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A podcast focusing on issues related to nonviolence, and a member of the Kingdom Outpost.
Welcome back to the Fourth Way Podcast. In this episode, I had the opportunity to speak with doctor Drew Johnson about some of his work on epistemology. I usually like to try to record these, these intros to the episode right after I I have my discussion. But it's been, like, I don't know, maybe 4 or 5 months since I actually did the interview with doctor Johnson because I wanted to spend time reading some of his other works. Biblical philosophy, I think, was 1, and, and ritual knowing because there's there's just so much in, in the field of epistemology and specifically just a lot from from doctor Johnson that, I like, and I wanted to have a a fuller sense of, of what was going on here and how to best introduce doctor Johnson.
Derek Kreider:I I've come to realize that,
Derek Kreider:of the time, I can keep my interviews to, like, an hour ish, and it's not too hard to, you know, whittle it down a little bit if I'm gonna go a little bit over. With doctor Johnson, we went well over an hour, and I had to cut a lot of questions. And now after reading more of his work, my my questions list has, like, tripled or quadrupled. So this is this is, this is a topic that when you get this discussion today, it is going to be just scratching the iceberg of of what's important and what's out there. But, hopefully, it will cover enough, and, it will be explanatory enough to to be sufficient, for for what we need here.
Derek Kreider:I'm currently not quite finished with his his book, Ritual Knowing, but, I've read a little bit of it, probably about half of it, and, we'll maybe pull a little bit from that here as I, prepare the introduction. So let's talk about some of the big ideas, big themes, important concepts that I want you to focus on, for our discussion or as well as some things that maybe we won't get into that I think are important for you to know. So first of all, doctor Johnson is gonna talk a little bit about, the the idea of truth in the the Hebrew Bible. And he's gonna talk about how the word true is used of lots of different things that we would never or it's it's weird for us to associate true with. So, you know, we do have, like, sailors setting a true course, but, you know, one of the things in the Bible that you you have that's really weird for us is, like, a true tent peg.
Derek Kreider:And that's just that's just odd for us that true could mean something to that extent. Yet it's true in the Hebraic sense, in the sense that, over time and circumstance, the the tent peg proves reliable. It proves it proves itself over time to function as it was intended to function. And and it's also what the New Testament seems to have in view. This isn't something that doctor Johnson talks about, but if you get into, New Testament literature more so and and some of the kind of evaluations of maybe where we've gone wrong, with modern protestants at times, you get this idea of of faith, which is this this concept that it's something that works itself out over time.
Derek Kreider:It's something that produces fruit, that it produces works. So a true faith is a faith which over time proves itself through the production of good works. Because if we have the spirit living in us and and we have a true faith, we're truly connected to God, then that spirit should produce fruit within us. Now there's a a popular book title, called I think it's like Salvation by Allegiance Alone. Right?
Derek Kreider:It it, takes this this idea of faith and says, look. Faith means more than what we think it means at this blind Kierkegaardian leap of faith. It it faith, it has the connotations of allegiance, of proving yourself over time. And that concept just dovetails very nicely with what has been explored in, in this section so far leading up to the interview here with doctor Johnson. These ideas of, you know, living out the ideal and and the production of fruits and, and and and all of that, proving yourself faithful.
Derek Kreider:So the the truth is an ideal that isn't at all idealistic. It's not gonna be something that's pie in the sky. It actually works. Right? It proves itself faithful over time.
Derek Kreider:The truth does. It just depends on on how you defined it works. Right? If you define it works, the truth works as something that gets you immediate gratification and results now, and it avoids the most suffering and pain in the near term, then lying may sometimes be a good route to take. Right?
Derek Kreider:It might, for for a moment, seem to show that it it's gonna work. But if you're a long term thinker, if you're a kingdom builder, that wants to build something for the ages, something that stands, then truth is always going to work better. Over time and circumstance, it proves itself, to be to be good, to be better. So in that sense, truth proves itself, at capable and the the best tool to build a good world. And it shouldn't be otherwise because if a good god created a good world to function on good, then you'd expect choosing the good to have the tendency to work better.
Derek Kreider:The hard part about this vision of truth, though, is that a new truth isn't immediately verifiable because truths aren't strictly propositional. When you're introduced to some some new information, you can't just propositionally look at that thing and say, oh, yeah. That's true. Right? Because the Hebraic sense of truth is that it it approves itself over time.
Derek Kreider:And I know that this is a strange concept for a lot of us that's that something is not gonna be really propositional, that that's not gonna work too well because we're very propositionally minded here in the West. And doctor Johnson goes to great lengths to to try to lay out a case for how this is so, and he, he digs into the work of, Michael Polanyi, who somebody that I'd really like to read after I read doctor Johnson. He's somebody I'd like to get to because, his pushback against positivism and which I think you still see the the remnants of today. It's, I I think it's just so fascinating and so interesting, especially if you're interested in looking at, epistemology and science and how science, you know, they they act like God, like, they can explain everything and, like, it just works. There's so many undergirding assumptions and epistemological issues, with with that sort of thing.
Derek Kreider:And doctor Johnson just starts to scratch the surface on it and point you to some other people who are gonna be able to to uncover that. It's just fascinating. But, anyway, this this kind of concept is sort of one of the cruxes of doctor Johnson's work that you you don't really learn propositionally because truth is known in community. It's known by, it comes to be known by trusting authority and it's verified by being proven over time. And we don't like that because you can't really be confident.
Derek Kreider:It's not like a, you know, syllogism that you can just look at and be like, oh, yeah. That's true. Right? It's something that is gonna have to prove itself. And that means that, there's there's a lot of caution and care that that goes into choosing who we trust to be our guides towards truth.
Derek Kreider:And not only, is doctor Johnson's work great as, as something new, but also something that kind of looks back on on what we've already touched on. But I'm also putting his, his episode right here because I think it's going to be a good stepping stone to what we've been talking about and what we're going to talk about soon. This this idea of the importance of truth leading into the concept of the formation of truth. How is truth formed? Because what I'm gonna argue and what I've kind of been alluding to throughout this whole season is that discipleship is the true counter propaganda.
Derek Kreider:It's the true propaganda killer. The formation of truth in communities is what undermines the effectiveness of manipulative propaganda. So consider this episode as kind of the glue that's going to hold the past and the future together, as well as bring up some some new ideas that, that you're probably gonna want to, go into, on the side because it's just such a a a rich field here. But we're seeking to kind of culminate the season, with with hope and application and and bring it to a meaningful and, close that, also has some application, involved. So beyond that, there is another idea that I think is really important or at least really interesting, but I think important and interesting that I want to, to highlight because we don't spend a ton of time on it, but it it's so, so important, and I wanna elaborate here.
Derek Kreider:And that question that I've had for a long time, I've asked so many people, Yeah. How can we you know, if if we can't learn from I don't know. Let's say, for conservative Christians, if they have problems learning from a a, a gay Christian, if they think those things are oxymorons, you can't be gay. You can't be a Christian. And they they'll say, nope.
Derek Kreider:I'm not gonna learn from them. We're gonna ban their books. We're not gonna read them because they're not even truly a Christian. So how could I learn from them? What happens for those same conservative Christians who are gonna wanna learn from slaveholders?
Derek Kreider:Whitfield, Edwards, I mean, quite a lot, right, from back in the the day. Who ought we to apprentice under? Who can we learn from? Can we learn from slaveholders and abusers? Can we learn from somebody like Ravi Zacharias who, before we knew he was an abuser, was just phenomenal, a phenomenal teacher.
Derek Kreider:But after he's abuser an abuser, does that really change the truth of what he's saying? Like, can we still learn from him? Yeah. I was, I was just sitting through my first communion the other day after, after getting into ritual knowing and, which is which is a book that kind of argues for this discipling sort of case where we come to know not not just through community, but also through the practices of community through rituals. And, I thought about communion.
Derek Kreider:I was like, okay. Well, communion is a ritual. So according to doctor Johnson, I am learning something in this ritual. Right? Has it took me a while because I was like, what am I what am I learning?
Derek Kreider:I'm just eating. I'm eating a piece of bread. I'm drinking wine. Okay. Yeah.
Derek Kreider:It tells me symbolically about this this, you know, this act that Jesus did. But but, doctor Johnson talks about how no. No. No. Rituals are more than just symbolic.
Derek Kreider:Like, they they're actual portals or whatever into knowing true things about the the real world. And then it clicked for me. You know, I was sitting in that room with, men and women, of course, old and young, of course, but people from different socioeconomic statuses. There's single mother in the room. There were orphans in the room.
Derek Kreider:There were poor people. There were well off people. There were Germans. There were Americans. There were Canadians.
Derek Kreider:There were Romanians. No other nationality at that point, but we had also, sometimes you have like Brazilians and you you've got people from all over the place. And I was thinking back to, to Paul writing about, about communion and, the importance of, of that. And I was like, Oh, their communion is teaching me to break bread, to do this this intimate act like this this thing. You don't just invite anybody into your house to eat with you.
Derek Kreider:I mean, usually, you invite people who are family or close friends into your house to eat with you, but there was a great diversity of those that I ate with. And it clicked for me that it taught me. It was a precursor to to knowledge. Like, it it taught me something that I didn't even know I was being taught. And that is that, I am part of a diverse group, and I am to value and love all people, young, old, single mother, family, orphan, poor, rich, regardless of nationality.
Derek Kreider:That's what communion was teaching me. It was having me sup, dine with all of those people. Yeah. You know, thinking about some of the churches that I visited here in Europe, the black church here in Romania, as one easy example for me, you go in there and you see how the pews were arranged aristocratically. Some of them arranged them, you know, men on one side, women on another side, but then you'd have, you know, this is this this patron's pew, this family's pew, because they donated such and such an amount of money.
Derek Kreider:And, and and then you think back to, the slaveholders and how they, you know, they might have sometimes split the churches, black churches and white churches and the the Jim Crow South and stuff. And you're like, man, they have completely bastardized communion. And not just bastardized this this ritual, but, like, rituals are epistemic events. They're things that teach you a truth about the world. What truth, like, to hijack this this ritual of communion and to have aristocratic seating completely undermines the ritual of communion.
Derek Kreider:You know, I think to, to first Corinthians 11, where Paul shows us one of only two places that I'm aware of in the New Testament where a Christian's death is attributed to a particular sin. The other instance that I can think of is with Ananias and Sapphira. Now in 1st Corinthians 11, Paul says, says something that's interesting. Now oftentimes, when when we go to communion, my whole life, I've heard, hey. Let's make sure we search our hearts and make sure that we don't have sin, sin before God and, that we're not sinning, also sinning against, brother or sister.
