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Welcome to the show that gets Christians 
thinking about faith and politics.

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Get ready to challenge the status quo.

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Expand your imagination and tackle 
controversy head on.

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Let's stand together at the intersection of 
faith and freedom.

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It's time for the Libertarian Christian 
podcast.

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Welcome to another episode of The 
Libertarianchristians.com, a project of the

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Libertarian Christian Institute and part of 
the Christians for Liberty network. And with

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me, I have another host at one of the other 
podcasts on the Christians for Liberty

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Network. His name is Alex Bernardo.

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He's the host of the Protestant Libertarian 
Podcast, and he lives in rural Kentucky,

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where he enjoys reading, 
theology, podcasting and cajoling Cody Cook

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for living in Ohio. And he likes writing.

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Yeah, he likes writing.

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Uh, which is why he's on to tell us about 
this project that he's been working on. And I

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think it would be of great interest to 
libertarian Christians. Alex, thanks for

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joining me again. This is like, 
I don't know, your fifth appearance. 10th

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appearance, something like that.

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It's always good to be back here, 
Doug. I really appreciate it and I appreciate

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that you mentioned my hatred for Ohio at the 
very top of the episode.

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You know, I, uh, you know, 
we'd like to diss on Ohio.

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I recently had occasion to drive through Ohio 
and then also on through Indiana and Michigan

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and Wisconsin, and Ohio was not the worst 
state.

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Yeah. So there's that.

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And I'm going to be real honest with everyone 
that's listening here. I grew up in Northern

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Kentucky, so right across the river from 
Cincinnati. I think that everyone can agree

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that Cincinnati, for the most part, 
is pretty terrible city. And for most of my

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childhood, I associated the entire state of 
Ohio with the city of Cincinnati.

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Ohio is actually beautiful, 
and there's a lot of really cool places in

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Ohio. I love that state a lot.

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I just hate Cincinnati so much.

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Uh, and that's really where all of this, 
this,

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um, you know, this kind of anger and 
aggression towards Ohio comes from.

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I see, I see. So is that why you have to 
write,

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like, a 130 000 word book, 
which is what you sent me?

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Yes. Uh, yeah. Pretty much.

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And we're, you know, we're about, 
uh, I would say it's probably about two

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thirds of the way to the end.

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So it's going to be.

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Yeah. No. That's good. That's good.

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No. I like to hear it because I know, 
obviously,

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I know the topic that you're writing about. I 
want to talk to you about that today. Um,

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you and I tend to have a lot of similar 
thoughts on things,

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although you have, you know, 
you've stayed up more currently with some of

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the more recent scholarly works and books and 
things.

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Um, so you have fewer kids than I do, 
so maybe that accounts for it,

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I don't know. Uh, but, 
uh, anyway, tell us about this project you're

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working on. Like, kind of what prompted you 
to want to write about this?

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Uh, and what is the what is your book gonna 
be about?

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Yeah. So I really appreciate that.

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And also, you are completely correct.

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Having one kid is the reason why I can write 
this book at this stage of my life.

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Uh, definitely gives you a lot of free time 
to pursue these kind of interests that,

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uh, my friends that don't have only one kid, 
uh,

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they just don't have the same amount of time 
to afford. But anyways, the book is called.

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The tentative title of the book is politics, 
Economics,

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and New Testament Interpretation, 
and it really is a summation of a lot of the

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issues that I've been thinking about over, 
really over the last 20 years,

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even before I was really interested in 
politics.

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And it's been 5 or 6 years since I really 
started diving into economics and political

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philosophy. And I've realized that a lot of 
the language and the categories that we use

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in the modern world to think about political 
and economic,

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um, political and economic structures and 
political and economic concepts are not they

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don't have any sort of solid foundation that 
people very loosely use words that are

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associated with political and economic, 
um, subjects all the time without ever

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attempting to define them. And this is 
something that for a very long time,

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I've identified in New Testament scholarship,

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even before I was, I was like, 
self-consciously political.

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I realized that there were, 
in many cases, disjunctions between the

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claims that certain New Testament scholars 
were making about what the writers of the

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Bible were saying, and then their modern 
application to the realm of politics and

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economics, and that I think that by trying to 
ground some of these concepts and definitions

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that are stable and applicable and more 
constant than the way that New Testament

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scholars have generally approached these 
issues. It actually sheds more light on how

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we can better interpret the New Testament in 
its own historical context.

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And I think, more importantly for modern 
Christians,

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draw draw on principles from those texts that 
we can use to kind of navigate our own

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political and economic landscape today.

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So this book is an attempt to try to deal 
with those those problems.

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How do we deal with the complete subjectivity 
of language with respect to economic and

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political concepts? And once we have a 
grounded understanding of politics and

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economics, how does that how does that allow 
us then to go and interpret the Bible in its

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historical context and come up with 
conclusions that might be a little bit more

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satisfactorily aligned with the intentions of 
the original author than what New Testament

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scholarship has produced up to this point.

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So give us a sense of what you mean when you 
say New Testament scholarship,

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because I know you probably have a whole 
bunch of authors in your head, and I don't

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know what people listening are going to think 
of.

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Um, but some people might be listening and 
think,

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well, none of the New Testament scholars that 
I read are really in contradiction,

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because a lot of them are just all about 
helping us understand when when Galatians was

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written and, you know, 
more spiritual and non-economic and

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nonpolitical things. And so I roughly know 
the authors that you're referring to,

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but I think they're really, 
really helpful to kind of discuss that

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because this, this sort of, 
um, sphere of I don't know what the word is,

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this grouping of authors that that are New 
Testament scholars tend to sort of dip into

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the economic realm, which is sort of out of 
their lane in a way.

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Right. Yeah. And so why is it?

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Who are these people? And we can talk about 
them by name or maybe not,

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but like, what kind of scholar are they?

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And then why is it that they seem to want to 
dip out of their lane a bit?

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Sure. And I do think just to just to make it 
really clear to the audience before we get

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into some of the specific authors in this 
camp,

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there is in in academia, 
there is a distinction between biblical

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Scholarship and theology.

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And I want to make sure that our audience 
understands that,

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because it's very important that when I talk 
about New Testament scholarship in

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particular, I'm talking about people that are 
essentially historians who focus on the

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biblical writings. And so my book is going to 
focus like my specialty is not the Old

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Testament. So my book is focusing on on New 
Testament interpretation.

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So these are scholars who have and obviously 
you can't you cannot draw,

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especially in Christian circles, 
a hard wall between theology and history.

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It's just not possible. But these are 
scholars that are self-consciously operating

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within the categories of historiography, 
like they're trying to come to.

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They're trying to construct historically 
plausible historical scenarios within which

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we can interpret the New Testament. That's 
kind of the goal of New Testament

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scholarship. And it's been very popular for 
at least the last 25 years in New Testament

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scholarship to see the claims that are being 
made by New Testament authors as being in

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conflict with Roman imperialism.

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This is called this the anti-imperial reading 
of Paul in evangelical circles.

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Probably the most famous name associated with 
that is N.T.

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Wright. But then you also have people like 
Scott McKnight and Mike bird who have written

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extensively on that as well.

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And then in and I know some of these scholars 
would consider themselves to be Christians as

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well. But you have people that aren't within 
the evangelical world like Richard Horsley

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and Neal Elliott. Very recently I've had 
James Crossley on my show before,

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and Robert Miles have written a book that 
analyzes Jesus through the lens of Marxism.

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And so these are these are scholars that are,

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um, that are interested in the historical 
interpretation of the New Testament,

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but are also interested in the way that it 
intersects with modern political concepts.

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Now, it's pretty obvious when you read them 
that a lot of the literature that they're

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engaging with in terms of their reading of 
economics in particular,

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is, is like secondary literature that's 
written by people that have a self-conscious,

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um, that have a self-conscious perspective on 
certain economic and political issues.

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And so I can use. Some of this is you can 
tell just by reading through the bibliography

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at the back of these books.

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They're not reading like the political 
philosophers themselves. They might be

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familiar with Karl Marx or, 
um, or maybe they've read like Keynes or like

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Adam Smith or something like that, 
but they're not steeped in,

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um, in economic thought and political 
philosophy.

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And yet they're drawing these kind of very 
broad economic and political conclusions from

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the text and aren't necessarily justified by 
the way that political theorists and

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economists understand these very same 
concepts.

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And so by doing that, 
they wind up bringing all of these imprecise

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categories to the text with them as they're 
interpreting the New Testament and then

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drawing monitoring conclusions that I think 
are at odds with what the writers of the

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Bible are attempting to communicate. And so 
much of that is that they just aren't like

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they're very interested in politics and 
economics. And a lot of this is probably the

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like the academic incentive of I work in a 
university.

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Universities are inherently political, 
and we're supposed to stimulate students to

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think about these kind of grand political and 
economic issues. But these New Testament

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scholars might not have there, 
might not be familiar with kind of hard

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political and economic philosophy, 
and they certainly aren't familiar with,

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like, the Austrian tradition of economics. 
Right. Like, like, like they're not reading

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anything that's outside of the mainstream.

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And you can kind of see that reflected in the 
areas in their literature where even if

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they've done very strong historical 
scholarship,

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it just doesn't quite translate to the modern 
world and the way that they think it ought

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to.

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Yeah, they might get to Hayek because he was 
pretty popular.

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Yes, yes.

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And was kind of opposite Keynes.

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And so they're like, all right, 
well, we'll read we'll read his nemesis.

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Yeah. Well, and even then I'm glad you 
brought that up, because I'm reading a book

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right now and I might have the author on my 
show. So I'm not going to name any names, but

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it's very clear that his analysis of Hayek 
doesn't come from his own personal reading of

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Hayek. It has to have come from like like an 
activist anti Hayek book,

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which again, you can't be an expert in 
everything. And so I get it.

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If you're a scholar and you are already 
committed to a particular political

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perspective, then you're probably going to 
read someone who's done an analysis of the

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people that you don't agree with. But it's 
like it's very clear in his presentation of

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Hayek in his book that he's not read Hayek 
because he attributes to hike certain ideas

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that in Hayek's work he specifically refutes,

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uh, like one of them is scientism.

