Episode 91: Interview with Dr. Ike Miller

This interview with Dr. Miller includes information about his background, how he came to study Barth and Augustine, and how he responds pastorally to COVID and Black Lives Matter. It was a pleasure talking with Dr. Miller and we hope you will check out his new book Seeing by the Light: Illumination in Augustine's and Barth's Readings of John.

Timestamps:

7:12- Dr. Miller’s Background

34:07- Calvin, Augustine, and Barth

51:18- Salvation Historical

Episode Transcription

Charles Kim 0:00

Hello, and welcome to a history of Christian theology. My name is Chad Kim, with me this week we'll be Ike Miller. The Reverend Dr. Ike Miller is the pastor of bright City Church in North Carolina, a graduate with his PhD from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. And he recently published a book with a University Press called seeing by the light illumination in Augustine ins and Bart's readings of John. So I was asked to review it for a publication called Modern reformation. And I thought it would be fun to have him on as I thought about reviewing his book. So this is a process that a lot of academics go through where they have their books reviewed. And, and in a lot of cases, it's, you know, it's to give a sort of summary. But I thought as a true sort of demonstration of the task of theology, I thought it would be good to have him on and that way, I could talk with him about some of the questions that that I had from the book. And then he was he'd be allowed to respond and give his sort of take. So I just thought, this is a cool way to think about what it means to review a book and, you know, think through with an author, the kind of insights that they're drawing from what what kind of insights they have to offer. And so, so yeah, so we had this great conversation with Dr. Miller. And I hope that it'll be beneficial for you, as you think through some of these things about what does it mean for God to illuminate us? What does it mean for God to teach us and so Dr. Miller helpfully explained that this is more than just an intellectual thing, that when, when God shines his light on us, and that this is more is as much about our affections and emotions, as it is about our sort of understanding intellectually of God. So I hope that you enjoy this conversation towards the end, Dr. Miller offers his his sort of perspective on some of the even some of the things that are going on in our in our world and in our country with COVID. And the Black Lives Matter movement. So stick around towards the end, and He will draw on his insights from Augustine and Bart, to help think about even those questions. It's also the time of year at the podcast, the history of Christian theology, where we have to pay for a lot of our costs for hosting and other things. So I would ask that you consider donating to our Patreon account, becoming a patron becoming a supporter. So based on our number of subscribers on Facebook, and downloads, if everybody gave $1, we could we could cover all these costs. So I would ask that if you think about it, if you would give $1 and that would just pay, you know, that would just help us cover our cost. And, and if you want to think about it this way, if you give $2, you're covering one other person. So one $2, even just these little small amount, if small amounts, if you guys could give that to us in the Patreon that would help cover our costs and everything. So we can keep this podcast going. So I've got a lot more interviews lined up for the summer. And for those of you who become patrons, I'm going to start putting a few things up on our Patreon that are only for those people who are supported. So the first one is going to be some of in some insights that that I'm able to draw from St. Augustine, and especially about about music and about his time in Milan, and then a little bit about the beatific vision. So some of those things are going to be available to our patrons. And for those few for some of you who are already patrons, you will be you'll have access to that stuff. And for those people who are becoming patrons, hopefully, that you guys will will have access to that as well. So so this is my conversation with Dr. Miller. And like I said, Please, if you can't donate, rate us, review us on iTunes, like us on Facebook, maybe share it, share this conversation with some of your friends on Facebook, and grow the following of the podcast so that it can be offered to more people, if you enjoy it. So thank you for listening. And sorry for this long intro. Here's my conversation with Ike Miller. I wanted to thank Ike Miller for coming on Dr. Ike Miller, I guess, Reverend Doctor, right, your pastor. There you go. That's right. So the Reverend Dr. ikan. Miller.

He wrote a book called seeing by the light illumination and Augustine and Bart's readings of John. And so that's put out by InterVarsity press and I was asked to review it for a publication called Modern reformation. And so when my review comes out the link to this podcast and I'll I'll link to, to that review, on our Facebook page and on my Twitter, but anyway, so I thought it'd be fun. So I've never I've never done this specific thing, which is I was asked to review you know, some something that academics tend to do is review books, and I thought, hey, why don't I just reach out to Ike and say, let's have a conversation. And I thought it'd be fun way to kind of get a little background so you To what historical theologians tend to do is we love a bit of context. And so we want to know, you know, what was going on when. So such and such a person was writing and historical currents. And so I feel like it's fun to do that with with authors as well. And so, so hopefully this will give us a little perspective on on where it is coming from, in writing this book, not you know, that was like, I mean, he's doing a some, you know, good academic and theological scholarship. And it's not always the place to give like your sort of more of your background. So we're going to ask some general more general questions, maybe, and maybe just sort of get a little bit a picture of him. And so that, I think that to me, that makes it easier to read an author. But you can respond to that if you like.

Unknown Speaker 5:48

Yeah, thank you, Chad, so much for inviting me on. It's such an honor to be joining you on the podcast and having this conversation. And just for reaching out, I love sharing, obviously, about the book. But, you know, I think everybody that writes some kind of book, there's something behind that book, something in their personal life that has inspired that. And so the opportunity to get to share that and to share that with others is really always a pleasure. So thanks for inviting me to be a part of the conversation.

Charles Kim 6:14

Yeah, absolutely. I was just thinking, you know, when I learned a little bit about Calvin's struggle, and sort of, he had some sicknesses, and he was a refugee and a certain respect, and it takes a whole, like his theology, which can sometimes seem harsh to people takes on a whole different, like, tone, when you understand his his biography, his background, and and I don't mean to say that it's not true just because of this background or something like that, but but at least gives you a window into a man that makes them more sympathetic. And if you know, I tend to come from a slightly more reformed side of things, like I was educated at a reform school for high school, and I went to Princeton seminary, they're not exactly reformed so much anymore, but historically, they were. But and then a Baptist, like my parents are Southern Baptist. So a little bit of a mixed sort of ecclesial background. But,

Unknown Speaker 7:12

yeah, I mean, you know, it's when you know, someone's backstory, when you know where they're coming from, it helps put what feels like dry thought into context that flushes it out and gives it gives it a face gives it a feeling gives you a sense of this is why they were saying what they were saying. And when we are really harsh. We like to dismiss that stuff. But I think when we're empathetic, and we're charitable in our reading, it's always helpful to take that into consideration. So I appreciate that that's tremendous.

