ASM141 Ask Bible Pete

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substitutionary atonement inerrancy and wait a second all these questions are about the bible what if we asked a real bible expert to host the show this week it's time for ask bible peace [Music] [Music] welcome to ask science mike the weekly podcast where i answer questions about science faith and life i'm your host science mike known in the real world as mike mccarg i'm an author podcaster speaker co-host of liturgist blah blah blah blah blah but we're doing something different this week i'm not going to host the podcast you send me bible questions all the time and i often feel very unqualified to answer those questions so this week dr peter enz is hosting ask science mike this week called ask bible pete and why are we doing that well for a lot of people the way they relate to the bible has gotten stale at best uh or confusing or even traumatic at worse how we read the bible really impacts our worldview and when we read the bible differently than our community that can be a problem and sometimes we lose confidence in the bible because we're reading it wrong okay so one of the people most influential in how i approach the bible and therefore how i approach my faith is pete ends now he's written a ton of books uh i've read most of them i especially recommend the bible tells me so and the sin of certainty both of those are are phenomenal accessible works about how to read the bible uh he also hosts a podcast called the bible for normal people and that is starting up next week their season next season kicks in so check out that podcast the bible for normal people and also consider supporting it on patreon there's there's not a lot of great progressive open christian resources out there there's lots of restrictive conservative evangelical resources but for people looking you know at the christian faith a different way there's not as many options so support pete and what he's doing in his podcast buy his books and with uh out further ado what do you say let's get into this here comes the first question hey science mike i've been on a spiritual journey over the last year or so i i guess technically i've been on a spiritual journey my whole life but in the last year i've been really encouraged by your work so thank you i'm sending this question as something that i've been struggling with because i've realized that a key to my faith in god is my view of the bible as god's word and so this is actually could be a question for bible pete i'm wondering if the belief in the bible as a situational document is mutually exclusive to the belief in the bible as a divinely inspired inerrant word of god i've been always taught that to give up divine inspiration is to give up any sure way of knowing who god is and thus any way of having a true relationship with him so i've been afraid of what it would mean to no longer hold to the scripture as an errand so i'm curious is it possible without offending logic too much to agree with everything bible pete teaches about how to read and apply the bible and yet to still hold the bible as the inerrant word of god i mean as a specific example the churches i've attended that have held to inerrancy have also taken passages like the one in corinthians where paul tells the women to cover their heads as being something that is culturally relative and does not apply to us today is this just inconsistent hermeneutic or could it be holding the word of god as both inerrant and situational thanks to both of you for keeping these conversations alive in the church i really appreciate how god has used both your ministries hello everybody it's really good to be here with you to answer some questions or at least try to answer some questions that you all sent in to science mike and uh it's my pleasure to be here to to take a crack at these uh want to thank science mike for asking me to do this and also for giving me a really cool name bible pete although it doesn't quite have the ring i think that science mike does i guess it sounds a bit arrogant doesn't it bible pete but uh i mean what are the options god pete jesus pete trinity pete that's not gonna work so this is the best option out of all those i'm happy to have it so bible pete it is at least for today um all right the first question uh that i want to try to take a crack at is a very very good one it's a common one meaning it's a good question you know questions that are asked a lot i think are questions that are worth discussing and going over a lot because you know obviously a lot of people think about this but you know whether it's possible to see the bible as situational and also as the divinely inspired and errant word of god and i i just you know i don't want to start a fight right off the bat here but you know for me i think the word inerrant doesn't help in this discussion because there's a lot of baggage attached to it you know i'm not an inerrantist i don't think it's a helpful term i don't think it's a good descriptor of what the bible is doing and i think it really you know i i think i understand divinely inspired and maybe a better word is authoritative like it has value for guiding us and faith and life and and we have to take it seriously uh no matter what we do i do agree with those things but inerrant for me is just a term that gets thrown in that almost guarantees that a discussion like this can't even get off the ground and i know that sounds harsh but that's at least my experience uh you know inerrancy sounds like it's sort of a safe place religiously spiritually to land until forgive me until you start you know reading the bible and then you see that my goodness gracious it's not really an errant for me and telling me what to do it's it's actually well like the question says it's situational right and and that's where the interesting discussion begins so i'd rather rephrase the question a little bit to say how can the bible be situational which it most definitely is and still function in some way as that text which is right with us as we try to navigate this life of faith that helps us understand what to believe and how to act i think that's that's a different kind of question perhaps so first of all you know the bible is absolutely situational i'll always remember when i was in seminary one of my professors we were talking about paul's letters and he said you know remember when you're reading paul's letters you're reading somebody else's mail and that goes for more or less anything we see in the bible it's not written to us you know i i understand that you know many christians have the view that the bible is sort of god's love letter to me and i understand that because you want to connect with it and see its relevance for your life i don't knock that at all but primarily it's not god's love letter to us it's a series and collection of texts that were written by ancient people of faith who were trying to understand themselves and their place in the world and who god is and why god seemed so mysterious and you know back in the old days he used to show up and do wonderful things and now today we're struggling with him and the bible does all sorts of things like that it is situational it's written by people at a particular point in time or times plural for certain situations to address the realities of life around them and how to navigate that from the perspective of faith in their god which i think is not a downer i think that's a beautiful description of what the bible is and how the bible works the way i'm putting it now and try to summarize this a bit the situational nature of the bible is i'm working on a book now as we speak don't ask me too much about it because i'm having a tug of war with it right now but the bible has certain characteristics that really show us this situational character and that is the bible is ambiguous the bible is ancient and the bible is diverse the bible is ambiguous because when you really sit down to look at it's like it's not entirely clear a lot of the times and uh it doesn't really tell you what to do or think very often you know i think of things like you know pick almost any law of the old testament you know remember the sabbath day to keep it holy do no work on it okay that's okay that's fine but what does it mean to work you know what if you have to feed your family i mean is there any leeway to this right it's it's not telling you what to do it's saying you know here's sort of like an idea here's a principle here's a general guideline but you have to work it out for yourself you know proverbs 26 4 and 5 which are one of my favorite places in the book of proverbs says you know