Derek Kreider:If if they have something against us, let's make sure we take it to them. And, yes, that's that's true. Especially the second part, the sin against somebody else. Yeah. That's true.
Derek Kreider:But in 1st Corinthians 11, there's even a much more specific focus that Paul has on why somebody died during, why there's death during communion. Paul talks about some being weak, like, and sick, and some having died because of their handling of communion. And listen to the reason, starting in verse, chapter 11 verse 17. Here's what Paul says. In the following directives, I have no praise for you, for your meetings do more harm than good.
Derek Kreider:In the first place, I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and to some extent, I believe it. No doubt there have to be differences among you to show which of you have God's approval. So then when you come together, it is not the Lord's supper you eat, but when you are eating, some of you go ahead with your own private suppers. As a result, one person remains hungry, and another gets drunk. Don't you have homes to eat and drink in, or do you despise the Church of God by humiliating those who have nothing?
Derek Kreider:Now, it's no wonder that only a chapter later, about 40 verses on from from where I left off here, Paul goes on to write his famous love chapter. It's by our love for one another that people will know that we're the disciples of Christ. And 1st John talks all about love being the indicator that we know God and a lack of love indicating that we don't. And here, Paul is just so explicit that the reason people have died, the reason people are sick is because you are, you are not eating as a family. You are creating divisions.
Derek Kreider:You are being divisive. You are, and especially to those who are poorer than you. You are you are excluding them. And the ritual of communion is a ritual that teaches us a vital truth about the world. And that is that all are loved by God and that all are to be included, and God does not take it lightly when that type of thing is bastardized.
Derek Kreider:Ritual is important because, as doctor Johnson says, quote, ritualized practice disposes one to recognize in order to finally discern, end quote. So you either see people as equal in value with you and worthy of love, or you don't. Or through ritual, you come to see that. You come to see them as worthy of love by breaking bread and drinking wine with them. The broken body and blood of your king and savior, a suffering servant who loved everyone and who's now partaking, of that meal.
Derek Kreider:You are now partaking of that meal with him. You come to know that everyone is valuable, not merely propositionally. In fact, you might propositionally know that someone is made in the image of God yet still not value them. That proposition is something that you only truly deeply know, proven in an act that we call embodiment or living it out or walking the walk or not being a hypocrite or a douchebag. You only truly come to know that proposition in a meaningful way through ritual and experience.
Derek Kreider:Now understanding this idea of epistemology and ritual is something that has made me much, much less open to including slave holders and egregious sinners, like, Ravi Zacharias, including them in my library. And so it's a hard, it's a difficult line here because we all recognize that we are our sinners in need of God's grace. That's true. But there is something wickedly egregious about about things like slave holding and abusing people like that, like Ravi did, that shows just a a so a departure that's so far away from from Jesus Christ and the ritual of communion. This thing that's that's at the center of, Christian practice and ritual, like, to to eat with people and then despise them and own them and abuse them.
Derek Kreider:There there's nothing farther from Christianity than that. And to have to apprentice under those people who do those kinds of things, it seems very, unwise, to say the least. And something that I don't I don't really get is how a lot of conservative Christians would defend people like, you know, Whitfield or maybe even, depending on your view of of Calvin and, you know, Servitus or Servitus, however you say his name, and, the burning of people and the inquisitions. Like, can those people can we learn from those people too? You know, I I think that's a great question.
Derek Kreider:But for for a lot of those people who might say, well, of course, we can learn from Calvin. We can still learn from Zacharias, all those kinds of things. It's just interesting that a lot of those same people would say, well, we can't learn from, the the German Christians who placed themselves under Hitler, right, and didn't repent of that. We can't learn from them. And I think back to, to Bonhoeffer and the Aryan clauses that were that were inserted, were accepted by a lot of the churches and the capitulation that went on there.
Derek Kreider:We don't give the Germans a pass as, oh, they were just men of their times. Right? Can you imagine elevating those theologians? Like like some conservatives elevate, I don't know, Whitfield, Calvin, that kind of thing. It seems it seems very difficult to accept.
Derek Kreider:I don't know. It it's something I'm still thinking through, but, but that's doctor Johnson addresses that very briefly. But it's something that, that as you read his work is a question that I think is really vital to ask and consider throughout. Anyway, like I said, I could I I had so many more notes for the intro here. I could go on for a long time, but I think at that point, it would just be more rambling.
Derek Kreider:So, hopefully, this I've given you, 2 good big things to look out for, and, I've prepared you. And, hopefully, you enjoy the conversation with with doctor Johnson because he is, he is much clearer and, and more intelligent than I am. So here it is, the interview with doctor Johnson. I have I have done a lot of a lot of thinking and reading, about propaganda, but, you know, the the reason I'm, kind of, coming to you is because, I think it's so the way that I've set up the season is I wanna go through propaganda in in a lot of different frameworks because there are lots of places that you can manipulate information. Mhmm.
Derek Kreider:But I know that a lot of times it's really easy to kind of tear something down and and and talk negatively about something. But that oftentimes doesn't lead you to a place where you're able to really do anything with that. And so epistemology, you know, I want to kind of end the season where it's like, okay. Well, we've seen the way that truth is manipulated. We've seen the absence of truth.
Derek Kreider:Let's talk about how do we foster and facilitate truth. And so I I read your book. I think I actually read human rights first. I was reading JKA, Smith.
Dr. Johnson:Yeah. Jamie Smith.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Some of his books, and then your human rights went right along with that. And then I I picked up Biblical Knowing, and I didn't I didn't know that you'd written Human Rights, but, I kinda made that connection later.
Derek Kreider:But those were were 2 influential books as I was thinking about the positive case for what truth is. So if before we kind of get into some of the the, tough questions, if you would maybe just give some of your background and, your what brought you to studying epistemology?
Dr. Johnson:Oh, yeah. Well, I grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I failed out of high school in the early nineties, like 90, 91. And, I joined the air force, and I spent, you know, 7 years going to college and then the reserves and deploying into is the nineties, so I was doing a lot of counternarcotics work done in South America and Colombia specifically, in order to pay for college because this is before September 11th. And it was before the gravy train GI bill that they have now, where I got, like, $100 a month, when I was in school. And I and I became a Christian when I was in college, and and 3 years into the military.
Dr. Johnson:And I think because of my combat experience, which was not heavy combat, but it was enough to charm me awake from any slumbers I had about, like, my naive views that humans are basically good, and given the opportunity, they will basically do good. Not you know, that was all blown down pretty quickly, and including myself. I was doing things that I wouldn't have thought that I would have done morally, and eventually, I kinda had to reckon with, like, wait. How how do humans get to these levels? So when I became a Christian and a friend kind of guided me towards going to seminary because he saw that I was interested in theological issues, even though I was headed towards a PhD in psychology, he was like, I think you would like seminary better.
Dr. Johnson:And and as soon as he described it to me, I was like, yeah. Actually, that sounds awesome. And I loved seminary. I loved my experience there. My professors were great.
Dr. Johnson:It was a covenant seminary, which is the PCA, the Presbyterian Church in America. So fit it's their only seminary. So and it wasn't really stuck in. Fortunately, my systematic theology professor who's a mentor was also a Vietnam vet and was an atheist who became a Christian in Vietnam, like, in the Foxhole kind of a situation, Michael Williams. And, it was great.
Dr. Johnson:But even then, there was kind of this headiness in the Presbyterian church, and I was I was all about, like, man, if it's not real life experience, I want nothing to do with it. Like, you know, let let let's quit the talk. Let's do walk walk. I only care about how you walk this out. And I and I think they were really into that as well, at least notionally.
Dr. Johnson:They they believed in that and they kind of burned that into me. To wit, at covenant, believe it or not, I did not know this until I was in my PhD program. But most seminaries don't require their professors to have any pastoral experience whatsoever. So covenant, it's a requirement to be a professor there. You have to have at least 5 years of some kind of pastoral experience or ministry experience.
Dr. Johnson:So there was that angle on it as well, but I just really got into, like, because of I came from a, you know, a broken home. I married a woman who was from a broken home. I had these experiences in the military that kinda shook me up. I was looking for solidity. I, like, I wanted to know how do you know thing like, how can you trust anything in this world?
Dr. Johnson:Because I had a lot of experiences that basically taught me don't trust anybody anytime, anywhere. All people will fail, let you down, or connive against you or try to kill you. That was the other one that I learned as well. So so it was not theoretical for me. I was actually very concerned about how can anybody say they know anything with any solidity or any firmness to it.
Dr. Johnson:And that's when I ran into Esther Meek. I read Michael Pilani, this person who is obviously a huge inspiration, who is a chemist, you know, turned social scientist, turned philosopher. And he really talked about and, of course, I had studied I was very interested in research methods in college, and I was very interested in statistical. Like, statistics blew my mind because I was like, this is this is the most magical form of math I've ever run into because, like, none of this makes like, I don't know how this works. The math works itself out, but how it actually works metaphysically in the universe was so bizarre to me.
Dr. Johnson:So I was fascinated by that, and I had a philosopher sorry. A scientist turned philosopher who is now explaining to me, like, yes. This actually is a little bit magical. Yes. It's it is a group of people who trust each other, who who explore the world and let the world kick back and tell them when they're wrong.
Dr. Johnson:And at the end of the day, they have things that they believe, like the bell curve, and power analysis where you just go, like, I have no idea how it works. It just does, and it seems to work in lots of different areas. So, so as soon as I started reading that, I was like, I want more of this. These people who are talking openly and honestly about what real knowing is about, and they're not talking about absolute truths and, you know, kind of unicorn ideas. Like, something is either absolutely true or objectively true or it's not.
Dr. Johnson:They're actually talking about real truth in the real world. And at the same time, I'm doing lots of biblical exegesis in Hebrew and Greek. And I'm like, wait. This is how the biblical authors talk about truth. There's real truth in the real world.
Dr. Johnson:They don't ever talk about absolute or objective truth. They don't ever frame truth as some kind of objective absolute thing. They talk about truth as something that could be known over time and over circumstance, and something can be, true in in in rich ways in which it's seen differently, but and understood differently, but still true. And so I would kinda became obsessed with plugging away at this question of, like, what did the biblical authors think truth was? Because they talk about truth, not a lot, but enough to where it's an important issue for them.
Dr. Johnson:And and I was looking to figure out what they said. And so when I had the opportunity opportunity to do PhD work, that's when I was just like, alright. I'm gonna dig in and figure out what the Torah says about knowing and knowing the truth. And then what do the gospel say? What does Jesus say?
