Forming the Faith of the Next Generation with Brad East

[00:00:00] Everybody wants to know the secret to reaching the next generation.

[00:00:04] But as many anxious parents know, there are a lot of obstacles to teens and college students and young adults maintaining their faith through college.

[00:00:13] And this leads to books being written to help teens reconcile science with faith, understand modern issues about sexuality, offer a historic apologetic for the resurrection.

[00:00:23] And all these are great. They all matter, but they're insufficient for the task at hand, especially in our modern day and age.

[00:00:31] Brad East joins us to talk about his book, Letters to a Future Saint, which seeks to bolster the witness of Christianity through a collection of letters designed to engage young minds with the history of the faith,

[00:00:46] the importance of the church, the significance of creation, and the testimony of the martyrs.

[00:00:52] He takes theology that has been thought through and prayed through over the ages of the church and distills them into a way that helps young people make sense of their lives and their place in the world,

[00:01:04] and most importantly, who God in Christ is.

[00:01:07] And we also talk about ways that a truncated gospel can undermine our faith in Christ and set up students for failure.

[00:01:14] Enjoy this episode.

[00:01:21] Welcome to the show.

[00:01:22] We have got Brad East on with us.

[00:01:25] Brad teaches theology at Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas.

[00:01:31] And he's written a book that has, I think, a lot of helpful information in it, a lot of things, especially if you're a parent, if you're dealing with teenagers,

[00:01:41] if you're thinking about the next generation and their faith.

[00:01:43] I think this has been a read that I've really enjoyed, especially thinking about, you know, college students by where our church is.

[00:01:51] I think it's going to be a valuable resource.

[00:01:53] But it is a book that he has written and is called Letters to a Future Saint.

[00:01:59] And this is something that he wrote.

[00:02:02] It's a very personal project, but also, I think, deeply intellectual in a way that I think is still accessible.

[00:02:09] So, Brad, thanks for coming on the show and thanks for writing this book and be willing to talk about it.

[00:02:15] Thanks for having me.

[00:02:16] So, you know, when I look through this book, there were a lot of things that struck me about it.

[00:02:21] One, the format is that it's a series of letters.

[00:02:26] And I'm just curious, the background and the story behind this book.

[00:02:32] What inspired you to write this book?

[00:02:33] And also, what motivated and kind of inspired you to write in the format that you chose?

[00:02:41] I think there are two or three answers to that.

[00:02:44] One is the immediate inspiration was...

[00:02:48] Well, actually, I'll go back in time.

[00:02:50] I write a letter to my children each year on the day of their birthday.

[00:02:59] And I did it like once a month for my firstborn and then realized that was way too ambitious.

[00:03:05] So, it's once a year.

[00:03:06] You're like running out of things to say.

[00:03:08] Exactly.

[00:03:08] Yeah, yeah.

[00:03:09] Yeah, just you're so great and I love you.

[00:03:11] That's the end.

[00:03:15] And that got me in a certain habit.

[00:03:18] And when I...

[00:03:20] In a short span, my godchildren and four of my nephews were all baptized.

[00:03:28] And for each of them, I think kind of motivated by this habit of writing to my own children,

[00:03:36] I wrote each of them a letter, a specific letter to each child on the day of their baptism about what was happening that day.

[00:03:45] And I limited myself to one page.

[00:03:47] And the age range varied.

[00:03:51] And so, I wasn't writing it for them at the moment, nor was I writing it for them when they were 30.

[00:03:57] I was writing it for them when they could begin to kind of grasp some of this stuff sometime in their teens, probably.

[00:04:05] Maybe middle school.

[00:04:06] And it was a very instructive exercise to try to put into three or four paragraphs that a 12-year-old or a 15-year-old could understand what was occurring to them in their baptism.

[00:04:19] Being forced as an academic to do that in language that someone could understand at that level was challenging in a good way.

[00:04:29] I remember that C.S. Lewis writes somewhere that if you can't put your doctrine or your theology into language that an ordinary person can understand,

[00:04:37] then you don't actually understand it yourself.

[00:04:40] So, that was one main inspiration or source.

[00:04:45] The second was I teach undergraduate students here at Abilene Christian.

[00:04:50] For folks who don't know, Abilene Christian is in Abilene, Texas, and that's three hours due west of Dallas-Fort Worth.

[00:04:55] So, I'm over here in one sense sort of still red state, red county, America.

[00:05:02] I'm teaching students who choose to go to a Christian liberal arts school.

[00:05:06] But at the same time, when they enter my classroom, these are not catechized young people.

[00:05:13] Most of them love Jesus, and they are warm toward the Bible, and many attend church.

[00:05:21] But their knowledge, for the most part, obviously I'm characterizing a lot of people, but their knowledge is relatively thin.

[00:05:28] And they're not in denial about it either.

[00:05:32] They're quite hungry.

[00:05:33] They're quite open.

[00:05:34] They want to learn.

[00:05:35] They want to move on from milk to meat.

[00:05:39] And so, this book in many ways was written for my students and with my students in mind.

[00:05:45] I want it to be the kind of book that they could have received in high school or when they graduated or maybe when they graduate college.

[00:05:52] And it would do the work of catechesis in such a way that it wouldn't persuade them to be Christian.

[00:05:59] So, it's not a work of apologetics.

[00:06:00] It would lead them into the depths of what they want to believe and how they want to live, but actually have lacked largely that guidance and introduction so far.

[00:06:16] And would be the kind of thing that shows them just how rich and deep and wide the Christian life is.

[00:06:25] That's what struck me about the book.

[00:06:27] You know, you mentioned how it's not primarily an apologetic work.

[00:06:31] I mean, usually you think there's so many Christian apologetics books, especially toward the next generation.

[00:06:38] And it's often done in this sense of, okay, we don't answer questions about science and historicity and all these types of things, which are very important.

[00:06:46] And you do touch on those.

[00:06:48] But what I thought was interesting and unique about your work is that focus on catechesis.

[00:06:55] One of our podcasts that we had a couple years ago, I interviewed, well, he's not a former England bishop.

[00:07:02] He retired.

[00:07:04] But Bishop Peter, sorry, that's his son, Neil Labar.

[00:07:07] He came on and he was a bishop during the time of the big Anglican Episcopal split.

[00:07:13] And one of the things that he talked about was for the next generation, catechesis is going to be key to preventing kind of losing proper doctrine, losing orthodoxy.

[00:07:23] Catechesis will be key.

[00:07:25] And so to hear you talk about that, especially through your book, I think is really, really profound and helpful.

[00:07:31] The way that you structure your book is also, I thought was really compelling because it begins right off the bat with martyrdom.

[00:07:39] Why did you begin with the story of guys like Polycarp and some of the martyrs of the past?

[00:07:44] Yeah.

[00:07:45] For a few reasons, I'll give you at least one or two.

[00:07:49] One is, well, in a certain sense, I want to grab the reader, right?

[00:07:52] Like, why?

[00:07:53] Like, am I going to waste your time?

[00:07:55] No.

[00:07:55] Like, this stuff has stakes.

[00:07:58] And stakes is the word that I kept coming to in my mind.

[00:08:01] You know, my students, again, I'm not only writing for my students, but so let's just say from millennials and Gen Z today, okay, folks from age, you know, 15 to 50, they have a lot of options for how they could live and what they could believe.

[00:08:18] And the thing about Christian faith and the gospel is that it doesn't become more palatable.

[00:08:27] The easier it is, it becomes less palatable.

[00:08:30] It actually becomes less interesting.

[00:08:32] Like, if this is something that I can add, like, an ornament onto my life along with, like, my kids playing soccer or brunch on Saturdays, then, like, take it or leave it.

[00:08:43] But if this is something that could require me to die, well, man, now you've got my attention because I may still say no, but something costly is something worth joining.

[00:08:57] And, of course, I'm just following Jesus here who says anyone who would be his disciple must count the cost because anyone who would be his disciple must take up their cross and follow him to Calvary.

[00:09:11] And so I just want, yeah, I wanted to show readers from the get-go.

[00:09:17] And if you make it to the end, the very last letter out of almost 100 is also about contemporary martyrs, the 21 Coptic martyrs from 2015 or so.

[00:09:29] So, and I wanted to show readers that, yeah, they may live in relatively affluent or comfortable social contexts.

[00:09:42] I don't want to assume that, but if they're in North America, they're probably okay.

[00:09:46] They're probably not going to be persecuted in some strong way.

[00:09:49] But that's not only a past tense reality, that's a present tense reality.

[00:09:53] People around the world today are persecuted.

[00:09:56] And even in your own life, you must die.

[00:09:58] There are things that you must nail to the cross of Christ or he won't have you.

[00:10:05] Um, and if that makes you, if you're lukewarm and that pushes you off the fence in the other direction, I think Jesus in Revelation says that's, that's right.

[00:10:15] Maybe now's not the time, but you should, I don't want to, I don't want to do a bait and switch where this seems really easy and light.

[00:10:20] And then we tell you once you're in that actually it's going to demand your whole life.

[00:10:25] Well, it really follows the pattern in the gospels.