do not answer a fool or you'll sort of join him in his folly or answer a fool because otherwise he's going to be wise in his own eyes so answer a fool don't answer for what do you do right it well it's it's not clear and in fact this text is not giving us a direction or a command or something clear to do it's actually revealing something about the bible that fits right in with this situational nature namely that sometimes you just have to figure things out you know god's not a helicopter parent and the bible's not this helicopter parenting manual of you know how to make sure everybody does the right thing all the time right so it's situational because it's it's ambiguous and it's ambiguous in part because it's ancient it comes from comes to us from a time long long ago and you know sometimes it's hard to know what to do with these ancient texts that have laws and stories that presume things like kingdoms and battles and and prophets and temples and priests and and a roman empire or a greek empire or a persian or babylonian or a syrian or egyptian these are things from such a long time ago you know the time of david for example is um about a thousand bc i mean we're removed from david's time three thousand years backwards in time in the same way that remove were removed from the year 5000 in front of us right the year 5000 a.d we're as far away from that unbelievable number as we are backwards from the time of david these are ancient texts in ancient times and they befuddle us sometimes they invite us to engage the text right to to to work through it to see how does this connect or in some cases does it even connect you know this this bible seems set up to invite us to think about what it means to live a life of faith in a way that inerrancy doesn't quite cut it for me but there's this is that's the authoritative dimension of the bible which i know it sounds a little bit weird to speak the way i am now and then say authority with the next breath but it's an authority for inviting us into this needed conversation about what does it mean to live the life of faith and this bible shows us ancient people sort of struggling with that in their own ways in their own ambiguous ways in their own ancient ways and we have to transpose this ancient message into our time and place you know one very quick example if it helps okay you know we know that the bible is basically a patriarchal text and i say that with no judgment it's patriarchal because it's ancient and it reflects those ancient cultures and you have paul saying things like you know women should not you know publicly teach men and you know wait till you get home if you have some questions and that sort of thing paul says and you know there are probably cultural reasons for that because of the way the social dynamic was set up in first century greco-roman culture you know you would cause a deep offense perhaps socially for the spread of the gospel if you were to neglect this social convention right but you know we have to today transpose that idea to a different culture and different context so today it's not socially uncouth to say that well men and women are of equal status there is no social hierarchy of one above the other they're both equal women run companies you know their prominent positions of authority and notoriety and wealth and all these other kinds of things and education certainly you know so so for us today to to uh you know to follow let's say paul paul's quote inerrant or authoritative word we might have to do the exact opposite of what paul did or what paul said we might right in fact i think we do we have to do something different because the cultural moment calls for something else and that brings us to you know to the last point the bible is diverse meaning it doesn't agree with itself it doesn't say the same thing about everything and the reason why is because the bible is written at different times different places by different people for different reasons and you're bound to have some diversity you know my my favorite example is comparing the the book of jonah and the book of nahum jonah is all about you know the book of jonah not shown to the prophet but the book of jonah is all about showing god's mercy and inclusion to the hated ninevites the capital of the hated assyrians and that's sort of the lesson of the story that you know god cares for them as well whereas in the book of nahum the world is cheering because god destroyed nineveh how do you reconcile those two well they're diverse but you reconcile them not by trying to harmonize them but just by recognizing they're written at different times in places for different reasons you know the book of jonah is probably a post-exilic book written after the experience of exile where the judahites are probably thinking you know maybe god is bigger than simply our tribal god maybe there's something more going on here than god is our personal property right so what we see in the bible is this beautiful diversity that can get covered up if we have too strong a view of like divine inspiration means the bible always has to agree and it always has to be on the same page it doesn't you know the bible's ambiguous it's ancient and diverse and as a result i think a better way of sort of not just recognizing begrudgingly the situational nature of the bible not begrudgingly but embracing it and i hate using that word because it's so you know hackneyed but you know celebrating and embracing the situational nature of the bible as something positive to teach us about how we can engage this divinely inspired text for our moment this is why i think a much better model for understanding the nature of the bible is not an errant and i'm even going to leave out apart things like divinely inspired or revelation or all those buzz words those code words would like to use i'd rather think of the bible as a book of wisdom and wisdom is just that beautiful new new and old testament concept that basically says god you know the spirit of god trains us to live well spiritually emotionally physically and all those things to really embrace life god's way and to learn that as we go along i think life is about learning to live life god's way and the bible is not sort of the field guide manual to sort of you know follow everything here and you'll get there it's actually modeling for us that journey right i think all of us have a sacred responsibility to work out what it means to follow the bible well and to live in god's way we have a sacred responsibility and we see that already modeled in the pages of the bible itself so to get back to the question is it possible to see the bible as situations and also as god's word i don't think we have a choice i don't think it's not only is it possible to it's it's beautiful that it is that way right the bible is situational there's no question about that the real question is what can we then learn about the nature of faith and about god and about our lives from its situational character and that is the task of theology and the task of biblical interpretation that's not something that can be answered in a pamphlet but you know that's why we study and read the bible so anyway great question and i'm glad to have taken a poke at it [Music] hello science mike i'm a relatively new listener of your podcast but being a seeking agnostic with a passion for knowledge of the world understanding it through science uh and religion i find your show fascinating and hugely important to the world today so i appreciate what you do i've also had a chance to listen to your book on audible and found it inspirational and i really appreciate the honesty that you put forth uh in in the book as well um my question is probably a good one for ask bible pete on that upcoming episode uh and it has to do with some of the things that you've said whether it be in your book or on your podcast about following uh jesus teachings uh or um saying these are things that jesus said and so on and i'm wondering in your in your research or as you read the bible um how do you decipher what actually jesus said or what do you take to be important when we really don't know what jesus said considering he has no writings uh associated with him directly we have various gospel writers and we have theology of paul and so i'm wondering how you um make sense of all that and this is maybe where pete comes in as well uh as i know there is some biblical scholarship around um researching uh what we know or what we think we know of what jesus may have actually said versus what was actually placed in the bible so hopefully that makes sense you're able to come up with an answer on that and have a good discussion