Charles Kim 7:45

Well, in that in a way that might even lead right into so I sent ike a couple of questions before we got going, just so he would know where we were headed. So I mean, there is a gotcha segment at the end, but I don't know if you see the show Parks and Rec but

that is not my intention. There we go. Be funny to have the gotcha dancers. There you go. So I the first question I sent out to Ike was how did he go about choosing the theologians here? So out Augustine and Bart, so where? How did they sort of fit into your Yeah, journey? And yeah, so

Unknown Speaker 8:27

you know, this may answer a few of your questions kind of there together. But just to kind of share with you the journey of coming to this topic. I grew up in a Southern Baptist context, had a great church, a wonderful church family, a wonderful youth pastor that helped me in the early stages of discerning a call to ministry. And, and yet there was this kind of part of that tradition that placed a heavy emphasis on evangelism, and in particular, kind of the process of leading someone to pray a prayer. And so being a young, Christian and wanting to do what I understood was right, you know, I dove in and started learning how to do that, and what that looked like and doing trips to do that kind of thing. And, you know, you would lead someone to pray a prayer and they would pray to receive Christ. And it's a powerful moment when someone does that. And you see that and you see transformation. But I also began to see something happen where someone would pray a prayer to receive Christ. And then the next day, it was as if it didn't even happen. It's like nothing had ever happened. They, they hadn't had some encounter with Christ. And if I'm being honest, I began to feel disillusioned with this to the point of if someone's had a genuine encounter with Christ, how can there not be transformation afterwards? And so that kind of sent me on this tailspin of kind of wrestling with that. And the funny part of the story is I went to a Baptist It's undergrad called Campbell University here in North Carolina. And somehow in the middle of this kind of like crisis that I was having around what is evangelism and conversion, I also found myself the evangelism team leader for Campus Crusade. And so it was a weird tension that I was living in, you know, of like, I'm not sure, like how I think this should happen. And yet here I am supposed to be the person in charge of it. So anyway, I wrestled with that, and, sorry, wrestled with that for a while, and then towards the end of college, my paradigm of faith began to shift as well. And so I became very interested in questions around the historical Jesus, and who was the historical Jesus apart from quote, unquote, the bias of faith, right, like, you know, remove all of the stuff that keeps people from seeing clearly who was Jesus. And then I knew I wanted to go to seminary, and so went off to Duke Divinity School. And it was interesting, because at that time, in my faith, I was in a pretty kind of progressive place, theologically, I would say, and so going to do, I just thought, Duke was going to affirm all of my quote, unquote, enlightened ideas, you know, like, I thought I had this thing figured out, and Duke was just going to agree with it.

Unknown Speaker 11:25

Because there was this academic institution, and I got there and man, they immediately started pressing back on a lot of my ideas. And that was kind of a wake up call for me, of just how I was thinking about things theologically, but but at the heart of a lot of that was this question of how do we know God? And how do we have this encounter with God that's transformational. And so there were a couple of things in there, Bart became huge for me, because his notions around revelation and this encounter with the Word of God, and how we don't control the Word of God, the Word of God is always in control over its own knowledge. It really resonated with me, this idea of being confronted with the Word of God, that it wasn't something that I could control. It really grabbed me and spoke to where I was at at the time. At the same time, the Gospel of John became really important to me because as I read the Gospel of John, there were these long narratives of people encountering Christ in John's gospel, unlike the other gospels, like Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, John had this proclivity for telling these long narratives of people encountering Christ like Nicodemus, the woman at the well, the men weren't blind. And in those I found kind of my own questions being answered around what does it mean to encounter Christ? Why are they transformative sometimes and why aren't they? I mean, clearly they encounter with Nicodemus, it was just over his head, it didn't make any sense. He's like, What are you talking about life have to be born again, you know. And so I found this resonance between Bart and John and John's Gospel on some of these questions. And then, as I was talking with, who then became my advisor, Kevin Vanhoozer, we're talking about this. And he said, you know, it sounds like what you're interested in is that question of like, the aha moment, what is the aha moment of faith? And really, that question of illumination, the AHA of illumination. And so then that led me to Augustine, who is kind of, in a lot of ways, the father of the theory of illumination in the church, Lydia Schumacher wrote a book on divine illumination, where she just lays out here's how Augustine influenced, you know, the history of the church on illumination. And then I'm just putting all this together for you. But then I come to find out Agustin has 124 sermons on the Gospel of John. And I'm like, Okay, this is perfect. And then finally, the nail in the coffin, so to speak, was Bart had these lectures on John Chapter one through eight, in German that had never been translated? Yeah. And so it was like, Oh, my goodness, I have this is it I have to write on this. This is this is where it's coming together. So so that's kind of a long story, but that's how all the pieces came together for me.

Charles Kim 14:25

Yeah. Oh, that's fascinating. So I mean, your your German, so yes. I, when I got to the BART section, you know, my, I have less expertise in Bart than in Augustine. And so you know, read read Augustine or read Bart, I should say, a little bit at Princeton seminary. And, you know, I couldn't graduate without getting my own copy of the dogmatics. I had to have, but I have not read through all of it. Just major sections. And so yeah, so I was I was really struck as I was going through the book, at your citations of the gotten getting dogmatic Next the church dogmatics. And then the sections of these, these untranslated lectures. So, just quick question, how did you get your German up to speed? Work on that,

Unknown Speaker 15:11

man, I'm telling you, it was rough. You know, the I had some moments in in the Ph. D program where I was like, our language is going to be the thing that keeps me from finishing this, you know, just, you know, trying to pass the proficiency exams. But there were a couple of things that were really helpful. I really, once I knew that I was going to need to translate Bart's German and do it on a level that I could cite reputably, I dove into some of the key works that people have recommended to me, I got a tutor that could walk with me personally, through my translations, as I did it, just because I knew it wasn't something that I could just translate and then turn in and be like, Hey, this is this is reputable, without being able to say I've got some other people that are helping me with this. So I had that in place. And then once I finished, I actually submitted my my translations to do to to people who are doing their PhD in German at Duke, and ask them to read it, and to give me feedback and to help correct anything. And so, so there was a lot of work on my end of trying to learn the German and learn it well enough to translate it. But I also wanted to run it by as many people as possible so that I could say, hey, this wasn't just my best shot at it.