[00:10:28] I mean, Jesus is sort of like, right, like first meeting.

[00:10:30] He's like, so what's going to cost?

[00:10:32] Okay.

[00:10:32] Are you, are you with me?

[00:10:34] You know, what are you going to decide about it?

[00:10:36] And I remember reading that and I'm thinking, wow, something that, especially if you think about a teenager, you think about a young college student to hit them right with that.

[00:10:46] And just to say, we're talking about real life with real stakes, I think is very, very effective.

[00:10:52] And like you're saying, it's, it's, it's like, we're not here just to talk about abstractions.

[00:10:57] We're here to talk about flesh and blood and history and the actual heritage that, that you have as a, as a Christian, you know, looking at all these faithful saints and martyrs.

[00:11:09] Something you really do emphasize is the centrality of the church, which again, when you think about Gen Z, you think about college students, all that stuff, you almost want to like, we'll get to church later.

[00:11:21] You know what I mean?

[00:11:22] Like, like, cause, cause that's got all the baggage, but you come out just saying, Hey, the church is central.

[00:11:28] What's behind that?

[00:11:29] Can you, can you elaborate on that a little bit more?

[00:11:32] Yeah.

[00:11:34] First, just because it just like the cross, it's central to the faith.

[00:11:38] So it's a kind of take it or leave it statement.

[00:11:40] I'm not in the same way that I don't want to do a bait and switch with suffering.

[00:11:45] I don't want to do a bait and switch with the church.

[00:11:47] As you say, you know, like come, come to Jesus, come to private or personal faith.

[00:11:52] And then we'll let you know later that we've saddled you with this unfortunate group of people.

[00:11:58] They're sinful.

[00:12:00] They're wayward.

[00:12:01] They're annoying.

[00:12:02] They're so different than you.

[00:12:03] They're going to drive you crazy and make your life miserable, but now they're your family.

[00:12:07] Sorry.

[00:12:08] Right.

[00:12:09] No, you got to put up with it.

[00:12:10] What'd you say?

[00:12:11] You got to put up with it.

[00:12:12] This is what you got.

[00:12:13] Well, you know, the way I wanted to frame it was not only guess what?

[00:12:19] You are saddled with it in a very real sense, but this is actually the offer of the gospel

[00:12:27] that God has called a people out of the world to be his people.

[00:12:32] And this people in virtue of your baptism, in virtue of placing your faith in Christ alone.

[00:12:39] Now you're a part of this people.

[00:12:41] And that's not accidental.

[00:12:43] That's not on the, that's not like one of the side benefits.

[00:12:46] It's, it's actually the very heart of the matter.

[00:12:50] You are adopted into a family.

[00:12:52] And now these people, these people for better or for worse are your people.

[00:12:57] They're your, they're your family.

[00:12:59] And moreover, in the same way that the gospel has stakes and the gospel gives you this thick

[00:13:05] identity and this 4,000 year tradition and so on and so forth.

[00:13:08] I wanted, I wanted readers, especially Gen Z young people, let's say to know that this

[00:13:16] is not about your solo adventure of self-discovery.

[00:13:21] You are not a Christian on an Island.

[00:13:24] You are not a Christian streaming your favorite worship from home on the couch in your pajamas.

[00:13:31] Just in the same way that Jesus makes personal demands of you, you have to die to yourself.

[00:13:36] You have to die to your idols, die to your flesh and sin.

[00:13:39] He also makes the demand that you've got to join these people.

[00:13:43] You've got to physically put your body in the midst of these other bodies so that all these

[00:13:48] bodies might be the one body of Christ.

[00:13:51] That's the ball game.

[00:13:52] So you can, you can leave or you can, or you can get on the fields, but there's not a

[00:13:57] sort of third option in between.

[00:13:59] Well, you do talk a lot about God choosing a special people and you really make a huge

[00:14:05] emphasis on Abraham and his story and him being called out.

[00:14:09] And you have this very compelling statement where you essentially say that one of the key things

[00:14:13] to grasp is the concept of adoption.

[00:14:17] That's something that you, you talk about.

[00:14:19] And, uh, you know, to me, a lot of what I find interesting about your book is that, uh,

[00:14:27] oftentimes when you think about, again, the next generation and, and, and reaching them

[00:14:31] and all that stuff, you start kind of with the hot topic, you know, the hot button issues

[00:14:35] and you try to offer apologetic for the Christian view on sexuality and, or whatever, all that

[00:14:40] stuff, which I think, again, really important, definitely needed.

[00:14:44] But you kind of start by saying, let's take a step back.

[00:14:47] And all of this is built on a larger foundation of God's action in the world, right?

[00:14:55] Choosing a certain people.

[00:14:56] And I'm reading some, like, this guy probably likes N.T.

[00:14:58] Wright.

[00:14:59] I'm getting, I'm getting some vibes there.

[00:15:00] Right.

[00:15:00] Um, but there's something about that that's compelling.

[00:15:04] And a lot of times people have a sort of stitched together, uh, stitched together theology.

[00:15:10] They heard a John Piper sermon here.

[00:15:13] The pastor says one thing.

[00:15:14] Their dad will always tell him this.

[00:15:16] They read this one devotional and they kind of patch it together.

[00:15:20] And catechesis is sort of a way of, of having a coherent understanding of the totality

[00:15:26] of the faith and seeing how they all play into one another.

[00:15:28] And so I, that's what I thought was interesting when you started with Abraham, you're kind

[00:15:31] of setting the story, uh, on the Bible's terms and not necessarily what are the pressing

[00:15:38] questions of the culture right now.

[00:15:40] Yeah, that's right.

[00:15:41] Uh, I hadn't thought of it this way, but I like that, uh, you know, other, other authors

[00:15:45] begin with interesting and sexy questions.

[00:15:49] And I begin with Abraham.

[00:15:51] Yeah.

[00:15:51] I mean, it's, you know, it's, yeah, no, and that's right.

[00:15:54] I want it in there.

[00:15:56] There, there are a number of ways of, um, explaining the rationale there and want, I

[00:16:01] like the way you put it, you know, the story of Christian faith, the story of scripture is

[00:16:08] what it is regardless of the pressing questions of the hour.

[00:16:13] And it's not a denial that those questions are pressing.

[00:16:15] And I'm glad that people are doing that work, but, uh, the story of God's people and the

[00:16:22] story of the gospel begins with Abraham, regardless of what people are asking today.

[00:16:29] And sometimes not always, but sometimes when we start where people are, we actually lose

[00:16:36] track of where the actual center is.

[00:16:40] And the center for us, the center of course is Christ, but the center of the, of the biblical

[00:16:47] story from Genesis 12 to revelation 22 is Abraham and his children.

[00:16:53] The seed of Abraham is Christ.

[00:16:56] Um, we are adopted through Christ into this family, a family that includes both Jews and

[00:17:04] Gentiles.

[00:17:05] And we learn in the new Testament that the mystery, the card up God's sleeve for millennia,

[00:17:14] for millions or billions of years, all of cosmic history is leading to the point where Jew

[00:17:20] and Gentile will together with one voice, give praise to God.

[00:17:24] And that is a framework within which we can ask some of those pressing questions.

[00:17:29] But if we lack the framework, we're going to go awry.

[00:17:32] Yeah, that framework is very helpful.

[00:17:34] And then, you know, I'm reading through some of the things that you write in these letters

[00:17:37] and I'm like, wow, that, that, the, the student who's reading this is going to start flipping

[00:17:41] and being like, yeah, I really haven't really read Genesis 12 or 15 or 17 or thought through

[00:17:48] the implications of this.

[00:17:50] And then you look at the new Testament and you're like, that's all in the minds of the

[00:17:55] apostles.

[00:17:55] That's all they can almost think about, you know, with Galatians and Ephesians and all the

[00:17:59] letters of Paul, he's thinking along that, that narrative.

[00:18:04] And this is the next chapter when you talk about God creating the heavens and the earth.

[00:18:09] So it's, it's, again, it's funny seeing this.

[00:18:11] You start with martyrdom, then you go to like a calling of a people, and then you start with

[00:18:16] really a doctrine of, of God, which I remember being in seminary.

[00:18:20] And I went to, I went to RTS Orlando, reform theological seminary, and they did a great

[00:18:25] job of, of doing Protestant retrieval and retrieving doctrine of God.

[00:18:29] And, you know, it's okay to read Aquinas sometimes and all these types of things.

[00:18:33] And we were sitting there being like, man, I, I feel like I know justification pretty well.

[00:18:38] Yeah.

[00:18:38] You know, I can do like a gospel illustration, but I haven't really sat down and thought about

[00:18:43] who is this God that I'm saved to.

[00:18:45] Yeah.

[00:18:46] And you begin not with Genesis three, you begin with Genesis one and two.

[00:18:51] Yeah.

[00:18:52] And you sketch out this vision of God as creator.

[00:18:55] And I'm curious, what, what was the, what was the idea behind that?

[00:18:59] You know, what are you trying to get at with beginning there?

[00:19:04] Man, there's a lot to say.

