversations, I try not to have it be simply a recapitulation of the book, although I will say with Ross McCullough, I did do that more, because I was trying to follow the argument. And so I but I, so I appreciate I hope, you know, I hope readers or listeners will go out and read the book and buy the book, because there is a lot of richness in understanding Webster and Jensen, and there's just a lot more that you talk about with these types and, and how they all fit. So I Yeah, Brad, Brad east. The book is the church's book, and thank you for being on the history of Christian theology, and appreciate your work.

Brad East 56:16

Thank you. This was a pleasure.

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