Charles Kim 16:36

Yeah, well, one of the things that you spoke to that, that even I found a chi like, you know, so like, Bart, BART has a kind of, how do I say this? Like, you know, sort of, he's dealt with, sometimes suspiciously by evangelicals. Sure. But the one thing like when I was required was, so when I started in my seminary program, they had us read, Bart's evangelical theology. And I was like, you know, so let's, I'd finished my undergrad where I did philosophy, I wasn't sure what what faith tradition I was, or what part of Christianity, you know, I had my questions and my my searchings and things, but I loved I loved his, like you said that that encounter. And one thing that that I'm, you know, as I grow, you know, as I continue to read, and in the tradition, it's just that idea that that BART brings out where you're not trying to get behind the text. And that's, and you bring that out a little bit in the book as well. But it is it is the locus for encounter with the Word of God. Right. So this is the place where, you know, God speaks to you and, and maybe even that this is not actually on the questions. But But even that's like, one of the things that I was most struck by as I was going through your Bart section was the place of the Holy Spirit, which has been one of the knocks on BART, like he doesn't do enough work on the Holy Spirit. And it feels like you do you know, that's one of your one of your angles in there. One of your real conclusions that that is sort of is pretty novel is like, okay, no, he had a very robust Pneumatology. He thought about the spirit and how the Spirit worked, and how important that is for this idea of, of encountering God. So it's not just that it's not just that we read the Bible, and we pray a prayer, but it's the Holy Spirit at work. And us and Bart recognize that and it wasn't that you had to get around the text to find something behind it. It was right there in front of you.

Unknown Speaker 18:31

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You know, and that was one of the things that I found so interesting was yeah, you know, there there was this skepticism about Bart and what he was writing. And one of the things that I learned at Duke before I even was aware of the skepticism, probably from evangelicals about Bart was this idea that and this isn't a knock on evangelicalism, I consider myself broadly an Evangelical, but one of the criticisms was that some of the evangelical doctrines of Scripture and kind of reasons why it was authoritative, were more based in modern criteria for authority, right? It's sort of it meets our standard for what historicity is, and some of these kinds of things, where as Bart was claiming, this is the word of God on the basis of God speaking his revelation to us and the Holy Spirit confirming it in our hearts. And that, to me felt like a more theologically grounded notion of authority of Scripture than some of what I'd heard. And it was less susceptible to times changing, like, what if our definition of historicity changes it's changed in the past? Why can't it change again, and now we have to rework our doctrine of authority. Right? And so there were just some things like that, that were really compelling and interesting to me. That that helped me to see what Bart was doing but I Honestly, you know, the other thing about Bart and his work on the spirit? I think if you read, I think it's four, three, that there's so much in there about the spirit that when I read that I'm like, how did he? How can you say he didn't write on the spirit. But there's also in one, two, church like Max, one, two, there's so much about the spirit in there, that I'm like, this could have been his work on the spirit. Like when he's talking about the subjective aspect of Revelation, there's so much about the spirit in there, because the spirit was a lot of that for him. There was a lot in there. That was essentially his doctrine of illumination that I drew on. So you know, that doesn't make him impervious to it. But I think there is so much that he does right on the spirit.

Charles Kim 20:46

Well, and that so one thing you brought up in there is, and I don't mean to make you one of the things that's difficult for me, I guess is, so when I did undergrad philosophy, I felt like it was a really helpful thing. But it also makes me annoying to anyone done philosophy, which is I want a definition. And evangelical is a hard thing to define. And it has been used and abused. And in throughout sort of, I would say, just like, even American journalism, but so that's a pretty broad term. But I was wondering like, so Augustine, Bart, you, you know, Kevin Van Hooser? I'm pretty sure is in the reformed kind of Presbyterian world. Is that I think I have that, right. Yeah. And so and I noticed a couple of a sort of citations of Calvin, at least, as Bart was citing him as well. But, um, so do you consider yourself broadly within that, that reformed kind of theological tradition, or they just have, so do they just happen to have some good finger? So it's like, well, I may not be one of them. But hey, I need to at least deal with them.

Unknown Speaker 21:51

Yeah, no, that's a good question. You know, I grew up Baptist, went to a Baptist, undergrad, I went to a Methodist seminary, Trinity is, you know, Free Church. Bart, obviously, is in the different kind of reformed tradition, so to speak. And so, you know, to answer the question, what I consider, you know, I consider myself broadly reformed, in the sense that, you know, the sovereignty of God is what underlies everything else, you know, where I fall in the five points of Calvinism? You know, it's not, if I'm being completely honest with you, and maybe this is being a lazy theologian. I'm not super interested in the conversation. Sure. But so I think for me, what I've tried to do, especially for the generation of theologians that I think are coming up, is trying to engage the questions that they're really interested in. And it feels like in a lot of ways, they're not so much interested in some of those questions as they are, how do we find our way forward? In a less strict? Where do you fall along this line kind of conversation? And instead, how do we recover and retrieve the great things of our tradition? And move forward with what I think Bart would say was, was apologetics, which is the beauty of our theology? Yeah, what what's the our best apology is going to be the beauty of our theology? And that's what that's honestly what I'm going after. So I don't mean to evade the question, but I think what I'm trying to do is draw the best of what we are.

Charles Kim 23:24

Yeah, no, I actually wasn't necessarily meaning tulip and Dutch Reformed. Sure. Sure. I was just sort of curious because these are, you know, important. And I, I was listening to a podcast. What is it on Bing, and I heard a guy on there, I think he was talking about Robert Jensen, actually. And now the I don't know that some of the other names are escaping me. But But he made this point that really stuck with me, which was, there's only so much time that a person has on Earth, and only so much that you can possibly read. And sometimes you just end up conversing with the people who've been presented before you. And so and that's a little bit I mean, not this isn't about me, but that's a little bit about how I feel about myself within this sort of broadly reformed tradition. It's not that I have some grand like defense of Protestant scholasticism and another lens in the 18th century. But, you know, which has come to dominate a lot of Neo Calvinism, but, but but it's just that, like, Hey, these are the people that are presented to me, and there's a lot of good there. And I mean, you know, so I think I think that my kind of even my own sort of place is very, very similar.