[00:19:06] I'll, I'll try to limit myself.

[00:19:08] Every question you ask, I'm just like, how can I, how can I move this from a 40 minute

[00:19:12] answer to a four minute answer?

[00:19:13] Just go for it.

[00:19:14] You know, I mean, we're not going to be able to get to the whole book, but yeah, exactly.

[00:19:17] You know, I want to just get the highlights here.

[00:19:18] So partly for, for, for listeners, you know, so it begins sort of in media res, meaning it's

[00:19:25] sort of like right now, martyrdom, you and me.

[00:19:28] And then it begins in chapter 12 with Genesis.

[00:19:31] I mean, excuse me, with Abraham.

[00:19:33] And then go, I go all the way to the end of Israel's history.

[00:19:38] And part of what I, what I'm doing is saying, okay, things have gone wrong.

[00:19:43] We haven't yet named what has gone wrong.

[00:19:45] And we need a name for that.

[00:19:46] The name is sin.

[00:19:47] So we need to, we need to rewind the clock all the way to the beginning to see how the

[00:19:52] whole universe, the heavens and the earth got started.

[00:19:55] And then what went wrong there?

[00:19:57] Because they, what went wrong is the kind of infection that is keeping God's people from

[00:20:03] being holy as God is holy.

[00:20:05] You know, one way I put this for my students is that chapters one through 11 in Genesis are,

[00:20:11] are the, the, the crawl at the beginning of a Star Wars movie.

[00:20:16] You know, so they're important, but they're setting the background conditions for when

[00:20:21] the first scene of the movie begins, which for me is Abram in chapter 12.

[00:20:25] Okay.

[00:20:26] So what did I want to do with thinking about creation?

[00:20:28] I want to do a couple of things.

[00:20:29] One, as you say, I wanted to make clear the talking about creation is first of all, talking

[00:20:34] about the creator and talking about the character of the creator revealed both in his creation

[00:20:39] and in his word, when it tells us that he created Bart, Carl Bart, the Swiss theologian has this

[00:20:46] line where he says, the first article of the creed, I believe in one God, excuse me.

[00:20:55] I believe in God, the father almighty creator of heaven and earth, all things invisible and

[00:20:59] invisible is not something we already know just by looking at the world.

[00:21:04] It's an article of faith.

[00:21:05] That's why it's there in the creed.

[00:21:07] If it wasn't an article of faith, it wouldn't be there.

[00:21:08] We actually have to confess this because it isn't available to empirical study.

[00:21:15] It's not something you put under a microscope and say, oh, now I see that God is the creator

[00:21:20] of the heavens and the earth.

[00:21:23] So I wanted to draw readers attention to the ways in which God is creator.

[00:21:30] Okay.

[00:21:30] So that's first.

[00:21:31] Second, you know, this, I wanted throughout this book to avoid getting too technical.

[00:21:36] And you can tell me if I was successful in that, but I wanted to talk about creation ex nihilo,

[00:21:41] meaning creation from nothing.

[00:21:42] You know, I think there's a tacit or implicit sense that most Christians have that sort of

[00:21:52] like, you know, God spoke and everything came about.

[00:21:54] That's kind of the big bang.

[00:21:56] And that's what it means.

[00:21:57] That's what that doctrine means, which is totally fine.

[00:21:59] But the deeper meaning of creation from nothing is not that there was a quote unquote time.

[00:22:07] There was a before when there was nothing but God.

[00:22:10] And then there was something.

[00:22:11] Even that chronological interval is a problem because time itself is a creature.

[00:22:16] God creates time, not just space.

[00:22:19] It's rather that God is the sole source of everything that exists that is not God.

[00:22:30] And creation is our one word category for that.

[00:22:33] But it's not just that he hit the first domino and their dominoes have been going down ever

[00:22:39] since it's that even right now I have been and am being created or otherwise put sustained in my being

[00:22:48] by God.

[00:22:49] A friend of mine, you know, sometimes I describe it as a novel and God is the novelist and the

[00:22:53] finished novel is in front of him.

[00:22:55] But a better example comes from a friend of mine who says, no, creation is a song

[00:23:02] continuously being sung by the singer.

[00:23:04] God is the singer.

[00:23:06] And if he ever stopped singing, creation would blip out of existence.

[00:23:10] And I wanted my readers to come away with much more than a vague sense that God made the world

[00:23:18] once upon a time in the distant past.

[00:23:20] But rather, I am being upheld in my existence moment to moment by the living God who created

[00:23:31] galaxies and black holes and beetles and stars and Niagara Falls and me.

[00:23:40] And why did he do it?

[00:23:41] Julian of Norwich tells us because he loves me.

[00:23:44] Like the only answer is love.

[00:23:47] And rooting the identity of God and the nature of creation in God's love that he didn't have to

[00:23:55] make me.

[00:23:55] He doesn't need me.

[00:23:56] I don't complete him.

[00:23:57] This is not a Jerry Maguire doctrine of creation.

[00:24:02] Actually, it's good news that he doesn't need me and I don't complete him because otherwise

[00:24:06] there would be this terrible codependence where I'm sort of filling up a lack in God.

[00:24:11] No, on the contrary, he doesn't need me yet.

[00:24:13] He makes me anyway, gratuitously as an act of grace, just because he loves me and wants me to exist.

[00:24:19] That is some powerful stuff.

[00:24:20] What are some of the reactions when you've maybe taught this to your students or if you've just

[00:24:27] shared this interperson with people?

[00:24:28] What are some reactions you get to this kind of understanding?

[00:24:32] Well, first they asked me, what is Jerry Maguire that came out before I was born?

[00:24:36] And I say, don't go watch it.

[00:24:38] I'm not giving you permission to watch it.

[00:24:40] I would just need to see the clip.

[00:24:41] I was thinking about the Star Wars reference.

[00:24:42] You're like, oh yeah, the Star Wars chronic.

[00:24:44] Oh yeah, yeah.

[00:24:44] You mean like the one with the girl who's the main character?

[00:24:47] And you're like, yeah, exactly.

[00:24:48] No, no, no, they don't even say that.

[00:24:49] They're like, oh yeah, the Mandalorian.

[00:24:51] Oh my gosh.

[00:24:52] Wow.

[00:24:52] Yeah.

[00:24:53] Wow.

[00:24:55] But I mean, in my experience, this is a very small sample size.

[00:24:59] In my experience, this lands because once they get over the kind of romantic comedy version

[00:25:09] of God's love for us, which has a kernel of truth.

[00:25:14] The Bible absolutely depicts the relationship between the Lord and his people as erotic

[00:25:20] or marital or nuptial.

[00:25:22] That's absolutely appropriate.

[00:25:23] But once we get beyond the superficial, you complete me theology, I think it sells.

[00:25:30] And it sells because it really is good news.

[00:25:34] And we get a tiny, tiny trace of this in the birth of actual children.

[00:25:42] Now, none of us parents know in advance who our children will be.

[00:25:46] So that's the disanalogy.

[00:25:48] But the analogy is, why do you exist?

[00:25:50] We wanted to meet you.

[00:25:53] And there's nothing you could have done to earn that because you didn't exist before you came

[00:25:58] into existence.

[00:25:59] And before you could talk, before you showed evidence of a personality, before you had any

[00:26:04] skills that anybody cared about, we, your parents and other people bathed you and fed you and

[00:26:12] bounced you and changed your diapers for no other reason but love.

[00:26:16] And that's a small echo of the creation of the entire universe.

[00:26:23] And I think that's good news.

[00:26:24] People hear that as the good news that it is.

[00:26:27] Well, it's, it's, it's a vision of God that really feels gracious to the core.

[00:26:34] And I'm sure that scratches the itch for a lot of people where, you know, I think people

[00:26:39] will sort of, I think a lot of times rightfully so, sort of the seeker sensitive movement,

[00:26:44] you know, you put a coffee shop in your, you know, church and you have the smoke machines

[00:26:49] and whatever, all that stuff.

[00:26:50] And you're just trying to draw people into what they like.

[00:26:53] But this is a deeper level.

[00:26:56] It's not a superficial drawing and it's actually getting at something that is within all of us.

[00:27:01] That desire to think, you know, this, this, this desire to want to be captured with, with

[00:27:07] the awe of creation, the awe of our existence, all these types of things.

[00:27:12] And sometimes I, I think about, you know, if the kid goes off to college or even when people

[00:27:19] are challenging their faith, they're just like, I gotta hold onto these propositions.

[00:27:23] Yeah.

[00:27:24] You know, these thoughts, like think them really hard and keep them or hold onto this emotional

[00:27:28] experience.

[00:27:30] Yeah.

[00:27:31] Yeah.

[00:27:31] But here you're, you're bringing something where it's like, it's not so much that it's

[00:27:34] almost like there's a, you just, you sort of begin with awe of saying, even if you don't

[00:27:39] believe this is true, what if it was, and what is that, what is that doing to you when

[00:27:42] you think about that?

[00:27:43] Yeah.

[00:27:44] It makes me think of two things.

