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Discussing the Decline of Biblical Literacy in the West with Scott Hafemann · Centrally Speaking

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Centrally speaking, is the central twenty family church's family?
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: It speaks to beneficias that would be of interest to Rimsist humanity.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: In particular, in the German Christian worldview, interconnection with Western secular culture, in the spirit of the church's family, we take the perspective of the middle women, which is in agreement with the historic Christian Church.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Dr.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: Drake Williams, Minister of Mission and Theology of the Church.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: Our website is www.cscfamily.org.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: We're very uh fortunate today to have uh Dr.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_02: Scott Hafman uh join us to talk about uh the subject of biblical literacy and its uh decline uh that we're experiencing in the Western world.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: Dr.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: Hafman received his PhD at the University of Tubigan in 1985 in Tubigan, Germany.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: He then went on to teach at Taylor University for several years at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary, where he taught for 15 years, serving some of that time as Mary Rockefeller Professor of New Testament.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: Then he went on to teach at Wheaton College for nine years as Hawthorne Professor there, and now as the reader in New Testament at St.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: Mary's College of Divinity at St.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_02: Andrews University.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: And uh he is the author of many books and uh numerous articles, and uh specialized in the study of Paul and also in Corinthians.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: That's a real treat to have you on the show today, Scott.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to Central East.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Drake, for having me.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's an honor to be here.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_02: Let's talk about the decline of biblical literacy in the Western world.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_02: Many have been noticing that this is happening within church as well as in society.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_02: What are the significances of biblical literacy declining, whether it be for the church or for society or or even in the life of the family?
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's a great and important question you're asking because, I mean, there's the general problem with biblical literacy for society as a whole, since Western society for most of its history was fueled by and based on the biblical narrative and the characters of the Bible and the message of the Bible as the fountain for art and science and culture and politics, as well as, of course, for the church.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: So, just to give you one example, the University of St.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: Andrews, one of the courses that we offered for the general population of the university, most of which are not believers, of course, are not Christians, was a course called From Adam to Apocalypse, in which one of our instructors simply taught students the basic narrative of the Bible, the characters, you know, who's Abraham, who was Jesus, you know, what happened in Israel's history, just to go through the narrative of the main events, the main characters of the Bible, because of course, students who are studying art history were becoming virtually handicapped by their lack of knowledge of the Bible, to understand the history of art.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: People who are doing the history of science were having trouble understanding the scientific worldview because they didn't understand the origins of the scientific worldview in biblical scripture, et cetera, et cetera.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: So there would be a hundred students a semester taking this class just to understand the significance of the biblical narrative for their field, just in again in terms of just culture and history.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, so that's an important aspect for biblical literacy just in terms of our culture at large.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: But that's not the most important thing, actually.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: Speaking as a Christian, the most important thing is that the declining biblical literacy within the church means that we're also experiencing a decline in our understanding of who God is, what he's about in history, and his ultimate plans and goals for the redemption of his people and the transformation of the world and the new creation.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Because, and here's a incredibly radical claim: we as believers are convinced that the only authoritative source for our knowledge of God is actually the scriptures.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: So, as our understanding of scripture declines, so does our understanding of who God is and what he's about in our world.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, as our understanding of God declines, so does our understanding of ourselves, because we know that our own lives take on their meaning and significance only in relationship to our creator and redeemer.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: So without the scriptures, we become radically impoverished when it comes to understanding who God is, who we are, the purpose of life, the significance of our everyday experiences.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: And in that regard, of course, we as God's people become handicapped or hindered in the living out of our lives with significance and faithfulness in the world in which God has placed us.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: So the decline of biblical literacy really means the impoverishment of our life as believers.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: That, of course, for me would be the most important significance of the fact that we're actually losing scripture and its meaning in the life of the church.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not just a cultural phenomenon such as changing over of different ways or patterns, but this is a question of framework, isn't it?