Dr. Johnson:And then low and I'd already taken another master's in philosophy at that point. So I kinda had heard what analytic philosophers thought about truth, and all all the very excuse me, the various ways in which they frame truth. And I'm looking at the biblical authors going, well, this is not how the biblical authors talk about truth. And I was hearing how Christian analytic philosophers were talking about truth. I'm like, that's not the whole shebang.
Dr. Johnson:So that that is basically what just fueled the fire, and that was so biblical knowing the book you, read second was actually my very first book, which was based a lot on my mainly on my is, like, how the Bible is is in many senses, its own philosophical tradition. If a if a intellectual historian were looking at ancient text and people, they would say, oh, the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament following it, it's just another intellectual tradition, like the Greco Roman tradition, like the Chinese tradition. Like, there's many ways in which it looks just like a philosophy, a philosophy text in many ways. So that's what I'm interested in these days.
Derek Kreider:Alright.
Dr. Johnson:You didn't ask for half of that. So No. No.
Derek Kreider:No. That but it it you know, the information that that you give always ends up, you know, being helpful because, so I'm in the PCA, with with mission to the world. And Oh, yeah. Understanding your experience, that that is that is very much, our experience. And a a lot of people that we talk to, some of our close friends, just this, you know, the the frozen chosen, the focus on, orthodoxy to the, you know, kinda leaving orthopraxy by the side.
Derek Kreider:Mhmm. The there's a there's a very bad taste in in, our mouths for that kind of thing and trying to figure out how to remedy that remedy that. And I think that, you know, that understanding kind of helps a lot because, you know, the first the first question that I had lined up for you was you talk about, the errors that we have in our in our thinking and in our actions being remedied by social interaction. You say social interaction, not singular reasoning upon singular propositional beliefs. And I think a lot of times, we we fail to kind of see truth as something that's embodied, but something that's maybe a little bit more abstract, but at the same time concrete, something that's objective, like you said.
Derek Kreider:And so one of the things as I've been going through propaganda is, you know, Jacques Ellul talks a lot about how propaganda basically forms communities. Mhmm. And and what you what you end up discovering is that they're not really true communities. They're they're kind of like, like a lot of American sorts of things. Right?
Derek Kreider:They're they're like these fickle facades, of or, like, these these cheap toys that you buy in the store that break a second later. Like, they look really good on the outside, but they're they're just empty. So these these just hollow echo chambers. And so your your idea of embodied truth, and like I said, reading through James k Smith stuff too, Just just that idea of, like, physical tangible truth building together through discipleship, I think, is is foundational to fighting propaganda, which is just fake community, fake relationship, fake truth, fake authentication, which is something that we'll get to later. But could you could you just explain why discipleship and communal participation?
Derek Kreider:Like, what does that have to do with truth?
Dr. Johnson:Yeah. I mean, discipleship is obviously, like like, it's become a Christianese word. Right? That's loaded with all kinds of ideas. But if you just say apprenticeship, which is discipleship at least has elements of apprenticeship in it.
Dr. Johnson:And I and this is, you know, the idea that there are certain people who well, you can think of any skill where there's people who know how to do the skill, and then and then there's people who know how to do that, perform that skill, and they know how to coach others into the skill, which those are not always the same thing. Right? So there are people who are really expert at some topic, but you should never put them in a classroom with people because they don't know how to coach people to see what they're trying to show them. And there are various techniques. You know?
Dr. Johnson:I'm a I'm a teacher by trade. And so, like, I I've come to realize, you know, you come into teaching as a content mechanism delivery mechanism. They even talk about this sometimes in the worst versions of higher education. And it really is what kinds of paces you're gonna put people through in order to see the thing that you're trying to show them, and developing these skills. So apprenticeship has to happen within a community.
Dr. Johnson:And if you think about all of the thing you know, if you think about just knowledge, what we the kinds of knowledge that we value most in our world. Like, I would put medical knowledge right up there really high. Like, the and not, you know, you know, maybe it's not we don't put it next to spiritual knowledge or something like that, knowledge of God. But just practically speaking, if something go you know, someone collapses right now, medical knowledge is the most valuable knowledge in the room. If you have a $1,000,000 financial investment knowledge is the most valuable, knowledge in the room.
Dr. Johnson:So when you look at, like, well, how do people become expert, or plumber? You know, I've got a leak in my roof last night because of hurricane Ian has come through, and it rained on us for 4 days, and we discovered a a leak in our roof. A roofer's knowledge right now is the most valuable knowledge in my house. I'm I'll probably end up paying 1,000 of dollars to have somebody come in and say, like, oh, here's the problem. Right?
Dr. Johnson:Or plumbers or something like that. Those people don't develop that by reading you know, you could say, like, well, I learned it on my own. But when people say I learned something on my own, they actually meant they read a book or they watched YouTube now. You know? They watched videos where somebody was able to form a community with that person even if it's a 1 on 1 and instruct them, and give them all kinds of various embodied techniques to perform until they could see the thing that they were trying to show them, the abstract thing.
Dr. Johnson:So you talk about the abstract and concrete. I you know, I've got 4 kids who are now, you know, teens up into their twenties. But I remember, like, one of the were the hardest things to teach my kids in our community of learning, which whenever you have kids, there's always learning community going on, is the idea of healthy, which is a really weird it's a modern concept that something is healthy or not. So you look at food, and you say, oh, that's not healthy. When you say that's not healthy, you're appealing to, like, 7 different criteria.
Dr. Johnson:And, you know, because obviously something would be some things are healthy in certain context where they're not in another or or we mean, oh, that's not healthy if you eat too much of that or something like that. But healthy is a really abstract, fuzzy logic, concept. And the only way to learn it is with someone pointing out over your shoulder, like, this is healthy and this is why it's healthy. This is why and at some point, you're gonna say why it's healthy. You're gonna explain, well, this is how the body works.
Dr. Johnson:Here's how many calories. Right? Okay. Pure grain alcohol, not healthy because your your kidney can only process so much alcohol, and any amount of that is already over that limit. Right?
Dr. Johnson:So that kind of sociological bond is required for us to know anything with any level of, degree of skill. And that description of knowing that I just, you know, sloppily danced around in all those different aspects, none of that is accounted for in modern philosophical and, I mean and if you look at apologetics curriculum, you know, 90 90% of apologetics discussions are not built on any of that kind of knowledge, which we had considered natural knowledge. I would call that the biblical view of knowing. It's predicated on actually, an enlightenment view of knowledge that, says there are just things that are facts. They're abstract entities.
Dr. Johnson:They either are true or they're not true. They call them propositions. And the goal is to figure out what's what propositions are true and arrange them in logical order in order to figure out what is true and and what we can know. So those are 2 very different discussions. I'm with some Christian philosophers who say the biblical view of truth and knowing is the broad, real, full full shebang view of knowing.
Dr. Johnson:And within that, you can still have things like the idea of propositions which can or can't be true. Like, that that's but that's the subset conversation. And so I think for at least for Christians, what we wanna do is have the full conversation and then figure out where these other little boutique view versions of truth fit within that fuller context.
Derek Kreider:So so if I hear you, correctly, it's it's more you're not advocating that this is the only way that we arrive at knowing, but you're you're saying it's part of of of a holistic approach to knowing?
Dr. Johnson:No. I'd still say it's the only way we arrive at knowing, you know, in a sense in that broad sense of nobody comes to know anything by themselves. But once you have mastered the skill so think about, like, learning your additions your times, division tables, your addition of mathematics. So when I was a kid in the seventies, like, at school, they just give you mimeograph sheets of you know, you just had to go fill out as fast as you could. Do it in under a minute, all the times tables, all the addition tables, all the right?
Dr. Johnson:And, so that was a communal activity in which I was apprenticing. And and then once I had that skill, I, on my own, could extend my my newfound skill of multiplication into other domains, into new domains. Right? But we would never say that you know, if you said, well, how do you know that this is mathematically true? I wouldn't say, well, I just know it because I know all math, and I learned it all myself.
Dr. Johnson:And we'd say, no. No. I'm extending a skill that was burned into me through rituals of repetition, right, and and various other rituals of mathematics. I mean, repetition is just one, ritual of learning. So so anytime we talk about so when people typically say, well, there's 3 types of knowing, knowing who, knowing how, and knowing what, and knowing what is really the one we're in in, you know, most interested in knowing facts and those kind of things.
Dr. Johnson:What they're really talking about is an extension of the knowing how knowledge. All the skilled knowledge is burned in through various rituals of communal, apprenticeship. And then and then we can extend those abstract entities, metaphors. You know, we can make metaphor or make sense of met new metaphors that never have been used before, and we can do all kinds of things. We, you know, we can make computers and stuff, but that but that is all extending traditions of knowledge.
Derek Kreider:So let let's jump to, maybe what would be the opposite of that. You know, in in your book, you talk about our a lot of times, some of the Christians desire to have particular beliefs logically arranged. And then, you said that this data mining approach offers a pretense of submission to scripture, which I think, you know, is is very accurate. And so our our view of epistemology that there are these objective truths, and we can just kind of know them intellectually. Then when we go to scripture, we believe that we're submitting to scripture because we can ascent to certain propositional beliefs.
Derek Kreider:Right. But, obviously, you don't you don't think that that's the case. So can you talk about the the modern especially the evangelical church, how how they the Bible? And I think the common pushback to that is, well, yeah, but if I can't do that, then how how does the Bible have any authority, if I can't take it at face value, if these propositions aren't really propositions, but something that I have to, learn some other way?
Dr. Johnson:Yeah. I think can I answer another question that you didn't ask first in order to answer that question, which is Definitely? You know, what's the view of truth here? Right? So the biblical and by biblical, I mean, when you look across scripture, all the different ways they're using true and fault what we translate is true and false amen, which is Aman, Emuna, where we get amen from amen, amen, truly I truly, truly I say to you.
Dr. Johnson:Right? One of the interesting things you'll find is they're actually not using truth as a noun the way we use it. They're most often using true true as a verb. Like a carpenter would say, I need to true up this line so that I can nail it in, which means I need to kinda get it where it ought to be. And that gives you kind of all the conceptual girth you need to understand everything that is said in scripture about truth, including when Jesus because you think about if if truth is like a proposition that is either true or false, then you have Jesus stand there going, I am the way, the truth, and the life.
Dr. Johnson:And you're like, well, how is Jesus true and not false? And anything you say after that breaks your paradigm of something as either true or false objectively and, speaking. Right? So true. My my friend, Yoram Hazony, who's an Israeli philosopher, and biblical scholar, he he says, look.