[00:27:46] One is the line from Lewis Carroll in one of the Alice books where the queen maybe, or

[00:27:52] someone endeavors each morning to believe 20 absurd things before breakfast.

[00:27:59] And how are, I think how our loss has a line about this, that like, that's, that's what

[00:28:03] often a certain branch of American Christianity thinks the faith is like every morning I got awake

[00:28:10] and I have to steal myself to like list the propositions and they're all absurd.

[00:28:16] You know, a man rising from the dead and an invisible creator who made everything.

[00:28:20] And it's like, oh, I just gotta try so hard to believe that stuff.

[00:28:25] And, and, and, and whereas the way you're put, the way you're putting it puts in mind

[00:28:29] Puddleglum, the wonderful character, I think Lewis, C.S.

[00:28:32] Lewis's greatest creation in the silver chair where in, where he's an underland.

[00:28:37] And, and they're, they're, they're starting to fall for the, the, the witch's spell and

[00:28:43] they're forgetting, they're forgetting Narnia and life above ground.

[00:28:49] And people call it Puddleglum's wager, like Pascal's wager.

[00:28:52] And the idea is just that like something about the version of reality you're spinning for

[00:29:00] me doesn't smell right.

[00:29:02] And I can't put my finger on it.

[00:29:05] And I, I hear your objections to, to when I talk about a lion and Aslan and living above

[00:29:14] ground where you see the sun that, yeah, you're right.

[00:29:16] In a sense that does sound absurd, but it rings so true.

[00:29:20] And what you're saying rings so false that I'm going to, I'm going to stick with it.

[00:29:24] Uh, uh, even if I can't prove it to you.

[00:29:27] And as you, as you're pointing out, there's something so, there's something so beautiful

[00:29:33] about the vision of God as gracious creator that answers to such a deep need in our souls

[00:29:40] that, uh, even if it weren't true, contrary to fact, it would be worth exploring as a genuinely

[00:29:48] open-minded person because the question is, well, then why does it speak?

[00:29:53] Like, what is that in me that answers to this call?

[00:29:57] Um, and I did, yeah, I, I share your sense that that is a, not the only, but a useful

[00:30:02] way to approach, um, folks who are open to the faith.

[00:30:06] It makes me think about if, you know, people who, when you think about good music, you hear

[00:30:12] a great melody or something like that.

[00:30:13] And you're just like, wow, that I, I know that that's a beautiful piece of music.

[00:30:19] And if someone was just like, it's just sound waves at a certain pitch, you'd be like, well,

[00:30:24] it's not just that.

[00:30:25] I mean, I know it's not just that, you know?

[00:30:28] And it's, it's, it's a deeply true reality.

[00:30:31] It's not just sensations activating, you know, synapses in my brain or something like that.

[00:30:35] There's something more to it than, than, than you're just.

[00:30:38] No, it's like, it's like, uh, reducing us to, you know, like electrified meat sacks or

[00:30:46] just point, pointing to a, pointing to a child and saying, that's nothing more than like a

[00:30:51] collection of atoms or, or as people say about prenatal life, uh, that's nothing more than

[00:30:59] a clump of cells.

[00:31:00] It's like, well, in one sense, yeah, I'm a clump of cells.

[00:31:03] I'm, I'm a collection of atoms that, that music is hitting my eardrum and my brain is

[00:31:09] reacting.

[00:31:10] But if that's what you think music is, you have an impoverished view of reality.

[00:31:16] Um, and that, that's, that's, there's a sense in which the end of the Christian invitation,

[00:31:22] the gospel is an invitation to a non-impoverished, a full view of reality as it really is.

[00:31:33] Well, how does that tie into the way that you start to unpack what sin is?

[00:31:38] Cause you speak about sin with relation to creation.

[00:31:42] I think you even talk about it as, as don't, don't think primarily in, you know, you cussed

[00:31:49] once, or you did this one bad thing, but, but more of a state of being.

[00:31:55] Um, and so maybe help make that connection a little bit.

[00:31:58] How, how, how does, why do you incorporate creation so much into the idea of sin?

[00:32:02] Yeah, I, I fought, I try to do my best to follow, um, St. Augustine, broadly speaking,

[00:32:09] both in his conception of original sin and his sense of evil as privation for listeners,

[00:32:17] what that has to, what, what that, what that teaches or holds is that evil doesn't have

[00:32:25] positive existence.

[00:32:26] That would mean that God created it, but God is the source only of good.

[00:32:30] Um, God only makes good things that itself tells us about the nature of God and is good

[00:32:35] news for the people we share the gospel with.

[00:32:36] Cause it means that God made you and, uh, there is bad in you.

[00:32:40] We'll get to that in a second, but fundamentally just looking at you as an existing thing tells

[00:32:46] me you come from God and you're good.

[00:32:48] You're made in God's image.

[00:32:50] But, uh, so evil as privation, it's a kind of cancer or parasite that eats away at the intrinsically

[00:32:58] good nature of what God has made.

[00:33:02] And, but I try to marry that with more recent, um, insights of New Testament scholarship and

[00:33:09] to Paul that, that sees, uh, the, the, the figure of sin in his letters, not as you say, as individual

[00:33:19] discrete sins that I, the, that I, the individual perform like telling a white lie or even something,

[00:33:26] uh, grievous, uh, uh, like murder.

[00:33:29] Rather, it's not sins in the plural that he's first of all interested in.

[00:33:34] It's capital S sin in the singular and capital S sin in Paul.

[00:33:40] If you go back and reread him, especially in Romans functions.

[00:33:45] The way that Pharaoh functions in the book of Exodus, it's a tyrant.

[00:33:50] It's a monster.

[00:33:51] It's a despot that in it's a master that enslaves.

[00:33:56] It's a false Lord that enslaves each of us.

[00:34:00] And all of us together, all of Adam's children, we are all in Adam in this sense.

[00:34:07] We are Adamic in this sense that we are in bondage to this tyrant.

[00:34:13] And what Christ does is, uh, he dashes our chains.

[00:34:19] He breaks our bonds.

[00:34:21] Uh, he releases us.

[00:34:22] This is the way in which he is a sort of, uh, victorious martial warrior, um, who busts into the prison or the household and steals us away.

[00:34:34] Just like in the icon of, uh, the Anastasis that, uh, he is yanking Adam and Eve out of their graves.

[00:34:43] And, uh, and the devil is sort of, uh, tied up on the ground.

[00:34:48] He can't get in the way.

[00:34:50] Um, and yeah, and to me again, I think for readers, this can be helpful in one of two ways.

[00:34:57] One is it can get them away from counting their individual sins and being hyper scrupulous.

[00:35:04] Like, like, guess what?

[00:35:05] Yeah.

[00:35:06] You send, you send five minutes ago.

[00:35:08] You'll send five minutes from now.

[00:35:09] You send yesterday.

[00:35:10] You'll send tomorrow.

[00:35:10] That's not very interesting.

[00:35:12] Like keep keeping a running diary.

[00:35:14] Uh, obviously you need to confess those.

[00:35:16] Obviously you need to take those to the cross, uh, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:35:19] But this kind of stereotypically puritanical approach to individual sins, um, where you're

[00:35:29] just sort of introspective all the time.

[00:35:30] You never get out of, you never get out of bed, metaphorically speaking.

[00:35:33] And on the other, it, I think this view of sin has such incredible explanatory power for

[00:35:40] our psychology, our psychological experience of sin.

[00:35:43] And, uh, uh, what we see in the second half of, um, Romans chapter seven was like, what,

[00:35:49] what is this war within me?

[00:35:51] And what, what am I, what am I bound to that both is, and is not me is, and is not inside

[00:35:59] of me.

[00:35:59] And it's not a denial of course, of things like mental health or mental illness.

[00:36:05] It's not a, any more than it's a denial of physical, um, health or physical illness or

[00:36:11] injury.

[00:36:12] It's just to say that once you see that sin and death and the devil are powers that hold

[00:36:21] me, or at least want to hold me.

[00:36:22] And Christ is the one who gives me the true power and the spirit to break free.

[00:36:29] Uh, it's, it, it, it, um, it makes sense of a lot of life.

[00:36:35] It's deeply biblical.

[00:36:36] It's deeply patristic.

[00:36:38] It's deeply traditional and you put it all together.

[00:36:40] And, um, that's, that's, that's, I think a way for, um, new believers or sort of, or

[00:36:46] newly minted believers, baby believers to sort of come into the fullness of what it means

[00:36:51] to follow Christ.

[00:36:53] When you mentioned St. Augustine and, and, uh, trying to follow him, I'm like, man, it's

[00:36:58] what everyone's just trying to do.

[00:37:00] Everyone's just trying to follow St.

[00:37:01] I feel like whether you're Protestant or Catholic or whatever, everyone's trying to.

[00:37:04] It's still all footnotes to him.

[00:37:05] Yeah.

[00:37:06] Yeah.

[00:37:06] But I just think about the, you know, his, his confessions and just what you're talking

[00:37:12] about, that inner war.

[00:37:13] I mean, Augustine has this self-awareness where he's like, man, there's something more

[00:37:16] going on in me than just wanting to steal these pairs.