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: For the Christian in the church, and for that matter, for society too, when it cannot understand uh, let's say the narrative of Adam and Eve as it reads through uh a novel so that it might understand the backdrop of why it was written.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly, exactly.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: And for the for the believer, again, we make the audacious claim that the primary sphere or means of God's self-revelation is not the private mystical experience in the individual's heart, but is actually the events of history.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: So that redemptive history is the sphere of God's self-revelation, not the private experience of the individual believer.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: So we as believers must understand God's self-revelation and the flow of history as recorded and interpreted for us by the scriptures, if we're gonna understand who God is.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so the fact that God has chosen to reveal Himself in space and time, and then to give us the authoritative interpretation of those events in his word means that, if you will, we're prisoners to that word if we're gonna understand who we are and what our relationship to God is all about.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: Again, that's one of the most radical claims that could possibly be made in our world today, because our world today has collapsed, people have collapsed in upon themselves and view their own subjective experience as the source of knowledge for themselves and the world around them, when we continue to make the claim that no, our understanding of ourselves and the world around us has to come from the scriptures as they witness to and testify to God's activities outside of ourselves in the history of redemption.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: So, in terms of what you're mentioning, framework and worldview, Christians have a very counter-cultural understanding of the world right now in terms of its source of significance.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: We don't look inside the human heart, as it were, but we will look outside of ourselves to redemptive history to understand what's going on.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: Must becomes very important indeed.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sure you've seen some of these statistics from uh Scotland, uh the Barner Group in 2018 has said that in the church, only 15% read their Bible daily, 27% read it weekly, 29% monthly, or just a couple times per year, 14% yearly, and 15% of those in the church never read the Bible.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: And in the USA, uh a survey from uh Lifeway Christian Resources in 2019 stated that only 32% of those who attend church regularly read their Bibles every day.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: It seems like an incredibly low statistic, but we have to assume that there's truth in these things.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_02: How have you been seeing biblical literacy declining in the classroom?
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_02: Or you've been teaching in the classroom for many years.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, can you see it uh among your students that they're reading the Bible uh less or have a lesser background as they enter into your classes?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, without a doubt.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, even when I taught seminarians who, of course, were coming into seminary after having completed a university degree, and you know, the vast majority of them came out of strong church backgrounds or at least strong campus ministry backgrounds through which they received a sense of calling to the ministry.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: Even among seminarians, you could not presuppose that they had any kind of comprehensive understanding of the Bible.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: So you couldn't make any sort of off-the-hand reference to the relationship between, let's say, the Abrahamic covenant and the Sinai covenant, and expect that the students would know what you're talking about.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: You wouldn't be able to make a reference to the fundamental contours of the ministry of the prophet Isaiah, for example, and understand, or even what the central content of the book of Jeremiah would be, or how the exile fits into the history of redemption in relationship to the Exodus.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, even in the New Testament, then you wouldn't expect them to have any understanding about the basic contours of the life and teachings of Jesus, or the history of the early church in Acts, or what was going on in the Pauline epistles.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: You had to virtually pause to explain almost any biblical reference that you made because you couldn't presuppose that they had had any kind of significant teaching or exposure, even when they were beginning their studies as seminarians.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: So you might remember, Drake, since you went to Gordon Conwell, that we used to give all students a content exam before they started to see what the level of their understanding of the basic contours of the Bible was.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: And if they flunked the exam, then they would have to take extra courses just to expose themselves to the basic survey content of the Bible.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: And most of the students flunked the exam.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's the seminarians.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, in college, when I taught college for nine years and then at the University of Wheaton, these are kids are coming out of, you know, for the most part, evangelical Christian backgrounds.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: But even then, you couldn't mention a name like Abraham and expect that they would understand who you're talking about or where he fit into the biblical narrative, not to mention something like, you know, the book of Zephaniah.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that would be way off the chart.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: So, yes, there's no question about the lack of biblical literacy in in the churches today.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm going to make it even worse than the statistics, because what the statistics don't reveal is the fact that even those 15% who are reading the Bible in Scotland or the 32% who are reading the Bible in America are not reading the Bible for the content of the Bible itself.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: So they're not actually gaining an understanding of what scripture teaches.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: Instead, they've been taught, both in the church and by culture, to read the Bible in a way that I would call devotionally experiential.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: And what I mean by that is instead of reading the Bible and asking themselves first the question, what did the apostle Paul mean when he wrote Romans 1 to the church in Rome in the first century?