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He's like, yeah, well, 
Hayek is basically just working within, you

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know, scientistic categories.

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When Hayek himself, like, 
wrote an entire book against using scientism

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in economic reasoning.

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Right. And so but you get a lot of that New 
Testament scholarship,

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too, where it's just like, 
okay, I can tell that they're interested in

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these issues. Yeah. But I don't think they've 
ever really tried to drill down to,

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um, how how they work at the core in the same 
way that kind of like the libertarian

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tradition does, where unique political 
philosophy and economic philosophy,

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because we're concerned about fundamental 
principles in a way that,

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um, other like economic and political 
traditions just aren't.

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Um, and I think that that really has hindered 
New Testament scholarship in a lot of ways.

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How much do you think, 
though, does this?

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Is it how much do you think this is explained 
by the,

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I guess, the general sense that you'd have 
scholars who are like,

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okay, I'm not going to go become an 
economist.

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I'm not going to go spend, 
you know, years of my life kind of learning

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the Austrian tradition versus the Chicago 
school versus the Keynesians and all of that.

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Right. And so I'm just going to kind of read 
some literature of people that I trust,

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and they shrug and they're like, 
oh, well, there's a handful of positions

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here. I'm just going to pick one.

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And maybe they use a little bit of thought 
process. I'm not going to say they're just

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thoughtless about it. They pick one and then 
they just kind of go with it.

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And what ends up happening is you have this 
sort of like,

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you know, lightly Marxist readings of New 
Testament texts,

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because the economic analysis sounds a little 
bit more like something,

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you know, the, the, the railing against the 
rich of Jesus did and the railing against the

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rich that Marx did. Oh, 
well, those sound very similar. And, you

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know, acts four, they held all things in 
common.

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And it's like, oh, well, 
okay, those kind of match up.

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And there's not a thorough thinking through 
like,

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well, that was then, this is now.

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What are the economic implications? What are 
the differences in those in those settings?

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Yeah. No, I mean, I pretty much agree with 
everything that you said there. And I do

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think that to your to your point that a lot 
of scholars tend to it's just a part of the

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academic institution. The academic 
institution is inherently left wing because a

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lot of it is funded by or at least subsidized 
by the taxpayers.

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And like the Pell Grants that students get to 
go to college are also subsidized and

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backstopped by the government. So there is 
like an inherent there's an inherent like

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sort of left wing bias within academia.

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And I think that a lot of scholars that have 
no specialty in economics or political

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thought will just kind of imbibe that as a 
part of being an and I'm sure that there are

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all kinds of social and I know that there are 
social pressures and the institutions because

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I've heard people like I've had people tell 
me that work in these institutions,

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that they're libertarians, 
but it's kind of hard to talk about it in

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certain, like academic contexts.

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Yeah. And then the other thing too, 
with this is that,

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yes, if you're a New Testament scholar, 
there is you have to be you have to be

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extremely immersed in the literature, 
and you have to know several different

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languages, and you have to be up to date on 
all the current scholarship,

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and you have to know a little about history 
and philosophy and, um,

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and anthropology. And so there are all of 
these things that you have to study when

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you're in New Testament scholarship, 
that it makes sense that you wouldn't be able

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to devote an extensive amount of time to 
researching complex political and economic

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ideas, because that's just not something that 
is inherently like,

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necessary. If you're just going to do the 
work of being an historical scholarship or a

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historical scholar. Now, 
I do think that if you're going to explicitly

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comment on how biblical texts that deal with 
what we would consider to be political and

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economic issues, um, impact the way that 
Christians ought to think about politics and

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economics in the modern world. Then you have 
to do better than what I just read what

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somebody said about this in a book a long 
time ago,

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and this was my position.

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Um, but I am sympathetic towards the fact 
that a lot of scholars don't have the time to

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do that, and maybe don't think that it is as 
important as we would.

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We would as we know that it is.

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What do you think of the what do you think of 
the critique that economics as a,

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as a field of study is just and particular 
free market economics is a sort of business,

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corporate, business interests way of 
interpreting economic like analyzing the

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economy in order to sort of justify the kinds 
of things that Marx would say economic class

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warfare does. Like I've heard that before, 
where it's kind of like, oh, well, economics,

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that's just another field. And that's just, 
you know, that's just, you know, bootlicking

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to the, the bourgeois or the capitalists and 
so forth.

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Yeah. I mean, I just, 
I think that that's just a wrong way to

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approach economics. I mean, 
it is certainly true that there are like in

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every academic discipline there, 
like in every academic discipline,

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there are activists within economics. And I 
would say maybe the majority of of economics

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professors in the country are probably 
activists for some sort of political program.

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But at its heart, economics is and this is 
what Mises and the entire Austrian school is

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built upon. Economics is just the analysis of 
human behavior.

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At the end of the day, 
it's about how human beings act and about how

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organizations and institutions kind of 
spontaneously generate from human action.

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That's at least the starting point for our 
particular tradition and economics.

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And so, um, for me, you know, 
these questions about scarcity and choice and

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supply and demand, these are just intrinsic 
to the human experience.

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There's something that we can't avoid, 
and we should try to have an understanding of

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how these dynamics work and about how they 
impact the lives of regular people.

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And to that extent, that really is just a 
study of economics.

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It's just about how people navigate the 
reality of scarcity and make choices given

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that we're constrained.

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And so I think that, yeah, 
there are certainly like if you read,

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if you pick up a if you pick up an 
introductory textbook to economics,

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and you look at all the charts and graphs and 
the math and everything like that, and there

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yes, it can seem very technical, 
and I could see how somebody who is kind of

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reflexively against, you know, 
what they consider to be capitalism would

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say, well, this is just a way of kind of 
masking the the evil excesses of free

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markets. I could understand how someone could 
draw that conclusion, but there's a lot more

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to the economics discipline than that.

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Um, and so I think that by assigning to the 
discipline of economics a sort of kind of

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abstract and almost irrelevancy that we don't 
give to other disciplines,

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you wind up actually missing out on, 
on a way of looking at the world that helps

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us to analyze, like the basic, 
the basic, the basic reasons why people make

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the choices that they make.

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Yeah, yeah. No, that's really well said.

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I think that's that's good.

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You know, it's funny, 
we've gotten to maybe the second point in my

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00:16:21,030 --> 00:16:24,310
outline for talking to you about this. This 
is like how this goes. Right? I want to talk

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a little bit about modern categories.

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And like first century economic realities.

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I think we kind of touched on it a little bit 
that that you have this like,

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um, the word socialist or capitalist or even 
libertarian.

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I mean, you and I both have articles of very 
similar names that Jesus wasn't a

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00:16:39,200 --> 00:16:43,160
libertarian. Um, and we don't like calling 
Jesus libertarian,

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even though we would say he would probably 
endorse what we what we're doing here.

287
00:16:47,160 --> 00:16:52,920
Um, well, what do what do modern Christians 
not realize about the way in which both New

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00:16:52,920 --> 00:16:55,400
Testament scholarship and just even pastors 
in general,

289
00:16:55,400 --> 00:17:00,680
in readers of the text, 
tend to do with our modern categories when

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we're looking at what we know as an ancient 
text.

291
00:17:03,360 --> 00:17:09,920
Yeah. Well, I think that the the biggest 
problem in that regard is that we don't have

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clear, stable definitions of either 
capitalism or socialism,

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and we don't really have clear, 
uh, and we don't really have clear

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conceptions of how political power works.

295
00:17:18,880 --> 00:17:20,280
Right. So even if you.

296
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And they didn't have any of those things in 
the New Testament.

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00:17:22,480 --> 00:17:25,560
Yeah, right. Well, that's exactly right. 
Because all of the modern isms, whether it's

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00:17:25,560 --> 00:17:28,440
libertarianism, progressivism, 
uh, you know,

299
00:17:28,480 --> 00:17:33,600
capitalism, socialism, 
conservatism, all of these are responses to

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political and economic ideas that were 
generated in the wake of the enlightenment.

301
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And, you know, for whatever the 
enlightenment,

302
00:17:40,650 --> 00:17:42,410
it's a it's a very diverse.

303
00:17:42,450 --> 00:17:44,690
And we can't even really call it an event in 
history.

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It's a very diverse period of time where the 
human mind in the Western world shifted in

305
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terms of the categories that it used to 
analyze the world around it,

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and they just didn't think in the same way 
that post-enlightenment thinkers do in the

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first century. And so it's it's we're already 
running the risk when we import these modern

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categories into antiquity and assume that 
they had to have taken a stake in these

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debates that weren't even really possible.

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And then beyond that, 
um, we also don't have a clearly defined or

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articulated definition of any of these modern 
concepts either.

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So not only do like, not only do we fail to 
realize that the ancients don't think like

313
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us, but we don't even know what we think 
about capitalism and socialism for the most

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part. You know, like you, 
I guarantee you, if you walked into,

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00:18:30,290 --> 00:18:34,020
like, you know, a local county affiliate for 
the Democratic Party and the Republican

316
00:18:34,020 --> 00:18:37,580
Party. And you ask all the Republicans what 
define capitalism and socialism? And you ask

317
00:18:37,580 --> 00:18:40,500
all of the Democrats will define capitalism 
and socialism.

318
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It would basically be that whichever one they 
didn't like was bad,

319
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and whichever one they did like was good. And 
that's the definition that they have for

320
00:18:46,260 --> 00:18:48,780
those terms, right? Like there's no substance 
to them.

321
00:18:48,780 --> 00:18:54,100
And I think that that is really, 
really harmed our ability to think clearly

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about what the writers of the Bible were 
saying. It's just that we just don't we don't

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have any way of grounding our modern concepts 
and anything objective or tangible.

324
00:19:02,900 --> 00:19:06,140
And so of course, we're not going to be able 
to do it when we're interpreting texts that

325
00:19:06,140 --> 00:19:07,220
are 2000 years old.

326
00:19:07,820 --> 00:19:09,580
Right. Okay. All right.

327
00:19:09,580 --> 00:19:11,580
So let's talk about another thing then.

328
00:19:11,620 --> 00:19:12,740
Um, the word politics.

329
00:19:12,740 --> 00:19:15,580
You and I both know that the word politics is 
not a dirty word.