[00:37:20] You know what I mean?

[00:37:20] He's like, there's something like really, this is, this is a deep well of corruption

[00:37:26] in me.

[00:37:26] That's driving me there.

[00:37:27] And I'm not even hungry.

[00:37:30] Why would I do this?

[00:37:31] Yeah.

[00:37:32] Right.

[00:37:32] I just, I just, I just want to do it.

[00:37:33] Right.

[00:37:33] And there's this wrestling with how deep we've been infected with this, this condition and

[00:37:41] how it really twists our humanity in all these aspects of our lives.

[00:37:45] Um, you, you meant, you mentioned mental health and, uh, I thought you wrote about this very

[00:37:52] well in, in, in the book where you're not sort of dismissing, you know, genuine, you

[00:37:56] know, difficult physical psychological conditions and all that stuff, but almost challenging people

[00:38:02] to press further that you can say yes.

[00:38:04] And we don't just want to stop right here.

[00:38:07] And I'm wondering just with, you know, people talk about our overly therapized culture and,

[00:38:14] and, uh, what, what do you think, what unique insights does a Christian tradition have regarding

[00:38:20] a lot of the anxieties and, and, and the mental health things we have going on today?

[00:38:27] Man, that, yeah, that's the question of the hour.

[00:38:29] I think two things come to mind immediately.

[00:38:33] One is, well, more, more comes to mind, but two, two at first, at least, um, one is I,

[00:38:42] I share the critique of the therapeutic turn.

[00:38:45] Uh, I do think that that's a problem, but that critique isn't a critique of the utility

[00:38:54] of therapy for certain people under certain conditions.

[00:38:58] It's a critique, as you say, of the therapeuticization, um, ugly word, uh, of all and every aspect of

[00:39:10] culture, um, including the church so that, you know, you and I, I'm sure both have been in church

[00:39:17] settings, whether from the pulpit or in the classroom where the gospel is reduced to my mental

[00:39:22] wellbeing.

[00:39:24] Um, and there's not only something dangerous about that, but it would be like promising

[00:39:31] that because God cares about my physical wellbeing, which he does that I will never, not only will

[00:39:36] never, um, um, get sick or get injured, but that, um, if I really believe the gospel is

[00:39:46] reducible to, um, securing my physical wellbeing, well, that's absurd.

[00:39:53] That's a kind of medicalized health and wealth gospel.

[00:39:57] And we don't, we don't want that any more than we want, uh, a therapeutic health and wealth

[00:40:02] gospel.

[00:40:04] In fact, uh, the gospel only promises that such things will be healed finally and completely

[00:40:09] on the last day.

[00:40:11] Um, uh, I can, I think, expect mental and emotional solace and consolation from God's

[00:40:20] Holy spirit in this life.

[00:40:21] But to the extent that I suffer any kind of psychological or mental malady, um, God's promise is not that

[00:40:30] that, that I'm going to be cured.

[00:40:31] The gospel, the gospel saves me from sin, death, and the devil.

[00:40:34] It doesn't save me from those ailments.

[00:40:36] Okay.

[00:40:37] So that's one way of being clear about the gospel's overlap, but distinction from, um, a

[00:40:44] wider therapeutic context.

[00:40:46] And then on the other hand, I do think, as I said a moment ago, that the explanatory power

[00:40:52] has existential import.

[00:40:56] And I, I was very careful in the letter that you're alluding to.

[00:41:00] I talked about, it's one of the places, this isn't a very autobiographical, um, book, but

[00:41:05] there are moments when I get autobiographical and I talk about my own, um, tendencies toward

[00:41:11] and struggles with various kinds of depression.

[00:41:16] And one of the things I try to highlight there, and I make the analogy to, um, alcoholism that

[00:41:26] AA, for example, rightly holds me accountable for actions that may stem in part or in whole

[00:41:35] from a condition I had no choice over that I didn't choose that I inherited.

[00:41:42] And yet if I'm an alcoholic and I get off the wagon and I get drunk and I get in a car and

[00:41:48] I hurt someone, I take responsibility for it.

[00:41:52] And, uh, in the same way, uh, that's what the church teaches about sin and original sin.

[00:42:01] That even if I'm, I'm, I'm conceived and born a sinner, I'm not a sinner because I sin.

[00:42:08] I sin because I'm a sinner.

[00:42:09] There's this cancer in me that I didn't choose and that I can't rid myself of yet.

[00:42:14] I'm stuck with it.

[00:42:17] And when I harm other people, when I sin against God or sin against my neighbor,

[00:42:24] God holds me accountable and he's right to do so.

[00:42:28] And he's not a tyrant holding me responsible for something I have no control over.

[00:42:33] I only know I'm a sinner in the first place because God has approached me and said,

[00:42:38] here is the medicine.

[00:42:40] Here is the chemotherapy.

[00:42:41] It's the blood of Christ and it will make you well.

[00:42:44] It will make you whole.

[00:42:46] It will heal you between, uh, and it will begin the process today at your baptism.

[00:42:53] And it won't be completed until your death and or the return of Christ and your own

[00:42:57] resurrection and conformity to the image of Christ.

[00:43:00] Man, that's good news in the sense that I only learn about my negative condition,

[00:43:05] my fatal condition, uh, by the announcement of the cure.

[00:43:10] But also I'd look into my own life and I realized, oh yeah, this does make sense.

[00:43:14] There are all these things I didn't choose.

[00:43:16] I didn't choose my parents.

[00:43:17] I didn't choose my country, my language, my culture, my household.

[00:43:21] I can't choose if I get in the car today and, and will I get home safely?

[00:43:25] I can't choose any of this.

[00:43:27] Uh, well, will my body work the way it should?

[00:43:30] Will it digest food?

[00:43:31] Will it be healthy?

[00:43:32] Will it get actual cancer at some point?

[00:43:34] None of that is up to me.

[00:43:35] And yet my life is a gift.

[00:43:37] And yet my life is under my control to a degree.

[00:43:42] I have some measure of accountability and that accountability makes me a person and a rational

[00:43:47] agent before God.

[00:43:48] And the gospel somehow holds all of this together in a way that for me, um, no other account of human

[00:43:58] existence or the nature of reality even holds a candle to that complex, not internally contradictory,

[00:44:06] but mysterious and sometimes paradoxical account of what it means to be human.

[00:44:10] Um, well, that analogy you talk about getting in the car, being an alcoholic, all these types

[00:44:16] of things, it points at the fact that we do have these intuitions about life.

[00:44:20] We're like, yeah, you, you would be responsible.

[00:44:23] And, you know, we can recognize if you choose the parents you had or all these types of things.

[00:44:28] And yet these are all things that are actually very close to us that we don't realize Christianity

[00:44:34] speaks to.

[00:44:34] And I think, you know, in your book, you don't, uh, what I appreciate is you don't insult

[00:44:40] the intelligence of the reader.

[00:44:41] You actually deal with some very, very, uh, intense topics and in concepts.

[00:44:47] But I think that really a lot of, a lot of teenagers and college students, they can

[00:44:52] handle it.

[00:44:52] In fact, they're looking for something that matches the profundity of the world that they're

[00:44:58] encountering as they're growing, as they're learning themselves, as they're reading more,

[00:45:01] as they've got access to the internet.

[00:45:02] And there's all these other competing narratives and explaining things.

[00:45:05] And it's a very powerful apologetic when you can come in and say,

[00:45:09] Christianity actually has a more compelling vision of how this all fits together.

[00:45:14] And you, you know, this, you know, this fundamentally in your being that there's a,

[00:45:18] there's a truth to this.

[00:45:19] That's a good way of putting it.

[00:45:20] And you're right that, um, young people, again, let's say 50 to 35, somewhere in there,

[00:45:26] but especially the sort of 15 to, to, uh, mid twenties, they are hungry for, let's say,

[00:45:33] meta narratives or grand symbolic systems that both explain reality and account for their own

[00:45:42] condition.

[00:45:44] And one is therapeutic.

[00:45:45] I think one is political.

[00:45:48] Um, another might have to do with gender and sexuality.

[00:45:51] Um, there are more, but Christianity offers not only, I believe a true, certainly truer, but

[00:46:01] a true, um, version of this, but it's also ancient and thick and intellectually serious.

[00:46:09] And so I don't, I didn't write this book only having in mind brainy, uh, readerly Christians,

[00:46:16] young people, but I did want to lay out the, the breadcrumbs for those who, you know, Christians,

[00:46:26] normally Christians don't have to read Augustine.

[00:46:27] They don't have to read Aquinas.

[00:46:28] They don't have to care.

[00:46:29] Like, that's not what it means to be a Christian.

[00:46:31] Uh, but a few of us do, you know, somewhere between, you know, one and 10%.

[00:46:37] I don't know what the percentage is, but some of us do need to read that stuff.

[00:46:41] And in fact, some of us can't remain Christian without it because it's what showed us, um,

[00:46:46] if you are intellectually inclined, if you're intellectually curious in, in the right ways,

[00:46:51] you're, you're a seeker after truth.