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe I need to look at some highly qualified biblical teachers to help me understand what Paul's doing in the book of Romans in the first century when he wrote it to the folks in Rome.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: No, instead, what they'll do is they'll just read a small portion of Romans 1, take a verse out of its context, never ask the question, what did it mean when Paul originally wrote it to his original audience?
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: Never ask the interpretive question, but instead simply ask the personal application question.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, what does this verse mean to me today and what I'm feeling right now with the emphasis on what I'm feeling right now?
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: The Bible reading that does go on tends to be atomistic and a contextual.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, a verse here, a verse there, taken out of its original context and then immediately applied to the reader's personal, private experience on that particular 24-hour period of their life.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: And from that, then they try to derive some sort of immediate guidance or message from God, believing that God will use the words of the Bible as if it were some sort of magic book and speak to them through these words, even though the sentences of the scripture they're reading are no longer being understood in their original context.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: Because what the original author, you know, be it the prophet Jeremiah or the Apostle Paul or Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels, you know, what the original author of those statements was attempting to communicate, has no bearing anymore on what they believe the Bible means for them in the immediate moment.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Even those who are reading the Bible daily are no longer actually getting in contact with what the Bible itself is teaching.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: Instead, they treat the Bible as if it were kind of a Ouija board that gives them these kind of magical messages that can apply directly to their own lives, apart from its original meaning.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: Again, don't get me wrong, I think the Bible should be applied to our lives.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think that God does want to use his word to speak to us and guide our lives.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't think that the question of what does the Bible mean to me in terms of its daily significance could ever be asked or should ever be asked before we first ask the question, what did this biblical text mean in its original context?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: So before asking the question, what does it mean in my context?
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: We got to figure out what it means in its original context.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: So actually I'm quite discouraged because even those who are reading the Bible are no longer reading the Bible in terms of the Bible's own intended message, but instead are simply reading experientially for a devotional application.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that does not increase biblical literacy.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: It increases a lot of personal, private, almost mystical experiences, but may not ever increase a person's understanding of what the Bible itself is about.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, when I read these statistics, I'm always saying to myself, and things are a lot worse than they appear.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I guess that brings up the question: how did it get like this?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_02: Because people at one time did used to say, what did Paul mean when uh he wrote to the Romans or what was in mind with the book of Deuteronomy?
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: But we're not asking those questions anymore.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: So this leads to the question, how do we get there?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_02: Um, what are some of the factors that caused uh biblical literacy, the type that you're talking about?
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_02: We're asking questions of the text and not our own uh spiritual reflections uh off of little snippets.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, how how do we get there?
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_02: Is it secularism?
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_02: Is it something else?