330
00:19:15,580 --> 00:19:18,300
We also know that the New Testament is very 
political.

331
00:19:18,500 --> 00:19:23,820
Uh, but you and I catch a lot of flack when 
we say that among our friends. So what is is

332
00:19:23,820 --> 00:19:25,380
politics part of the New Testament?

333
00:19:25,380 --> 00:19:26,300
In what ways?

334
00:19:26,300 --> 00:19:30,020
Well, I mean, yeah, and a lot of that does 
depend on how you define politics.

335
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And I really do think that the.

336
00:19:32,260 --> 00:19:32,740
Definitions.

337
00:19:32,780 --> 00:19:36,620
Again. Right. Because really this all just is 
kind of a problem of language.

338
00:19:36,620 --> 00:19:41,180
Like I think that, um, 
well, yes, even in the very narrow modern

339
00:19:41,180 --> 00:19:44,260
American sense of the term, 
when people hear the word politics,

340
00:19:44,260 --> 00:19:47,220
they think about the political process, 
right? So they think about governments, they

341
00:19:47,220 --> 00:19:50,260
think about elections, 
they think about that in a very narrowly

342
00:19:50,260 --> 00:19:52,780
conceived term. And of course, 
if you look at the New Testament, then

343
00:19:52,780 --> 00:19:55,060
absolutely. I mean, I just got done writing, 
uh,

344
00:19:55,220 --> 00:20:01,020
like yesterday, my chat or two days ago, 
my chapter on acts and the entire book of

345
00:20:01,020 --> 00:20:05,140
acts is about the early Jesus followers being 
engaged with the,

346
00:20:05,180 --> 00:20:07,860
you know, quote unquote, 
political authorities of their day.

347
00:20:07,860 --> 00:20:10,260
So, yes, the early Christian movement is very 
political,

348
00:20:10,260 --> 00:20:15,580
and they're also making very concrete claims 
about Jesus as Messiah that they don't think

349
00:20:15,580 --> 00:20:18,700
is a metaphor, like when they call like, 
and this is universal.

350
00:20:18,740 --> 00:20:22,780
All 27 works in the New Testament when they 
call Jesus the Christ the Messiah,

351
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they sincerely believe that he is the 
crucified,

352
00:20:25,500 --> 00:20:29,980
resurrected, and ascended Son of David who is 
reigning over all of creation right now in a

353
00:20:30,070 --> 00:20:32,750
real way, like it's not just a dead metaphor 
for them.

354
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And so, yeah, of course, 
like the New Testament is very political in

355
00:20:35,870 --> 00:20:40,830
that narrow sense. But I think that a more 
helpful definition of politics in the wider

356
00:20:40,830 --> 00:20:44,670
modern sense is simply how human beings 
relate to each other. It's about how we, um,

357
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whether whether it's organization from the 
top down that's imposed upon us by a state or

358
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by a government, or whether it's organization 
from the bottom up where people come together

359
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and build communities and, 
and create businesses and do things like

360
00:20:55,550 --> 00:20:57,110
that. Well, that's that's politics.

361
00:20:57,110 --> 00:21:02,910
And I think the broader sense of the word and 
really the Greek word politeia is a lot more,

362
00:21:03,350 --> 00:21:07,270
uh, it's a lot more closely related to that 
wider conception of politics than just

363
00:21:07,270 --> 00:21:10,550
focusing on governmental structures and the 
political process,

364
00:21:10,550 --> 00:21:13,590
although that would be a part of human 
relationships as well. Um,

365
00:21:13,590 --> 00:21:16,310
and so I think that we have to be kind of 
aware that,

366
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that when we talk about politics, 
that it's got to be bigger than just,

367
00:21:19,990 --> 00:21:24,030
um, you know, who's running for election and 
what laws are they going to pass if they win?

368
00:21:24,110 --> 00:21:27,510
Um, it has to do with how human beings relate 
to one another in general,

369
00:21:27,550 --> 00:21:31,000
as. But we cannot But we also cannot forget 
that it does have to do with power and

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authority. And so, you know, 
quote unquote, social management and things

371
00:21:34,600 --> 00:21:38,240
like that. So, um, again, 
it's just it's just trying to trying to step

372
00:21:38,240 --> 00:21:42,000
back and think about, 
well, what do we mean when we say political?

373
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We also have this problem in the modern world 
where the thinkers of the enlightenment,

374
00:21:45,840 --> 00:21:48,360
at least rhetorically, 
it never worked in practice. But the thinkers

375
00:21:48,360 --> 00:21:50,600
of the enlightenment, 
this is very famous. Um,

376
00:21:51,000 --> 00:21:55,680
they divided up the world into separate 
spheres of religion,

377
00:21:55,680 --> 00:21:58,440
politics and society. So from the 
enlightenment on,

378
00:21:58,440 --> 00:22:02,280
and a lot of this had to do with the fact 
that the that many enlightenment thinkers

379
00:22:02,280 --> 00:22:05,440
wanted to undermine the power of the 
institutional churches of late medieval

380
00:22:05,440 --> 00:22:08,640
Europe, which I'm kind of sympathetic with 
that in a lot of ways.

381
00:22:08,760 --> 00:22:13,200
Um, but in doing so, they, 
they, they put these very firm boundaries

382
00:22:13,200 --> 00:22:15,600
between politics, religion and society.

383
00:22:15,600 --> 00:22:19,200
And so those of us that are born in the wake 
of the enlightenment just kind of assume that

384
00:22:19,200 --> 00:22:22,800
those are separate spheres of life, 
whereas in antiquity they just they just

385
00:22:22,800 --> 00:22:26,040
didn't do that. There is no boundaries 
between those three things. They all kind of

386
00:22:26,080 --> 00:22:27,600
happily blend together.

387
00:22:27,600 --> 00:22:31,440
And so one of the reasons why the Romans were 
nervous about Christianity is that they

388
00:22:31,440 --> 00:22:32,920
didn't worship Roman gods.

389
00:22:32,920 --> 00:22:35,920
And the thought back then was that, 
well, if you don't worship the gods, then the

390
00:22:35,960 --> 00:22:39,120
gods are going to be unhappy with Rome and 
they're going to bring wrath upon our

391
00:22:39,120 --> 00:22:42,320
civilization. And so, 
like, these Christians are putting our entire

392
00:22:42,320 --> 00:22:44,840
empire in danger by not worshiping our gods.

393
00:22:44,840 --> 00:22:47,720
And that's just a great. And we don't think 
that way in the modern world. But they

394
00:22:47,720 --> 00:22:49,920
certainly did back then. And we have to 
account for that.

395
00:22:50,280 --> 00:22:54,240
Yeah, yeah. If the gospel weren't political, 
then Rome wouldn't have seen it as a threat.

396
00:22:54,240 --> 00:22:56,880
They would have just shrugged. They would 
have just shrugged and said, okay, just don't

397
00:22:56,880 --> 00:22:59,040
be menacing. Yeah, yeah.

398
00:22:59,080 --> 00:23:02,600
No, I yeah, of course I agree with you on 
this because you and I have talked about this

399
00:23:02,600 --> 00:23:03,000
a lot.

400
00:23:03,040 --> 00:23:04,320
Yeah, we read a lot of same authors.

401
00:23:05,280 --> 00:23:06,680
We read a lot of the same authors.

402
00:23:06,680 --> 00:23:12,560
I think there's this, 
um, there's this view that the either the

403
00:23:12,600 --> 00:23:15,160
gospel or the scripture or Jesus wasn't 
political.

404
00:23:15,160 --> 00:23:19,080
And a lot of times we think about that as 
just narrowly the electoral politics that we

405
00:23:19,080 --> 00:23:21,720
talked about. In other words, 
Jesus doesn't tell you how to vote. Jesus

406
00:23:21,720 --> 00:23:26,210
doesn't tell you, you know how how to think 
about every single policy prescription that's

407
00:23:26,210 --> 00:23:28,810
out there. And that's true.

408
00:23:28,850 --> 00:23:32,170
I mean, I think you and I do agree with that 
in that sense.

409
00:23:32,170 --> 00:23:38,890
But to understand that is it politeia is is a 
way for us to think about.

410
00:23:39,130 --> 00:23:44,570
It's important. And God cares about how we 
treat each other and how we relate with one

411
00:23:44,570 --> 00:23:47,610
another, which brings up questions of power, 
authority,

412
00:23:47,650 --> 00:23:51,010
violence, and the limits of all of those 
things.

413
00:23:51,010 --> 00:23:54,370
And so that is where that's where you and I 
come down as libertarians,

414
00:23:54,490 --> 00:23:56,610
uh, as where other people come down is, 
you know,

415
00:23:56,650 --> 00:23:59,050
whatever social Democrats, 
Republicans, conservatives, whatever,

416
00:23:59,090 --> 00:24:02,010
whatever they end up, 
uh, you know, we think that we're,

417
00:24:02,050 --> 00:24:03,730
you know, more consistent.

418
00:24:03,810 --> 00:24:05,890
Um, they think they're consistent.

419
00:24:05,930 --> 00:24:08,770
Um, we're here to tell them they're wrong. Of 
course. That's why that's why our shows

420
00:24:08,770 --> 00:24:09,530
exist. Right, Alex?

421
00:24:09,570 --> 00:24:09,770
Yes.

422
00:24:09,770 --> 00:24:15,530
It is. Um, so I think it's I think it's super 
important that we we understand the political

423
00:24:15,530 --> 00:24:18,050
nature of the gospel, 
the political nature of,

424
00:24:18,330 --> 00:24:22,090
um, of the New Testament, 
especially, but even even the entire

425
00:24:22,090 --> 00:24:26,300
scriptures. But that is not to say that it is 
only political,

426
00:24:26,300 --> 00:24:30,180
or that it is primarily political, 
or that it's first and foremost political.

427
00:24:30,300 --> 00:24:32,860
That may be the sort of historical on the 
ground,

428
00:24:33,140 --> 00:24:38,380
uh, setting. Um, but there's also a sense in 
which we know that it's also more universal

429
00:24:38,380 --> 00:24:38,940
than that.

430
00:24:39,460 --> 00:24:43,420
Yeah. No, absolutely. And that was kind of 
goes back to what I was saying just a minute

431
00:24:43,420 --> 00:24:46,900
ago, is that in antiquity, 
they blended all of these ideas together.