Dr. Johnson:In in Hebrew, and I think this continues perfectly into the New Testament, true means it does what it ought to do over time and circumstance. So in Hebrew Bible, they'll talk about a true road, a true tent peg. I mean, you can think of, like, a true report, you know, that as it's investigated and here's here's where the whole the the modern paradigm of something is objectively true or objectively false. It just is that way. Here's where it falls apart.
Dr. Johnson:How do you have a true tent peg according to, scripture? Well, it the tent peg does what it ought to do do over wind and rain or rock as a foundation, if you wanna go to Jesus' parables, right, versus sand. Sand will not act as a foundation over time and circumstance. It will deteriorate. And so in in Hebrew, conceptually, they would say sand is an untrue foundation for a house.
Dr. Johnson:We use this in, nautical terms, a true course set a true course, which means I wanna go you know, if you think about a sailboat, sailboats have to tack and bob and weave. But the true course is the one that sticks on the intended line. Again, in carpentry, we talked about cuts. True. You know, that's a true cut.
Dr. Johnson:I drew a line on the wood, and my cut is really close to the line that I intended. Over time and circumstance of my hand going up and down and zigzagging and sawing, it's a true cut. That's or a true spouse. Be true to your spouse. Over time and circumstance, when opportunities arise, I stay true.
Dr. Johnson:I do what I ought to do over time and circumstance. That so and we have this kind of concept in our world, but then we have this other very recent concept that something is either objectively or subjectively true, that is kind of interrupting the circuits. So going back to your original question, which I've now forgotten, but it has to do with this.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. So I was just asking, especially in evangelical circles, you've got this this idea that they the bible.
Dr. Johnson:Right.
Derek Kreider:They say, well, you know, if we can't take it at face value, as an authority, then how how does it have authority?
Dr. Johnson:Yeah. So in the same way that Jesus has I mean, Jesus stands and has authority. He says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Now well, now now knowing that's the his view of truth, we can say, oh, it makes sense why he says I'm the way. Over time and circumstance living in his way, which, by the way, that's a Torah that's a Deuteronomic way of describing things, the way of Yahweh, that it living in this way will do what it's supposed to do over time and circumstance.
Dr. Johnson:Even when it doesn't look like it, you know, at certain times, it will it will be, it will lead to life over time and circumstance, even over the circumstance of death itself. So even when, you know, you read a disciple who's saying, God is good. Right? And, of course, if you're coming out of the Hebrew Bible, you can say, like, yes. I agree with that proposition.
Dr. Johnson:However, I also know, as a matter of fact, that in the Hebrew Bible, I don't know, a dozen or more times, it very openly describes God as doing evil, committing evil, relenting from evil. Like, they are not afraid at all to relate evil with God. Right? To associate it with God, to make some of his actions described as evil, which for us, we're like, wait. Does that mean God is evil?
Dr. Johnson:You know, we freak out. We try to propositionalize it. We try to make it the nature of God himself and say, no. No. No.
Dr. Johnson:They have a more robust view of good and evil than we have. Us for it's you know, talk about propositions. Good and evil are like a light switch for us. Something is either good or it's evil. It can't be in between.
Dr. Johnson:Right? Which is funny because, like, we are all creatures who are good, but also have bad parts to us as well and bad inclinations, etcetera. So the biblical authors are much more willing to talk about good and evil in this more robust sense where it doesn't diminish or indict the person who's committing evil, in this case, God. When humans do evil, it's bad. When God do evil God does evil, it's just.
Dr. Johnson:And, like, whether you like it or not, that is exactly how the biblical authors talk about God. And so saying something like God is good and and, you know, that's just plainly true, we have to say things like, okay. It may be true, but there's no sense in which it's plain. You have to do a lot of caveating, a lot of, describing, a lot of thinking and reflecting before you can figure out in in what ways does that sentence make sense. And you can think of lots of statements about God.
Dr. Johnson:Like, god is all knowing. Right? Or God is omniscient, which is a big one that people like to talk about. And I'm like, okay. But God but the biblical authors describe God as having to come down to Babel to see what's going on.
Dr. Johnson:They describe him as having to go down into Sodom and Gomorrah to see if the report that has come up to him is altogether true. And if so, then he will know. He stops Abraham before he kills his son and says, now I know that you fear me. You have not withheld your son, your only son. So the biblical authors are actually very comfortable describing God as figuring stuff out.
Dr. Johnson:Now I don't know exactly what that tells us about what God does or doesn't know. I think by the time you get to the end of Deuteronomy, if you say does God what does God know? You pretty much end up in everything land. You know? God God is all knowing.
Dr. Johnson:He seems to know anything that he wants to know at any time he needs to know it. But there at the same time, to say that God is omniscient, it jumps the shark. Right? You get out above your skis, and you're skipping out on all this very rich description of God's interaction with creation where he is figuring stuff out. Now you have to kinda make sense of, like, well, why are they describing him that way?
Dr. Johnson:What are they trying to do by describing him that way? But to say that god is omniscient as if that's a plain statement that adequately captures all the data so easily sounds to me like somebody who's not reading the scripture itself and and thinking about what the biblical authors are trying to say, especially since every single one of the biblical authors has the language and the concepts to say, god is omniscient. If they if they wanted to describe him that way, they very easily could have used their words to describe him that way, and they don't. Instead, they paint a picture of an all knowing god, which at some point, you're like, is he all knowing? I don't know.
Dr. Johnson:He didn't seem to know what was gonna happen in the garden. He said in that day that you're gonna die, and yet they didn't die in that day. So, like, did he not know that was gonna happen? Like, Jesus doesn't know the day that he's gonna return. Jesus doesn't know what it's like to be a sinter ex a sinner existentially.
Dr. Johnson:Right? Like, so there's the proposition is only as good as all the rich discussion that brings you to the point where you say, this is what I would affirm. And at that point, it defeats the purpose of having an objective proposition when you have to spend all that time saying why it's objectively true. Like, if your goal is just to have objective statements that just are true no matter what, then why would you have statements that you have to spend, you know, pages and pages and pages writing justifications for why it is true? That puts us in the world of reality, I would say.
Dr. Johnson:That puts us in the world that all humans experience. And I don't know any humans who experience the world objectively, a view from nowhere as Thomas Nagel describes it.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. That's, I'm I'm glad you touched on nominations because it's sort of a sort of a a side question I wanted to ask, but it was maybe the biggest question that I had for implications for what you were talking about, about coming to know through relationship, or in community. Because so I was in the car while I was reading your book, working through it. I was driving. My son, asked me a question because I I have this camera, and so I was taking pictures earlier, and he said, you know, of course, he thinks I'm I'm the greatest photographer.
Derek Kreider:Right? Because I'm his dad, and I have the camera. He says, oh, dad. Do you do you know everything about cameras? It's like, no.
Derek Kreider:Not not even close. Like, I know hardly anything at all. And he said he thought for a minute, and he was like, well but what about the does anybody know everything? I was like, no. And he said, well, what about the guy who made the camera?
Derek Kreider:Like, no. Even he doesn't know everything about the camera.
Dr. Johnson:Right.
Derek Kreider:And he might even be a really good engineer, but not necessarily be a good photographer. But that got me thinking about God and his omniscience. If you're if if you're talking about truth not being purely propositional, then there certainly, there are things that, God, it seems, would have to come to know because there's a time before creation when I didn't exist. How could god truly know me without experiencing me, if if I'm not just proposition? So what what implications does does, your what you discuss, have for for God's omniscience?
Dr. Johnson:Well, I mean, we we have to remember, a, again and this is this is you're gonna, like, you're gonna get sick of me saying this, but the biblical authors are offering us an intellectual tradition. And by intellectual, I mean, embodied, spiritual, communitarian, ritual, all of it. That's what ancient Greeks meant by intellectual traditions. Not that they had the term intellectual, but that's what they meant by spiritual traditions and wisdom traditions. That's what the biblical authors are offering us.
Dr. Johnson:So when we say god is omniscient, my first thought is that's not how the biblical authors describe him. And you might go, well, no. But the the bio you know, like, they didn't under almost like this, we give this primitivist caveman view of the biblical authors. Like, oh, they didn't under, you know, iron age, bronze age. They didn't have these sophisticated concepts.
Dr. Johnson:No. Actually, they they again, they had the language and the concepts. If they wanted to describe him that way, they would have. The question I would put back is why don't they just openly describe him as omniscient? And I think this is part of that apprenticeship model.
Dr. Johnson:It's an intellectual tradition that forces you to do the work. They give you you know, the way I put it in a recent book was it's a pixelated argument. It's not a linear argument. They give you lots of pixels about God's knowledge, and they expect that you're tracing those bread crumbs across the text. And eventually, you will arrive at a fully orbed view of God's knowledge.
Dr. Johnson:I think what you don't end up and even Thomas Aquinas, I mean, he so he's a medieval theologian. Right? Even he is like, you know, God knows everything, because his not because his presence is everywhere, but he's like a king in the kingdom, and he he gives metaphors for God's, omniscience as well. So when people get nervous about, well, is God omniscient or, you know, what do you think is God omniscient or not? I would say, what what are you what are you worried about that you need God to be omniscient for?
Dr. Johnson:Right? That's the first thing. Same with, like, omnipresence. And I'm like, what is your concern? If God is not omniscient, then what happens?
Dr. Johnson:What's the the downside to that? And what you usually end up getting is it's all entangled with all of these views of perfections, which none of which are biblical era. You know, they're neither Old Testament nor New Testament concerns. That doesn't make them wrong. It just means that they weren't concerned about they're aware of this problem.
Dr. Johnson:They weren't concerned about talking about it. So then the question becomes, how how prescriptive should we take biblical silence on a topic? If I could move it over to a parallel problem, There's no description in the old or the New Testament, what I call the Hebrew Bible or New Testament. No description of what happens to you when you die. Like, 0.
Dr. Johnson:Right? The best you get is the thief on the cross who Jesus says, today, you'll be with me in paradise, which is clearly analogical because we know Jesus went to the grave for 3 days and then was resurrected. So, so even when Jesus said that, he did not mean it in any kind of plain literal way. He means something else, and you kinda have to do the work. So and that's that's not interesting because you just say, like, okay.
Dr. Johnson:The biblical authors didn't talk about what happens after death. They just kinda leave it as this big ambiguous blank spot in their thinking. What's interesting is they're surrounded by cultures who do talk about what happens after death. Right? Egypt and, Mesopotamia, the Canaanites, they just discovered this big grave and and the Canaanite grave that goes back to Ramesside, pharaoh ship, like, just discovered it la last year.