[00:46:53] Um, um, seeing that Christianity has this extraordinary reservoir of resources is a way of saying,

[00:47:01] oh no, it's got the goods.

[00:47:02] It's got the nourishment.

[00:47:03] Like it's actually answered most of these questions before I even started thought to ask them.

[00:47:08] And I wanted to show in my end notes in the breadcrumbs, Hey, if this has peaked your,

[00:47:14] peaked your interest, there are so many places to go.

[00:47:17] Just, just start here and it'll be off to the races.

[00:47:21] Well, that's a very helpful resource that you provided in the book.

[00:47:24] It's kind of like you're giving a little tip of the iceberg, but there's so much more under the,

[00:47:28] under the surface.

[00:47:28] Um, well we've got to talk about Jesus, right?

[00:47:32] I mean, that's the big thing.

[00:47:34] And you do spend a lot of time talking about him and particularly you really stress the importance

[00:47:41] of the incarnation.

[00:47:42] And, uh, why is that so pivotal to your project?

[00:47:45] And especially you spend many letters kind of unpacking that, that idea of, of God taking on flesh.

[00:47:53] In one sense, I said earlier that, you know, the church and the family of Abraham or the,

[00:47:57] the whole ball game.

[00:47:58] And of course what I meant by that is they're the whole ball game in as much as Jesus is everything.

[00:48:04] Everything comes down to Jesus.

[00:48:06] I quote, I quote Thomas A. Kempis, uh, at one point in the, uh, at multiple points in the letters,

[00:48:14] but one quote that's coming to me, I'm going to paraphrase, but he says something like life without

[00:48:19] Jesus is hell, but life with Jesus is a sweet paradise.

[00:48:26] Um, I think he calls it a relentless hell.

[00:48:29] And that, that's, if I had to sum up the, the, the, the vision of the Christian life and the

[00:48:36] vision of human life that I wanted to offer to readers, uh, that's it, that everything stands

[00:48:41] or falls with the person and work of Christ.

[00:48:45] And in particular, as you say, the incarnation, that this is the mystery out of which every

[00:48:51] mystery and every blessing and every grace springs forth in the, in the gospel and the

[00:48:57] Christian life.

[00:48:59] And, uh, without the incarnation, none of that, none of that, none of that is forthcoming.

[00:49:04] Um, it's all contained in this one mystery that the God who created heaven and earth became

[00:49:09] a human being became flesh and blood became a baby became, uh, a fetus in the womb of Mary.

[00:49:18] Um, in whose presence the also unborn John the Baptist leaps, he's dancing.

[00:49:24] We've got a pirouetting John the Baptist in utero because he just can't, just can't help

[00:49:30] himself in the presence of the Lord and the tabernacle that is the body of Mary.

[00:49:36] And to me, I talk about inexhaustible riches and depths.

[00:49:40] This is it.

[00:49:42] And, um, yeah, I wanted, I wanted both to offer that, especially, you know, like to somebody,

[00:49:48] I don't, I guess I probably don't have a sense of the extent to which young people today

[00:49:52] grasp that that is the heart of the thing.

[00:49:56] I imagine that for some of them, it's, they sort of have a vague sense of Jesus, God's

[00:49:59] son, but like it's him dying on the cross, which of course, yes.

[00:50:04] But yeah, I want, I wanted to communicate that if they hadn't yet fully, if they, if,

[00:50:09] if no one had fully sort of given them that the claim, that the claim of the gospel is that,

[00:50:15] is that Jesus is God in the flesh, full stop, not God with an asterisk, not, uh, a semi-demi-mini

[00:50:24] God as my students like to hear me quote Moana, but God, God, full stop, capital G O D, uh,

[00:50:32] God from God, light from light, true God from true God.

[00:50:35] The very creator has become a creature.

[00:50:39] Um, and, and then to see what that God does for us in love.

[00:50:44] Um, and in the book, that was the other thing I was going to say, as you know, it, it split

[00:50:48] into 12 sections and the turn is from sin and then death, sin chapter, uh, section five,

[00:50:57] part five, death, part six, and then part seven.

[00:51:01] It's the turn.

[00:51:02] The turn is the center of history.

[00:51:04] The axis of the ages is that God enters the picture.

[00:51:08] He enters the scene and he begins to make all things new.

[00:51:11] Um, and that's what I want.

[00:51:12] That's how I wanted it to feel to readers.

[00:51:15] And in the light of that, you place the cross and the resurrection in, in, in light of that

[00:51:22] whole, it's almost like to build, build out all those other things.

[00:51:25] And then you can go now here is how these elements come in.

[00:51:29] I mean, I remember asking, you know, some, some students like, you know, what if Jesus

[00:51:35] just showed up full grown man and just showed up for a week, died, resurrected?

[00:51:40] Like why, why the 30 years?

[00:51:42] Yeah.

[00:51:43] And it's trying to get them to think about like, yeah, yeah.

[00:51:47] Why, why is that?

[00:51:48] And it's just like, you have to see it in, in the, in the wider spectrum, the wider vision

[00:51:53] and narrative of God, the creator that you start, you know, in the first few chapters you

[00:51:59] talk about to create all things actually enters into the, the story that he sustains and we,

[00:52:04] yeah.

[00:52:05] And it's, it's an act of this, this part I think resonates with, with everyone, but certainly

[00:52:10] with my students, it's an act of solidarity with our condition and that the word solidarity

[00:52:15] is not there in the new Testament, but the idea is everywhere that he actually, you know,

[00:52:19] as Hebrews has shared the condition of his brothers, um, that he undergoes whatever it

[00:52:25] is that we undergo.

[00:52:27] And that solidarity, uh, in, in, um, in the gospel of John, when he weeps at the sight of

[00:52:36] Mary and Martha grieving their brother, whom they knew Jesus could have kept from death.

[00:52:43] Um, like, this is what God does.

[00:52:45] He enters into our tears.

[00:52:47] He enters into our pain.

[00:52:50] And I have this line and I try to, I try to extend this metaphor, um, from, uh, from Aquinas

[00:52:56] where, uh, he says that if God had so willed simply becoming human in Mary's womb could have

[00:53:06] been sufficient to merit our salvation.

[00:53:09] And he's not, he's not taking away from the cross.

[00:53:11] He's saying, you need to understand the depths of this mystery that the actual deity entering

[00:53:20] as it were the human, um, bloodstream and in giving us his antibodies, as he takes our

[00:53:28] illness, contracts it into himself in this extraordinary exchange between us, that could

[00:53:34] have been it.

[00:53:35] Now, God had many other things to accomplish and it was supremely fitting and beautiful

[00:53:39] and right, um, for him to do all the things that he does in his life and in his suffering

[00:53:45] death, um, descent and resurrection.

[00:53:48] Um, but it's a way to, it's a way to press on, to push us, um, to, to try, we can't grasp

[00:53:54] it, but to at least to apprehend the, the, the full breadth and height and width and depth

[00:54:00] of, of the mystery of, of the incarnation.

[00:54:03] With all that in play, how does that inform our understanding of, of, of the cross and

[00:54:08] resurrection and flat?

[00:54:10] Well, no pun intended, but flesh it out, you know, and, and help us have a fuller vision

[00:54:14] of, of what I think are probably two of the most well-known elements of Christianity, especially

[00:54:20] in American evangelicalism, cross resurrection.

[00:54:23] That's, that's the bread and butter as it should be.

[00:54:25] Right.

[00:54:25] I mean, that's important, but these other aspects that are also important, what angles does this

[00:54:31] help us see or how does it make this, that take something that's 2d and make it 3d for

[00:54:36] us?

[00:54:39] In the letters, I try to avoid, um, not entirely successfully, but I, I try to avoid giving the

[00:54:49] reader, um, the one atonement theory to rule them all.

[00:54:55] Um, because I think Christians, uh, tie themselves in knots and get into totally unnecessary conflict.

[00:55:02] What we are beholding is an infinite mystery and God in Christ saves us in 10,000 ways.

[00:55:12] Um, and what, what the, the important thing is to behold it and to receive it and then to

[00:55:21] live it out and share it with others.

[00:55:23] So that's the, that's the first thing, which may be a kind of prolegomenon.

[00:55:26] That's a preface just to say, I I'm wanting, you know, uh, Robert Jensen, the late the,

[00:55:32] late Lutheran theologian liked to say, um, the church's one and only official atonement

[00:55:38] theory is Holy week.

[00:55:40] So if you want to understand, um, what and how God does, uh, uh, what he does, uh, in

[00:55:49] his atoning work, um, on the cross and in particular from, you know, Maundy Thursday, um, through

[00:55:56] Easter Sunday, attend the Holy, uh, week liturgy.

[00:56:01] And in particular begin the, the, the, the traduum, the Paschal traduum, the three days from

[00:56:07] Thursday night through Friday into Saturday and the Easter vigil that evening.

[00:56:11] And I, I, I really resonate with that.

[00:56:14] Not as a dodge for, well, we still got to kind of explain how this works, no doubt.

[00:56:20] And I try to do some of that here.