432
00:24:46,900 --> 00:24:48,260
And so there is no distinction.

433
00:24:48,260 --> 00:24:51,500
And that's why when it's been very 
unfortunate in the history of Western

434
00:24:51,500 --> 00:24:57,580
Christianity, that we severed the messianic 
identity of Jesus from its Davidic origins.

435
00:24:57,620 --> 00:25:01,180
Like the entire point, 
you can read this like it's like just read

436
00:25:01,180 --> 00:25:05,100
Isaiah or Jeremiah 30 through 33 or Ezekiel 
34 through 37.

437
00:25:05,140 --> 00:25:08,460
I mean, these passages, 
uh, you know, Zechariah nine there over and

438
00:25:08,460 --> 00:25:11,700
over again, Micah four. And I gotta stop 
because there's so many,

439
00:25:11,860 --> 00:25:16,500
uh, there are so many passages in the 
prophets that foretell the coming of a future

440
00:25:16,500 --> 00:25:19,460
Davidic king who will rule over all creation.

441
00:25:19,940 --> 00:25:22,660
Psalm two, second Samuel seven, 
Psalm 70. You can go through all the passages

442
00:25:22,820 --> 00:25:26,060
in the Old Testament. They believe that this 
was going to happen.

443
00:25:26,060 --> 00:25:30,260
And so when the writers of the New Testament 
call Jesus Messiah and say that he's the Son

444
00:25:30,260 --> 00:25:34,580
of David, they're not they're not changing 
the fundamental structure of those messianic

445
00:25:34,580 --> 00:25:38,180
promises, like they really do believe that he 
is king over all creation.

446
00:25:38,180 --> 00:25:40,900
And it's unfortunate that in the third and 
fourth centuries,

447
00:25:40,940 --> 00:25:44,060
and I'm not saying that it's wrong, 
like these were good conversations to have,

448
00:25:44,060 --> 00:25:47,140
but I think that questions about the ontology 
of Jesus,

449
00:25:47,140 --> 00:25:49,940
about whether or not he was in substance with 
God,

450
00:25:49,980 --> 00:25:52,940
kind of overtook these messianic categories.

451
00:25:52,940 --> 00:25:55,940
And the Western Church is more or less just 
completely lost that.

452
00:25:55,940 --> 00:26:00,340
And that's the reason why a lot of modern 
Christians read the New Testament and think

453
00:26:00,340 --> 00:26:02,860
that when it's like that, 
when the writers of the New Testament talk

454
00:26:02,900 --> 00:26:05,660
about Jesus as king, that it's more of a 
metaphor,

455
00:26:05,700 --> 00:26:08,940
like he's king of our hearts or he's king of 
the church, or he might be, you know, the

456
00:26:08,940 --> 00:26:12,100
king of my life, but he's not king of the 
world. And any sort of tangible, objective

457
00:26:12,100 --> 00:26:12,340
sense.

458
00:26:12,380 --> 00:26:14,660
Or king just goes along with Savior and Lord.

459
00:26:14,980 --> 00:26:18,660
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. Well, 
and again, there's kind of like this, um,

460
00:26:18,820 --> 00:26:21,790
and I know that this, 
this, um, this is, this is hard for a lot of

461
00:26:21,790 --> 00:26:24,230
people to to grapple with, 
especially people that have grown up in

462
00:26:24,230 --> 00:26:28,750
churches. But we're like, 
we put the ontology of Jesus before we put

463
00:26:28,750 --> 00:26:30,230
his messianic identity.

464
00:26:30,230 --> 00:26:33,830
And I don't think that we should play those 
two things off of one another like I,

465
00:26:33,830 --> 00:26:37,830
you know, I'm I think that, 
uh, the Trinity is certainly one way of

466
00:26:37,830 --> 00:26:40,350
looking at God that I don't disagree with 
like that.

467
00:26:40,350 --> 00:26:43,310
That is a model for understanding the 
relationship between the father, the son, and

468
00:26:43,310 --> 00:26:47,710
the Holy Spirit that is bred within the realm 
of Greco-Roman philosophy.

469
00:26:47,710 --> 00:26:51,110
But I think that if you're going to make a 
statement about the nature of the father, the

470
00:26:51,110 --> 00:26:54,590
son, and the spirit within the framework of 
Greco-Roman philosophy, you would have to get

471
00:26:54,590 --> 00:26:57,030
something like the Trinity. So I don't 
disagree with that. I do believe that Jesus

472
00:26:57,030 --> 00:26:59,470
is God. Absolutely. But he's not just that.

473
00:26:59,470 --> 00:27:01,390
Like there's more to his identity than that.

474
00:27:01,390 --> 00:27:06,710
And we kind of want to downplay all of those 
other aspects and just emphasize his divine

475
00:27:06,710 --> 00:27:09,830
status when in reality, 
like his divine status is,

476
00:27:09,870 --> 00:27:12,830
is inextricably connected to his messianic 
status as well,

477
00:27:12,830 --> 00:27:14,270
the one reaffirms the other.

478
00:27:14,270 --> 00:27:18,190
And so you can't really fully have, 
um, a developed,

479
00:27:18,190 --> 00:27:20,400
fleshed out Trinitarian theology.

480
00:27:20,400 --> 00:27:24,080
Unless you also understand that Jesus is the 
real Davidic Messiah.

481
00:27:24,080 --> 00:27:25,840
And we can't we can't pull what.

482
00:27:25,840 --> 00:27:29,400
And this is, again, kind of putting these 
modernist categories back on these ancient

483
00:27:29,400 --> 00:27:33,800
texts. We can't pull Jesus's political 
identity away from his religious one,

484
00:27:33,800 --> 00:27:36,480
because in the ancient world, 
there was no distinction between those two

485
00:27:36,480 --> 00:27:38,600
things. And unfortunately, 
in the modern world,

486
00:27:38,600 --> 00:27:41,120
we want to keep those two apart. And we 
actually kind of want to privilege the

487
00:27:41,120 --> 00:27:43,720
theological identity over the political one.

488
00:27:43,720 --> 00:27:46,760
But the writers of the New Testament just 
don't do that. Like it's just not it's not

489
00:27:46,760 --> 00:27:49,960
biblical to do. I understand why people read 
it that way, because we're trained to read it

490
00:27:49,960 --> 00:27:51,280
that way to a certain extent.

491
00:27:51,280 --> 00:27:54,000
And I'm very sympathetic towards people that 
have a hard time kind of seeing that in the

492
00:27:54,000 --> 00:27:59,360
text. But once you once you kind of tear down 
all of those modern impositions that we place

493
00:27:59,360 --> 00:28:02,000
on biblical hermeneutics, 
then it's really easy to see where the

494
00:28:02,000 --> 00:28:05,480
writers of the Bible are going. And it's a 
direction that, like, not a lot of modern

495
00:28:05,480 --> 00:28:08,880
Christians are willing to take, 
because it does have massive implications for

496
00:28:08,880 --> 00:28:10,480
how we live our lives as Christians.

497
00:28:10,680 --> 00:28:13,800
Well, there's also the explanation that 
sometimes there's like apologetic

498
00:28:13,800 --> 00:28:17,480
explanations for these things where like 
there's a certain era of time where we have

499
00:28:17,480 --> 00:28:19,450
to defend the divinity of Christ.

500
00:28:19,650 --> 00:28:24,010
And so that becomes what the church talks 
about and or what church traditions talk

501
00:28:24,050 --> 00:28:25,490
about. And we inherit that.

502
00:28:25,490 --> 00:28:28,530
And so now there's, you know, 
you know, that people use the metaphor of a

503
00:28:28,530 --> 00:28:31,170
pendulum swing, right? And so, 
you know, the church was heavy on, you know,

504
00:28:31,170 --> 00:28:34,210
the divinity of Christ. And you and I 
inherited that with a lot of scholars, you

505
00:28:34,210 --> 00:28:35,410
know, as we were growing up.

506
00:28:35,530 --> 00:28:38,970
And now we're thinking, 
okay, you know, all that you just said is

507
00:28:38,970 --> 00:28:42,450
like, okay, well, there's more to it than 
that. And so there's a rebalancing to some

508
00:28:42,450 --> 00:28:47,170
extent. And, um, I think that's sort of okay 
in one sense.

509
00:28:47,290 --> 00:28:52,210
Um, because that's just the way that's partly 
the way theology is done.

510
00:28:52,210 --> 00:28:55,010
And sometimes things get a little out of 
whack. But yeah.

511
00:28:55,050 --> 00:28:58,890
Yeah. Well, I'm going to say something too, 
that I might have said on my podcast once or

512
00:28:58,890 --> 00:29:02,730
twice and people will probably, 
like initially label me as a heretic.

513
00:29:02,730 --> 00:29:06,210
So just hang on and hear everything out that 
I have to say about this. But there was a

514
00:29:06,210 --> 00:29:10,330
period of time about, 
I don't know, 10 or 12 years ago when I was

515
00:29:10,330 --> 00:29:15,210
really steeped in reading a lot of literature 
about messianism in Second Temple Judaism.

516
00:29:15,370 --> 00:29:18,130
And I flirted with the idea.

517
00:29:18,170 --> 00:29:20,770
I never, never totally came to this 
conclusion.

518
00:29:20,770 --> 00:29:25,130
But I flirted with the idea that even if 
Jesus wasn't ontologically God,

519
00:29:25,250 --> 00:29:30,450
he could still 100% be the crucified and 
resurrected Davidic Messiah who reigned over

520
00:29:30,450 --> 00:29:35,170
all creation. That Jesus's ontology wasn't 
necessarily connected to his Davidic

521
00:29:35,170 --> 00:29:40,290
identity. And so I will say that as a part of 
my theological development at that time,

522
00:29:40,290 --> 00:29:44,130
I kind of privileged his messianic identity 
over his divine identity.

523
00:29:44,130 --> 00:29:46,490
But then as I read more and more scholarship 
on that,

524
00:29:46,610 --> 00:29:49,850
the the very tight connection, 
especially in Paul,

525
00:29:49,890 --> 00:29:56,290
between Jesus's Davidic status and his like 
and his his relationship with God the Father,

526
00:29:57,130 --> 00:30:01,770
it helped me to better understand just how 
significant that messianism was.