Unknown Speaker 24:39

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Charles Kim 24:42

So I was so let's, let's take a step back a little bit. So like thinking about your own sort of work as a pastor, so your you and your wife founded bright City Church, is that correct? Uh huh. And so like, okay, so this is a more definitely a more academic work. So you're going deep into Bard and Pneumatology. In his German at all, it's an Augustine, deep into the tradition. But how does that how does that shape your own work? Is that as?

Unknown Speaker 25:09

That's good question. Yeah, you're like, how did you end up? You planted a church but also wrote a, an academic book? What's going on in your world?

Charles Kim 25:17

It's great. I

Unknown Speaker 25:19

just, yeah, yeah. So you know, when I, you know, I would say I first felt some sense of a call to ministry when I was in high school, and, you know, at the time thought, Okay, this is to youth ministry. And so when I was an undergrad, did youth ministry for a little while, and but I remember when I was in seminary, I sat down with a, he was a PhD candidate at the time, and I said, Hey, you know, I'm really wrestling with what, what's next for me what I'm supposed to do? I said, Do you know of any schools? Or is it even still a thing where people will go, and they'll study for a PhD, but their one of their primary purposes in that is that to then leverage that for the church and to teach within the context of the church? And their response was, it's rare, but yeah, it's still done. And so, you know, those kinds of conversations. For me, I've just, I've, for a long time felt this tearing between Okay, am I supposed to be in academia? Am I supposed to be in the church, and had that conversation with a lot of people? And eventually, I just kind of reached this point where I had to say, Okay, I don't know what the answer is, I don't know if I'm supposed to be in this world or that world. But I'm able to step into both worlds. And so I'm just going to do it. And I'm going to, I'm going to see where that takes me and see where that leads me. And so that first step then for me, was to pursue a Ph. D. program and went to Trinity and studied there. And I just being very transparent with you, as I got towards the end of the Ph. D. program and started looking into the job application process and applying for jobs I, I didn't really enjoy that. I didn't enjoy the not so much the networking, but the piece of like, let me try to prove to you that I'm smart enough for you to listen to me right now. And so I was like, maybe this is something I've just got to push through. But then I began to feel well, let's look at the church. Let's see what kind of conversations happen in a church. And so I started having conversations with pastors and looking at positions. And man, I just loved it. It felt natural, it felt like this is where I was supposed to be. And so I just leaned into that. And so I while I was finishing up my dissertation, I took a job working at a church, I was a young adults, pastor at a church here in North Carolina, and just kind of lived in those two worlds of writing my dissertation, and, you know, pastoring young adults. And when I finished my PhD, there was this switch in me that took place of like, okay, now it's time to start thinking about what's next. And I still felt like the church was that world, but I still love the academics, and I love studying and I love reading and, and honestly, it's a good balance for me, like, I knew that I couldn't solely be in academia, because I needed to be connecting with people, I needed to be pastoring people, I needed to be shepherding people. And I know lots of professors that do that. But I knew that I needed to be in the church for that. But I also knew that I did enjoy the intellectual engagement enough that I needed to be able to engage in that level. And so as we continue to pursue what was next, I won't go into the whole story, but God just made it very clear, kind of one of those, like, middle of the night, wake you up, hey, I want you to go to plant a church kind of thing, where you're like, I wish I was asleep right now like. And so we just started pursuing that. And my, my approach has always been like, let's just push forward in all directions until doors closed or something says no, or God just says clearly, like, Hey, this is where I want you to go. And so that's, that's just kind of been my journey and my process. And so the world that I feel like or the space that I feel like I'm I'm meant to inhabit, at least right now is to stand in this place of kind of translating academia to the church, and maybe speaking from the church into academia in any way that that helps those worlds to stay connected and contributing to each other. So

Charles Kim 29:28

well, and it's, you know, it's funny, as I listened to you, I, we have actually quite a bit in common. It's funny, because, yeah, I mean, I, like you know, grew up in a Southern Baptist Church and fell to a sort of call to ministry. Now, it was funny, my parents always told me, they were like, I think you need to be a teacher. But we're happy. We're happy wherever you feel God has called you but we'll just throw out there that we think you're more a teacher. So so when I was in my Ph. D program, I I was actually teaching it in elementary school, and it was it was an interesting and helpful balance, actually, to go and hang out with kids and sing songs in Latin and, you know, do other things that weren't so tied to my academic work. But be that as it may, I'm one of the things that I, one of the questions I send you is one of the things that I thought a lot about as a kid was there was this kind of anti intellectualism I felt like, in my church, like where people were, you know, I mean, I remember my mom used to get prayer requests for their atheist son, Chad. Because I was studying philosophy as an undergrad, and they were, you know, and but they were like, they were worried that if I, if I studied too much, or if I studied, you know, like, evangelicals don't tend to have a good like thought, like, I don't know, sort of apologetic or a good understanding of where even the Bible comes from. It was like, okay, don't don't ask that question. Because we don't have a great answer for you. Or, you know, in philosophy and these sorts of things. So, so the question I said was, sometimes the church can be the sort of American Evangelical Church broadly considered can be described as anti intellectual. And so how do you feel like it? You know, how is it that? I guess, how was your emphasis received, even in the church like, so it sounds, you must have a more slightly more intellectual mindset? And is that a difficult place to beat? And I guess,

Unknown Speaker 31:23

yeah. Are you referring to kind of what I was brought up in? Or where I'm at now? Well, let's

Charles Kim 31:26

say specifically where you're at now, though, like, I mean, how is it that you're able to bring your passion and dedication to, to theology and that sort of thing? How are you able to bring that into your church now?