[00:56:22] Um, but to, um, avoid the temptation, as we said earlier in our conversation to kind of

[00:56:31] propositionalize it, like the closer we get to a kind of divine mechanics of expiation.

[00:56:38] I'm not, I'm not afraid of any of these words, expiation, good substitution, good penal, good,

[00:56:45] you know, Christus Victor, good sacrifice, good, all of it's good.

[00:56:49] And all of it's there, um, in the text and in the tradition.

[00:56:52] Um, uh, but, but, but, uh, the more we mechanize it, mechanize it, mechanize it, I don't know

[00:57:03] how to say it.

[00:57:04] Um, the more we alienate, I think ourselves from being living participants who inhabit the

[00:57:18] saving work of Christ, uh, on the cross and in the tomb and on the eighth day, on the first

[00:57:27] morning of the week, but also in our, in our own lives as we receive it in all the ways

[00:57:33] that we do through baptism, through the, through the proclamation and reading of the word through

[00:57:38] the Eucharist, um, and so on.

[00:57:41] So I, I suppose I am a little bit not answering your question, but that's at least the mindset

[00:57:45] I tried to have, as I approached the question.

[00:57:49] Well, it reminds me a lot of Romans six, when Paul kind of weaves all those things together,

[00:57:55] you know, considering yourself dead to sin, alive to Christ.

[00:57:59] And now it's like this story of death and resurrection becomes your, your story becomes

[00:58:04] the new narrative of your life, the way that you regard yourself.

[00:58:07] And, uh, that is an interesting way of, of talking about it because you're right.

[00:58:13] I mean, the propositions are important, right?

[00:58:15] Penalty for sin substitution, all these types of things.

[00:58:18] Um, but how does it land, especially when you're talking to younger people?

[00:58:21] Like, how does it land on them?

[00:58:23] I don't say practically as it makes it sound like, like a utilitarian, but how does it actually

[00:58:31] reverberate throughout their actual life and cause them to think about themselves differently?

[00:58:38] And, uh, I, when you think about like living that out, what, what specific things do you

[00:58:45] have in mind?

[00:58:46] I mean, if you're trying to give a new believer, somebody who's struggling in their faith, trying

[00:58:50] to have them get an understanding of the death and resurrection of Christ, how would you try

[00:58:54] to make that land for them in their everyday life with the things that they're dealing with?

[00:59:00] I think the first thing that I would say is a return to what I said a few minutes ago.

[00:59:07] And, and the word is power.

[00:59:11] Um, I'm taking this a bit, well, I'm taking it from a hundred places, but I'm taking a

[00:59:15] bit from my colleague here at ACU named Richard Beck.

[00:59:17] He's a, he's a psychologist, but actually he's a theologian and he's brilliant.

[00:59:21] And, and he has this line both towards his left sort of folks focused on social justice

[00:59:27] and folks to his right.

[00:59:30] Um, all of whom are focused sort of on the love of God.

[00:59:32] He has this, he has this quip where he says for, for students or for parishioners, um, um,

[00:59:41] if I take, if I give you an equation and it's the gospel, and then I minus God is love.

[00:59:48] What am I left with?

[00:59:49] And it's, and it's a prompt to stimulate thought about like when we reduce the gospel to a platitude

[00:59:55] or a hallmark saying, and of course, God is love is in the Bible that there's not, you

[01:00:00] know, but we can platitude eyes it, you know, we make it, we empty it of the, of the rich

[01:00:06] meaning either by repetition or by smoothing out all the rough edges.

[01:00:12] And his, his answer is power.

[01:00:14] When you look at the new Testament, the ministry of Jesus, the ministry of the apostles and,

[01:00:20] and the letters of Paul and Peter and so on, what you get is power.

[01:00:25] The power of God's own Holy spirit over every enemy that opposes God and opposes his people,

[01:00:35] whether that, whether the enemy be demons, whether the enemy be besetting sin, whether

[01:00:41] it be death itself, the one quote unquote undefeated power in human and cosmic history, right?

[01:00:50] Death, uh, death in that sense always wins.

[01:00:54] He even seems to win.

[01:00:55] It even seems to win against, uh, Jesus.

[01:00:58] And yet what makes the Christian message from the beginning so revolutionary is that the one

[01:01:06] power undefeated is itself defeated by Christ.

[01:01:11] The one it supposed it had defeated and the, the existential and practical effects of that

[01:01:19] in one's life that I have access, you know, I'm not Pentecostal.

[01:01:25] Um, I'm not particularly charismatic, but they get this right.

[01:01:30] I have access to the power of God.

[01:01:34] You know, I am a vessel for the same power that created the universe that raised Jesus

[01:01:43] from the dead.

[01:01:44] The, the very same, not something different.

[01:01:46] The very same force that brought Jesus out of the grave and into life forevermore lives

[01:01:55] in me and wants to be conducted by me and through me in accordance with God's will and for the

[01:02:05] wellbeing and upbuilding of my neighbor and the church and the world.

[01:02:11] Yeah.

[01:02:12] Yeah.

[01:02:12] If, if that's what Jesus did on the cross, he both, he both exercised that power and then

[01:02:20] unleashed it both in his resurrection and then from heaven and the outpouring of the spirit.

[01:02:25] Who doesn't want a taste of that?

[01:02:27] You know, who doesn't want that in their life and in their daily struggles?

[01:02:31] I do.

[01:02:32] Well, it really gets at the supernatural element, not even element, but it's like, it's, it's

[01:02:37] the thing.

[01:02:38] I mean, I think it reveals, you know, our maybe even just a lack of, of faith that God can actually

[01:02:47] change us.

[01:02:49] And, uh, that probably has a lot of apologetic power too.

[01:02:54] Uh, not even just apologetic, but just encouraging people in the church to say that you're not

[01:03:00] just a random ordinary person.

[01:03:03] You have, you have God himself dwelling in you, empowering you to live a life of power.

[01:03:11] Yeah, that's right.

[01:03:12] And you're not, you're not just, you're not reducible to this bundle of appetites.

[01:03:17] Uh, so that, so that you're just tossed to and fray.

[01:03:20] You're, you're blown this way and that by whatever, whatever your stomach, uh, or whatever other

[01:03:27] parts of your body or your brain tell you that it, that they want at any one moment.

[01:03:32] And you're just subject to that.

[01:03:33] It's true.

[01:03:33] In a sense, we're subject to it apart from Christ, but in Christ, you really do have the

[01:03:38] power.

[01:03:39] You know, this is where self-control is such an unsexy virtue and fruit of the spirit.

[01:03:43] Yet self-control, self-mastery is in another sense, the very highest that, that my body,

[01:03:51] my appetites, my desires, uh, are not in the driver's seat.

[01:03:55] I'm in the driver's seat and whatever they say, whatever they ask for, whatever they beg

[01:04:01] me for at the end of the day, I can tell them yes or no, not on my own account, not on, not

[01:04:09] by my own power, but by the power of God.

[01:04:11] I think for, I think for a world or at least a culture dying for that kind of freedom.

[01:04:18] And it's not a freedom to do as we please.

[01:04:21] It's a different kind of freedom, freedom from ourselves, from our own flesh and desires.

[01:04:26] Man, that sounds good to me.

[01:04:29] Sounds like good news to me.

[01:04:30] That was a, an N.T.

[01:04:31] Wright lecture where he, he had this quip where he said, uh, and it was obviously it's in

[01:04:36] a British accent.

[01:04:37] So it sounded 10 times more brilliant.

[01:04:40] Right.

[01:04:40] But he says something to the effect of all the, all the fruits of the spirit can be counterfeited

[01:04:46] by happy, healthy young people except self-control that that's to tell.

[01:04:51] Right.

[01:04:52] I mean, you could just be, you have low joy, peace, kindness, just because things are going

[01:04:55] well and you're young and everything, you know, the world's your oyster and all that stuff.

[01:04:58] But when it comes to self-control, that maybe of all the gifts of the spirit or the fruit

[01:05:04] of the spirit is the one that most readily clashes against the impulses of, of the culture.

[01:05:10] And maybe, maybe actually marks people out the most, the ability not to be mastered by all

[01:05:15] of your.

[01:05:16] Yeah.

[01:05:16] And it's a reminder, you know, my students find it so, um, so hard to believe that for the

[01:05:27] first, let's say five centuries of the church in many social contexts, the number one evangelistic

[01:05:35] tool was, Hey, you can come join us and never have sex.

[01:05:41] And that, that was like, Oh man, like people are just lining up for baptism.

[01:05:45] And it's like, what, you know, how does that work?

[01:05:48] Well, what, what's that?

[01:05:49] What's that a proxy for?

[01:05:51] It's a proxy for many things, including, um, the, the horrible conditions of, uh, Greco-Roman

[01:05:58] marriage and what that meant, especially for women, but also for men in its own way.

[01:06:02] Um, but above all, it was a proxy for, um, the promise of self-control that in a world

[01:06:12] that tells you that we are controlled, we are driven and manipulated like puppets by our

[01:06:22] appetites and desires.