Dr. Johnson:So everybody is worried about feeding people after death, making sure they get through the judgment after death amongst the gods, having their after death life. Biblical authors, silent. So what do we take from their silence? And that's, for me, that's the real question I struggle with. So when you talk about omniscience, I'm like, I think what you really wanna say is god is all knowing, and I don't need Aristotle to, basically explain for me in all the different ways in which he's all knowing.
Dr. Johnson:And by the way, like, all on all views of omniscience are philosophically problematic because you just say, like, what do you mean? Well, he knows infinitely. He knows everything. Right? Well, which kind of infinity?
Dr. Johnson:Contorian? Because there's, you know, 4 different types of infinities, and they're mutually exclusive for one another. So you can't just say yes all of them actually because some of them would rule other ones out. So on what basis do you, do you choose an infinity of infinities or an infinite point on lines or infinite starting point all the way from here to infinity? Like, on what basis do you choose which one of those is analogical to God's knowledge about the universe?
Dr. Johnson:So you're gonna run-in pro problems in every direction you go. So I will then pull back and say, look. If it was good enough for the biblical authors to fix on these points of God's ability to know whatever he needs to know whenever he needs to know it, his strength. You wanna talk about his omnipotence. He is able to do anything he wants to do, when he wants to do it except for those things he's promised not to do.
Dr. Johnson:So he restrains his power and says, I won't do certain things. And as soon as he does that, then we can't say things like, god can do whatever he wants. But, like, nope. Actually, he can't. He has made treaties with animals and humans and the earth saying he won't do certain things.
Dr. Johnson:So we're we're really not we're really just talking about the biblical God that we can understand at this point. And the question becomes for me, why do you wanna create extra biblical apparatus to talk about God? Is is is what they've given us sufficient?
Derek Kreider:So, before I came over to Romania, I did a lot of of, studying on the Eastern Orthodox Church and Mhmm. Came to appreciate a lot of a lot of things about them. And one of the things that I appreciated was apophatic thought, which is, okay. That that's that's a completely new new concept for me to work through, but it I liked it because it it kind of undermined some of my my desire for certainty and and, you know, all those objective propositions and and kind of putting God in a box. But, you know, as I as I listen to you talk, so it seems like what what you're saying, it undermines cataphatic thinking of, like, you know, god is this, this, this, this, but it seems like it would it also undermines apophatic thinking because, you know, you when you were talking about, well, God, God doing evil, you know, what whatever that means.
Dr. Johnson:Right.
Derek Kreider:Well, the apophatic thought would say, well, I can say God is not because that that's apophatic. So does so now, like, my mind is is having trouble because I I thought that those were kind apophatic and cataphatic thought was kind of the only two options, and now it's
Dr. Johnson:Right. Yeah. I think, you know, there there's a way in which the biblical authors are giving to us a god through experience. It's a history of the experience with god, by which they are constructing a view of god that they think is positive and all but there's also a lot of I mean, Deuteronomy 2929 or 2928 in the Hebrew, it's, the hidden things. It just literally just says the hidden things to Yahweh, the revealed things or the manifest things to us and to our children to do them and keep them.
Dr. Johnson:Right? And so there's already this acknowledgment in Deuteronomy 29, 1 and 2 and 3 in the Hebrew at least starts off with, hey. I did all these things these things. You saw the signs and wonders I did before your eyes in Egypt, basically, indicting them, why haven't you done well? Well, because God has not yet given you a heart to know, eyes to see, or ears to hear.
Dr. Johnson:I think, actually, heart to know, ears to hear, eyes eyes to see in that order. And so there really is this hidden god, but what has been revealed is the stuff you have to do and keep in order to see what he's trying to show you. Right? And that that seems to be the formula that gets carried all the way through and including into the New Testament gospels for sure. And I think my Pauline scholar buddies have said, like, yep.
Dr. Johnson:That that continues on in Paul as well. I mean, I thought it did in Paul, but, you know, Pauline scholars have their own ideas about things. But, so I don't I I think this is this is a like, if we talk about spheres of epistemic responsibility, like, here are the things that you are responsible to understand and to pursue and inquire and chase about. And I think there are some lines they draw where they just like, nope. This you're trying to get behind the curtain.
Dr. Johnson:And I and I think this comes to conspiracy and propaganda. Oh, I'd have to hear what you think about the propaganda side, but that, you know, conspiracies are all built on, let me pull back the curtain and show you what's going on back here, which you get in Hellenistic Judaism. So the wisdom of Solomon in the Apocrypha, the pseudo or, yeah, the Hellenistic Jewish text, if you wanna put it that way, you know, he reverses the Deuteronomic language, and he says, God has shown me everything that is both hidden and revealed. So he's like, I got behind the curtain. Let me tell you what's going on back here.
Dr. Johnson:Right? But that goes directly against what Deuteronomy is is selling Israel on. It's like, no. You don't get to get behind the curtain, but I came. I showed you.
Dr. Johnson:I gave you these rituals in order for you as a community to become Deuteronomy 4, a wise and discerning people, which is if I could say that is the goal in every endeavor. We want our children to be wise and discerning, not just spiritual issue. Like, if my kid's a filmmaker, I want them to be a wise and discerning film. Good at the knowing which lens to use for which focal depth, good at organizing people towards a project. You know?
Dr. Johnson:Like, wise and discerning for the biblical authors is not spiritual knowledge or, you know, if you wanna make a spiritual physical divide, it means being a good doctor, a good craftsman. It means, wise and discerning in every, possible way you can think. It means being skillful, I guess. And so it's applying that skillful language. It's using language used in, like, the you know, as one point person one scholar pointed out, the language of wisdom is used in the Bible both for, like, sailors, how how to sail a ship and tie knots, etcetera, craftsmen, builders, mothers, infants, that are growing into wisdom, and also, like, knowing God and knowing what God is up to in the world, and participating with what what God is up to.
Dr. Johnson:So, yeah, it does I I wouldn't say it's the via media in between, Apo and Kata. Kata how how did you say it?
Derek Kreider:Cataphatic thought or Cataphatic. Cataphatic.
Dr. Johnson:Yeah. I was trying to, like yeah. I was like, how do I conjugate that Yeah. That word? I don't know if it's the middle way.
Dr. Johnson:It's a more aggressive way. And it what it doesn't do is, like, say, oh, no. This is mystery. You can't know. Right?
Dr. Johnson:It actually says, no. You can know. And you and not only can you, but you're responsible. And, I mean, if you really wanna get into it, like, the average Israelite is held to a pretty high degree of of responsibility when it comes to wisdom and discernment, so much so that they're supposed to figure out when a prophet who is authenticated with signs and wonders by God is speaking falsely. Right?
Dr. Johnson:An average Hebrew is supposed to be able to to know they're supposed to practice the Torah to the extent that they can go, no. That's not right. That's not from Yahweh, which that's a pretty high demand. So it's not that it's just available to them, this wisdom, but it's actually required of them.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. That, that's really good so far. I need to, I need to start ramping this up so I don't, take too much more time.
Dr. Johnson:Oh, yeah. You just ramping it up.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. If you if you, give me give me, like, a 10 minute warning, I'll, and, yeah, I'll make sure to to speed things up. But so I think one one of the things that would be helpful here at this point is because I I can just picture my former self thinking, what what are you talking about? I can look in the bible, and I can see, you know, these statements, and they're they're clear propositions. Mhmm.
Derek Kreider:One of the things that you said helped me out a lot where you said that there is no such thing as brute seeing. There are no self interpreting events for Israelites to know, not even the exodus plagues nor the miracles of Jesus. That idea of there are no such things as as brute facts. And I I also loved that you didn't I mean, I love that you used the Bible, but I also love that you used, how did you say his name? Pagliani?
Dr. Johnson:Palani.
Derek Kreider:Palani.
Dr. Johnson:It's Yeah. It's more straightforward than it's a than it looks. Yeah. It's just Palani.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I I read the whole book with with, that
Dr. Johnson:Oh, I know. I know. Yeah. I did I did the same thing the first time. So and then I got around Polanyi scholars, and they're all Polanyi.
Dr. Johnson:I was like, oh, it's like a sabre Sabre situation if you know The Office. So
Derek Kreider:Yeah. So so that was, I really liked that you brought in those real world, examples. But can you talk about brute seeing? Why why we feel like we can see in a in a brute fashion and why facts are not that way?
Dr. Johnson:Yeah. I mean and I use the exam I I think I use it in that book. It's been a long time since I've cracked that book open, but, you know, things I when I'm in class, I'll say, alright. Give me an example of a brute fact that everybody in the room would agree with un you know, uncontroversial. And they always think I'm a magician because they'll someone will say the sky is blue.
Dr. Johnson:And then I go to the next slide, and I already have on there the sky is blue. Right? And they're like, how did you know? I'm like, I don't know. It's the one that everybody cites.
Dr. Johnson:Right? But, you know, the sky isn't I I lived in Scotland for 2 years. Like, they don't know the sky is blue. They think it's gray and rainy all day long. Right?
Dr. Johnson:You're you're coming to me in the middle of the night. The sky is not blue. It's black or, you know, dark or whatever. From the International Space Station, the sky is translucent looking down. And so when we say or, you know, the the sky is red at sunset or purple or some other color.
Dr. Johnson:So when we say the sky is blue, which we take to be a fact, you know, a, what is sky in reference to me? Do I mean, like, the the stratosphere, the exosphere, or something like that? And then, b, what is even blue? Right? 475 nanometer wavelength is the the definition of blue, but, you know, in different cultures, blue is you know, I lived in Brazil for a little while, and they they include lavender or what I would call lavender in their blue spectrum, what they just call Azul.
Dr. Johnson:So you and what we really mean is if you're standing on a particular spot on Earth during the right meteorological conditions at the right time of day, the sky will appear blue. But 100 and thousands of other times and perspectives, it will not appear blue. Right? And so, again, if the goal is to come up with an uncontroversial fact, me having to caveat it with 2 dozen, well, in this situation and and not in these situations, it defeats the purpose of having uncontroversial objective fact. B, like, you know, if that's a, here's b.
Dr. Johnson:We want anybody who has a skill to see the same facts differently. Right? So when I do bible teaching I mean, I'll I'll teach things on Genesis 23 and and just an hour on Genesis 23, and people will often say, I have read that so many times, and I never in my life noticed what these very basic things that you're pointing out to me. Right? And I'm not a genius or anything.