again i appreciate what you do and hope to hear you on the podcast thanks okay our next question is another very good one how do we know or how do we decide what jesus actually said and here's one of these questions i'm going to have to um avoid it as much as i can now i'm going to try to answer it but this is very much how i put the pieces together and others will see it differently that goes without saying i think all these questions i could say preface it the same way but this is a tough one uh you know it's been a major theme of new testament scholarship for you know a couple of hundred years now to sort of ferret out what did jesus actually say and trying to decide by criteria that seemed to change with the wind uh we know how to make those kinds of decisions you know when you compare matthew mark and luke they're very very similar and yet they're very very different in some places and you know those similarities and differences are things that lead scholars to sort of make certain decisions that there are certain things that jesus would have said and there's certain things that just sound later you know i mean one of the examples of things that sound later for a lot of people is you know what we're called the olivet discourses where jesus gets very apocalyptic towards the end of the uh of the gospels and uh you know talks about the destruction of jerusalem and things like that and of course it did happen but in the year 80 70 which suggests to a lot of scholars that this is something that shows a later reflection on the part of the gospel writers that's just an example you know frankly i'm not sure where i stand on some of that stuff but it is a question because you know the gospels were probably written you know a generation or so after the time of jesus and you know it's it's a tough one to to to crack and you know if you get down to it really you know how do we know i think the answer is we don't i don't think you can actually know what jesus said and what jesus didn't say you know this you can't sort of put on to this empirical evidence uh to determine you know there's no criteria for jesus or for any historical figure to actually know what they actually said what came out of their mouths so we're always going to be dealing with i think this delicate situation of the words of jesus on the one hand on the other hand the gospels that we have which are which reflect the theology of the gospel writers and i think that's inevitable now taking a step back from that i think you know we should probably think about the nature of all history writing of all historiography especially ancient history and especially when we're dealing with not like raw events of battles and things like that but of personalities of people and when you tell those stories of influential people it's never going to be free of later points of view you can pick any reasonably contemporary figure like martin luther king jr or gandhi and people write biographies about them they can interview people who knew them but they put the pieces together in ways that uh satisfy their own agendas and i use agenda in a neutral sense we all have agendas and purposes for why we communicate important things so you know to to suggest that the gospels are going to avoid that you know they're not going to participate in that same kind of historiography that is universal you know is is probably an expectation that is is unreasonable now some might say well yeah but it's inspired by god blah blah but you know then the obvious response is yeah but there are four of them you know you know whatever you might think or any of you know the listeners here might think about divine inspiration of the bible and god revealing uh his will to the writers to write things down the fact is you have four of them they don't get along they don't they get along but they don't say the same thing you know you compare matthew mark and luke and you know perennial differences and how they talk about jesus and what they include but they don't include even if they include the same things they're different in times and then you have john who's like off in his own you know place someplace he's off in the cabins writing almost on his own and you know the historical nature of that and what did jesus say and was there really an upper room discourse that lasted several chapters you know all those kinds of things come up and they're legitimate questions but you know we have these four gospels and i think it's better to think of them as from beginning to end a theological let's put it this way a theological representation of jesus for a given community rather than well let's figure it out what jesus really said and didn't say you know we have red letter bibles right the words of jesus well the scholarly red letter bible is going to be a lot smaller than that you know and rather trying to make that hyper red letter bible i i think we just have the gospels that we have and they are they are so thoroughly you know the theological purposes of the individual gospel writers it's baked into the pages you can't just extricate it you know so you know you're going to find things in the gospels like invention of dialogue you know i mean no one was taking notes when jesus was talking you know that's not what they did back then there were no pads there was nothing to do that with and and you know to think that ancient people would remember everything that was said it's nonsense they they didn't they remembered the gist of things but then they created dialogue around it or they talked to eyewitnesses or other people and they created dialogue around these things so you have that and it's hard to know you know at what point is dialogue created out of whole cloth at what point is it a representation of exactly what was said at what point is it a mishmash or whatever you can never tell that forgive me that's that's my opinion that's where i'm gonna get into trouble with some people i just don't think we can ever tell that you know the gospel writers they they invent scenes they or they put scenes in different orders and they connect them differently and they give different slants right i mean it's so thoroughly theologized these gospels that you know it it's to me it becomes really i would hate the job of having to try to figure out what jesus quote actually said and what he didn't actually say a few years ago i was reading a book which i highly recommend by a roman catholic scholar luke timothy johnson called the real jesus and i allude to this a little bit in my book the bible tells me so for a page or two because i have to deal with this issue and um you know not that it's worth running out and getting that book for two pages although you should get it anyway but anyway i'm not here to sell things okay back to the topic uh the real jesus what what johnson says in a nutshell is that the jesus that we have are these four representations period and they come to us from a later time and this i think is a profound point from a later time when these writers have had the opportunity to reflect on the significance of jesus you know the gospel writers if they say anything they're pretty unanimous in the fact that the uh the disciples were clueless most people were pretty clueless about jesus they didn't seem to get it right so and i can imagine like maybe being back in the first century and and certainly not getting it either right and what you have with the gospel writers is not don't think of it as like later and therefore off the wall crazy have no connection with the historical jesus but maybe jesus was actually a highly significant historical figure who did amazing things and started a movement that is you know has become sort of big over the past 2000 years right maybe someone of that sort of magnanimity it took time to sort of digest and to think and then to see maybe what the spirit of god is doing in the life of people in the first century for 20 30 40 50 years and then you're writing it down you know it's better to write a biography of kennedy in 2015 than in 1965. maybe there's an ability to reflect a little bit see what we have in the gospels let me put this another way i think what we have is enactments of jesus we have performances of jesus and i find that to be not frustrating but again just the way history is but also very encouraging at least to me spiritually because you know what we do is you know i think we have to take those scripts those performances those enactments very seriously but we also have to accept the responsibility which i think is a sacred responsibility of thinking about okay how do we enact jesus today how do we perform this gospel in the