527
00:30:01,770 --> 00:30:03,810
That yeah, he absolutely is the son of David.

528
00:30:03,810 --> 00:30:05,850
And yes, the church has marginalized that.

529
00:30:05,850 --> 00:30:08,850
But understanding that he has that 
relationship with the father.

530
00:30:08,970 --> 00:30:13,930
Um, that that historic Christianity has 
assigned to him only makes that that

531
00:30:13,930 --> 00:30:15,700
messianic identity even stronger.

532
00:30:15,700 --> 00:30:18,060
And so I've come completely around to the 
conclusion.

533
00:30:18,100 --> 00:30:21,100
It's like, oh yeah, like if you want to 
believe that Jesus is Messiah,

534
00:30:21,140 --> 00:30:23,980
like in a real sense, 
you kind of have to believe that he's God

535
00:30:24,020 --> 00:30:27,140
too. Um, but if you want to believe that 
Jesus is God,

536
00:30:27,180 --> 00:30:30,940
then you also have to believe that he's the 
Messiah. Like, you can't get you can't get,

537
00:30:31,140 --> 00:30:34,300
you know, around the other direction without 
going through his messianic identity as well.

538
00:30:34,340 --> 00:30:38,460
Yeah. So you have to have both of those 
things in order to fully understand who he is

539
00:30:38,500 --> 00:30:40,500
and what it means for us as Christians today.

540
00:30:40,780 --> 00:30:43,580
Yeah. No, I mean, I think your story, 
um, Mr.

541
00:30:43,580 --> 00:30:45,060
Heretic. Yeah, is.

542
00:30:45,580 --> 00:30:45,700
It's.

543
00:30:45,700 --> 00:30:45,820
Not.

544
00:30:45,820 --> 00:30:45,940
The.

545
00:30:45,940 --> 00:30:46,220
First.

546
00:30:46,700 --> 00:30:47,300
Heretic, you know.

547
00:30:47,460 --> 00:30:51,140
No. It's fine. Um, everyone's a heretic to 
someone else's theology anyway.

548
00:30:51,140 --> 00:30:52,180
So. Yeah, I don't know.

549
00:30:52,340 --> 00:30:55,860
Um, but, uh, I think the experience that you 
have is,

550
00:30:55,860 --> 00:30:59,540
is very similar to something I probably 
around the same time you were doing,

551
00:30:59,540 --> 00:31:04,140
you were flirting with. This is like the idea 
of borrowing an idea without actually sort of

552
00:31:04,180 --> 00:31:07,860
adopting it and sort of just like letting it 
wrestle around in your mind and be like,

553
00:31:07,860 --> 00:31:12,500
okay, I want to try to walk out this theology 
and I'm going to read the Bible as if this

554
00:31:12,500 --> 00:31:15,790
theology, this particular point is true, 
whether it be what you were just talking

555
00:31:15,790 --> 00:31:18,830
about, whether it be something like, 
I don't know, universalism or anything like

556
00:31:18,830 --> 00:31:21,230
that, and you just kind of, 
you know, work that out.

557
00:31:21,430 --> 00:31:23,910
It doesn't mean you're going to adopt it, 
and it doesn't even mean that you think it's

558
00:31:23,910 --> 00:31:26,070
right. But you have to find a way to be like,

559
00:31:26,070 --> 00:31:28,030
well, does this help me read the text better?

560
00:31:28,150 --> 00:31:31,230
Does this actually help me, 
uh, know Jesus better?

561
00:31:31,270 --> 00:31:32,950
Does it help me love others better?

562
00:31:33,070 --> 00:31:36,950
Is it the right way of treating the text, 
or does it twist the text?

563
00:31:36,990 --> 00:31:40,990
You know, all those different questions. And 
sometimes when you step aside and you,

564
00:31:41,310 --> 00:31:45,870
you take a an angle on things and you look at 
it from a different angle,

565
00:31:46,110 --> 00:31:49,590
you wake up to realities that are that you 
wouldn't have seen otherwise.

566
00:31:49,590 --> 00:31:53,230
And sometimes you realize, 
okay, this is just wrong and terrible and or

567
00:31:53,270 --> 00:31:55,910
or not quite right. And so you kind of tweak 
it.

568
00:31:55,910 --> 00:32:03,430
And I think there's, there's a maturity in 
the ability to basically don the glasses of

569
00:32:03,750 --> 00:32:07,550
some other way of looking at the text in 
order to understand it better.

570
00:32:08,110 --> 00:32:11,270
And so I think a lot of Christians would do 
better to sort of like, all right, I'm going

571
00:32:11,310 --> 00:32:16,670
to understand this from a different 
perspective and try to gain a sense of what

572
00:32:16,670 --> 00:32:18,910
is the text saying from this perspective.

573
00:32:19,030 --> 00:32:22,750
And maybe it's not true, 
but I can learn more about how others think

574
00:32:22,750 --> 00:32:27,110
about it, let alone the of course, 
you coming to the conclusion that okay,

575
00:32:27,150 --> 00:32:29,790
these flirting with that was okay to do.

576
00:32:30,110 --> 00:32:34,230
Uh, those people are wrong, 
but it gave you a better sense of tying those

577
00:32:34,230 --> 00:32:37,030
two things together. Together, 
which, you know,

578
00:32:37,070 --> 00:32:39,350
if you hadn't, quote unquote flirted with 
that idea,

579
00:32:39,550 --> 00:32:42,950
uh, you may not have come to the wrong 
conclusion that those are just inextricably

580
00:32:42,950 --> 00:32:43,390
linked.

581
00:32:43,550 --> 00:32:46,070
Yeah, I agree, and I mean, 
I know that you I mean,

582
00:32:46,110 --> 00:32:48,430
you studied this in college, 
too, so I know that you understand this

583
00:32:48,430 --> 00:32:51,150
dynamic. But I remember going to, 
um, because,

584
00:32:51,150 --> 00:32:54,310
like, with my own back story, 
when I was, when I was 15,

585
00:32:54,350 --> 00:32:57,670
I, that's when I really started taking my I 
was, I grew up and was raised. I mean, I was

586
00:32:57,670 --> 00:33:00,350
raised in the church. My parents weren't 
super serious about it, but like, they made

587
00:33:00,350 --> 00:33:02,950
sure that we went, um, 
and a couple of years before I started

588
00:33:02,950 --> 00:33:05,510
getting serious about it, 
my mom had an experience and she. But. So

589
00:33:05,510 --> 00:33:08,550
anyways, I was 15 when I really started 
reading the Bible for the first time and I

590
00:33:08,550 --> 00:33:11,680
was like, totally sold. You know, 
I was in a Lutheran church at the time, and

591
00:33:11,680 --> 00:33:14,360
the thing that I learned is that if you want 
to be a real Christian, you read the Bible,

592
00:33:14,360 --> 00:33:17,480
because that's what Martin Luther did, 
you know, which I think is I think is a true

593
00:33:17,520 --> 00:33:21,080
statement. Like, I love I love that the 
impact that Martin Luther had on my life.

594
00:33:21,080 --> 00:33:23,240
But like in the because part.

595
00:33:23,280 --> 00:33:26,920
Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't like Martin 
Luther's position on Jews.

596
00:33:27,000 --> 00:33:28,160
I think that that was wrong.

597
00:33:28,320 --> 00:33:32,080
No, I think he's wrong about a lot of other 
things. But I do love I love that Martin

598
00:33:32,080 --> 00:33:36,280
Luther gave the Bible kind of the primacy of 
authority in the church.

599
00:33:36,280 --> 00:33:38,280
I think that that was incredibly helpful.

600
00:33:38,280 --> 00:33:41,160
And I there's that different angle, 
again, that I just talked about.

601
00:33:41,160 --> 00:33:41,520
Right.

602
00:33:41,640 --> 00:33:43,320
Like, yeah. And so so.

603
00:33:43,320 --> 00:33:43,400
We.

604
00:33:43,400 --> 00:33:46,040
Need to drink from that. Well and that's for 
me like um,

605
00:33:46,320 --> 00:33:49,200
so I read the Bible just I just like 
throughout my time in high school,

606
00:33:49,200 --> 00:33:51,440
I just read the New Testament, 
like cover to cover.

607
00:33:51,440 --> 00:33:54,520
I would I would start with Matthew, 
read through revelation, and I just read it

608
00:33:54,520 --> 00:33:58,920
over and over again. And I just remember 
being so confused by everything that I read

609
00:33:58,920 --> 00:34:01,200
in there, and it seemed like there were all 
these contradictions, and I didn't really

610
00:34:01,200 --> 00:34:04,200
know what was going on. And then trying to 
square it with like some of the theological

611
00:34:04,200 --> 00:34:06,040
teaching that I had at church, 
I was like, well, I know that you're saying

612
00:34:06,040 --> 00:34:09,610
this, but like, there are these passages here 
that don't seem to line up with that. And

613
00:34:09,610 --> 00:34:13,810
then I remember going to college and starting 
and I started studying this historically.

614
00:34:13,810 --> 00:34:18,210
And I realized that, like my framing for a 
lot of these questions was wrong.

615
00:34:18,210 --> 00:34:21,290
And so it wasn't that like my it wasn't that 
my,

616
00:34:21,370 --> 00:34:24,010
um, it wasn't that my reading of the Bible 
was worthless.

617
00:34:24,010 --> 00:34:27,930
It was just that I had a ton of assumptions 
about what the Bible was supposed to do,

618
00:34:27,970 --> 00:34:31,290
and about what the Bible was supposed to tell 
me that weren't actually true. Like the Bible

619
00:34:31,290 --> 00:34:34,250
was designed to do something different than 
what I thought that it was.

620
00:34:34,450 --> 00:34:38,930
And by studying it in a historical context, 
that really helped me to reshape the way that

621
00:34:38,930 --> 00:34:42,730
I thought about, like what the Bible does and 
how it impacts my life.