Unknown Speaker 31:39

Yeah, that's a great question. You know, so when we were when we had decided, Okay, seriously, God is calling us to plant a church, we should probably do this. We started kind of having conversations of, okay, you know, we need somebody to teach us how to do this, because we don't know how to plant a church. And this is new to us. And but before that, as I interviewed at places, people kind of, were skeptical of my education, and kind of felt like, you're going to be difficult to connect with, I'm afraid you're gonna be too academic and not relational enough. And so, you know, there's a part of me that thought, man, is this a disadvantage? And when we started with, we planted with an organization called Ark sociation of related churches, some of your listeners may be familiar with them. But that was one of the questions I brought to them was how do you feel about, you know, who I am in my education, and they said, you know, what we want you to be who you are. And we don't want you to change we don't want you to, to be anything other than who you are. And one of the beautiful things about where God very clearly called us to plant a church is we're right here in the Raleigh Durham area, the area we're near is called the Research Triangle. And so you've got Duke, NC State, UNC that are right here. And so it's a very intellectually minded community, when I think it's, it's one of the highest PhD per capita areas in the country. And so there was just kind of as we step back, and look at that, we were like, man, God, obviously, you knew what you were doing. But clearly, we fit the people that you've called us to, and they are interested in the kind of conversations that we are interested in. And so for me, you know, it just felt natural in a lot of ways that this is exactly where we're supposed to be. Now, I realized that there's a lot of people in our church that aren't on that level aren't interested in that level of conversation. And so my goal is to the way that I've put it a lot is to be both thoughtful, but also accessible. And so how do I take a deep truth or a challenging thought, and make that accessible to everybody in the room? And honestly, I think that's the important thing. I don't think it's that we're being too lofty or too deep in our teaching. It's are you doing the work of making it accessible for people because that's where I think people get lost. So that's my, that's my goal is to make it accessible, regardless of how deep it is.

Charles Kim 34:07

Yeah. All right, I'm gonna change gears just a second to be a fast change here. Alright, so I love this question, just because I just recently came across it. So the next thing I want to work on. The next thing I want to work on a little bit is Calvin and his reception of the church fathers. And so he saw I'm reading through what he said so and then your book actually made me look at this as like, okay, so how does Calvin fit in this kind of conversation? Right, so he's somewhere in between Bart and Agustin on John. And right there and it's first thing on, on on John one. He says, Well, if you read Agustin on this he's obsessively concerned with Platonism. So we've talked about Bart, we've talked about, you know, getting behind the text and Christ present in the text. So how do you go about reading Augustine? What like is this Do you? How do you handle some of his Greek platonic emphasis says, Is that something you have to like say, Okay, well, we hold that at arm's length, which is basically Calvin's perspective. It's fascinating how much he rejects Agustin in his commentaries on scripture.

Unknown Speaker 35:10

But exactly, no, that's a great question. It's a fair question. It's one that I definitely wanted to address in this conversation. Because you're right there is. I mean, with John one in particular, there's a tendency to want to let's, let's see what how this relates to Plato. There's there's a couple of things that I'll say, though, on one level. And this is a bit of an exaggeration, but I think a bit of it is to say, man, to criticize Augustine for obsessing with plate with Platonism is kind of to criticize humans for being obsessed with oxygen, like, it's just the air you breathe, right? And it was just the air that that Augustine breathed. And so when he saw some of the language of John one, it was natural for his response to be this is connected to Platonism. And how does this connect to Platonism? But at the same time, as I did some digging in this, there's a guy named Gilson who wrote he's French but wrote a book on Introduction to the Study of St. Augustine. And he said these words I'm just going to read. But he said that Agustin have formulated his doctrine of illumination through merging a philosophical metaphor with the text of Scripture. In this metaphor, light is figurative for God, eyes are for the soul, and sight is the souls reception of truth. And so there is this metaphor, I think, that that Agustin sees that is connected to kind of the Platonic notions of God and the forms and knowledge and those kinds of things. But what Gilson goes on to say is that Augustine only accepts tenants of Platonism and Platanus doctrines because of their harmony with scripture. Yeah, that's right. And so, you know, like all of us, to some degree, we can avoid what's been informing our thinking. I mean, Bart still engaged in Galeon thought at times, you know, and some of that's just because like you said, That's what was presented to him. That's what informed his thought. But what I appreciated about what some of the people writing on Agustin and Platonism was Gustin still prioritized scripture and used Platonism Platonism insofar as it was in harmony with Scripture. And so he didn't do that perfectly. I think none of us do that do that perfectly. But I think at least being aware of that, and and being sensitive to that was important. So yeah, I don't think he did it perfectly. But I would I wouldn't go so far as to say that he was obsessed with Platonism and couldn't see past it. Like Calvin said.

Charles Kim 37:47

Yeah, it really, like I said, it's mostly just one of those, like, Great phrases that you just like, accident turn up. And I was like, oh, yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah, you know,

Unknown Speaker 37:57

and I think it was a tool for Augustine, a tool that he used. I mean, I talked about the metaphor of the cave and how Plato aside, that's a beautiful metaphor for someone experiencing illumination, you know, of coming out of the darkness of the cave, where there's been forms projected onto a wall, and you thought that was reality, like you thought that was truth. But man, when you're dragged out into the light of day, and you see light as it truly is, man, then you see how dark and how false what you thought truth was, and so, so to be able to use that tool, I think, is what Augustine was after.

Charles Kim 38:33

Yeah. Oh, and I just liked it as a funny kind of criticism. Personally, I enjoy reading my Plato. And I just kind of like it because it's one of those sort of like, funny one liners. Sort of like, whenever I might well, so the other guys my podcast, they really like Aristotle, probably more than Plato. And one of their favorite quotes is Aristotle, or at least attributed Aristotle, who said, I love Plato, but I love the truth more. And so, you know, just like one of those great burns like you just, you know,

Unknown Speaker 39:09

put it in there. Yeah, yeah.