culture around us taking our our our cue from the gospel writers themselves who are doing that very thing talking about jesus for audiences not for global publication but for moments and times and places and situations that made sense and i think we have the responsibility to do the same thing we've come a little far perhaps from the original question but i think this all ties together at least it does for me how do we know what jesus actually said we don't but tough you know that's the the nature of historiography and we have four gospels and they're all telling us something of significance and the fact that they don't always get along that they have contradictory moments so be it life is like that too and for those of you who believe in god you have to sort of accept that if god is going to have some hand in producing a text look at what god gave us look at what we have you know and now we take that as our clue not to try to fare it out what did jesus actually say or how can we mesh these gospels together to make one big one out of it so we sort of have the one straight jesus but to embrace the fullness of it and to to then take that responsibility to uh to likewise think about our time in our context and there's an awful lot of things that i think jesus can say in the world that we're living in today hi bible pete this is kyle in rochester new york my question about the bible is in regards to how important it is for me to have a relationship with it i have outgrown the conservative evangelical understanding of the bible from my youth but i don't feel drawn to develop a new relationship with it at this point i've recently read many books about the bible including yours and i'm fascinated by how all the ancient world history geography anthropology traditions and language can point to what is really meant by the bible as opposed to what i was handed earlier in life while all that is interesting i can't help but feel like i would need to spend a lifetime studying first century customs economics or agriculture just to have a chance to understand one small part it makes sense that people in those times would understand progressive new ideas through those stories and i believe its themes and ideas can be relevant to me once they are mined out but as someone that's not living in those times is it really worth that much to me it feels like it wasn't written for me wouldn't i be better off reading the stories that actually are being written for me as a person living in my time oh and by the way both my parents went to eastern so go eagles thank you okay our next question from kyle i do need to mention kyle's name because his parents went to eastern university where i teach go eagles anyway okay the question is about having a relationship with the bible after you're learning a bunch of new stuff and it's hard to have a relationship with the bible that's sort of a quick summary as i see the question with a lot of excellent excellent sort of sub points to that but um yeah you know once you sort of start seeing things differently it's hard to have the same kind of relationship with the bible that you once had i absolutely get that and a lot of uh the the the difficulty and the pressure and the challenge that people feel who have been raised in let's say you know evangelical or fundamentalist context is sort of re in the bible in ways that are meaningful and that's hard because the way you're engaging it in the new way is the way you're always told was the wrong way you know so it's it's very very difficult to um to sort of reinvent that and and you know one point kyle says you know i'm not really drawn to a new relationship with the bible at the moment and that may be like you know after a breakup you don't want to just boomerang back to something else you might want to take a break you know i don't i don't mind saying that i've said that to many people and i felt that myself too just taking a break from having to figure this out and taking a break from the bible and and taking a break from all that stress of like you know i've got to get this back in order now see that's the old you talking at that point who has to have it all sort of closed in and making sense take a break from all that and maybe just assume that god's on your side and and you're going to have time to think through this now in other words for me the issue is it's really the way the bible was taught that makes it so difficult to look at new information and to sort of absorb that and to think through it it's not the bible itself right it's it's it's just the the model of bible that you were taught and you know i'm going to say by well-intended people i just don't think it works you know i i remember thinking this and other people have voiced this too that you know you go to you know an evangelical and you go to maybe a college or something or in my case it was graduate school and the the paradigm the model of the bible that i had begun questioning anyway at my point in in life but uh was still pretty much where my home was um you know that that bible that way of thinking about it began to unravel literally within about a month by listening to some lectures and reading some articles or books and beginning to read some hebrew guided by teachers who you know had the hebrew bible memorized and things like that and it's not that i was overwhelmed by you know the pressure of caving in it's just that they were presenting things that made sense and you know other people have that same experience maybe at different levels or maybe for different reasons but you know if you have a way of thinking about the bible not the bible itself but if you have a way of thinking about it that can't handle a new information that is widely accepted by people who think through this stuff a lot you know maybe the problem again is not the bible but it's the way it was taught one of the things that the kyle brings out and again it's a very good point is like you know do i have to be a scholar to to you know get a handle on all this stuff and you know do i have to you know go to graduate school or spend my time digging into this ancient context and trying to understand it and um this actually dovetails nicely with another question that was asked about study bibles and and how to sort of access this information easily and let me say that i do think that no you don't have to be a scholar and spend your life doing this but you know it's nice to have study bibles with maps and with uh charts and with all sorts of explanatory footnotes it's wonderful to know sort of what a pharisee is you know when you're reading the gospels it's sort of nice to know what the greco-roman world was like when you're reading paul's letters it's sort of nice to know who the assyrians were and the babylonians were and how israel fits in its ancient context and you know study bibles are they're wonderful wonderful things they're designed for that sort of thing you know i i recommend a few i you know have several of them myself but the ones that i happen to like the most are the harpercollins study bible is very good the jewish publication society has its own jewish study bible of course that's just the old testament but um or the hebrew bible i should say but you know just the notes there and the essays are just worth the price of the book the new testament version of that is the jewish annotated new testament and likewise just very helpful essays and notes i would also recommend something like the new interpreter study bible which is another one that i use the most of those are not the jewish study bible but the others that i mentioned work off of the new revised standard version which is a translation i happen to like and and uh you know for variety of reasons it doesn't seem to be very apologetic it's not perfect no translation is perfect but it's pretty good but i'm not really hung up on translations that much uh because you know they all have their issues but the study bibles the notes are actually very good guides to get on board with things and and you know it's it's helpful to know that historical context and you know even if it's annoying not that it is for kyle but i'm just saying even it's like it's too much work to do too bad because you know we live at a point in time in history for the past three four hundred years and even a little bit longer where we've had this sort of historical consciousness and the study of christianity and judaism and religion in general has been absorbed into that mindset and you know you can't make believe that it's 1387. right we we live when we live where we live how we live and we might have you know the burden of historical information