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: What do you feel the culprits are?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's a good question.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: I'm and I'm not sure.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's a great question, actually, important question.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure I know the answer to it because I don't really consider myself very well versed in the development of cultural and intellectual history.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: I have a few hunches.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: There's an author by the name of Hostetter who decades ago wrote a book about anti-intellectualism in American culture and basically traced out the development of the anti-intellectual strain in American culture that derives from the fact that, given our important emphasis on democracy, we take this idea that everybody is an equal participant in society at large and transfer that over to the fact that everybody can be an equal expert in whatever field they choose to explore, if that field has immediate relevance.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: That anti-intellectualism in American religious life then became so powerful because people then attach that to kind of an anti-elitism and an anti-expert attitude in which people never began to feel like, well, nobody needs to tell me what the Bible says, I can decide that for myself.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: And by elitism and experts, I simply mean people who are seriously trained to understand the biblical message and communicate it to others, you know, teachers in the church.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that fueled that development was ironically the very powerful tradition of Bible translation that we have in the West.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, people don't just have simply one choice of an English Bible, they've got dozens of choices.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: And biblical translations into English now are so well done that you can pick a literacy level and create a translation that will be immediately understandable to that level.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: So we have biblical translations that are aimed at an eighth-grade reading level, for example.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so if you pick up a Bible that's aimed at an eighth-grade reading level and you read it, it appears to be immediately understandable because it is in the English idiom.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: And that leads then to the wrong assumption that because I can understand the English so easily, therefore I can understand the message so easily because it applies immediately to me where I'm at.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so there is, on the one hand, an anti-intellectual, anti-teaching bias in the church fueled by our culture of democracy, that gets matched with the powerful translations that we have.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: Thirdly, then, when you bring to that the idea that in American culture, immediate relevant experience is the most important thing that you could have in life, you kind of get this very dangerous potent where, again, the primary question becomes, what does the Bible mean to me?
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: In the Protestant world, then, because we stress the priesthood of all believers, we begin to think that means every believer has an equal expertise when it comes to understanding the Bible.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: So we don't need Bible teachers anymore.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we can just gather in a circle, read the Bible, go around the circle and ask each person, well, what does this verse mean to you?
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: What does this verse mean to you, et cetera?
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: And by the time we get all the way around to the beginning of the circle, the Bible studies leader's job is only to say, isn't it wonderful that the Bible can mean so many different things to so many different people?
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because inevitably, as you go around the circle, there's going to be about six or seven different interpretations and applications of that same biblical text.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: It is a combination, I think, of cultural influences, of anti-intellectualism and American history overall, and then fueled together with a Bible that's accessible to everybody, matched with an emphasis on the priesthood of all believers, and just this finally emphasis on the autonomy of the individual.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_01: Who are you, oh teacher, to tell me what the Bible means?
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: I certainly now, with this English Bible in my hand, can understand the Bible for myself.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: I used to hear from my students, especially beginning college students, but once in a while a seminary, you know, would say to me, Well, why do I really need to take this class on the Bible?
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: All I really need is my Bible and the Holy Spirit, because that would be the final linchpin here.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: Not only do we have autonomy, but we everybody has the spirit.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: So the Holy Spirit can just tell you what the Bible means.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I used to chuckle a little bit to myself and then say, No, really, what you mean is all you need is the Holy Spirit and 400 years of concentrated scholarly endeavor, which gave you your English Bible, which is so easy to understand.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: So, really, you need the Holy Spirit and 400 years of scholarship because nobody stops to reflect on how they actually got this English Bible from the original Greek, Aramaic, and uh Hebrew manuscripts from which it came, you know, which weren't collated and certainly not, you know, translated.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: So somebody had to get us from the original biblical manuscripts to where we are today.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a it's a combination of certain kinds of piety on the Holy Line on the Holy Spirit, American and now Western autonomy, and then of course the anti-intellectualism of the culture.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: It also derives now from the fact that we have an under-educated clergy, an under-educated pastorate, and we are exporting this under-educated leadership of the church around the world.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: So if the leaders haven't been trained to understand the Bible in its original context, they certainly can't communicate that to anybody else.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: So on the frosting of this cake of illiteracy, we now have a very, very worldwide crisis of untrained leadership in the church.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_02: So very well thought through uh answer.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_02: And uh makes it makes it very complex then to think about reversing biblical illiteracy so that people are literate and are able to think through what the text actually means and says or the time in which it was written, and then being able to import it properly onto a person today ought to think or ought to believe.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: How'd you go about doing this practically in your class?