Charles Kim 39:12

So and one. So one of the things I also like to do I love so I'm an auditory learner, in addition to reading and writing. So Bart actually says something fairly similar. He came to Princeton Seminary in the 50s. And they recorded it and he actually sort of castigates himself for as being when he was too young being too concerned with Platonism. And it it's this fascinating sort of part of the Christian tradition. I don't know if it's the homos EOS. The, you know, are the way that the Nicene Creed choose chose to, you know, the Greek word that they chose to use to talk about the same substance of God the Father and God the Son, but it just seems like it's hard to escape that. That part of Greek philosophy and platonic philosophy that was the water in which the Scripture came, I had another guy on the podcast, Vince Bantu, who just wrote a book about called a multitude of all peoples also published with InterVarsity. And hit part of his work was to sort of see other other sort of philosophical or cultural lenses which to bring the gospel, especially in Africa, and Asia. And he's, you know, he's a very careful, historical theologian, and trained at Catholic University. But anyway, so I suggest going to listen to that podcast. But he talks a lot about other ways in which like, it doesn't have to be that the gospel is intimately connected with Greek philosophy,

Unknown Speaker 40:46

right? Yep. Absolutely. Well, and you know, one of the things that I was concerned about too, was, you know, there's this kind of move in academia to speak about the Hellenization of the early church. And so some of it was to say, Hey, that's not exactly what's going on here as well. Let me clarify a little bit of that. So, yeah.

Charles Kim 41:05

Um, well, let's see, we got, let's see, we've been going for 40 ish minutes, I was trying to decide if I was going to ask you, I had one other question on on Augustine that may be maybe very particular. And I didn't write it to you. I wasn't sure.

Unknown Speaker 41:25

Gotcha. Is that Is that what this is?

Charles Kim 41:29

No. Well, it was just it was just something that was like you wrote in a footnote about the ecclesial nature of Caesar on page, the, the ecclesial reality for Augustine, like you were talking about some different realities. And it was just sort of it was sort of interesting. I was like, Alright, do I bring this up on the podcast or not? I was just sort of curious why you, you know, you felt like maybe I want to talk about it, but maybe not. So I'll put it in the footnote. And, and it was sort of the I think the reason that it stuck out to me was, Well, for one, my advisor was very, like, that's one of his big emphasis in his in his book and Augustine. So just curious, like, you know, what, what role let's, so I'll ask the question this way. What is the importance of the church itself? And like, so being in a church, for reading scripture for understanding illumination? How does the church fit in our coming to a knowledge of God?

Unknown Speaker 42:25

Hmm, yeah. Are you referring to kind of were speaking about how illumination was a part of there was an ecclesiological grounding for illumination in Augustine is that? Yeah, so

Charles Kim 42:41

like, I think the footnote says specifically, a debatable fifth statement could be made is that this participation is an ecclesial reality for a Gustin patient in illumination isn't. And so like I said, that was sort of what I was thinking of, but not not okay, not trying to put you on the spot about that. But let's just so the real the big quick question that made me ask is, how does the church fit in?

Unknown Speaker 43:03

Yeah, so you know, kind of one of the things that I was going after there, and the reason it's in a footnote is originally it was a part of the main conversation, where I was taking some time to clarify maybe where there's some points of disagreement either between Augustine and Bart, or between kind of what I'm trying to say and what Augustine was trying, or yet what Augustine was trying to say. And one of the places where that I didn't know about until I started reading, this I wasn't even aware of, but in the early church, illumination was associated with baptism. And that was fascinating to me that there was this connection between baptism and illumination. And so a part of the early conversation earlier kind of parts, editions of the book was me kind of communicating that I don't think illumination is dependent upon, say participation in, it doesn't happen in the moment of baptism, necessarily, it doesn't happen in the moment of taking communion. So that it's not this mechanical, hey, I do this, and therefore I experienced this. So that's all that I was trying to communicate with that. But to kind of the point of what you're asking is, What place does the church play? I think the church plays a huge part, especially when it comes to theological interpretation, and the moment of illumination or experience of illumination, in that we learn scripture by listening to the church, read it and teach it, you know, that that that is an integral part to it. And so, for me to go in my closet and read Scripture by myself, I'm missing out on a bit of what God is trying to teach me through the Scripture simply because I'm reading it apart from the community of the saints. And so for me, you know, Dan Trier and his stuff on the logical interpretation of Scripture talks about the church, the Creed Being this essential part of helping us to read Scripture well, and so that's the part that it plays for me is that it's not an echo chamber that I'm reading this in, but I'm reading this along with other people and God speaks through others to teach me His word. Yeah. Yeah,

Charles Kim 45:16

that's great. I was I should have probably prefaced even the question with If This Is to gotcha, I can access. It was I made that joke about Gotcha. Actually not thinking about even this question. It was just it was sort of just a yeah, I hope that was not like you didn't feel totally good. It was just, you know, like I say it well, and it's an interesting part of sort of the broader evangelical project is we tend to be atomized. We tend to be individualistic. And I'll you know, another great one of those great one liners that always sticks in my head is BB Warfield says that the reformation is Augustine his doctrine of grace triumphing over his doctrine of the Church. And I, you know, another another sort of project I have broadly in the back of my mind is to write a little bit on war fields, on that statement of Warfield and what that means, what that has meant, basically, for the church in his way. And so, you know, because I think we do have a tendency to think we can do it on our own, we can read on our own, you talked about the echo chamber. But, and this is a hard problem, because, you know, Roman Catholic readings of Agustin have such a robust way of viewing, like you just said, the place of the sacraments for directly providing this illumination, sort of the, the Latin phrase that comes out later, which is attributed to Augustine, but didn't actually say, X up or aparato. It is, you know, and so it is by just by the virtue of the work, not doing it. And so they're, you know, anyway, so that's, that's one of these hard things that that the American church has to sort of American Evangelical Church has to deal with.

Unknown Speaker 47:03

And it's, it's to, I'll be honest, like, I think some of it is probably, and this isn't a knock on Baptist, but some of it's probably my own Baptist baggage, right? Like, you know, whenever these conversations come up around, you know, what, what happens in in communion or taking Eucharist, what happens in baptism is, I want to say, yes, the Spirit works. And there's something unique that happens in that, but also, it's not a mechanism, you know, it's not a this therefore, that and I haven't resolved that tension in myself, to be honest with you, I think I'm still figuring that out. But there's kind of that own, like wrestling with my own history of theology.