622
00:34:42,730 --> 00:34:46,170
And so I want other people to be able to 
experience it in the same way that I did as

623
00:34:46,170 --> 00:34:48,770
well. And I'm also kind of like, 
um, on my show,

624
00:34:48,810 --> 00:34:53,050
I'm like, I don't I don't take I don't take 
hard stances on a lot of theological issues.

625
00:34:53,050 --> 00:34:56,450
Number one, because theology isn't my 
specialty. I read maybe, maybe two works of

626
00:34:56,450 --> 00:34:58,410
systematic theology a year at most.

627
00:34:58,450 --> 00:35:00,090
Like, I'm just I'm not a systems guy.

628
00:35:00,130 --> 00:35:05,490
I would rather start with the biblical texts 
themselves and the awareness that these were

629
00:35:05,490 --> 00:35:09,180
produced by certain people at particular 
places in history,

630
00:35:09,180 --> 00:35:12,220
and that they had to have had an intelligible 
meaning to their original audience. This

631
00:35:12,220 --> 00:35:14,500
doesn't mean that God did not inspire the 
text,

632
00:35:14,500 --> 00:35:17,540
because he absolutely did, 
but he inspired it through culturally

633
00:35:17,540 --> 00:35:21,460
embedded people, and it was originally 
designed to address the needs of the

634
00:35:21,460 --> 00:35:23,740
audience, which was also culturally embedded,

635
00:35:23,740 --> 00:35:27,940
and that lived in a culture that had a lot of 
different values and thoughts than my own.

636
00:35:27,940 --> 00:35:32,140
And so I've always found it really helpful to 
try to suspend if I really believe the

637
00:35:32,140 --> 00:35:34,980
Bible's authoritative, 
which I do like. I believe that the Bible has

638
00:35:35,020 --> 00:35:37,380
primacy of place above all theological 
systems,

639
00:35:37,380 --> 00:35:39,620
above all denominations, 
above all traditions.

640
00:35:39,620 --> 00:35:43,220
Like this is what Martin Luther got right. 
It's that the Bible and the Bible alone

641
00:35:43,220 --> 00:35:46,780
should be the final source of authority for 
all Christian doctrine and teaching.

642
00:35:46,780 --> 00:35:49,940
So if I believe that the Bible is the 
ultimate authority,

643
00:35:49,940 --> 00:35:53,660
well, then I start with that. And I have a 
willingness to have my ideas and belief

644
00:35:54,060 --> 00:35:55,700
beliefs changed by the text.

645
00:35:55,700 --> 00:35:58,820
And I just try to figure out, 
well, how, how might these texts have worked

646
00:35:58,820 --> 00:36:01,580
historically, and how does that bear on my 
theology?

647
00:36:01,580 --> 00:36:05,740
And as I get older, I guess I've become 
increasingly frustrated with a lot of like,

648
00:36:06,140 --> 00:36:09,620
there are so many like dichotomies and 
trichotomies and theology.

649
00:36:09,660 --> 00:36:13,100
You know, it's like you either are a 
dispensationalist or you believe in covenant

650
00:36:13,100 --> 00:36:17,380
theology. You either believe in free will or 
you believe in determinism.

651
00:36:17,380 --> 00:36:21,060
And I think that when you look at it from the 
standpoint of the writers of the Bible and

652
00:36:21,060 --> 00:36:24,340
try to understand it in their historical 
context, a lot of those questions become a

653
00:36:24,340 --> 00:36:25,860
lot more complicated than that.

654
00:36:25,860 --> 00:36:30,220
And those either or neither side really 
capture kind of the dynamics of what these

655
00:36:30,220 --> 00:36:33,740
writers of the Bible are attempting to 
communicate. And so I'm just and again,

656
00:36:33,780 --> 00:36:36,940
this kind of goes back to what you were 
saying before is like, I'm now as I'm older,

657
00:36:37,060 --> 00:36:41,580
um, I'm a lot more orthodox, 
but I'm also I'm also a lot more open to

658
00:36:41,620 --> 00:36:45,620
like, wrestling with these ideas because I 
realize that they are way more complicated

659
00:36:45,620 --> 00:36:48,060
than many Christians give them credit for.

660
00:36:48,060 --> 00:36:50,820
And I don't want to, uh, 
I don't want to be guilty of,

661
00:36:50,860 --> 00:36:54,540
like, taking a really hard stance on a 
position and,

662
00:36:54,580 --> 00:36:57,860
like, making public statements about it and 
then having to come back later and say, well,

663
00:36:57,900 --> 00:37:00,580
you know, I kept on studying the Bible, 
and I realized that I was like, I was wrong

664
00:37:00,580 --> 00:37:02,700
and I'm an idiot for being such a jerk about 
it. You know.

665
00:37:04,060 --> 00:37:07,350
You could be. Yeah. You're not being an idiot 
for being for being wrong.

666
00:37:07,350 --> 00:37:10,750
You're being an idiot for being a jerk about 
it. Yeah, yeah, but I guess, you know, you

667
00:37:10,750 --> 00:37:15,470
know, your disposition in mind too, 
is is to be such that when when we want to

668
00:37:15,470 --> 00:37:19,070
articulate what we believe, 
it's somewhat provisional in the sense of,

669
00:37:19,070 --> 00:37:21,070
well, I'm pretty sure this is the way it 
works,

670
00:37:21,070 --> 00:37:24,190
or I'm pretty sure that this is the best 
interpretation of this, you know, event in

671
00:37:24,190 --> 00:37:27,790
Scripture or whatever it might be, 
um, or this articulation of theology.

672
00:37:27,790 --> 00:37:30,590
But, you know, we also shrug and say, 
well, we could be wrong.

673
00:37:30,750 --> 00:37:33,150
And, you know, I think a little humility goes 
a long way.

674
00:37:33,430 --> 00:37:37,150
Um, I want to get to some specific, 
uh, scriptural passages here.

675
00:37:37,150 --> 00:37:40,390
I know your book covers the Luke-acts 
narrative.

676
00:37:40,670 --> 00:37:46,750
Um, if how does how does Luke and deal with 
the in the book of Luke and the Book of Acts?

677
00:37:47,230 --> 00:37:50,830
What do we need to know about that approach, 
that narrative as it relates to Empire?

678
00:37:50,990 --> 00:37:53,270
Okay. Yeah. So that's that's a great 
question.

679
00:37:53,270 --> 00:37:56,430
I do want to say, just because I'm 
shamelessly promoting my book right now,

680
00:37:56,430 --> 00:37:59,790
that this like I will cover every work in the 
New Testament in this book, which is one of

681
00:37:59,790 --> 00:38:02,710
the reasons why it's taken me a little bit of 
time to write. Like, I want to make sure that

682
00:38:02,710 --> 00:38:06,160
all of the passages that people wrestle with 
when it comes to political and economic

683
00:38:06,160 --> 00:38:09,760
concepts. I'm going to address all of them at 
some point in the book. So I did finish my

684
00:38:09,760 --> 00:38:12,920
chapter on ACS, and I did, 
I think, for, yeah,

685
00:38:12,920 --> 00:38:14,600
I did four chapters on the gospel.

686
00:38:14,600 --> 00:38:16,960
So there's a lot of material in there.

687
00:38:17,120 --> 00:38:22,440
Um, with Luke ACS in particular, 
man, there's so there's so many interesting

688
00:38:22,720 --> 00:38:26,840
there's so many interesting ways in which 
Luke deals with the kind of the political and

689
00:38:26,840 --> 00:38:28,760
economic dynamics of his day.

690
00:38:28,760 --> 00:38:31,760
It's almost hard to be really general about 
it, but I think that what's what's

691
00:38:31,760 --> 00:38:37,440
particularly interesting about Luke ACS is 
that and it doesn't appear to me that Luke

692
00:38:37,440 --> 00:38:42,240
was aware when he wrote his gospel that he 
was going to be writing acts as kind of a

693
00:38:42,240 --> 00:38:47,160
sequel, but he is definitely aware when he 
wrote acts that he wrote Luke's right,

694
00:38:47,200 --> 00:38:49,920
like, like like in any. And what I mean by 
that is a terrible way of putting it.

695
00:38:50,000 --> 00:38:50,960
He starts it off that way.

696
00:38:51,000 --> 00:38:54,880
He does. Right? Yeah. And so what I mean by 
that is like he's self-consciously emulating

697
00:38:54,880 --> 00:38:59,440
the themes that he, he kind of develops in 
Luke throughout the book of acts.

698
00:38:59,480 --> 00:39:01,800
Right. So there is kind of this narrative 
flow there.

699
00:39:01,840 --> 00:39:05,920
And at the very beginning of Luke, 
he's different from Mark and Matthew,

700
00:39:05,960 --> 00:39:08,640
whereas Mark and Matthew, 
Mark one one and Matthew one one start out

701
00:39:08,640 --> 00:39:12,280
with statements that are unambiguously about 
Jesus's messianic identity.

702
00:39:12,280 --> 00:39:15,120
Matthew develops it just a little bit more 
than Mark does,

703
00:39:15,120 --> 00:39:18,600
but with Luke, he has kind of this address to 
his,

704
00:39:18,600 --> 00:39:20,160
uh, his audience, Theophilus.

705
00:39:20,160 --> 00:39:23,680
And then he actually goes into the story 
about the birth of John the Baptist. But Luke

706
00:39:23,680 --> 00:39:26,480
spends his infancy narratives kind of 
developing,

707
00:39:26,640 --> 00:39:31,160
um, this narrative about how Jesus is the 
Davidic Messiah and he's come to rescue

708
00:39:31,160 --> 00:39:34,640
Israel, but he's going to wind up ruling over 
all the nations. So you wind up getting the

709
00:39:34,640 --> 00:39:39,240
exact same messianic content that you get in 
Mark and Matthew and Luke,

710
00:39:39,240 --> 00:39:42,720
only in more developed form. And I also 
believe, too, that Luke is using both Matthew

711
00:39:42,720 --> 00:39:43,880
and Mark as a source. Right.

712
00:39:44,160 --> 00:39:47,280
The episode that I have coming out tomorrow, 
which will be August 26th,

713
00:39:47,400 --> 00:39:50,400
um, you know, as people are hearing this, 
I know later the episode I have coming out

714
00:39:50,400 --> 00:39:54,200
tomorrow is all about how the gospel writers 
using one another as a source,

715
00:39:54,200 --> 00:39:55,920
develop these messianic ideas.