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, in class, it's a little bit easier in one sense, and that is they have to learn what you're teaching them because otherwise they're not going to pass the class.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: So you have a you have kind of an external motivation.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: And in the church, you don't have that, it's much more difficult.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: However, what is the same in the classroom and in the church is that I think ultimately the only way to reverse this is a very small grassroots mustard seed movement in which we begin to create well-trained Bible teachers who can communicate to folks in the church understandings of the Bible that they realize they would never come to on their own, with an excitement about what that biblical text means actually for life in the modern world.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: So teachers who can actually help explain the Bible and then apply the Bible to everyday life in a way that people go, oh wow, I never would have seen that, or I certainly didn't understand that.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: And they begin to say to themselves, oh, I would never try to self-diagnose cancer.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: I would go to a cancer specialist.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: I would never try to figure out if I had a lot of you know extra money how to invest in the complexities of the American economy.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: I better go to a financial advisor, maybe even somebody who has an MBA and a degree in accounting, and maybe they're even a lawyer on the side who would know how to handle my money.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: Or I'm facing a serious issue of mental illness.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: I would never try to figure out what to do with this.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: I better go actually to a counselor, a trained counselor, a psychologist or psychiatrist to get some help, right?
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: So we are very willing in the West to go to experts when it comes to the things that are really important to us in terms of life in this world, our bodies, our mental health, our money.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: But somehow, when it comes to things that are really important for the age to come and eternity, we're willing to say, oh, anybody can read the Bible for themselves.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: They don't really need somebody that's well trained.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I think what we need again is a grassroots movement of people who are, as they used to put it, In the old days of the church, doctors of the church.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_01: We don't just need doctors of the Bible.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_01: We need, I mean, doctors of the body.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: We need doctors of the church.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: We don't just need people who are highly skilled financial advisors with MBAs.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: We need people who are highly skilled, you know, masters of the biblical text.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's about the only way we can do it is to show people again what they're missing if they're not sitting under the leadership of a well-trained biblical scholar, which means that we not only have to recover serious theological education in the West because we're quickly losing it, we also have to begin to export again well-trained biblical leadership for the global church.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: And as you know, Drake, from all your experience overseas, we call it leadership training, but really, you know, serious biblical and theological education for the leadership of the church is, I think, the number one need right now for the spreading of the Great Commission.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because as missiologists are telling us now about the church everywhere, not just, you know, in sub-Saharan Africa, but also in, you know, Iowa and Wyoming, the church is becoming a mile wide and an inch deep.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so it gets swept away by every wind of doctrine, as the Apostle Paul would put it, into things like the prosperity gospel or into things like Christian nationalism or a nationalism of any other country or whatever it might be, rather than holding on to a biblical understanding of the life of faith in the midst of adversity and the priority of the kingdom of God over any national identity.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: But again, you're not going to be able to resist these cultural trends unless you've got a well-founded biblical faith, which demands well-founded biblical teachers.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: I wish I had an easier answer, but it really comes down to an individual Bible teacher in an individual church with its individual small group, teaching the Bible faithfully, and people being willing to sit under the teaching of those whom they trust.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: I appreciate the uh well-thought-through uh responsibleness, Scott, to have all you've seen over the years in uh the classroom, uh, nationally and internationally, from your time that you've spent with us here at uh the Schwenkfelders.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_02: You know that we have a vast repository of books where people have written, thought about the text of scripture and ordered it, uh, placed it in uh the Schwenkfelder Library and Heritage Center.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_02: But it's that type of tradition that is constantly evaluating that I think it is a positive route.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's it's it's really amazing.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Central Church wouldn't exist apart from the scholarship during the Reformation period.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: All of the reformers were professors and teachers initially.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, they were also ministers in the church, but they were most of them, I think almost all of the leaders held dual roles in academics and in the church.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then that appreciation for the scholarship of the church was passed on.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: So you had people who out of even like the nobility in your tradition, who then began to study scripture seriously and were willing then to say, despite the way the scripture is being interpreted every day in our culture, that's not what the prophets and the apostles were saying.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: And we're going to submit to that revelation rather than to our own uh most cherished opinions.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so the reformation movements and the tradition from which, of course, you come from was all based on a submission to scripture as it was seriously studied, not a submission to it to oneself.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: It was this it was a willingness to put an entire people movement, if you will, like the Schwank Elders, under the authority of Scripture.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: And one example I know it's very controversial from your tradition, but it is very striking to me is the uh decision to forego celebrating communion because the leadership became so convinced that what Jesus taught about the unity of the church was true and was so counter-cultural to the way in which the church was living in its day that something radically counter-cultural, if you will, had to be done in order to say, wait a minute, we're not taking Jesus seriously here.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, I know your own tradition debates the decisions that were made, but my goodness, when I first heard about it, they go, here's a group of people who say, we're so committed to the teachings of Jesus over against even contemporary church practice, even within the Reformation movement, that we're going to take this radical step to make a dramatic statement and say, until we become obedient to actually what the Bible's teaching, we can no longer pretend to have church unity when we don't have it.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: I know, you know, the controversial debate around, but at its core, it was a declaration of the authority of scripture understood in its original context, which would be lost today on most churches, because what church today would make that kind of stand?