Charles Kim 47:41

That's great. I mean, you know, myself included, I spent some time in an in an Episcopalian and Anglican kind of context. And, you know, I sort of liked the VM idea, kind of thinking, like, we know, this is important, but we're not actually going to make some statement that's like incontrovertible about it. Like, we're not going to affirm Transubstantiation explicitly, or, you know, these sorts of things. But, but it was certainly important there. Although I don't I don't find myself going to an Episcopalian Church anymore. But but for a little while, that was that was where I thought I was. I belonged.

Unknown Speaker 48:16

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I'd love to hear from you not to turn the conversation around. But, you know, as someone who spent a long time studying Agustin sermons, yeah, I'd love to hear just a little bit of what that's been like for you, and what resonance you felt with what I wrote any. Anything that you felt like I wrote that you're like, Yeah, I don't know about that. I'd love to hear that, too. I'm open to hearing that, too.

Charles Kim 48:43

I mean, yeah. Well, I mean, so like I said, so one of the things that, again, wanting you to come on the podcast, was, was like I said, this is my way of saying, like, you know, I prefer face to face, I prefer conversation. I prefer being able to look someone in the eye and say, you know, this is, you know, this is what I see. Because I'm always way more charitable. If I know someone, sure. And, yeah, so and I mean, I think, you know, when I first like, it just came across my desk, and I was like, Oh, this interesting. Let's see, you know, so I will say straight, like, outright, like, I didn't my My specific research wasn't on Augustine is use of a or Gus Agustin tractates. On John. I was looking at another collection, which is called the sermons to the people. And so, you know, it turns out that, that Augustine wrote way more in terms of his sermons than he ever wrote, even, you know, like, the commentaries on the Psalms is actually larger than the City of God, quite quite a bit larger. So anyway, so that's been preached a ton. And so if you focus on the Tractatus on, John, you know, you're focusing on a ton of stuff So I didn't know you know, but no, like, I'm not trying to like fault you like. I mean, that's, that's even one of the difficulties when I look at this I can remember even my, my advisor saying I think I wanted to compare Agustin to. I translated some stuff from Peter, autologous. And I would like wanting to do some comparison or something and their preaching styles are. And my, my, my advisor just said, you know, do Agustin do one person? And he's like, because you won't get through that. And I actually another one of the people in my department tried very hard to get me not to do Augustine and kept telling me Don't do that. Don't do that. Too many people have done that. And so I was like, but this is what I want to do. Right? Yeah. Yeah, that's what I'm here for. Yeah. So So I was really happy that McKone encouraged me on that. But yeah, I hadn't thought about you use three different phrases like historical, historical, rhetorical and soteriological. Those were the two different kinds of there's a second line there that I'm missing. Yes. And there was the literal historical,

Unknown Speaker 51:07

salvation historical and the rhetorical historical as my kind of framework for his, what he was doing in his preaching and exegesis. Yeah.

Charles Kim 51:18

Yeah. I mean, my, the salvation historical one made me think a lot of the salvation history as a term in sort of the German theological tradition. So you know, that was and I never thought about the rhetorical historical, but I definitely think the literal, like, I think the divides in a sense are helpful. So I appreciate it as a way of framing it. And, you know, because that's it is actually one of the things that fascinates me most about Augustine is when you talk about the broader ideas of patristic exegesis, we tend to you brought this out very well, which is people tend to argue that there is like Alexandrian, and anti McKean, exegesis. And really, the truth is, even if I don't think that those are actually in the end that helpful, even if you thought they were helpful, Augustine kind of straddles them. And so, you know, are sort of just taking the heuristics for what they are, neither one of them directly applies to Augustine. So what you brought out in those three different levels was was helpful, just to sort of say like, I mean, this is what makes him kind of interesting, he is concerned with literal in a way that origin couldn't have countenanced. But he is also directly concerned with and that's what that's what makes him powerful as a preacher to me. I talked a lot about his speaking to the poor, specifically in the sermons because sometimes it stated that Augustine audience was just the wealthy elite. And that basically, the the contention is, is that nobody who was poor would have even understood him. And so my, my work was a lot of looking at the specific quality of his Latin, and trying to show how he was speaking to a broad swath of people. And Peter Brown says, he has a simplicity understood at the far side of eloquence. And so it's sort of this great way to capture like, he is simple, but it's not the simple language of the farmer or fisherman, but it is still on and then this is not actually what Peter Brown even thinks, but it's what I think it's I think that they could understand it too, though. And like Augustine, Augustine does this, like really fascinating thing where, on the one hand, he wants to speak to the most educated, and on the other hand, he wants to speak to, like, say, the farmer and the fishermen. And so anyway, that's kind of what what I did with, with my, a lot of my work, but, but yeah, so I like those kind of different emphases.

Unknown Speaker 53:56

Yeah. And what I was doing with, you know, some of it was just trying to be clever, honestly, you know, the literal historical, salvation historical and the rhetorical historical, but, you know, what I was trying to do was to bring some coherence to his method. You know, a lot of people wanted to say that they couldn't accept Agustin as interpretation because it was too allegorical or it wasn't rooted in the literal meaning of the text. And what I was trying to communicate was that you've got to take into account what he's trying to do in that particular passage. So for example, one of my favorite things that Agustin does is in John Chapter Four with this the story of the woman at the well is he talks about how the reference to Jesus and it being the third hour is a reference to this the time of Jesus is coming as the third kind of era in history, right of like the fall, or creation, the fall and then Jesus coming as the third kind of act, so to speak. And so people want to take I can be like, that's not what this is about. Like, that's not what this passage. It's just saying what time of day it was. And I wanted to be like, but it's both like, yes, it's literally, you know, the third hour of the day, but he's also trying to communicate what's happening in Christ coming, which is something new is happening in the history of salvation. But then then he's taking the step of also speaking to his audience. So he's, it's a rhetorical move. He's speaking to his audience saying, hey, and Christ is coming to you, the catechumens. You know, he's coming to you in this time. And so just trying to bring some kind of consistency to his his methodology in a way that we'd say, Oh, actually, yeah, Augustine was onto something here that we've we've missed. But whether it's achieved that or not, I think people will determine for me.