the burden of archaeology the burden of anthropology the burden of science all these things we are in a position like it or not to have to do some homework perhaps to sort of engage these texts in a responsible way but that will also yield i think tremendous fruit and insight in terms of what these ancient texts are saying you know for me studying antiquity and and looking into this stuff helps me have that relationship with the bible because sometimes i look at this and i say man knowing something about the ancient world helps me understand what the theology of these writers is and how i can access it how i can you know bring that theological energy into my life or vice versa see myself in the context of this theological energy that the bible has and you know i that's why i think you know that stuff is really worth it which sort of gets to another point that kyle was making that you know and it's a good one the bible is so ancient it's clearly not written for me why bother and you know that's you know on a certain level that's very true because you have stories of sacrifices and temples again in battles and you know empires that don't exist anymore who cares you know but you know on one level i think it's important to remember that you know leaving christianity out of it um ancient wisdom is not a bad thing and i answered in another question uh at least i said in another question might not have answered it uh how the bible as a source of wisdom as a wisdom book makes a lot more sense to me and if we think of the bible as a wisdom book and a wisdom book from an ancient time in place it's sort of it it's disorienting because we think of our own time and place as like being the be-all and end-all but it's not and sometimes having to think outside of our own circumstances outside of what we assume to be true and right and good in this world to transpose ourselves back into another time and place so to speak to try to glimpse something of the nature of god from a very different perspective but then bring it back to our world you know i think to me that's sort of why that's worth it you know you know the bible itself does that sort of thing the bible is a growing kind of text and what i mean by that is you have a lot of instances in the bible where you know later writers are looking back at these ancient words and texts and rethinking them for a new audience and you know my favorite example which i could go on for two hours but give me 30 seconds is the book of chronicles which is a history of israel that is very very different from the history we find in first and second samuel in first and second kings but it's written probably a few hundred years later for different time and place you know so what what i mean by that is that within the bible itself you already see this this um commitment on the part of people of faith of antiquity to go back to even earlier times and to rethink them for themselves you know it is true and i've learned this from so many people one of whom most recently is walter bruggeman who's you know i think just a a wonderful thoughtful and prolific uh old testament theologian but thinking of the bible as this ongoing dialogue of movement of change of movement from antiquity to some current time and place you know what is the new testament if it's not that you know there's so many things that sort of change this is a jewish book the new testament it's written essentially by jews and and the you know what is the new testament if it's not some shifting and changing of of the older story like circumcision or dietary laws right those ancient things are now rethought because there's an ongoing dialogue in the bible about what god is up to and i think you know judaism this is one of my hobby horses but judaism has a a history of of i think being much better than christianity in terms of understanding that ongoing dialogue and debate you know this is where you have the the hebrew bible the what we call the old testament and then you know as time moves on you you have the canon it's there you're not going to mess with it but you have to keep thinking and engaging these texts and that's where we get you know jewish ancient jewish documents also of things like the mishnah and the talmud and you know judaism is this ongoing talmudic dialogue with these ancient traditions and what it means to engage them responsibly today you know so i think the fact that the bible is ancient absolutely true that's not necessarily a bad thing but it's the nature of christianity and judaism to keep engaging these things for our current time and place maybe another way to sum up too i think the question uh that kyle is asking is a very good one and without suggesting that kyle himself thinks this way because he's clearly moving in his own thinking away from this he's not there but the question still presumes i think a fundamentalist view of the bible that that it's a book of information that's supposed to be somewhat timeless and then to be memorized maybe unquestionably accepted just as is without taking the responsibility to engage it for your time and place you know when we think of the bible that way which is the common way that a lot of christians at least in the west have been taught to think about the bible especially in america how we've been taught to think about the bible then when you hear new things that sort of rock that way of thinking about the bible then it's hard to engage the bible again again the problem is the paradigm the problem is how you're taught to think about the bible the problem is what we've been told we have to expect from the bible the problem is really not the bible itself i think the bible actually when properly understood and just went paid attention to deconstructs that way of thinking that causes so many problems for us today so anyway great question i really appreciate it [Music] hey mike hey pete my name is zach and i'm a huge fan of both of you really excited to listen this episode uh my question is pretty simple uh i'm an ex-calvinist who thankfully over the last couple years has let go uh of the belief of biblical inerrancy and i'm just curious are there any good and concrete reasons that i should continue to disregard writings like the gnostic gospels or sort of any other non-canonical judeo-christian scripture i'd like to use like every tool at my disposal to learn more about jesus and early christianity and ancient judaism but i'd like to better understand the context for these writings in order to help me sort of build the lens through which i should view them thanks that's it okay now on to our next question about the gnostic gospels and other non-canonical texts and what are we to make of all those well good question again a lot of what i do deals with texts outside of the protestant or jewish canon one of those you know it's sort of popular because it shows up in time magazine or the history channel is the what are called today the gnostic gospels and if you want to know what gnosticism is all about google it that's a whole 10 or 15 hour podcast series but and also i'm no expert in that i don't want to sort of jump into things that you know i just don't feel um completely comfortable pontificating on let me stick to things i like pontificating on um but anyway yeah i mean these texts were discovered you know in the 20 mid 20th century uh a bunch of texts i think 50 or so texts from egypt that present a jesus different than the gospels that we see usually a bunch of like sayings wise sayings of jesus and you know again i'm no expert in that but i think you know a lot of controversy about these because you know they're hailed as like well here's maybe this is giving us the real jesus or this or that and other people saying no no it's not the real jesus whatever um i'm not too big on that sort of debate uh you know a lot of you know the conservative reaction is like well they're not actually gospels or just strings of saying something like proverbs or something like that and that's true i mean the gospels the gospels we have are narratives they're stories or sort of biographies and these are not that but i think the value in them is to see something of the diversity of people claiming the name christian in the ancient world and you know these texts who knows when they were written it's actually you know people debate these things but you know some say even like the the latter part of the first century some of these texts were written and others maybe you know in the two three four hundred years after that uh it seems that you know they went out of circulation sort of went into hiding uh you know maybe in the fourth century they were