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, well, churches are starting to have to do it against some kind of social movements in the church today or moral movements in the church today, which could end up costing us something.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_01: So churches are starting to see that that might come our way, but it's much broader than just this social movement or that social movement.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: It comes down to the everyday life of Christians and how we spend our money and what our priorities are and what we understand the life of the church to be and our role in it.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_02: Mary, that you've spent a lot of time in in biblical studies, is uh the use of the old testament and the new for our listeners, the quotations, allusions, echoings of scripture that then of the old testament that formulates uh the way that either the gospels are written or Paul or Peter or John uh goes about writing.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's a quite a complex area of study.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_02: Do you feel that in-depth study uh uh or that type of approach uh helps increase biblical literacy for the rank and file of the church?
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes, yes, because it does a couple of things.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: First, it shows people the sovereignly created unity of scripture, in which they can begin to see that the New Testament actually didn't just drop down out of heaven, so to speak, but is the continuation and fulfillment of the history of redemption that begins with Adam and Eve and goes through the call of Adam and I mean Abraham rather, and it's established in the Sinai Covenant and gets taken through, you know, the Exodus and the exile and the hopes for messianic redemption after the exile, and then begins to have its inaugural fulfillment in the coming of the Messiah, etc.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: And you begin to see then that you can't understand the New Testament without understanding the Old Testament from which it comes and in which it finds its fulfillment.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: Why I say that's so important is because not only do people then begin to understand the whole Bible in its kind of coherent expanse, but they also start to get really excited about the fruits of serious biblical study because they begin to see insights into scripture that they never saw before once they see the way in which scripture is using scripture.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: So the Old Testament use of the Old Testament and the New Testament use of the Old Testament really becomes another exciting tool to help people regain biblical literacy because they have to understand one particular biblical passage within the context of the Bible as a whole, and in doing so begin to get excited not only about the unity of scripture, but uh but about the fruits of serious study.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: Because apart from a serious study of the text, you won't begin to see these inner connections uh within scripture itself.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, you would never understand even the most fundamental Christian confessions.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the earliest Christian confession, one that I was taught when I first became a Christian as well, even in the modern world, is Jesus Christ as Lord.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we forget that it takes a lot of understanding of the biblical narrative as a whole to understand that very basic, simple statement.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, as a young Christian, I had to be taught that Jesus' name wasn't Jesus, that it was Joshua.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: And why was he named Joshua and not Moses, for example, or not Jeremiah, or not Simeon or Ezekiel or something?
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: Why call the Messiah Joshua?