Charles Kim 55:50

Yeah, I mean, I, I did have my question about the use of historical historical as the phrase for it. I think that was the right phrase. The other two made sense to me. That one, but anyway, that doesn't matter. It's not that I appreciated what you're trying to do. Because that's also I mean, that's a little bit anybody who, who goes after Augustine sermons, is trying to say, look, it doesn't, you know, if I'm sure if I listen to you preach, I haven't yet. But I'm sure if I listened to you preach, I would, you know, you would preach very differently from Augustine. And, and we're trying to figure out, okay, how do we make sense of what he is doing? Because, you know, he wouldn't have been like, there wouldn't have been the need for the Atari to write down his sermons as he preached them. And they wouldn't have been sent around the Empire and then literally around Europe around the world after he died if they didn't have some influence, and it's, but it's just, it's on the historian to figure out okay, why, how are you? And, and so anyway, so that's part of Yeah, and that, too, is a little bit of what I was after, like, okay, how can I make sense of what this guy was up to who clearly had, you know, the greatest impact on Western Christianity of any theologian? And I think, and I think one, maybe even if it's possible, one underestimated element was he had a great impact even on those intellect, like on those people who weren't intellectuals? And so like, you know, we don't, you know, we think about him as the author of The City of God and the confessions. But he spent most of his time preaching to fishermen and farmers. And in a, you know, far flung corner of rural North Africa. And it's, you know, it's a straight like, it's this strange thing that nobody seems to reconcile. I mean, there's tons of biographies of Augustine, and sometimes they laud Him for it, and sometimes the castigated for it, but they're like, what, what is he doing? Why in the world, does he go to hippo? And maybe occasionally Carthage are actually kind of frequently to Carthage. But But But basically, he doesn't he doesn't ever go back to Italy. He doesn't go anywhere else degrees, he doesn't travel. Like, he just stays there.

Unknown Speaker 58:05

Yeah. And that was one of the things man that I'm just I continue to be in awe of him. But it also gives me solace is like, yeah, he was writing a lot of this incredible stuff. But he was still dealing with the day to day affairs of being a pastor. And the challenges that come with that, which is just makes it all the more impressive who he was.

Charles Kim 58:25

Yeah. Well, I will I'll, I'll stop talking about Bart there. I mean, I mean, Gustin there. So I mean, I've had a great time chatting with you. I don't know if there was anything else from from the questions that you really wanted to address? Or if, if you just want to call it call it a day there. I really appreciate your time. And

Unknown Speaker 58:45

yeah, no, um, you know, I really appreciate it. And one of the questions that you had asked was, you know, just understanding the task of the theologian and and a pastor in the midst of some of just the world we're living in right now with COVID. And Black Lives Matter and the protests. And it's a great question. And I think it's a really important question that I think all of us need to be asking whether we're academics or we're pastors is, is what's my place in this? Why is God positioned me where I am in this moment? And it's certainly been challenging, you know, of figuring out how do I Shepherd people who are in search diverse places on these issues and feel very differently and have very different priorities, even in what's guiding their thinking? And I think for me, what I've found and what I've tried to do is, is to be someone who is constantly returning my people back to Christian and biblical categories, for thinking through these things, you know, and so one of the conversations that I've had with my community a lot, whether it was during, you know, disagreements over COVID And do we have the right to gather and our rights being taken away or not? When we're divided over, are you for the police? Are you for black people in our country? And saying no, you know, our allegiance is to Jesus above everything else. Like, that's where we begin. That's where we start. That's where we have to take our orders from and take our direction from and so constantly putting ourselves through that filter of, Okay, where is my highest loyalty right now in this moment? And if it's to anything besides Jesus, maybe I need to rethink some things. And so I just really appreciated you asked him that question and wanted to acknowledge that that's something that I'm wrestling with and trying to figure it out. But I know that you mentioned a lot of your listeners are our pastors and seminarians. And I think we've just got to be people that, that think through these kinds of tough questions and aren't afraid to engage in them. One of the things that I've told our community, our churches called Bright City Church, and I said, you know, if we're going to really claim to be a bright city, and to be able to say that with integrity means we've got to be people that are shining a light that people actually see, and that people actually feel and experience. And so that means we got to step into these hard topics, but always be pointing to our ultimate allegiance to Jesus. And so that's gonna look different in each of our contexts. But I just I wanted to speak to that, because I appreciate you asking the question.

Charles Kim 1:01:17

Yeah, you're welcome. And like I said, I think I, I sort of didn't exactly ask it, because we've kind of run a little long, but also, you know, I just read something this morning from Alan Jacobs, who was responding to some stuff that's gone on in the Twitterverse. And it was sort of this idea that that even, like, even speaking to these issues, you know, can is a difficult thing. And so, which is to say, like, you know, if you want to get a job, or you're worried about getting a job, or, you know, I mean, like, there's you can't, or you can be dragged on Twitter, or you know, like, a tweet that you sent from 10 years ago, might make it difficult to get a job or, you know, so anyway, like, it's such a, you know, we tend, I mean, on the podcast, I don't try to make it overly, like, divisive. You know, we have listeners who come across from across the sort of Christian spectrum, I get emails from Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic and predominantly Protestant, but occasionally from others. So Anyway, point being, I didn't necessarily want to make it about that. But I it is an important thing that we can't ignore. And so, you know, I think I appreciate you, you being willing to speak to that. And that's very helpful. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 1:02:25

Well, and I appreciate you inviting me. Oh, man, I've so enjoyed this conversation. We'd love to continue it some more and look forward to reading your stuff when we don't get done comes out. Yeah, we'll,

Charles Kim 1:02:34

we'll see. Yeah, that's my next My next task is preparing it for publication. So see if if anybody wants to pick it up, but there you go. Well, I appreciate it. I like and thank you for writing it. And I like said I learned a lot. And it was, it was good chatting with

Unknown Speaker 1:02:53

you, and sharing with you too. Thanks so much for the invitation.

Charles Kim 1:02:56

Thank you for listening to history of Christian theology. Again, I would remind you please become a patron, find our patreon link, which will be up with this episode. And please support us and that way, we can keep offering these free of charge and the full back catalogue to to people, and it'll help me be able to get more content to you. So thank you for listening. Hope you enjoyed this conversation. And we'll see you hopefully you'll hear from us in the next week or two. Thanks, Mike.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai