You're listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, click the NakedBiblePodcast.com and click on the support link in the upper right-hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Heizer's approach to the Bible, click on newstarthere at NakedBiblePodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, episode 188, ETS conference interviews, part two. I'm the layman, Trey Strickland, and he's the scholar, Dr. Michael Heizer. Hey, Mike, how are you doing? Pretty good. We're still here. We're still here in the road. Road Island. That's correct. Haven't moved anywhere. No. Well, part two, we're going to have a discussion with two longtime friends of mine, Ron Johnson. Again, his name will be familiar to people who follow the website, the blog, and Carl Sanders. We interviewed Carl last year and, you know, we'll actually pick up a little bit with one thought from one of our interviews in part one, but, you know, I also want to get into just some fun stuff, kind of, you know, give people sort of an example of what Bible geeks do when they're together or the kind of things they talk about and the way they talk about things. So I think this will be both interesting and entertaining. Well, with us back at ETS is Ron Johnson. Ron's name is going to be familiar, of course, for contributing some things on the blog. We've referred to Ron before on the podcast and Carl Sanders, who we interviewed last year. So Carl should be familiar to listeners. But what you may not know, I don't, maybe I've mentioned it before, but Carl and Ron are related. Okay. What's the relationship? Tell everyone. Carl married my sister, my older sister, my much more mature sister. Right. That's right. Because I am sort of old now, you know, so that's just how it is, but it's all right. Age is a good thing. Well, you know, I'd really like to just sort of chit chat about our history together. But before we do that, we actually have to do something, I guess, substantive. Okay. I just talked to you. You'll pretend you're interested. Exactly. That's good. You're good at that, Carl. You have to be. That's part of being an academic too, right? You sit in many sessions where you pretend you're interested. Okay. I just, we just interviewed earlier, Andy Nacelli, and I know who he is, okay, and Ron, you know who he is? Okay. Andy teaches for Bethlehem, what is it, Bethlehem Baptist Seminary, it's John Piper's school, and he's an elder there. He's a New Testament guy. He has a book out called No Easy Fix. It's a critique of Keswick theology, the higher life theology, let go and let God. So I'm bringing that up because what he, in the interview, again, what he was articulating about, what he's really shooting at, is this notion that he objects to having a category where Christians are only ever carnal, or they never do anything. There's no fruit in their life, so he's objecting to this category because Keswick theology has this category, then it has this other category where we have some sort of spiritual experience. The carnal Christian versus the spiritual Christian, something like that. So that in turn raises the question of, well, and this could go a lot of different ways, like what do you do with that? Because what does it mean to have like no fruit at all, like is that really even possible?  Well, were they in sanctification there? I would say, yep, they're still believers, even though we don't have opportunity to have fruit. I could think of other examples where you could have someone understand the gospel and embrace it, but they're never actually taught anything. That could either be where maybe they don't have Christian friends, maybe it's just somebody in some country where it's really hard or having a Christian fellowship can be threatening or evasive depending on the context. So if they don't know a whole lot of anything, how could we expect fruit in that situation? So what I'm wondering is, how do you guys think about this category thing, whether it's just Keswick theology or just more generally? Can we have people who are really Christians and the key words are, who never bear fruit? They never show any evidence of discipleship. How do you guys think about that? I was just talking about this with a friend, so let me jump in first. I asked him over coffee, what do you gain by this? Because he's of the Grace Epilegal Society. Yeah, and that came up in there. They pushed so hard on assurance. My question to him was, what do you gain out of this? Why would Jesus say make disciples? Are you trying to convert and then worry about his conversion turning into discipleship? Why can't I argue for going for the jugular with discipleship right off the bat, thus never having to worry about a category to fill in that unknown space? There must be some value to even asking the question. I'm not upset by that question, but I'm just wondering, why have we developed? Well, I think I know why, but I'm challenging this development of thought where we can have Jesus say make disciples and we stop short and say, well he's converted, but what's between the but and the discipleship that we value? Yeah, and I grew up, I think in at least part of the context I grew up with, had a lot of this kind of idea. So I think probably all of us heard this kind of teaching in a number of contexts. And I went to Dallas Seminary, which is one place where a lot of this kind of idea has floated around, not for everyone, but as a significant influence in the institution. For me, there's two dimensions. I'm always concerned about the extremes on both sides. On the one hand, I think I'm absolutely on board with the idea that Scripture says there should be fruit, that there really true conversion results in real fruit, that there should be something there. There must be something. Yes. The question, so on that side I'm totally with I think where Andy's going in the general category. I'm also, but on the other hand, I'm also concerned about the other extreme where we just become really over focused and trying to evaluate people because the fruit isn't always as obvious as we would like or in categories which we could understand. My biblical example I always use when I talk about what students is lot. If you read Lot's story in the Old Testament, there's not a lot admirable, not a lot admirable. I didn't intend that. There's not much admirable about Lot's life and yet in the New Testament, he's called righteous Lot. Why is he called righteous Lot? Because his soul was vexed. Now, if you look at his actions, I don't see a lot there, but I do see a lot, but not good stuff. There was an internal thing going on and I wonder if, again, I agree there should be fruit. There's a caution not to be too hyper. I'm figuring I know what that fruit is, because then you start developing these lists. If you do these five things, you're really converted. If you don't, you're not. That's my tension there. We've all seen that because of our context and mutual history. We've all seen that sort of devolve into, well, I'm doing these things. Therefore, people wouldn't use this kind of language, at least when I'm familiar with, but I do these things. Of course, I'm a believer or they've never used deserving or merit language, but since they have those things, it almost is like adding works to it. Because if you took them away, then it's like, oh, is God still happy with me? Am I still right with God? It transforms the simplicity of the gospel into some sort of, there's a bit of a performance element there that I get concerned about. But I'm with you too that if the standard is like never, ever for one moment in time showing any kind of fruit that I could detect, well, again, how would I know and how is that really possible? Is that a real category? That's where I would return to the simple directive to follow me. If I'm directed by Christ to follow him and then I'm asking myself, am I showing evidence, excuse me, of following, I just think I'm getting off the beaten track of what Christ is asking me to do. I don't like the question, but I know it's being asked all the time. I just avoid it myself. It is this conundrum, and I think, and I've got good friends who are very active in the Grace Evangelical group and subsets. What was the answer you got when you would ask that question? Oh, that's a good question. What do you gain by this? Assurance. And if you follow the Grace materials closely, they keep pushing this issue of assurance. Why would God allow us to not have total assurance in the first John 5.20 that you may know? My first retort is, well, we only can have the assurance that God allows. We can't invent assurance.  There's my assurance that if I am loyal to this God, I'm in. If I'm disloyal, look out below. That's basically the assurance. David could be a hopeless screw up in his life in so many ways, but he never crosses that line. He knows where the line is. It's not behavior-oriented. That's the key. It's worship-oriented. So that's where I think we're getting off the beaten track is when we say, not us here, but I'm saying that the question is, when were you converted? Give me a date and a time. When did you start growing? I think you're starting to walk down a path that the Bible writer would say, oh yeah, we didn't have these questions. We thought of the person's baptism probably of his day of conversion in the sense that he declared Jesus as Lord.  Do not leave. Do not leave. So they weren't asking the question in the negative like we do, where I don't see any growth. What do I do? They were seeing people first on 219 walk away and you could see that, but it wasn't the behavior. There's only two more pieces, maybe a first is just assurance has to do with our subjective awareness, not with reality. So there are people who are genuinely followers of Christ who don't have assurance for various reasons. And so I think this focus on assurance shifts it to the subjective piece in an unhealthy way at some level. Similarly, I mean just working up assurance, I'm not sure that's really the goal in the end. So just that focus on assurance I think is a little distorted and maybe confuses or conflates a couple of categories. The other thing is, and I'm going to follow up on what Ron said, conversion, I do think this model is a little caught up in, I'm going to be in trouble here, a single moment conversion model rather than doing conversion as it really is in most human experiences, more complex. It has stages and elements and you don't necessarily always know the moment you cross over. I mean we like to think, I mean some of us have dramatic conversions where we can say yesterday I wasn't, today I am. But there are lots of people who, if you look at their experience, their subjective experience, they see I wasn't here and five years later I am somewhere in the middle of there. I'm here now but I can't really tell you at what point the line has crossed. And Gordon Smith, I think it has a book called Beginning Well or Starting Well, I forget the title now, but it's on conversion and he says that conversion has at least ideally has a number of elements, faith and repentance, but also baptism and joining a community of faith. That's the normal, that's what Ron was talking about, the discipleship thing. They contribute to getting you to over here as opposed to some of them. And it's not this magic, you have to check this list because some people don't get all of them and are still right with God at their moment of death.  But so it's not that there isn't a reality of becoming a child of God, but that in our subjective awareness of it, our realization of it, it's not always a precise moment. I was talking to Luther and Pastor once in this kind of conversation and he looked at me without any, he was angry with me for asking the question when I got saved or, he looked at me and he said, when it came to how do you know when you became a Christian or when did I become a Christian? He said, when did you realize your father loved you? And that was his answer. In other words, it's got to be a path. It's got to be a progression. It's got to be a realization almost. It's a realization more than a decision. For those of us that grew up in, particularly in kind of evangelical world, I grew up and I see a lot of Bible college students, some of you guys may have seen this as well, students who really struggle with this notion of when did I become a Christian? I'm really a Christian because they couldn't pinpoint that moment, you know, and so they struggled and they, then they pray and then if I really didn't mean it, I'll pray again and they go through this really stressful. They'll go out and fall in a sin and well, I guess it, I guess it didn't take, right? And rather than saying, you know, for, for many people grow up pretty in Christian homes, it's, it's there, but subjectively, we don't have a moment and, you know, we don't have a date, you know, we want that date. And I just don't see that as kind of a biblical model or requirement. And that, I think, ties in with this, that if we see it as a moment, then we have this, we can have this conversion, whatever, if we see it as more of a process or at least having a process experience from us, from the human side, we see more like it. Am I willing to be on a journey with Christ? That's how I see my own conversion right now. Today, am I willing to be on this journey with Him? If the answer is yes, then I may, to use a anachronistic term really, I'm a Christian, but back then they probably wouldn't have called it that.  So I was just interested in what you take was because, again, you have this, I don't know, maybe we're, I'm just getting hit with a lot of this lately, you know, you're just running into people that, and maybe the content on the podcast too, because we're in Hebrews now. But since I don't see the, you know, like this list of things either in myself or somebody else, do you know, did I lose my salvation? Did I, maybe I never had it. And, and, and we take, again, what should be this progress, and we make it, we make our works part of what, what the gospel is. And we, we, we just, we, we take something simple like, you know, Romans five eight is what I keep going back to while we were at sinners Christ died for us before we even had a single thought of where we cared one iota of what God thought about us. He still loves us. So why do we think we have to give God this disposition toward us now by doing certain things? It rips the joy in one sense out of salvation, right? Because salvation ought to be a joyful experience. I mean, it isn't always joyful. I mean, we, we have those moments of crisis or struggle or whatever. But, but so there ought to be at the root of it, this, this joyful thing rather than this fearful thing. But fair enough that most of the questions I get on this are from parents wondering about their kids, especially their adult children. How do I know that my 20 year old is a Christian? Well, when he was eight, he said this, I hear that all the time, or at least too much, I guess. And it makes me nervous that we're trying to think about the other person's situation when it comes to discipleship, which is always dangerous territory. So well, on a lighter note, you know, see, this is the point, Carl, what I'd love to segue into your memoir. Oh, yes, my memoir. Yeah, are you still thinking about writing your memoir? It lurks, lurks in the background of my mind. I'm not, I'm waiting for the right moment to produce my memoir. I don't know if you want to give us the title of your memoir. Should I? I guess I can. I'll, I'll slightly give us the story. And then that'll lead. Okay. All right. Well, the story is I was teaching and I had a student who came from a pretty rough background. You know, he was dealing with some advising issues, courses he needed to take and whatever. And he's one of those good, I really liked him. He's a good kid, but you know, he's all tatted up in piercings and, you know, punk metal rock stuff. And that was his, that was his background.  I hated Christianity. That was just, I just hated that. And then I became a Christian and suddenly I find myself at Bible college. And then I asked myself, how the bleep did I end up at Bible college? So I thought of that perhaps as an interesting title for a book, you're rising out of that experience.  I mean, I taught at Washington Bible College for 10 years and I've taught at other colleges as adjunct before that and boy, I have wonderful experiences, great students I loved. I still connect with many of them. And you know, so I, I mean, it was one, but boy, there were a lot of weird and strange and silly things that happened along the way to, I mean, I think that happens in a lot of churches. I mean, people can empathize with those. Let's look for our listeners. Let's, we can all share one of our strange teaching moments or something like that. Hmm. Do you remember, do you remember, Ron, your in hermeneutics class, where you did, where you modeled the the exegetical process on the letter from your mom? Oh, yeah, I was a teacher. It's one of my favorite moments.  Remember, you're going to have to remind me of how that, well, I taught hermeneutics class and again. Well, here's the background. I was taught the classical way of presenting a sermon is observation and just, you know, tearing a, tearing a text apart down to the level of trying to get behind the writer and every word and every now and so I decided, and this was just on a on a whim, because I was so frustrated, I took a letter from my mother, an actual letter, and it was about going to a garage sale and just just a nice paragraph of what moms talk about. And I did an ex ex an exegetical expose of my mom's letter down to the level. And I put it somewhere down to the level of I didn't know what she meant, that that all the meaning was lost, all the meaning is lost. Once you dig enough, you know, garage sale now becomes about garages and sales and you lose the sense of what it is.  I just remember it in hermeneutics, you know, sort of illustrating the point that when because the letter was short, and you know, we read it for the class and it's honestly, it was kind of perfectly obvious what the world was talking about. But then when you like, when you take every, every word of it and sort of explode it, and you separate all the parts out and scrutinize each part, and then you get to the end of that, you've talked a lot about you lost sight of the entire meaning.  This is another memory I haven't lost the whole thing. It was the same teacher actually in seminary. And I probably told you the story, but I prepared several hours, five or six hours for this sermon. And I got a D plus first year preaching class, and I go back to my house, my apartment, and newly married, and I got a call from a fellow student, and he said, I heard you got a really bad grade on a rebellious sermon. Rebellious, because I didn't follow the, you know, one, two, three in the alliterations and so forth. So I just made this deal with myself out of frustration. I set my egg timer on the on the kitchen stove to 10 minutes, and I studied for my next sermon. And when that timer went off, I stopped studying. And I got an A minus on the sermon. I have a parallel story for my seminar. It's just because you're gifted, right? I have a parallel story for my seminary days. All to this was, I was taking theology at the seminary. I was at, and I was taking both years of theology at the same time. I was a weird scheduling glitch. So I had two classes going on at the same time. And this teacher designed, so all the assignments were doing the same day for both classes. So I had two midterms on the same day and two 20 page theology papers do on the same, you know, it's just one of those things.  So the first one, I really worked on, you know, I just, I really researched it. I thought it through, it was on, I think on the human constitution, you know, body, soul, spirit, those kind of things. I said, well, you know, it's, it's the biblical focus is more on the unity of the human, human person. And I worked through all this. And I think I did a really good job reading, you know, and the second one was the one, well, okay, the papers do tomorrow, we're going to spread a bunch of books on the kitchen table, and I'm going to write a 20 page paper in one night. There was something that maybe it was done day and a half, but it was, you know, that was the one I didn't have time to, and so basically I just followed the teacher's outline from the class, you know, and, and plugged in the appropriate quotes and you know, all the things that students learn to do when they're good students. And when I got them back, the one I really slaved over got an A on it, but the one I had just cranked out, matching it's note, they got a good job. And that just taught me something about what the expectation was for the course. It was, it was not about thinking creatively or really developing theologically, it was reproduced what I gave you. I didn't really care about that. Why do laymen are surprised at these stories? They think seminaries full. I want you to tell us full of creative thought where people are in a circle and thinking, you know, beyond the teacher or the sage, but it's not. It is where we're busy people and you learn how the teacher thinks. Think like him or her, produce the answers there. And some teachers are more like that than others, obviously. And I try as a teacher to not be like that. I mean, I want to be fair.  And I'm going to have students writing on both sides of that paper. I try to be meticulously fair. I may be even a little harsher on the people who agree with me because I want them to do a better job. But you know, you can write an A and disagree with me. And I can be a good paper. I may put some comments on, did you think about this, right? But I try very hard to do that, but it's really hard to do that. And it takes more time and effort as well. So what are some things that your students have done to you in class, stuff that you've run that students have done to you? Well, I got the, the, it was a bad student who gave me a wonderful paper at the end of the summer. You know, it was an independent study. And of course it was. I got a journal in the mail and it had, it was exactly the same paper as the student. And so I called the student in and I pretended I didn't know. I just said, this is a wonderful paper. Thank you for your work. Here's an article you probably should have referenced. It's, it just came out, but it's very good. I'd like you to see it. So I pushed across my desk to him just to see his, his reaction. And he was perfect. He looked at it and said, yeah, Prof Johnson, that's a good article. And I just said, what happened here? And apparently he had talked to this guy earlier in the summer before he had sent it to the journal and just copied it. So if I hadn't seen it coming around the back end, I never would have known. But that takes a lot of nerve. Did he learn a lifelong lesson? I don't know. I know he graduated, but I mean, I, yeah, I mean, I think we all have stories of like that of various kinds of plagiarism and things that sometimes I'm most often, I mean, my funny ones are when they turn in something I understand what's turned into something and you could see like the hyperlinks and things from the webpage they copied it from, you know, it's like, they're not even good at this.  I mean, I'm glad you aren't because it's easy to catch you. But but it's, it's, it's, it happens way too often. I would, at the beginning of every semester, I'd give this long talk. Don't plagiarize. I will almost certainly catch you. These are horrible meetings.  You will not like them at all. And, you know, please don't do this. It's not that hard to put notes on something and all that. And it still would happen. And, you know, and it's, it's, that's, that's frustrating to be sure.  And I had a guy, again, I don't want to caricature student athletes too much, but that's what we were dealing with. So he turned in just a really poor paper. One semester, it was, it was a history class. It was just terrible, you know, throwing together probably in 10 minutes and, you know, kind of what you'd expect for the, the guy who's majoring in basket weaving, you know, it has to take this class and whatever. So he fails this paper. I don't know what he got for this semester, but I had him for the next semester in a different class. And at the end of the class, he turned in the same paper. He plagiarized himself. But it was like there's no improvement here.  But it's like, really, like you're turning in the same F paper for a different class. Do not like see the same to the same person. Every once in a while, I have things like that where I can't prove. I mean, it's not a really bad paper. But like they turn in a paper that has nothing to do with the assignment. Yeah. But it seems to have something to do with another class. I know that's in their curriculum. And I'm pretty confident I know what happens. But sometimes you just don't have the ability to chase it down. But I get quite suspicious about those moments when that kind of stuff happens. But it's well, I shared earlier that story, but a student who is a graduate level in this paper. It's just a short paper. It's 14 point font and double space extra double space. No, this is a recent experience, fairly recent experience. Yes. A master's level class, no resources, nothing.  I mean, it was really bad. And and I felt like I was grading a junior high paper because that's what you do in junior high, you know, you make the font larger, you know, you add headings where you don't need heading, because you really don't need a heading in a two page paper, but they put them in every paragraph. You got to hit the page count, right? And, and, you know, I just, I, yeah, I, I let the student kind of have it. So this is unacceptable. And he says, Oh, I'm just so busy. I'm just doing God's stuff. And it's like, no, you're not. I'm sorry, you're just a bad student. You don't you want credit for not doing any work. But oh, well, we just we just, you know, some students want to learn and a lot don't. Unfortunately, I wish they did. And I try to make it so it's possible for them to learn, but not always successful. Not always successful, unfortunately. Yeah. Well, boy, we could go on and on. I think is what I'd really, you know, other than your memoirs and some of your specific, but one of my favorite stories is when you're all sitting there in coats, there's no heat in the class. We had, we had some issues. We had problems with the heater. And we are just folks. This is what happens at little Bible colleges. Sometimes it does and these are great to support them. Yeah, they really need help. So yeah, there wasn't heat in the classroom building. So the students are all huddled in their coats and hats.  So I kind of like the cold room. But it was it was chilly and then and things like that. And the students, some of the students were so great, they had great attitudes. Well, we're preparing for the mission field. And so this is, you know, this is preparation for all going to Siberia. That's a great attitude. If I were a parent, I wouldn't have been so happy. Let me tell you the one dining hall one. You remember this one, right? Yeah, the there was an issue with the the dining hall service company and they bailed on us. That was a good day. Yeah. And so, so Oliver twist is coming to me. Yeah, it was so it's lunchtime and they just grabbed the student workers and told them prepare something for lunch. So everyone walks into the cafeteria and they're at the place where you're lunch. Here's what they were serving. Beets and couscous. That was it. That was the lunch menu at this college for lunch for that day. Beets and couscous. And so you saw the steady stream of people walking in looking at thing, walking out and going to McDonald's or Burger King or whatever. So if you like Beets and Couscous, it was it was Christmas. If you like Beets and couscous. But so to this day, many of the people who were there that day, all you have to do to get them laughing is just say Beets and couscous. It's like it's like a secret code. You know, you're in the club.  And again, I don't want to be I'm not being overly as I say, wonderful. So we're not going to talk about the, you know, give us give us your gold. That cash for gold. Well, no, we're not going to talk about the cash for gold fundraising campaign. That was that was not a good thing either. But that was that's, I've got too easy to identify the school might be. I'm probably already in trouble. So but yes, I've got chapter titles at cash for gold, Beets and Couscous. You know, these are some of my chapter titles, you know, that I've the stories that you know, there's clusters of stories. And again, many wonderful people and self sacrificing people. But, you know, the school financially near the end, this was struggling and essentially went under at the end, like a number of schools have done not that not that recent recently, not that long ago. And so when you're trying to prop something up at the end and trying to make it go and people believe in what they're doing, you know, they believe in teaching the Bible and working with students and all that. It's amazing what people will put up. Yeah, the abuse that'll allow themselves to be subjected to for something like that. And so I want to be respectful and honor that heart of sacrifice and service that was there. And the students who really wanted to learn. So remember talking to one of the alumni who I still have a good relationship with. And even after this story, after a number of these stories, yes.  And he said, boy, you know, we went there. We had great Bible teaching. We had great friends. It was wonderful experience. No, you should not go there. Just because of all these right administrative kind of things. And I could understand that. But it wasn't the most encouraging word to hear, right? We struggled to do the best we can. I think we did a good job in many ways. But unfortunately, it was not enough to make it a going concern long term. So if you're if you're ever in the Northwest again, I have to remember this, we'll have you over and have beats and two skis. Boy, that would be that would be special, Mike. I would thank you so much for that. We haven't had that in quite a while, you know, I'm sure. So what are you what are you guys doing these days? I know you should get a little bit of an update. Char, we'll start with you. What do you what are you teaching? Teaching. Mostly courses on theology of culture, a couple of different things. One that deals with technology. Are you going to the nanotech paper tomorrow or the transition? I'm still working my way through the program. But but there's a there's a lot of interesting stuff where we we think about how we engage culture, how we you know, that's one of a lot of seminaries, particularly we focus a lot on biblical teaching and exposition. That's good. But most of the time of the people, the church has spent outside the church walls. So helping them figure out how to live in their careers, how to engage the world around them, their neighborhood, how to process media, how to think wisely about technology, because I don't think we're going back. I'm and I'm not I don't advocate that I'm not giving up my smartphone. But the smartphone has changed