716
00:39:55,920 --> 00:39:58,600
And then at the very beginning of Luke 
chapter two,

717
00:39:58,800 --> 00:40:03,490
you have Joseph and Mary being forced to go 
to Bethlehem by Caesar Augustus in faraway

718
00:40:03,490 --> 00:40:07,730
Rome. But then at the very end of acts, 
you have Paul preaching the gospel of the

719
00:40:07,730 --> 00:40:09,730
kingdom of God in Rome unhindered.

720
00:40:09,730 --> 00:40:10,850
Now he's in a jail cell.

721
00:40:10,890 --> 00:40:15,090
But but Luke makes it a point to say that 
Paul can more or less talk to whoever he

722
00:40:15,090 --> 00:40:19,210
wants to in Rome, showing that this message 
of the kingdom of God has made it all the way

723
00:40:19,210 --> 00:40:22,690
from this backwater in Judea, 
where Jesus was born,

724
00:40:22,690 --> 00:40:24,250
to the heart of the Roman Empire.

725
00:40:24,250 --> 00:40:28,130
And so there's this big logic throughout the 
work of Luke and acts where,

726
00:40:28,210 --> 00:40:31,730
you know, Luke kind of telescopes in on 
Jerusalem, and then Jesus finally dies and is

727
00:40:31,730 --> 00:40:34,810
raised from the dead. And then right at the 
very beginning of acts in Acts one eight,

728
00:40:34,850 --> 00:40:38,090
Jesus says, I'm going to give you the Holy 
Spirit, and you're going to be my witness in

729
00:40:38,090 --> 00:40:41,610
Judea and Samaria and Galilee, 
and to the ends of the earth.

730
00:40:41,650 --> 00:40:44,890
Like in other words, you're going to take 
this message of the kingdom to the ends of

731
00:40:44,890 --> 00:40:47,890
the world. And then what happens right after 
that? And this is what a lot of Christians

732
00:40:47,890 --> 00:40:51,530
miss. But it's very, very important for 
understanding New Testament Christology.

733
00:40:51,570 --> 00:40:55,490
Jesus is taken up to the right hand of the 
father and sits as the ascended Lord over all

734
00:40:55,490 --> 00:40:59,380
of creation. And in Peter's first major 
speech in acts chapter two.

735
00:40:59,660 --> 00:41:05,180
The climax of Peter's speech is when he says 
that Jesus was raised from the dead and now

736
00:41:05,180 --> 00:41:08,980
sits as king, currently ruling over all 
creation from heaven.

737
00:41:08,980 --> 00:41:13,700
And that's the political logic of of Luke, 
which is also there in acts like all of

738
00:41:13,700 --> 00:41:16,820
these, all like everything that acts is 
moving to is kind of working,

739
00:41:16,980 --> 00:41:21,100
or everything that Luke was moving towards is 
working itself out in acts. And so every time

740
00:41:21,100 --> 00:41:25,260
you see someone in acts like Peter or Paul 
interacting with one of the political

741
00:41:25,260 --> 00:41:30,540
authorities, Luke wants you to understand 
that this is within the context of Jesus

742
00:41:30,540 --> 00:41:32,460
already being king over all creation.

743
00:41:32,460 --> 00:41:34,220
He's unambiguous about that.

744
00:41:34,220 --> 00:41:38,940
But the way that Luke, 
but the way that Luke portrays Peter and Paul

745
00:41:38,940 --> 00:41:42,340
and other early Christians interacting with 
the Roman authorities is,

746
00:41:42,380 --> 00:41:45,940
is unique because, uh, 
like Paul in particular,

747
00:41:45,980 --> 00:41:48,580
seems to get along really well with the 
political authorities. Now, he doesn't

748
00:41:48,580 --> 00:41:52,180
compromise his message. Like time after time, 
Paul wants to say to everyone that he can

749
00:41:52,180 --> 00:41:56,220
that Jesus is the Messiah and that there's 
going to be a judgment day and Jesus will

750
00:41:56,220 --> 00:42:00,790
come back, and that everyone needs to get 
ready. But he also doesn't allow himself to

751
00:42:00,830 --> 00:42:02,630
succumb to the temptation of revolution.

752
00:42:02,670 --> 00:42:06,950
Like Peter and Paul are not really interested 
in changing political systems per se.

753
00:42:07,230 --> 00:42:10,510
They believe that it's the power of the 
spirit that's going to transform the world,

754
00:42:10,510 --> 00:42:13,310
and they just have to get the message out 
there. As long as people are hearing it and

755
00:42:13,310 --> 00:42:16,750
the spirit has the space to do the work, 
then that's what really changes the world.

756
00:42:16,750 --> 00:42:21,310
And all of this is only possible because God 
has installed Jesus as king over creation,

757
00:42:21,310 --> 00:42:23,790
and he's ruling currently throughout 
Luke-acts.

758
00:42:23,790 --> 00:42:29,950
So in that sense, like Luke and acts is is 
they are very political texts because they're

759
00:42:29,950 --> 00:42:33,670
all predicated on the assumption that Jesus 
is this Davidic Messiah,

760
00:42:33,670 --> 00:42:37,750
and you just simply can't escape that in, 
in any of the text,

761
00:42:37,750 --> 00:42:41,470
in acts. And when you look at it from that 
perspective, it's so brilliant. I think the

762
00:42:41,470 --> 00:42:45,670
thing that's so frustrating to me about the 
way that New Testament scholars have

763
00:42:45,670 --> 00:42:48,590
approached acts, and a lot of the sources 
that I use kind of do this,

764
00:42:48,590 --> 00:42:51,510
too, is that they acknowledge this and they 
see this,

765
00:42:51,510 --> 00:42:55,310
and they don't draw the obvious conclusion 
that for modern Christians,

766
00:42:55,310 --> 00:42:57,670
if we want to take a principle away from the 
book of Acts,

767
00:42:57,670 --> 00:43:01,870
it's that whatever you think about your party 
affiliation or anything like Jesus has to

768
00:43:01,910 --> 00:43:04,870
come first and there's nothing that comes 
before that.

769
00:43:04,990 --> 00:43:08,710
That loyalty to Jesus like that is the number 
one and everything else.

770
00:43:08,750 --> 00:43:12,070
If there is even a second place, 
it's a very distant second.

771
00:43:12,150 --> 00:43:14,710
Um, and I think that that's the message that 
comes out of that.

772
00:43:14,750 --> 00:43:18,190
And a lot of people have forgotten it 
because, again, we tend to read passages like

773
00:43:18,190 --> 00:43:20,270
that and we wonder more about, 
like these weird,

774
00:43:20,310 --> 00:43:23,350
like theological, not weird, 
but these theological issues that aren't

775
00:43:23,390 --> 00:43:26,590
necessarily tied into the main themes that 
Luke wants to portray.

776
00:43:27,310 --> 00:43:27,750
Got it.

777
00:43:27,790 --> 00:43:29,430
Yeah. Was that good? I know that.

778
00:43:29,630 --> 00:43:33,470
Yeah. That was that was that was like this 
nice rush of like,

779
00:43:33,510 --> 00:43:36,630
here's a theme. Like, 
we all understand when I say we all I mean,

780
00:43:36,670 --> 00:43:38,830
it's it's understandable for a lot of 
listeners,

781
00:43:38,830 --> 00:43:40,830
for a lot of people to think, 
okay, Luke and acts,

782
00:43:41,230 --> 00:43:45,110
that's, that's a large portion of events in 
the New Testament,

783
00:43:45,150 --> 00:43:48,670
of course, because acts is really all the 
history beyond the Gospels that we have,

784
00:43:48,910 --> 00:43:52,070
and it kind of frames the approach that 
you're taking.

785
00:43:52,070 --> 00:43:55,280
And that's why I picked Luke acts as sort of 
the narrative for you to kind of discuss

786
00:43:55,280 --> 00:43:59,240
here. Um, it also influences, 
of course, things like Romans 13 first Peter

787
00:43:59,240 --> 00:44:04,240
two. I'm sure you're going to deal with all 
those in your book without maybe without

788
00:44:04,240 --> 00:44:06,960
going into those in depth. Do you want to 
tease a little bit else?

789
00:44:07,000 --> 00:44:10,960
What? Sorry, do you want to tease what else 
is in your book that people might be,

790
00:44:11,000 --> 00:44:13,680
you know, sort of piqued, 
especially libertarians, because I know we

791
00:44:13,680 --> 00:44:17,760
all want to hear what Romans 13 means to 
every other Christian,

792
00:44:17,800 --> 00:44:19,640
Christian, libertarian, 
Christian.

793
00:44:19,640 --> 00:44:21,280
So let's wrap up with that.

794
00:44:21,320 --> 00:44:24,840
I just want to give you an opportunity to 
sort of share, like, what else do you want to

795
00:44:24,840 --> 00:44:27,360
share about your book? I realize we're 
months,

796
00:44:27,400 --> 00:44:31,240
possibly a year away from this really being 
out and basically in the hands of people.

797
00:44:31,240 --> 00:44:36,000
But, um, it's important for them to know, 
like I've seen I haven't read it all,

798
00:44:36,000 --> 00:44:38,160
but I've seen it and it's pretty large.

799
00:44:38,160 --> 00:44:41,080
And I know you're covering a lot of material, 
so tell us more.

800
00:44:41,200 --> 00:44:44,880
Yeah, I mean, I like my, 
my goal is to have the manuscript done by

801
00:44:44,880 --> 00:44:47,400
March of 2026. Uh, it's a pretty ambitious 
goal.

802
00:44:47,400 --> 00:44:50,920
I think I can do it, but it's going to 
require a lot of work. We'll see if that

803
00:44:50,920 --> 00:44:53,530
happens. That's that's the goal. Um, 
but with the book,

804
00:44:53,530 --> 00:44:55,290
like I said, I want to.

805
00:44:55,690 --> 00:44:59,410
So the first, the first six chapters of the 
book are just pure methodology.

806
00:44:59,410 --> 00:45:03,490
So I talk like I give a concrete definition 
for capitalism and socialism.