[01:06:23] And there's nothing we can do about it.

[01:06:26] Like we're helpless before them.

[01:06:27] Hey, we're not just, we're not just holding out the hope.

[01:06:31] We're saying if you join us and you submit to Christ's yoke and you receive him in baptism

[01:06:38] and follow him with faith, hope, and love, you actually will be able to conquer, um, your

[01:06:46] desires to, to put them on the leash, to bridle them.

[01:06:50] Um, and, and of course the, the strongest, uh, it's arguable, I suppose, but the strong,

[01:06:54] if the strongest, uh, appetite is, uh, sexual, well then the way, the way to sell that at

[01:07:00] the time, the, the, the, the proclamation was you can control your sexual appetites.

[01:07:05] You can control them by the, the very power that raised Jesus from the dead.

[01:07:09] And people, people, um, came by the hundreds and thousands.

[01:07:14] Um, and I don't know how we get there in our context, but to me, when I think about

[01:07:19] it, it certainly seems like there are a lot of analogies or correspondences between the

[01:07:23] two that if the church could model that, which it current, which it has not been for in previous

[01:07:28] years and decades, but if the church could actually model that in our life together and

[01:07:33] in our individual lives, um, modeling the virtue of chastity as itself, not a bourgeois norm of the

[01:07:42] middle class, but as a mark and as a sign of the presence of God and God alone in our lives,

[01:07:49] then, um, I think people would pay attention.

[01:07:53] Well, you know, there's always a fear of, of legalism and works righteousness.

[01:07:57] And, but when I hear that, that, that actually is a, a message filled with grace.

[01:08:02] Yeah.

[01:08:03] That God himself can actually liberate you from this corruption and bondage.

[01:08:09] And obviously we're always going to sin and, you know, all these types of things, but, uh,

[01:08:13] that's a, that's a powerful, powerful image.

[01:08:16] I, uh, someone we've had on the show before, uh, Alistair Roberts, you probably know him.

[01:08:20] And, uh, something he's always brought up is, is how the new Testament doesn't actually

[01:08:25] call us to view ourselves as primarily sinners.

[01:08:29] I mean, we acknowledge that we're sin, but we are viewed and you make a point of this.

[01:08:32] We're viewed as adopted.

[01:08:34] We're viewed as children.

[01:08:35] Yeah.

[01:08:36] And, uh, maybe just coming to a close, you know, we, we, we talked about adoption before,

[01:08:40] but what, what do you think, what do you hope people get from understanding that concept,

[01:08:46] especially as they read through your book and the, and the fatherhood of God, what are you

[01:08:49] hoping the fruit of that will be in the minds of not just the next generation, but anybody?

[01:08:53] Yeah.

[01:08:54] Okay.

[01:08:54] I'm going to try to succinctly give you three, three elements here.

[01:08:59] One is, as you say, we are adopted as children of God.

[01:09:04] And that is not something we were born with.

[01:09:07] I say this to students and actually this, this does scandalize them at first.

[01:09:11] They're like, no, no, everyone's a child of God.

[01:09:12] I was like, well, I understand the intention behind that, including when it's spoken by Christians.

[01:09:17] What they mean is we're all created by God and that we bear God's image.

[01:09:20] And that's, it's a kind of loose way of saying that.

[01:09:22] But John chapter one says that Christ alone in virtue of his work grants to us through the

[01:09:31] gospel, the power to become children of God.

[01:09:35] Well, if that's, if Jesus has to die to give us that gift, and it is a gift, then it's not

[01:09:42] something we already possess.

[01:09:44] It comes from the outside.

[01:09:46] It comes from without.

[01:09:47] It comes from God.

[01:09:49] So that's the first thing, as you say, to emphasize that we're children of God, the

[01:09:54] father together with Jesus.

[01:09:55] We are in the son.

[01:09:57] And so we are sons and daughters of God.

[01:09:59] Second, adoption is not only vertical, it's horizontal.

[01:10:03] We're not only adopt, we don't, we don't own, we don't only gain God as a father.

[01:10:07] We gain Abraham as a father.

[01:10:08] And it's hard for, I think, especially maybe evangelicals or Protestants to hear this, but

[01:10:14] if you don't have Abraham for a father, you can't be saved.

[01:10:20] That's the ecclesiology at work here.

[01:10:22] Like, you know, the, the, the, the line from the line from St. Cyprian extra ecclesium

[01:10:30] nulla salus outside the church.

[01:10:32] There's no salvation.

[01:10:33] I riff on that in this book.

[01:10:34] And then another book of mine on the church was like outside what that really means, according

[01:10:38] to Paul is that outside of Abraham's family, there's no salvation.

[01:10:43] This is the saved people because all the blessings are found in the seed of Abraham.

[01:10:51] Who is the seed?

[01:10:52] It's Jesus.

[01:10:53] So when we are in him, we are not only in the son of God, we are in the seed of Abraham

[01:10:58] and we have to become children of Abraham by adoption.

[01:11:01] We're not born Jews.

[01:11:02] We're not born genealogical descendants of Abraham.

[01:11:05] So we have to be adopted.

[01:11:07] We have to be grafted in and integrated into a family.

[01:11:10] We were not born into.

[01:11:12] So that horizontal piece tells us to belong to God in his family is to belong to Abraham's

[01:11:19] family, because that's the one he chose to be the father of faith and the head of this

[01:11:23] people.

[01:11:23] The third thing I'll say to close is it's not strictly speaking about the concept of

[01:11:32] adoption.

[01:11:32] It's about this language of saints that I was anticipating in my mind what you were going

[01:11:37] to say.

[01:11:37] Alistair said that we're not called sinners.

[01:11:39] We're called fill in the blank.

[01:11:41] And I thought you were going to say saint.

[01:11:42] Well, obviously he's right.

[01:11:43] We're called children.

[01:11:44] But the sort of contrast term there is we're not sinners.

[01:11:47] We're holy ones.

[01:11:49] We're sanctified.

[01:11:50] And I call this book Letters to a Future Saint.

[01:11:56] And I address the reader, my imaginary correspondent, as dear future saint for a reason.

[01:12:03] And it's one, again, that Protestants might be a little bit nervous about, but I want to

[01:12:08] allay the anxiety in this way.

[01:12:11] You know, the word martyr comes from the Greek word for witness.

[01:12:16] So in that sense, we're all martyrs, small m, because we're all witnesses to Christ.

[01:12:21] Even though we weren't eyewitnesses, we become witnesses through our lives and our words.

[01:12:26] But the church rightly has reserved the title of martyr, capital M, for men and women who

[01:12:32] give their lives.

[01:12:33] For Christ, who actually literally die for the gospel.

[01:12:37] And in the same way, the church very early on said, all of us are made holy in baptism.

[01:12:45] This is why Paul can address Christians as dear holy ones, dear saints, small s.

[01:12:51] You have been washed.

[01:12:53] You have been sanctified.

[01:12:55] You have received God's own Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Holy One Jesus.

[01:13:00] But that holiness is proleptic.

[01:13:02] It's a seed.

[01:13:03] It's a down payment.

[01:13:05] It's a first fruit.

[01:13:07] And the church has also, and the church has therefore, across the centuries, reserved capital

[01:13:13] S saint as a kind of title for men and women who retrospectively, when we look back at their

[01:13:19] lives and their words, are uniquely beautiful or revealing witnesses or windows onto the holiness

[01:13:32] of Christ.

[01:13:33] We see what it means to be made holy across an actual human lifetime when we look at these people.

[01:13:40] And so all of us, in one sense are saints, but in another sense are on the path towards

[01:13:46] sainthood, towards sanctity and holiness in the kingdom of God.

[01:13:52] And that relates to adoption and the status of child, because it's a gift we receive from the

[01:13:58] outside.

[01:13:59] It's a gift we receive from the Holy Father, the All-Holy One.

[01:14:04] And we receive it in part by joining the communion of saints, the fellowship of all the redeemed from

[01:14:14] Abraham and even Adam and Abel all the way to the very last human being before the return

[01:14:23] of Christ.

[01:14:23] And joining that great cloud of witnesses is, I think, an enticing vision.

[01:14:32] Well said.

[01:14:33] I mean, it reminds me of Hebrews 12.

[01:14:35] I mean, that cloud of witnesses, that's what helps us keep going forward as a source of strength.

[01:14:40] Brad, thank you so much for joining us.

[01:14:42] Thanks for writing this book.

[01:14:43] I think it's going to help a lot of people and I appreciate the thought and care you put

[01:14:47] into it.

[01:14:48] We're going to put links to order your book in our show notes and we'll put your website

[01:14:52] as well.

[01:14:53] But Brad, thank you so much for coming on.

[01:14:55] Really enjoyed it.

[01:14:56] Happy to.

[01:14:56] Thanks for having me.

[01:14:57] It was a blast.

[01:14:59] Thanks for listening to this episode.

[01:15:01] If you liked it, please support the show and consider becoming a Patreon supporter.

[01:15:05] You can find all the links to our YouTube channel and our Instagram account in the show notes.

[01:15:11] Thank you guys for joining us.