Dr. Johnson:I'm just pointing out what I what I saw when I was a new Christian and some of the things I investigated. And then I'll always say, like, were those things always there, or did they just arrive when you figured them out? Right? And then and, you know, this is just kinda like, oh, these were always there. I just now noticed them.
Dr. Johnson:Right? And why did you notice them? Because you had somebody over your shoulder who's already has developed the skill of seeing these things. And through some verbal ritual techniques, get you know, prod your brain to think about the text in this new way, and now you see things that have always been there that you just never noticed. So in what way did they brutally see the text?
Dr. Johnson:I mean, I think, you know, it's funny because Christians will always push or I should say modernist American Christians, but also, like, in South America and then even in Africa. I've taught, you know, in lots of places. And you'll get people that really struggle with this for for really good reasons. They struggle with it, including I did at first myself. And then you just say, like, look.
Dr. Johnson:Thousands and thousands of people saw the the miracle, the signs and wonders that Moses did. They saw the plagues. And yet and and the whole purpose of that, you know, you walk through that story, and it's so that you will know, so that you will know, so that you will know, so that you will know. And most of the so that you will knows are that Yahweh and not the other gods did this for you. And yet thousands of people, as soon as Moses is gone for a week or 2, we don't know how long, they commission Aaron to build a golden calf and have an orgy to it.
Dr. Johnson:Right? And the explicit I mean, the the language could not be more explicit in the book of Exodus. The whole purpose was not to liberate them from slavery. They are slaves the whole time. They remain slaves after they leave.
Dr. Johnson:They're just now slaves to Yahweh rather than slaves to pharaoh in the house of Egypt. So the goal wasn't to get them out of slavery. It was to transfer the ownership of slavery. And the stated goal is so that they will know. Right?
Dr. Johnson:All of these things, and it doesn't work. It doesn't take. And this is Deuteronomy 29. Even though Yahweh did these signs and wonders before your eyes, you saw him with your eyes. And Jesus' miracle.
Dr. Johnson:Like, nobody nobody in the gospels ever argues as to whether Jesus performed a miracle or not. Right? So you wanna think about your miracle ology? Like, nobody ever says, was that even a miracle? They all are forced to admit this was unnatural, whatever happened.
Dr. Johnson:The only thing they argue about is by whose power he does this or whether it was right according to the Sabbath, to do these things. And so there you go. Again, you go, and you have people who all saw the same thing, but they're interpreting it differently. And if, like, if you want to pick something that should be self interpreting, it would be Jesus healing somebody openly and publicly and unashamedly and telling you what he's doing as he's doing it. Like, that would be, like, the great I was a children's pastor for years, and that would be the object lesson par excellence.
Dr. Johnson:And even in that situation, many people saw something very different when they saw the same thing. So what makes the difference? Skilled insight that you you submit to somebody who says, I'm gonna teach you how to see this correctly. I I can handle electrical problems all on my own, I can handle electrical problems all on my own. Plumbing is magical to me.
Dr. Johnson:I don't understand. It seems so simple. Like, water just flows through pipes, and then you try to fix your toilet, and all of a sudden, it gets really complicated and you can't. Right? I will pay anybody a lot of money if they come in with the skilled discernment.
Dr. Johnson:And what I noticed the first time a plumber came in to fix a problem I had created trying to fix it is they saw things that I did not see. They're like, oh, did you did you put that little piece of plastic over the valve that goes on the faucet? The one that probably looks like you should throw it away, but you actually need it. And they, like, they instantly thought of pressure and pressure differentials. So we're seeing all the same pipes.
Dr. Johnson:I've spent lots of quality time with those pipes. I've struggled and wrestled and thought and thought and thought, but they apprenticed in a way that they saw those pipes differently from me, and I'm paying them for their sight. Right? The their ability to see the pipes differently than I could. And this is true in every single thing.
Dr. Johnson:Right? We go to a doctor. We we look it up on WebMD, and we're like, okay. I I think this is what I've got. And then you go to the doctor, and they ask you a few simple questions.
Dr. Johnson:They're like, nope. That's not it. Here's what's going on. Here's why. Right?
Dr. Johnson:They see the same data differently. And that's what all education and knowing is aimed at is seeing the same data differently. Not seeing new data, same data differently.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. And I think that leads into, maybe what is at least for for, you know, the series that I'm doing, what is the most important? But I think also maybe one of the more most important aspects of your book because it's like, okay. Well, if I can't just look at words, and and understand propositions, if, like, the big question is, well, how do I how do I know anything? And so Mhmm.
Derek Kreider:You talk about, authentication because that in my mind, that's what everything ultimately comes down to. It's like, well, who who do I trust? Because if if I have to come to know through somebody else, you know, Paul talks about, well, you know, if an angel of light comes to you, looks looks really good, looks really holy, looks wonderful, speaks nice words. Why it seems like I should believe that angel of light. Right.
Derek Kreider:So how do I know? So when we talk about, you give an example, I think, of that that kind of leads us into authentication. You talk about, the serpent in Genesis 3, and, how, you know, everything that the serpent says does come to fruition, but, you know, his authentication, his his right to speak is, not there. So can you talk a little bit about authority, authentication, and what that has to do with with knowledge?
Dr. Johnson:Yeah. And even that Paul and the angel the messenger of light or whatever you whatever he's referring to, he's really just tugging on Deuteronomy 13. Again, where God says, I'm going to raise up prophets, and, and I'm gonna I'm going to authenticate them. If you ever wanna get shook, read Deuteronomy 13 1 through 5. I'm gonna raise them up.
Dr. Johnson:I'm gonna authenticate them with signs and wonders, and then I'm gonna cause them to lie to you and mislead you in order to test you to know whether you love me or not. Right? So the sign and the wonder cannot be the mechanism. That's the mechanism, I would say. The sign and wonder is the mechanism that gets you to listen more closely.
Dr. Johnson:Right? But it's not the authentication mechanism. So I separate out authority from authentication. The authentication. The serpent was author I mean, the story opens with, and the serpent was the most wise or prudent creature God had ever created.
Dr. Johnson:And you get to the end of the story, and you're like, oh, that was right. He did actually know everything that was gonna happen. The narrator, every word out of the serpent's mouth, the narrator repeats in the story to show it happened exactly as he said it would happen. So he's authoritative, but he's not authenticated. They have no reason to listen to him over over God outside of this desire that the woman has for wisdom that she's being talked into.
Dr. Johnson:And the man's failure to interrupt the serpent's voice and say, no. No. No. We're not this isn't what god said. We're not doing this.
Dr. Johnson:Right? So the I think the question that arose for me by the way, you know, the book that book that we're talking about is about error, not because I actually wasn't intending to write about error, but as I was reading through the Torah, kind of trying to figure with the question of, like, what do they say about knowledge, The question of knowledge came up much less than people getting things wrong and how risk averse the biblical authors are to getting things wrong when God is trying to instruct us. So a lot of the what we call the epistemological rhetoric of the Torah and the gospels is really like, hey. Don't don't do this. Don't do this.
Dr. Johnson:Don't do this. Do these things, but make sure and avoid these things. It's it's avoiding kind of erroneous understanding of the world around them and showing pictures of erroneous understanding and saying, yeah. You don't wanna end up like that person over there. So the question you end up with is, who should you listen to?
Dr. Johnson:And the answer is gonna be, well, at least by the time you get to Exodus, Moses. Moses, Moses is listening to the burning bush, but then even Moses has to be convinced with the signs, the, you know, the staff, the hand, the blood the water to blood. But then he has to go convince Aaron of the same thing, and then Aaron and he go to the elders and show them the signs and convince them of the same. And then Aaron and Moses and the elders go to the people of Israel and show them the same thing. So everybody has to be convinced then.
Dr. Johnson:And then the irony is the very next passage is let my people go that they may serve me in the wilderness. And he says, who is Yahweh that I should listen to his voice? I don't know this guy. Right? And then he shows him, the signs and wonders, and they're completely inefficacious.
Dr. Johnson:Right? They don't work at all because they can replicate them. And then the plagues push beyond the boundaries of what they can replicate and give them reasons. So god is spending a lot of time. I mean, we just think about, like, why should we listen?
Dr. Johnson:You know, I I usually play in class. You know? The Monty Python skit. Who are you? Well, I'm the king Arthur, the king of England.
Dr. Johnson:Well, I didn't vote for you. Right? Like, this kinda like, why should I listen to you? With Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, this is true. But with Moses, he has to be convinced, and God takes the time to convince him even though he pushes back.
Dr. Johnson:And so as I mean, he tells God, this isn't gonna work. What you're what you're talking about will not work. And, like, 4 or 5 times, he pushes back. We see the same thing with Gideon, and God convinces Moses, and then God and Moses and Aaron go convince everybody. The only person that is never convinced that the Egyptians are convinced, pharaoh's court is convinced about Moses.
Dr. Johnson:Pharaoh is the only person in the entire book of Exodus that is never convinced that, he should do what he even though he reneges and goes back and forth. Same thing with Jesus. I mean, just take the gospels, you know, there that that are basically passion narratives with a big introduction to them. Right? But that big introduction is all authentication.
Dr. Johnson:Like, everything is word and deed, word and deed, word and deed, hand in hand so that nobody who is following Jesus has any excuse not to I mean, even the disciples themselves, they say, who is this that even the winds and the seas listen to his voice?
Derek Kreider:But if if you
Dr. Johnson:take that Yeah. Go ahead.
Derek Kreider:If you take that Deuteronomy 13 where you know that people can be authenticated Yep. And yet be false, like, how do you
Dr. Johnson:Yeah. Yeah. So this is why I think it's important, especially for our Marcy and his brothers like Andy Stanley out there, to understand Jesus is very aware of this problem, and so he knows he cannot do anything that violates the Torah in any way. The only thing he can do is extend the Torah's thinking into his present context. And so he says, I have not come to abolish the Torah.
Dr. Johnson:Everything that he does. Right? Paul too, in Acts 21, the brothers think that you're they're hearing that you're teaching the abrogation of the Torah out to the Gentiles, and he says, no. May it never be. Right?
Dr. Johnson:They said, well, can you go give an animal I mean, you wanna really mess up your theology. Can you, Paul, go give an animal sacrifice in the temple to show that you're not teaching the abrogation of the Torah? And Paul says, yes. I will. And he goes, and he gets arrested and sent off to his death from the temple where he was given an animal sacrifice and preaching, the gospel at the same time.
Derek Kreider:Okay. So just to to be clear, catch me up to speed here.