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, obviously it has to do with the fact that he is the fulfillment of the one who ultimately brings God's people into the promised land of the new creation.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: So just as Joshua brought the people of God into the promised land, so too our Joshua is the one who will bring us into the promised land of the new creation.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: He is the one who is God, our deliverer.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: He is our Joshua, if you will.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: But I sort of intuitively thought that Christ was Jesus' last name, you know, Fred Schwartz, Jesus Christ.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know that the word Christ actually meant an anointed one, and that its primary tradition was the anointing of the kings of Israel, so that the anointed one ultimately becomes the anointed one, the Messiah.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: I had to be taught that Christ actually means the Messiah of Israel.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: So that when we say Joshua is the Christ, we're saying our Joshua is the messianic king of Israel, the anointed one, the long-awaited fulfillment of the promise to David that one of his descendants would have a kingdom that lasts forever.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I first had to learn about Joshua, then I had to learn about the messianic king of Israel, because the Bible begins to make clear that under God's sovereignty, the messianic king of Israel is going to be the ruler of all the nations.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: So here I am, a little Gentile of German descent, you know, in Illinois, learning that I've been incorporated into the history of God's salvation of his people.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_01: And as a Gentile, now being brought under the rulership, the lordship of the Jewish Messiah, who is the redeemer of God's people.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: So that I had to begin to understand myself as part of this ongoing history of the people of God that actually goes back to the promise of Genesis 3:15.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, even when we say Jesus Christ is Lord, we're talking about Joshua, the messianic king of Israel, who's now the ruler and boss of all the nations, and we as Gentiles are being incorporated into that history.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well, without understanding the Old Testament as it begins to be fulfilled in the New Testament, without understanding that the Old Testament's the key to the new, without reading the new in light of the old, I wouldn't have understood what the most basic confession, Jesus Christ as Lord, actually means.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: It starts with these most basic understandings and then just develops from there.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, why does Paul say in Romans 11 that we as followers of the Jewish Messiah, as Gentiles, are now part of the remnant of Israel and find our identity in relationship to the 7,000 who didn't bow the knee to Baal when Elijah thought that he was the only one left?
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what does it mean to be part of the remnant people of God?
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, these kinds of questions.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: People, when they start to see the biblical understanding of who we are, I think they get excited.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: But again, it takes serious study of scripture, well-trained biblical teachers, people who are patient and humble enough to submit themselves to the original meaning of the text before they ask the question, what does this mean to me?
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: It takes a real humility.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, all these things then kind of mix together to create, I think, a renewal of biblical literacy in the church.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_02: Let me ask you one uh uh last question here.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_02: It's actually a combination of uh several uh life weight uh Christian resources as they were evaluating ways to for a person to raise their own biblical literacy, uh suggested these these things that one should be a part of a church that believes in the divine inspiration of scripture, that one should be a part of a small group of Bible study where one is studying with people together.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_02: Do you agree with their conclusions?
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_02: These are ways that if somebody wants to raise their own biblical uh literacy, that they should look for a church with a statement on divine inspiration uh of scripture and uh and also um look to be a part of a small group, be a Sunday school class or a Bible study group?
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would say yes, unqualified yes to the first and a qualified yes to the second question.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: The qualified yes to the first question is yeah, why why go through all the trouble of trying to study the Bible or to sit under the leadership of somebody who's patiently taking you through the Bible in its original context before you ask the question, what does it mean to me?
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: Why do that if it's not the inspired word of God?
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: So, yes, I think believing that the scripture is God's word to us today, as it interprets for us God's acts in redemptive history, that's fundamental.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think people that aren't committed to scripture as the word of God would find very little motivation to study it, unless, again, they just viewed it as one of these religious classics and believed, you know, in kind of a mystical new age way that, yeah, that God, whatever or whoever he or she is, could speak to us through any religious text.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: So you could read the Bible one day and read the Quran the next, and because any, you know, any religious text could do.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, you could just read reader's digest.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, God could use anything, right?