807
00:45:03,610 --> 00:45:07,370
Um, I give a more concrete understanding of 
the political spectrum.

808
00:45:07,370 --> 00:45:10,130
It's really a spectrum between like liberty 
and authority, between violence and

809
00:45:10,130 --> 00:45:14,410
nonviolence. And then I also go into, 
like some of the methodological issues of how

810
00:45:14,410 --> 00:45:15,650
we interpret the Bible.

811
00:45:15,770 --> 00:45:21,010
Um, and then I give like a brief synopsis of 
Greco-Roman history,

812
00:45:21,090 --> 00:45:24,010
uh, and then kind of political and economic 
thought, because I think it's really

813
00:45:24,010 --> 00:45:27,890
important to ground our interpretation in the 
New Testament, in the world of the Roman

814
00:45:27,890 --> 00:45:31,170
Empire. And in order that we have to we have 
to have a little bit of history.

815
00:45:31,170 --> 00:45:34,170
And then I also give a review of Jewish 
history leading up to the first century as

816
00:45:34,170 --> 00:45:38,210
well, just so we can kind of contextualize 
those two worlds of the earliest Christians

817
00:45:38,210 --> 00:45:41,170
lived in. So the methodology frames the rest 
of the book,

818
00:45:41,210 --> 00:45:45,650
and then I just go through all of the works 
of the New Testament and draw out major

819
00:45:45,650 --> 00:45:50,050
themes and address major passages in light of 
these kind of historical considerations,

820
00:45:50,050 --> 00:45:55,210
and also in light of the concretized 
definitions of political and economic

821
00:45:55,210 --> 00:45:58,250
concepts that I've developed in the earlier 
part of the work.

822
00:45:58,250 --> 00:46:01,250
So it's just designed to say like, 
okay, like if we if we look at,

823
00:46:01,450 --> 00:46:06,130
um, if we come up with a like, 
like an inflexible definition of these terms,

824
00:46:06,130 --> 00:46:09,730
how does this work within these passages in 
the New Testament that are often,

825
00:46:09,890 --> 00:46:13,690
um, that are often seen as dealing with 
political and economic issues?

826
00:46:13,690 --> 00:46:16,810
Now, for the Gospels, 
I deal with like like with the with the

827
00:46:16,810 --> 00:46:19,690
narratives in the New Testament. So with the 
Gospels and Acts, I deal with some major

828
00:46:19,690 --> 00:46:22,650
themes. I deal with Christology, 
I deal with eschatology.

829
00:46:22,650 --> 00:46:27,810
These are all issues that impact the way that 
they thought about Jesus's messianic identity

830
00:46:27,810 --> 00:46:29,850
and the way that it shaped world history.

831
00:46:29,850 --> 00:46:33,130
And once you look at how these themes are 
developed throughout these,

832
00:46:33,170 --> 00:46:39,090
these works, then it becomes very easy to see 
how they do take Jesus's messianic identity

833
00:46:39,130 --> 00:46:43,450
seriously in a way that Christian history has 
kind of tended to marginalize or ignore.

834
00:46:43,450 --> 00:46:46,490
And then we also look at, 
you know, certain economic texts.

835
00:46:46,530 --> 00:46:49,610
The parable of the rich young ruler is a 
great example of this. The widow and the

836
00:46:49,610 --> 00:46:51,380
mites is a good example of this.

837
00:46:51,540 --> 00:46:55,500
Um, in acts I look at the Jerusalem church in 
Acts two and acts chapter four,

838
00:46:55,660 --> 00:46:59,140
and we look at that through the framework of 
wider Christian teaching,

839
00:46:59,140 --> 00:47:03,100
how they understood political and economic 
dynamics in the first century. And then can

840
00:47:03,140 --> 00:47:06,860
these do these correspond to any of our 
grounded modern definitions for politics and

841
00:47:06,860 --> 00:47:10,140
economics and just kind of work through them 
that way? And there are so many passages.

842
00:47:10,140 --> 00:47:12,060
Now, like I said, I'm setting up my, 
uh, my,

843
00:47:12,100 --> 00:47:15,260
my chapters on Paul because I think I'm going 
to have to have five chapters,

844
00:47:15,260 --> 00:47:17,980
all in all, to deal with him. Um, 
but I'm going to have an introductory chapter

845
00:47:17,980 --> 00:47:21,060
where I deal with his main themes. We look at 
like, all right, so what does the gospel mean

846
00:47:21,060 --> 00:47:24,700
for Paul? What is it about the identity of 
the church that is characteristic that maybe

847
00:47:24,740 --> 00:47:28,900
Western Christians have forgotten? And then 
what is it about Pauline ethics that we have

848
00:47:28,900 --> 00:47:31,060
to take for granted? And so when you look at,

849
00:47:31,100 --> 00:47:35,820
like, the cumulative evidence that Paul's 
gospel is centered upon Jesus as the Messiah,

850
00:47:35,860 --> 00:47:38,260
that his ecclesiology is, 
that he believes that all those that have

851
00:47:38,260 --> 00:47:40,380
faith in the Davidic Messiah are a part of 
Israel,

852
00:47:40,380 --> 00:47:43,100
and that, like we're the real people as 
opposed to everyone else.

853
00:47:43,100 --> 00:47:46,980
He takes that Jew and Gentile divide and 
applies it to the church and not the church.

854
00:47:46,980 --> 00:47:50,270
And then if you look at his ethic of 
Cruciform that Christians are supposed to

855
00:47:50,270 --> 00:47:52,310
emulate the cross and live a nonviolent life.

856
00:47:52,390 --> 00:47:56,310
Well, then, when you read all of Paul's 
letters and you come across these economic

857
00:47:56,310 --> 00:48:00,310
and, uh, or these texts that appear to speak 
to political and economic issues,

858
00:48:00,310 --> 00:48:03,390
well, then you have a framework for thinking 
about those things within Paul's larger

859
00:48:03,390 --> 00:48:07,030
thought. And that just helps contextualize a 
lot of these. And what's crazy is that there

860
00:48:07,030 --> 00:48:10,710
are so many passages in, 
uh, in like first and second Corinthians,

861
00:48:10,710 --> 00:48:14,590
for instance, that are just totally left out 
of these Christian political and economic

862
00:48:14,590 --> 00:48:16,470
debates that need to be reincorporated.

863
00:48:16,470 --> 00:48:19,590
And I think that by, you know, 
having that more expanded definition of

864
00:48:19,590 --> 00:48:22,150
politics that helps us to see where Paul sits 
with these,

865
00:48:22,150 --> 00:48:25,470
and then I'm going to go through the rest of 
the passages in the New Testament, um, like,

866
00:48:25,510 --> 00:48:28,430
you know, James, Hebrews, 
all the Catholic epistles, written revelation

867
00:48:28,430 --> 00:48:33,310
and just work through how these would have 
been understood historically,

868
00:48:33,310 --> 00:48:37,710
and then how these bear on the way that 
Christians ought to today try to apply these

869
00:48:37,710 --> 00:48:41,430
categories. So it's it's going to be a really 
for someone that's totally unfamiliar with

870
00:48:41,430 --> 00:48:44,710
this. It's going to be a great book to read 
from start to finish. For people that are

871
00:48:44,750 --> 00:48:47,640
already a part of these debates, 
it might be more of a resource that,

872
00:48:47,680 --> 00:48:50,840
you know, you can kind of pick certain 
passages here and there and certain sections

873
00:48:50,840 --> 00:48:55,240
here and there. I just want to be able to 
give people a guide for understanding how

874
00:48:55,240 --> 00:49:00,680
this could work. Um, if we were to start with 
the assumption that the Bible was historical

875
00:49:00,840 --> 00:49:05,240
text and then have some sort of hermeneutical 
controls to deal with that and then work

876
00:49:05,240 --> 00:49:08,280
through the interpretation that way, 
that's the whole goal of the book. It's going

877
00:49:08,280 --> 00:49:12,840
to wind up being probably 450 to 500 pages 
long when it's all said and done,

878
00:49:12,840 --> 00:49:15,960
but this might be the only time in my life I 
ever write a book. And so if I'm going to do

879
00:49:15,960 --> 00:49:16,920
it, I want to do it right.

880
00:49:18,600 --> 00:49:20,240
Well, I wish you all the best.

881
00:49:20,240 --> 00:49:23,360
And, uh, if there's anything we can do to 
help you get the word out there,

882
00:49:23,400 --> 00:49:25,800
I mean, we're starting with this 
conversation, and, uh,

883
00:49:25,800 --> 00:49:27,760
so that would. That would be really great.

884
00:49:27,880 --> 00:49:30,640
Um, Alex, thank you so much for joining me 
here.

885
00:49:30,640 --> 00:49:34,040
Uh, I know we'll talk about this, 
uh, whenever your book is published in the

886
00:49:34,040 --> 00:49:37,080
future, and we'll we'll talk more concretely 
about it since,

887
00:49:37,080 --> 00:49:39,080
uh, since, you know, I love talking to you.

888
00:49:39,080 --> 00:49:41,520
And this is kind of a topic of interest for 
for the two of us.

889
00:49:41,520 --> 00:49:44,160
So, uh, thanks for coming on to talk about 
these topics.

890
00:49:44,200 --> 00:49:46,720
Oh, man. Doug, always great talking to you. 
You. Thanks for having me.

891
00:49:46,960 --> 00:49:47,440
Yep.

892
00:49:49,960 --> 00:49:53,880
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893
00:49:53,880 --> 00:49:57,280
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894
00:49:57,280 --> 00:49:58,680
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895
00:49:58,760 --> 00:50:01,000
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896
00:50:01,000 --> 00:50:03,760
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897
00:50:03,800 --> 00:50:07,080
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898
00:50:07,080 --> 00:50:09,600
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899
00:50:09,600 --> 00:50:10,800
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900
00:50:10,840 --> 00:50:12,800
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901
00:50:13,960 --> 00:50:18,960
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902
00:50:19,000 --> 00:50:21,680
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903
00:50:21,800 --> 00:50:25,040
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904
00:50:25,080 --> 00:50:27,040
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905
00:50:27,280 --> 00:50:30,680
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906
00:50:30,880 --> 00:50:35,320
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907
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