Dr. Johnson:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. I went one
Derek Kreider:place. No. I just wanna make sure I wanna make sure I get this, and I don't have in my head something that you didn't say. So you you said that a lot of the Bible or especially the Old Testament is about showing you negative examples. Like, don't don't be like that.
Derek Kreider:So if you take Paul or if you take Deuteronomy 13, it says, hey. There might be a lot of people with positive authentication. But then you brought in Jesus' example, and you said, yeah. He had positive authentication, but he also didn't end up like those negative examples. He didn't
Dr. Johnson:Yes.
Derek Kreider:Violate the Torah. So it's it's both of those things. Positive authentication and a life that's that backs up that that individual has been discipled by God or somebody Yep. That God sent.
Dr. Johnson:They have to practice the Torah. Like, the he the the book of Hebrews or the the letter to the Hebrews says, like, look. You you practice all of these rituals, this festival life. You practice the justice and righteousness of the Torah. You should be able to understand Jesus is the fulfillment of of these things, right, as as he himself claimed to be.
Dr. Johnson:So if Jesus comes along and says anything that doesn't correspond with the Torah, they they have the right to stone him according to the Torah, which people who didn't take the time to listen to what he was saying or or take on board when that's what they tried to do. They tried to run them off cliffs and stone them. And in some sense, you go like, okay. I vibe. Like, I you're in some ways, you you are thinking like what the Torah wants you to.
Dr. Johnson:But, but the the impulse of the gospels is if you hear what Jesus if you hear him out, it's very hard, to contravene what he's saying, and that's what the Jewish leaders will ultimately say. They like, no. We're not gonna listen to this guy anymore because we can't you know, they dared not ask him a question again. Because everything they said to him, they realized they had nothing to say against what he was saying. Same thing with Paul.
Dr. Johnson:Right? Everything that Paul said explained, it was according to the Torah, he explained to them. Jesus in Luke 24, according to the Torah and the prophets, he explained to them why all these things had to come to pass. So it's that submitting yourself to the Torah's teaching and this Torah's way of life that it's actually evidence beyond the the initial step of of authentication. I I'll I'll point out also Deuteronomy 18 is the is the text of the transfiguration, right, where god you know, you you have to say this out loud sometimes when you're teaching it.
Dr. Johnson:Like, it's on a mountain with clouds just like Sinai, but god's voice descends, and he doesn't say 10 things like he does on Sinai, the 10 commandments. He says one sentence, and he quotes Deuteronomy 18 and and Genesis 22. This is my beloved son, which is Isaac, at the sacrifice. To him you shall listen, which is Deuteronomy 18. I will raise up a prophet in the days to come, and I will put my words in his mouth, and to him you shall listen, which is really interesting because the transfiguration you know, you just came out of a conversation about, is he the Christ or not?
Dr. Johnson:Is he the king, this this kingly figure? And the transfiguration doesn't have kings showing up from the Hebrew Bible. It has 2 prophets showing up from the Hebrew Bible who were clearly authenticated and, like, the big prophets of Israel, Moses and Elijah. And so and g and god god's voice come down and says, this is the guy you should be listening to now. This is the one Moses was talking about.
Dr. Johnson:Yeah. It's it's a remarkable scene, especially considering the disciples have been with him for years at that point, and god's now having to say, listen to this guy. And you're like, what were they doing up to this point? Right? And they they weren't listening.
Dr. Johnson:And that that is a lot of the drama of of most of the gospels that I I will always point it out. There's 3 groups of people in Israel and sorry, in in all of scripture who have hardened hearts or described as hardened hearts. Pharaoh in Exodus, Israel later, by the prophets, when they reject God and his covenant, and then the disciples in in the gospels. Those are the people who are described as having hardened hearts. So even his inner circle is having trouble.
Dr. Johnson:They trust him. Where can we go? You have the words of life. Like, they know he's worth listening to. They know he's worth following, but they are not yet seeing you know, it's it's all stars and no constellations for them at this point.
Dr. Johnson:And as you probably know, you get to the end of Mark's gospel, and it's still all stars, but there's no like, they never figured out Mark's gospel. So
Derek Kreider:Yeah. That was, you know, that was really sobering when you talk about, you know, not just the positive authentication, because I would relate that to our conversation at the beginning when we're talking about orthodoxy and orthopraxy Mhmm. Where I think a lot of times, my group, evangelicals, but also, you know, PCA in particular, we we have the authentication. Right? We have the word of God.
Derek Kreider:We have the Bible, and we take that message, you know, and it's people's job to listen, but there's so many times that we don't have the, we we don't have the the positive life that goes with that, the orthopraxy. And and and it makes me think of, you know, Jesus said that by this, you shall know that Right. They're my disciples, and it's not by their their doctrinal statement. It's by their love for one another.
Dr. Johnson:Yeah. Yeah. The living of the Torah, and I mean, you think about all the issues that are coming to surface with leadership in the church, narcissistic pastors, people who are spiritually abusing their congregations, even in soft ways, not even, you know, like sexually abusing, but just like using manipulative tools, and how much veneer is put on of, like, living being a nice person, being the right person. So, yeah, it's this the walk and talk are the authentication. And notice now we can make sense of the truth language because truth we don't say they're authenticated.
Dr. Johnson:They're true, and now they're good to go. Right? It's like, no. True is over time and circumstance, they prove to be faithful to the thing that they ought to be, and that would include pastors. I mean, this is first Peter 5.
Dr. Johnson:You know, you as fellow elder and the shepherd of the flock you know, shepherd the flock, don't lord it over them. Don't do it under compulsion. The chief shepherd is coming. Over time and circumstance, you need to be true to the the calling of pastoring or shepherding, I guess, is the the the term there. So truth truth talk really makes a difference here.
Dr. Johnson:It's not talk. It's truth truth is walk, not talk, if I can put it that way.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. So maybe you can help resolve a question that I've had for years, and I posed posed to a lot of people, and I just I I can't get an answer because I don't I don't think anybody's comfortable with with what it seems like one of the answers has to be. So I I know there there's a lot of canceling out of certain people, you know, of people being pulled from bookshelves. Mhmm. Yep.
Derek Kreider:So let's just give give an example. Like, in in evangelical circles, you'd get somebody like Matthew Vines. He is he is a practicing this. So practicing homosexual.
Dr. Johnson:Oh oh, yeah. I'd actually, I do know who he is. Yes.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. And so they they would be like, no. We we cannot, read his books and learn from him. Simultaneously, you know, I've got I've got guys in in different groups who talk about how inspirational somebody like, Whitfield or Edwards
Dr. Johnson:John Edwards. Yep.
Derek Kreider:Slave holders are. And and I'm thinking, man, that's so do I can I not learn from from anybody who doesn't walk according to the way that we think people should walk biblically, or can we learn from everyone? We just we can throw out the stuff that's bad. But in our conversation here, it seems like if you don't have the walk, then Yeah. May it's not that you can't still say true things.
Derek Kreider:It's just I would I would not put myself under apprenticeship to you.
Dr. Johnson:Yeah. So I have had this this this is my dilemma too because, you know, like, I I did some of my PhD work on Bart, and, and right about the time well, later, Bart it came out that Bart had this mistress, and he mistreated his wife horribly and, you know, all of these problem. Not that I was a in in any way. Mine was mostly a critique of Bart, but that threw a lot of people who are Bart scholars like, like, should we be studying this guy who's now or John Howard Yoder, you know, who is this pacifist who turns out he was quite violent and his aggression towards women around him or at least, you know, sexually, he was aggressive. Yeah.
Dr. Johnson:I I really do think at the end of the day, there is I think there you can think of, like, Elisha or, or even Peter. I mean, look at Peter. So he you know, he's kind of a putz in the gospels, and then he seems to get it in Acts. And then you read the very final comment from Paul, and he's like, I still had to put Peter in his place because he wasn't he was refusing to hang out with the Gentiles, in his letter to the Galatians. So it's a mixed verdict on Peter.
Dr. Johnson:So he's not walking out. Like, I mean, if you if you learn one thing from Jesus is this is from for the Gentiles as well as the Jews, and Peter seems to not be walking that out, to the fullest that he should be. So I think there's a little grace built into the system. But if you, you know, if you find out, for instance, that your pastor who seems like they're a great nice person and you get me you know, like, come on staff and you figure out, oh, here's how the sausage is made, and you realize it's all about appeasing this person who's being maniacal and manipulative, then I I do think there are thresholds where you say, like, you know what? This person's teaching cannot be trusted, because it's too enmeshed with not walking out this Torah life.
Dr. Johnson:The basics. Right? Justice and righteousness, fairness, reflectiveness, accountability, looking out for the vulnerable people in your congregation. If you're manipulative and spiritually abusing, like, automatically, you're not you're not looking out for the vulnerable, which what clear command is there across scripture than heeding, what you're doing or sorry. Submitting what you're doing to, to the detriment of the vulnerable in your communities.
Dr. Johnson:So, so I think there are certain thresholds where you just say, like, you know what? This person's teaching cannot be trusted. And, of course, a lot of those people who've fallen under that rubric you know, we could name names here. But you can just think of people who were really big, and then they kinda fell from grace for one reason or another. And then you don't see them coming back and repenting and saying, I missed I messed it all up.
Dr. Johnson:I wasn't walking the walk. I wasn't talking the talk. What you see is them, like, quietly becoming a pastor somewhere else in Arizona, like, a year later or something like that, you know, like, off the grid. And everybody's going, should we let this person pastor again? So I I yeah.
Dr. Johnson:I would say absolutely that that it actually it has to be a criteria. I mean, I don't know how you could read Paul. Of all people read Paul and think that he wouldn't absolutely think that your walk is your is your orthodoxy, in many ways. It is your authentication mechanism.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. That that's hard because, I mean, Yoder was one that I didn't know about his history, and he was he influenced me through the politics of Jesus and some of his other stuff. And then I found out
Dr. Johnson:Yeah.
Derek Kreider:You you have that question where, well, you know, I
Dr. Johnson:So they might be saying something, you know, like, they say a broken clock is right twice a day, and I and I have to explain to Gen z's what that means because they only know digital clocks. But the the there is a sense in which somebody can be tapped into truth. Like, you know, I would say I would say my atheist colleagues that I work with who are biblical scholars, you know, but most biblical scholars are not religious people. Right? They're atheist, agnostic, or something else.
Dr. Johnson:But many of them see like, they show me things in the scripture that I didn't understand before. Right? So I think there's a way in which you could say, you can be on the truth, but whether you, like, submit to that person and, like, apprentice under them and say, this is the way you know, this is gonna be a discipler for me, maybe not. So transgression of the Taurus principles is transgressing what it means to be a human. And so if somebody's doing that systematically or it's been they've been enabled in fostering that kind of disposition, I for me, it's a no go.