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, amen.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: Go to a church, belong to a church that has a very high view of scripture as the inspired word of God.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: The small group question I answer with a qualified yes, because the key to that statement would be where you study the Bible together.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: Many quote-unquote small group Bible studies are actually prayer and share groups where people get together and they use the Bible then to share about their own personal feelings or religious experiences, which are important, but they're not actually studying the Bible.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: They're just using the Bible as a springboard to talk about themselves, you know, what the Bible means to them and their own personal experience.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then they share that with the group.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, that's combined with sharing personal needs and praying for personal needs.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think prayer and share is fabulous, important.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_01: We ought to get together with people and share our concerns and our lives and pray for one another.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: I just would not equate that with studying the Bible.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: If it's a group in which people go around the circle and just share what the Bible means to them, I don't think it's very helpful for biblical literacy.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: It may be a good springboard for prayer, but I wouldn't, in my understanding, call that Bible study.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: If you've got a small group with a with a serious person or two or three who are actually trying to help one another study the scriptures, then that could be very, very powerful.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_01: Again, study meaning trying to figure out what the Bible was saying when it was originally written and put together as a book of books, because it doesn't always mean recreating the history of the book of Judges, for example, but it means understanding the message of Judges in its original context as it relates to, you know, the ongoing biblical canon, you know, the Torah behind it, the development of Israel's history in front of it, et cetera.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: That could be good in a small group because you might have more opportunity to ask your questions and to discuss the text than you would in a large group.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: If it comes to studying the Bible, you could study the Bible in a large group too, very effectively.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you could have a hundred people in front of you.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_01: You're teaching the Bible seriously.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: People could be, you know, learning carefully and following along and studying the Bible with one particular Bible teacher in front of you, or but you might not have the courage to ask your questions uh or to enter into discussion in front of a hundred people that you might in front of 10.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: At the level of study, a small group is probably good for discussion and questions, uh, but it doesn't really change the dynamic of the study portion of biblical studies.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: So that's my understanding of a qualified yes, because again, most small groups are prayer and share groups, and that doesn't really increase biblical literacy.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they might read the Bible, they might read biblical verses, but it's not moving to literacy.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_02: In your opinion, one needs to be make sure that one is actually involved with the study of the scriptures so that if we're trying to figure out what the gospel said at their point in time, what uh Genesis said at its point in time.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this is going to sound very authoritarian or elitist, but I'll just give you an example.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: I taught Sunday school a while back in our church, and I was teaching a group.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I don't I want to be the first to admit when I'm teaching that I might not understand this or I might understand something wrongly, or I'm often saying, now here's a question where sincere Christians sincerely disagree, you know, and here's two different understandings of this particular item or question or theology.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'll give them what the two basic views are, but then I'll tell them what I hold and why, because I don't want to just present a smorgasbord and say, you know, here's five views, pick the one you like best.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I might present two or three views, but then I'll always argue strongly for my particular view.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, I gave my view of this particular issue that came up in First Peter, and I said what it was.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: And this very godly, well-meaning person was really upset with the view that I presented, which is okay, great, you know, ask questions, let's discuss it.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: But instead, this person just gave a counter-understanding and couched it in this context.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, this is what the Lord has shown me this text means.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: And if it means what you just said, it means that I could not believe in God anymore.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, they kind of pulled out a spiritual one-upmanship, you know.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: So, what am I going to say as the Bible teacher?
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, the Holy Spirit didn't tell you that.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_01: So now we're arguing about, you know, who's got more of the Holy Spirit, so to speak.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because it wasn't an argument about the text, it was all from her own personal experience, right?
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_01: So the Holy Spirit had showed her what this is what the text meant, and if it meant what I said, she couldn't believe in God anymore.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: So you're right up against the wall of powerful personal, private experience.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: Because I might be wrong, but I was challenging one of her most cherished convictions about the Bible.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, at that point, you see, in a study, you would want to be able to interact with one another, talk about the different perspectives, look at you know, the reasons for one over against the reasons for the other, talk about why I read it this way.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: But it was impossible because at that point the thing just came to a dead end because you were trying to match an argument about the understanding of the text up against a private, personal, immediate, experiential understanding of the text.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: And you can't really go much further after that.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for taking uh time today to talk with us about uh biblical literacy and problems as it's receding in uh the modern world and in the church, and then also uh uh giving some perspective on how uh to rectify it.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for the interview.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: Again, thanks for having me, and uh thanks to those of you who are listening for.