condemned after you know the christian church more or less started to unify what it believed in its doctrines that we see in you know some of the the big ecumenical councils like you know nicaea which gave us the nicene creed and things like that so you know the focus is typically on well it's not part of the bible the early church decided it's to forget about it well yeah i mean i don't read the gnostic gospels but you know i will say that again it says something about the diversity of christianity from a very very early point and to me that's very instructive because we have diversity in the church really from the very beginning we sometimes think of even the new testament is this pristine time where everybody's seeing things the same and everybody's on the same page and there's no debate and no nothing you know that's just not true you know you have diversity going back to the earliest documents that we have in the new testament again it's hard to know exactly which ones are the oldest but like galatians and and you know first thessalonians and and james even are considered to be among the earlier written texts and you read galatians and paul's not a happy camper because people are not seeing things eye to eye in fact he seems to have had a major fallout with peter i mean think about that you know peter and paul are not seeing eye to eye and i'm convinced that james has an issue with uh paul or at least with how some people may have understood paul because you know paul is all about you know grace not by works and james says yeah show me your faith you know without your works and i'll show you my faith by my works and even quotes the same old testament passage that paul deals with in genesis it's like it's almost like i think james sort of has paul in his sights and i i think of this you know getting back to the gnostic gospels and these other texts outside of the canon i think they're showing us something about the real life down to earth diversity of thinking in the uh among the followers of jesus from the very beginning i don't know if that's comforting or not but to me it is because again this is just so raw and there's no moment to get back to where everyone was on the same page the disciples weren't on the same page for heaven's sake you know keep reading back in the old testament talk about conflict and dissension and diversity that results from it you know and and in that sense for me the gnostic gospels is okay listen you know people thought of jesus in very different ways in antiquity and in i think for us today when we're struggling of how to engage this gospel in our contemporary context it's i don't know it's sort of nice to look at the entire history of the christian church not just the ancient church but how there have always been fights and i'm not advocating fighting but you know it's it's there and and rifts and disagreements and people going in different directions because you know there's always been this diversity you know so this is to me just another example of that just happens to be very ancient and time magazine exaggerates its importance i think but you know other non-canonical texts and boy are there a lot i mean just you know for starters just the apocrypha which is uh means hidden things and it's you know part of the roman catholic tradition and also the orthodox tradition not the protestant or jewish tradition because protestantism got its old testament from the jewish tradition during the reformation because the reformers didn't want to be roman catholic so they got rid of these apocryphal books which are books like you know ecclesiasticus not ecclesiastes but ecclesiasticus the wisdom of solomon tobit you know a couple of extra psalms uh the prayer of manasseh they're like 15 16 17 depending how you count them first second third fourth maccabees you know history of of the greek period of the old testament from about 200 on so you know the these texts are there and uh you know they're taken a scripture by these traditions maybe a slightly lesser status than the other books but they're still part of their collection that has spiritual value and you know the longer i live the more i see the wisdom i think in some of those texts and being a part of the christian tradition too because they sort of connect the time of israel and the divided kingdom and the exile and all that they sort of connect that to the new testament because there's a lot of stuff that happened in those hundreds of years in between the testaments so to speak and they have them there and you know i tell you i wrote my dissertation on the wisdom of solomon it's a great book of you know ecclesiasticus or the wisdom of ben sira that that's an amazing uh piece of literature about wisdom and what it means to live a wise life and and and you know at least four jews living in the second century bc under greek rule you know and and it's it's amazing and i think it's it's worthwhile to read and i got to be honest with you i i i'm not sure how song of solomon made the cut probably because it was thought to have been written by solomon which is unlikely but um you know it's you know that's a book like you have to sort of like be embarrassed about and shuffle around because it's basically about sex not that that's bad you know but it's just you know why is it in there and we're missing things in the apocrypha so no i'm not converting to roman catholicism or orthodoxy i've got enough things on my plate right now anyway so okay the these texts these extra canonical texts there are many others we don't need to go through them but the fact is that they they give us an understanding of the context of the old testament and the new testament i mean you know in the old testament knowing something about neo-assyrian treaties actually helps us understand why the book of deuteronomy looks the way that it does knowing something about the judaism of you know the first century of the christian era and the century or two or three before that knowing something about judaism and their struggles and their hopes and their fears and their tensions and their arguments it really puts paul for example in a different perspective and scholars even call that a new perspective to look at paul from the point of view of these of this ancient context which we know something about from these non-canonical texts that are out there that need to be read and it's just you know it's invaluable for you know understanding the the the the deeply problematic statement of paul's which is recurring that dietary restrictions are no longer necessary to be the people of god specifically gentiles don't need to keep dietary restrictions and you know jews can they don't have to they're welcome to it's part of the tradition but it's not needed and and i think of you know a text like second maccabees chapter seven which is one of these apocryphal texts and how this talks about the martyrdom of a mother and her seven sons for refusing to give up their kosher laws their dietary restrictions when faced with certain death so you know i think understanding something of that moment of that context you read paul is my goodness gracious is he trying to make enemies if he's trying to convince jews he's not doing a very good job with it right so i think these things really do illumine biblical texts you know it's not a magic bullet but it helps us understand something of the uh of this moment this glimpse the snapshot of the past that we have in our new testament and i think you know maybe to put it this way to sum up what i think about these non-canonical texts including the gnostic gospels which are christian they're reminders of others of antiquity people of faith not just troublemakers but trying to work it out right reminders of others grappling with their faith in changing contexts whether you know during the old testament time or during the new testament time or thereafter and that hasn't ended that hasn't stopped we're still doing that in fact i think we have to or the bible just remains in the past it doesn't become something we can access today that doesn't mean everything's fine and we can't discern and debate and discuss whether you know some of these grapplings produce good things or maybe not so good things but that's that's certainly a matter of debate i'm not suggesting you know everything and anything goes you can say whatever you want to but the fact of the matter is that people of faith even within the bible and thereafter have been dealing with what does it mean here and now to live this life of faith in this god and canonical non-canonical texts and gnostic gospels to me are reminders of that very big and important process [Music] there's three chances to see me in person this february as i'll be traveling i'll do an ask science mike live in orange california february the 7th and ask science mike live february the 10th in cincinnati ohio and february the 23rd i'll be at the revive conference in san diego california you can learn more about these events by visiting ask sciencemic.com and clicking on the events tab our next question for pete came in via email and it reads what does the phrase translated eternal life in the new testament mean i've heard rob bell talk about the phrase meaning life of the ages and how it was meant to refer to the best possible life here and now and also in the future rob's concern which i support is getting us away from thinking it only means life in heaven when we die it includes present reality quality of living and yet there are passages when it seems jesus is talking about some future life after the resurrection or in the age to come see also luke 18 verses 29-30 there seems to be some tension between jesus meaning eternal life as a here and now reality and a future reality thanks pete love your books and podcasts and thanks mike love your podcast too okay next question eternal life uh yes eternal life yes and i agree with the question uh that it's both now and future in fact i think that's a pretty fundamental and important new testament idea it's not just a future thing but it's a present thing it's it deals with a quality of life because uh you know the new age i mean i'm going to use paul's language or i guess maybe parroting paul's language a bit but um for paul the new age began with jesus's resurrection so if you're united to jesus by faith then you are likewise participating in this resurrection age which is something that is is very similar to this idea of eternal life already beginning now it's a quality of life for paul it's a quality of life that's summed up best by being uh but by saying you've been raised from the dead with jesus that's like romans chapter 6. so it's not an either or you know the lord's prayer thy kingdom come they will be done on earth as it is in heaven it's the summoning down of the kingdom here and now the kingdom is here because the king is here and i think that's a very important notion to be sure eternal life and resurrection those are also future concepts but the point is that in principle you've begun that journey already now by being united to this jesus who's raised from the dead so it's not just something for future reference now uh the question uh referred to to rob bell who talks about this as well and how this phrase eternal life is about the best possible life here and now i have to confess i'm not exactly sure like how rob develops that but let me develop that a little bit here that the you know the best possible life here now is not you know what televangelists might say about having several boats but it's the best possible life here now is paradoxical it's what in a lot of theologians call a cruciform life a life that takes the form of crucifixion the cross it's a life that is marked by uh by suffering and resurrection i think you know one of my favorite new testament passages is in philippians chapter 3 where paul says i want to know christ which means for paul participating in his suffering sharing in the fellowship of christ's suffering and as well as this power of the resurrection that marks his life right so that's the paradox your life now is more marked by both triumph and suffering uh humility is a major mark of this eternal life that we begin now again it's it's not like we're glowing and and have power over other people it's exactly the opposite it's paradoxical it's about self sacrifices about thinking of others as more important than you it's willingly taking on the shame of being a lowly servant just like jesus that's you know paul's the hymn of you know jesus in chapter two of philippians but you know it's it's it's this life that is marked by being like jesus and embodying jesus's life in our own which includes suffering dying you know if need be physically but definitely you know personally emotionally psychologically on a daily basis and also having this i mean this is all mystical language i can't possibly understand it but having this this access i guess through the spirit to resurrection power and the life that we live and again that doesn't mean it's all going to be nice and you know cherries and roses because it's not and we all know that but you know this this eternal life that begins now is marked by um the these the trials and tribulations of this life and handling this in a christ-like manner with humility and thinking of others is better than yourself that's why i think you know it's important that idea of eternal life beginning now is very very important because it reorients us to what it means to be transformed by the spirit and i think and forgive me folks this sounds so horrible but you know and i don't want to be like this i gotta look at myself too when i say this but you know i i just see non-eternal life christianity all over the place you know when it's you know wrapped up in political power or in making sure the others keep out and building walls around our beliefs and and and uh you know always casting judgment of people who are outside the tribe you know to me that those are not marks of the resurrection life as paul puts it or eternal life as the gospels put it and you know that's why i think it's important to to understand the presence of that that new kind of quality of life but also understand the marks of that life which are very very different than what we sometimes see and you know again for me that's i i keep thinking about i gotta do this better than i'm doing you know and and that's okay i don't feel you know unloved or pressured but it's just it's a goal you know to to to live the life that supposedly you know has those characteristics that mark us off as followers of jesus so i think this is a very important concept [Music] and our last question for bible pete came in via email and it reads what if i disagree with jesus i understand much of the old testament may be myth legend misguided and i may not always agree with the apostle paul but what if i even find some of jesus's statements harsh polarizing judgmental and in my opinion unchristlike of course every text has its unique hermeneutical but which of the following are potentially valid strategies a i shut up and submit because jesus is god b i consider that the gospel writer might have put his own spin on things which may not be infallible c i consider that something may have got lost in the process of oral tradition copies translations etc d i do some creative hermeneutical gymnastics to look for an out a possible reinterpretation that i'm more comfortable with e i assume jesus was using a rhetorical device appropriate for the specific conversation but maybe not take everything he said too literally or apply every statement universally f i consider that jesus might not have been omniscient and could have been wrong about some things gee i consider that jesus represented a revelation at a certain time in his human consciousness and his spirit is guiding to new levels of truth that humanity wasn't ready for all of the above other ideas can't wait to hear how pete handles this one okay last question and it's a doozy what if i disagree with jesus well pal if you do just give me a heads up so i can move out of the way so i don't get hit by the lightning bolt how does that sound okay hey just kidding um what if i disagree with jesus um excellent question giving all these scenarios a through g and i think they're all extremely thoughtful i want to comment on a couple of them i think you know a is wrong shut up and submit because jesus is god we'll get into that in a second what does that mean jesus is god um but also uh enf i think are very helpful um maybe there's a rhetorical device that's appropriate for a setting or for a time but it's not something to be applied to every statement universally and i think that's a very wise way to look at it and also consider that jesus might not have been omniscient and could have been wrong about some things yeah let's go there in a second okay let me set it up a little bit first though um i think you know this is this is all it all comes down to who do you think jesus is and christology and that thing that has occupied you know thinkers in the church well since the time of paul you know um and for us you know i think for us i would put it this way because this is language that i think we we use in the church and we we struggle with and we have to think through as well but