Dr. Johnson:And maybe I'm just being conservative. I'll just play it safe and say, like, I know plenty of other people who are not famous who walk the walk, and I'll I'll go with them.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. And, you know, talking about the the oppressed, I thought it was ironic. You You know, a lot of the examples that you can think about of people who were authenticated were the oppressed. You know, you think of Moses and the Israelites being the people who could help pharaoh see, or you think of some of the prophets, you know, they're they're eating over dung coals and stuff.
Dr. Johnson:Right. Walking naked through the cities.
Derek Kreider:The people who see Jesus for who he is, you know, blind Bartimaeus and and and stuff. And you're like, oh, okay. So not only do we oppress these people, but oftentimes, it's it's those people who are the ones who would would help us to see. They're the prophets.
Dr. Johnson:Yeah. Absolutely. And, yeah, the diversity I mean, even that, just stating those examples, you're already seeing, like, it's objectively true that Jesus is the Messiah. You know? You're like, well, if you coordinate all the perspectives of those people who did tend to get it, the marginalized and the the the disabled, like, yeah, you could see that.
Dr. Johnson:And it's really easy over the shoulder of the omniscient narrator of the gospels to see that, a little bit trickier when you're in the situation. Right? So, yeah, there is a certain disposition that allows I mean, you you could you could cite out all kinds of poetry at this point, like the contrite spirit and, walk humbly and do justice. Like, the there is a certain disposition that makes for a better seer of the kingdom of God. And and my experience is that, God is always willing to tear people down to that disposition when he needs to.
Dr. Johnson:Like, I tell my students, look. It's humble yourself or get humiliated in order to be used by God. Like, those are your really your 2 options for most people. So I'm gonna go with humble myself as often as I can, knowing that I probably need to be humiliated about a few things in order for God to use me. And I don't mean that in, like, a shaming way.
Dr. Johnson:I mean, like, properly, find my place so that I can understand what God's trying to say to me. And I probably do need to leave really soon.
Derek Kreider:So Yep. Perfect. This is the last question. And if you need to go, that's okay.
Dr. Johnson:Yeah. No. We're we're good. I just just making sure my wife is not texting me. Okay.
Dr. Johnson:The only text that matters.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. Okay. Last question. So you talk about the disciples and how their lack of comprehension you said that their lack of comprehension is mitigated by either their failure failure to listen or their failure to participate. And when I was reading through, some of the stuff, it it seemed like a a chicken and the egg sort of thing where it's, you know, well, I'm not gonna listen to you until you're authenticated, but for me to see your authentication, I kind of have to participate and listen with you.
Dr. Johnson:Right.
Derek Kreider:And so it got me thinking when, my wife was taking apologetics classes, one of the terms that came up, I love, you know, the the topic of free will, and, one of her her professors brought up doxastic volunteerism, and I had no idea what that was. Yeah. But, you know, it's just this this concept that, we we can't really choose what we like. Like, you know, I didn't like beer, but by participating by partaking in beer, I began to like it. But I had to participate before I could I could like it and see that it was good.
Dr. Johnson:Right.
Derek Kreider:So it it kind of reminded me of that when you talk about participating and listening. How how is it how do you start to act before you have knowledge, and then how does how does acting on something and participating produce a knowledge? Could you talk a little bit about that? I'm not sure if the question makes sense.
Dr. Johnson:Yeah. No. I think, I think that, again, it's kind of isolating knowledge is, like, one single act or something. So I would say I would put it this way. Biblically speaking, if you think of biblical faith as someone closing their eyes and stepping off a cliff, you know, that's what a lot of people in the street would say.
Dr. Johnson:Right? And I'm like, well, you know, when I teach class, I ask, well, what do you think it means, you know, to have, like, religious faith? And, you know, let's say something like that. You just trust no matter what. Blind you blindly trust.
Dr. Johnson:I'm like, okay. Well, we're getting ready to read a bunch of stories where nobody blindly trusts God, and God plays ball. Right? He's like, okay. You don't you don't blindly trust me?
Dr. Johnson:Great. We can work with that. So, you know, I would just point out the patterns in scripture. God doesn't come up to people out of nowhere, except for Abraham. Abraham's the one exception, but I assume something like this is going on because the pattern is so strong.
Dr. Johnson:He doesn't come up people out of nowhere and say, hey. Do this thing. He says, and even with Abraham, he says, do this thing, but then there's all kinds of other things where Abraham pushes back. He says, you know, I'm gonna give you this land to possess, and Abraham's like, oh, yeah? How can I know that you're gonna give me this land to possess?
Dr. Johnson:And then he does that weird ritual. Right? But even that, the presumption is now that I've given you a viable historical reason to believe that I'm gonna give you this land, you need to trust me. Right? And god comes to Abraham, I don't know how many times, 3, 5 times making the same promises over and over again at various periods in his life.
Dr. Johnson:And the same thing with Moses. Right? The the pushback of Moses is reasonable to God. He's like, okay. Yeah.
Dr. Johnson:I can see. I can see why you wouldn't trust that. And he goes along with them, but the but the implication is and he actually eventually does say, alright. Enough. Stop it.
Dr. Johnson:I'm sending you in. The implication is now that I've given you really good historical verifiable reasons to trust me, you you need to trust me. And, you know, you can just go down the line. Same thing with Jesus. Right?
Dr. Johnson:Like, his frustration with his disciples is, you know, now you feed them. Right? The first time he said it, you can imagine he's like, okay. This I know what's gonna happen. You you guys are gonna freak out and say, where are we gonna get all this food?
Dr. Johnson:Right? That's why I love Mark's gospel. The second feeding, he says, alright. Now you feed them, and they're like, how are we gonna do this? That's when you're like, okay.
Dr. Johnson:I'm with you, Jesus. I understand why you're frustrated why with these people because he's given them the he's showing them in person exactly how this can happen. So I think when you say the chicken and egg, I'm like, well, not really. It's like chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, and now egg. Right?
Dr. Johnson:And that willingness of the I mean, if you wanna talk about the ancient scheme, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Greco Roman, Hittite, anything, like, ancient schemes of how gods interact with humans, there ain't nothing like this in the ancient world where god has extends such what we call grace and mercy that a god would even care about these people, that a god would interact with them, that he would reason with them the way they need to be reasoned with. Gideon, you know, you can think again of, okay. I messed up. I gave the sign of the fleece, but that could have happened naturally. Can you reverse the sign?
Dr. Johnson:Right? God's like, okay. You did it. Right? So that pattern and I say this with people I disciple too.
Dr. Johnson:Like, look. If you need to be convinced because I was that person. I need to be convinced. And I was like, I finally got and, again, I finally got desperate enough and fed up enough with my own life where I was finally like, alright, god. If you're real, now is the time to see it.
Dr. Johnson:I wanna like, show me who you are, and he did. Like, it was a real it was only verify. I could tell you, but you wouldn't believe it. Right? I could tell you what happened to me.
Dr. Johnson:But other people saw, like, hey. You really like, so what happened to you? You really changed. Right? And if that were it, fine.
Dr. Johnson:But then there were other things along the line. I saw other people go through the same thing. I have real historical verifiable reasons why I trust God. And it was and if it was just that one time when I was 19 years old, I wouldn't be a Christian today. I'd be like, you know, I believed a lot of crazy stuff when I was 19 years old.
Dr. Johnson:That was just another one. But it it comes again and again and again. So I think that pattern we see in scripture that I think God is still willing to commit himself to today through the Holy Spirit is, is one worth trusting. But I always tell people, like, look. It's not my job to convince you that God is real.
Dr. Johnson:That's actually his job. I'm only like Paul who believes that you might be the elect from before the foundations of the earth, but the only way I can find out is by telling you about this stuff and then seeing if god does something. Right? And and, you know, going out and telling and being unashamed of the power of the gospel to reveal who the elect are. And and, again, the I'm not going all Calvinist.
Dr. Johnson:I'm just using the the language of Paul. Right. Yeah.
Derek Kreider:Okay. Alright. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate your time. And, Yeah.
Dr. Johnson:No. It's great. These are great questions. I haven't talked I've I've never in a podcast talked about my first book, so
Derek Kreider:Oh, yeah.
Dr. Johnson:Which was really fun to have somebody who read it so carefully and understood it. This is fantastic.
Derek Kreider:I I wouldn't say I understood it. I I tried to
Dr. Johnson:read it carefully. That's my fault because it was my first book. And it was you know, this is what happens when you get your first book published. You you think this might be it. This might be the last book I ever get published.
Dr. Johnson:So it's it becomes a everything in the kitchen sink, kind of a book. So that's probably why it was, and it wasn't particularly well written either. So that's my fault if you didn't understand it.
Derek Kreider:Of your, more recent works, do you have any recommendations? Well, I
Dr. Johnson:mean, the book I love, that is my baby chop wipe too, but they're nerdy books, but you can handle them. Knowledge by Ritual, which is all about ritual epistemology and how only the Hebrews in the ancient world would say do this ritual in order that you might know. Like, that's that's unique to the Hebrew Bible in the ancient world, and then thinking why rituals are such a big deal and, again, connecting them to the scientific enterprise. And then my recent book with Cambridge University Press is is basically an argument that if we're to be really honest, the biblical tradition is an intellectual tradition. And, again, intellectual means community, ritual, spiritual, understanding the nature of reality.
Dr. Johnson:There's a there is a better way to understand the nature of the kingdom of God and the reality we live in, and that requires an entire intellectual formative community that we don't wanna make the Bible that. We we'd rather go to Augustine or, you know, any anything later. Right? Augustine, John Edwards, or whatever, but we're not taking Christians are not taking the Bible seriously enough. Even when they say they are, they're actually not.
Dr. Johnson:So that's an argument for the Bible as a a philosophy. So it's called biblical philosophy. I did not name it that. That was Cambridge. I was like, oh, that's a bold spicy title, but
Derek Kreider:It's better than QAnon something. Right?
Dr. Johnson:QAnon, chaos in Christ. Yeah.
Derek Kreider:But I but I am gonna pick that up when it comes out. So thank you.
Dr. Johnson:Alright. Me too. I can't wait to read the other essays.
Derek Kreider:Yeah. Alright. Have a great night.
Dr. Johnson:Alright. Peace to you.
Derek Kreider:That's all for now. So peace, And because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it. This podcast is a part of the Kingdom Outpost network. Please check out the links below to find other great podcasts and content related to nonviolence and Kingdom Living.