what what does it mean for jesus to be god incarnate and by the way i can't answer that i i to me this is just above my pay grade the incarnation is a mystery of faith that's not an obvious thing right just oh yeah jesus is god is a phrase it doesn't quite cut that incarnation i think is much more complex and much more serious than that you know what does it mean to take this incarnation seriously you know remember this way what are the implications i mean really what are the implications of jesus being fully and truly human right you know maybe another way what are the implications of jesus being a real life flesh and blood human being living in first century judea now of course i can hear you know a response to that and saying well listen of course jesus was the person living at a certain time but don't forget he was god too okay um jesus was more than just another guy maybe he was more than simply human but he wasn't less than that either right this is the we can't minimize the humanity of jesus which is a tendency among a lot of christians frankly to right away go to what jesus is god so everything you say about god you say about jesus um that's a bit problematic when you read the gospels right when jesus finds things out he figures things out and he prays to the father he doesn't pray to himself and all that sort of stuff you know yeah jesus okay more than simply human but he was fully human as well and you know that's we just we can't overlook that you know and and when somebody's actually a human being a way to put that is that they are limited by their humanity we all are every human being no human being is omniscient right jesus was clearly not omniscient you read the gospels you know and and you know he even talks about things he doesn't know about it it's up to the father not up to him he doesn't know he's limited because of his humanity and you know because of that you know he had to learn things he had to figure things out jesus grew up just like anybody else and came to a certain consciousness and i think was you know endowed by god with a special status you know i don't want to try to you know parse out exactly what all that could mean but you know maybe at his baptism or earlier or you know according to paul is that his resurrection that's when he was you know endowed with this title lord this is what paul says in romans chapter one the first few verses so you know i i think the question of what it means for jesus to be god incarnate is is a mystery it's difficult but one thing we do understand and that's humanity and to be fully human means to be limited it means to learn i think simply saying well jesus is god i think that disrespects the process of what jesus had to do to become who he was i think it disrespects what the incarnation the doctrine of the incarnation of the church is actually trying to protect that jesus's humanity is of absolutely unequivocal importance right if you don't have a human jesus you don't have someone who identifies with us you don't really have god being among us god with us emmanuel you don't have that you know there's there's there's an ancient heresy called docetism where you know jesus's humanity was sort of just faking it it just sort of appeared human but really what he was was divine he just sort of put on this robe of humanity and just sort of walked around sort of like a roman god you know coming down and sort of acting human but they really don't belong here that's you know deeply problematic for the christian faith so the point of this is you know what if we disagree with jesus what we might have to at times or we might in other words i think we have permission to engage what jesus says and even if it's you know a gospel writer i think this is one of the questioners um you know number letter b the gospel writers might have put their own spin on things yeah of course they did but just leaving that to the side there are points where we might want to engage these writings and say yeah but i mean one good example is what jesus says about divorce you know in the sermon on the mount and then the old testament moses allows for a certificate of divorce but jesus is more strict he says that now it's not just a certificate of divorce like if the guy thinks you know he just is tired of her or whatever it's only for you know adultery for infidelity that's the only time that the husband can divorce the wife and and uh you know the the reason behind that is it actually protects those who might be unprotected namely the wife you can't just get rid of her because if you get rid of her she has no means of living there's no economic stability for the most part right you don't just go to college and become a secretary back then right so so jesus is i think this is a move to protect the woman so jesus had reasons for doing what he did for saying what he said but you know today we we have a different problem to confront and it's it's you know maybe spousal abuse right and you know i've heard this passage used to say you know christians should never divorce unless there's adultery right well does that mean jesus automatically in any case where there's adultery then you can divorce someone right or you know what about if there's something else going on that's you know psychological abuse or physical abuse what do you do in those situations right so i think it's okay in fact i'm gonna say this it's necessary to read this and say okay what wisdom is there and what jesus is saying for his time and we can think about that and how that maybe can be transported into a different time and place but simply to say you know well jesus said this about divorce and that's it that's the end of it well goodness gracious i mean it's it's you know that would not be i think a wise thing to do right see jesus said what he said again because of his full humanity addressing a human situation in his time and place and you know he's he's doing this in a rather dramatic way in the sermon on the mount he's almost po by sort of is posing like a moses figure giving commands from on high down to the people and engaging the old testament and switching it up a little bit and making a little bit more stringent but still we look at this and say jesus is who he is saying what he is and there's wisdom there but we cannot resolve absolve ourselves rather we cannot absolve ourselves of our responsibility of thinking through what does it mean to represent jesus here now best and we may have to think differently about let's say the nature of divorce and a whole lot of other things we could engage but you see in principle in other words i think it's our our required you know again responsibility to engage these texts responsibly right and you know maybe if we were transferred transported back into those ancient days and we were to you know engage jesus from a modern point of view we might bring some of these things up and probably jesus would tell us to shut up because it's irrelevant but the question is okay what is jesus saying today and what jesus is saying today may be more than what jesus said then and this is all about now not just who you think jesus is but how we think of the working of the spirit in the life of christians in the life of the church today and i think that's a very very important question to bring into this so so i think disagreeing with jesus so to speak is not a sign of disrespect but it's a sign of taking responsibility for living a jesus cruciform life here and now [Music] and there we have it folks ask bible pete i'm really curious what you thought about this how it went for you um i mean i learned more on this episode of ask science mic than i typically do but it's because i had access to another person's thinking for the entire show which i found marvelous so here's what i'd like to know would you be interested in more guest hosts like this an ass bible beat round two someday uh as always this is your show i'd like to take it in a direction that you're interested in reach out on social media or via my website and let me know if you like guest hosts or how ask bible pete was for you thank you so much to peter ins for taking the time to host this program and again next week make sure you check out the next season of the bible for normal people pizza amazing podcast and you can support it on patreon i'd like to thank greg nordine for slaving over this audio and making both pete and i sound great and smarter than we actually are andrew lucky for his work in pre-production on this program including this special episode and of course my supporters on patreon that make this show possible thanks for listening everyone and i'll talk to you next week [Music]