the world. Carl Truman, I think recently had an article where he said the real real reformer wasn't Luther, it was Henry Ford, because the car turned the church into a commute a commuter thing and basically made it a commodity so you can drive to the church you like. And that transformed American Christianity. And you know, we don't think of the way technology shapes these things. So the Amish, I say this in class all the time, Amish or don't have cars, not because cars are evil, but because cars destroy community. And you know, and so if you think if you at least can begin to process how technology works that way, again, I'm not giving up my car. But I can begin to think are there ways I can work against that or compensate for that or figure out alternative ways to build community in light of them to a Jewish author talk about how for American Judaism, the car, the idea of being allowed the rabbis decided they could drive to Sabbath services. And when that decision was made, somewhere in Cincinnati, back in the mid 60s or whatever, it changed Judaism across the country, because now people are driving to synagogue instead of everyone walking to their local and you made a big point that that was a huge reflection. It's interesting. So just think about things like that. And again, that's just one illustration, but trying to help students engage in stuff more intelligently and thoughtfully so they can actually have an impact in their churches and help their parishioners relate to the world, engage the world better. So that's been my teaching. That's probably my biggest focus over the last couple of years. So aside from my side project on biblical language, pedagogy, which is totally disconnected to that. But there you go. I just, you know, things happen in there. Ron, what's the latest with you? I'm an instructional designer at United Health Group. And I have two very active Bible studies that I prepare every week and about a dozen people sitting in a circle talking. The second one or one of them is composed of mainly non churched, younger, well disenchanted, disenchanted Christians, younger, they're all unmarried. And they've been coming to this house church actually it is for about seven years and just a delightful group. Boy, there they are. Are they willing to sit and just open up and talk about their thoughts and not get preached to. I'm noticing that. So yeah, you were telling me about this last night. And again, some a good number of people in our audience are going to know that you know, you were pastoring. And you're not like in a traditional sense, and you're not now. But since you've been in that context, the house church thing, do you have any thoughts on that? And your exposure to it? I do, I mean, things you still wonder about. The way we do it is very open ended, which again, in a sermon that I used to prepare for a church 15 some years of that, it's, it's always, you know, 32 minutes that ends with a bow tie at the top. You have to apply this text to 100 different people in 75 different ways. And to me, that wasn't matching my personality. So what we do now are these two Bible states I'm involved in, we just read the Bible in a circle, stop and talk about it, and admit where we don't understand and dig in where we do. And the honesty of being able just to talk back. I've often wondered in the earliest church, if it was set up like the synagogue, I don't believe the synagogue had a had a sermon portion to it. I mean, from what I understand, the effect coming from the same Jewish author, I was just talking about the American synagogue started a homily or a sermon, because they were jealous of the American church system, the Protestant churches that had this homily idea of, you know, 15 minutes uninterrupted soliloquy. And this Jewish author was saying that we as Jews, Jews had never thought of that, of actually having a prepared soliloquy by one person. We've always been, you know, talk it out. And so I put that back into the first century, shall we say, and I think we would do better. Well, let's back up. Is there a place for a half hour sermon? Sure. But I think on a day or week to week basis of the Christian, well, let's get back to the question of following Christ versus making a conversion statement. Following Christ to me means you're engaged in this process. Well, what better way to be engaged than to have a back and forth conversation with your quote unquote pastor, whoever that person is, whether it's a Bible study leader or whatever. This is what is filling in for their church now is just talking about scripture. And we go what 630 to 10. So what is that three and a half hours of pretty engaging conversation, very honest. Do you have a meal or finger food or something? We eat, yeah. Someone always brings food or the person that we have out of their house. They always provide some and that we sit and talk and eat. Again, food is always part of a good theological conversation. I think it's interesting that this idea of a more dialogical thing. It's culturally, I think it's becoming, I don't know if it's a necessity, but something that makes more sense. I mentioned in the paper I did earlier today, this book, a secular book called the end of power. But he's just talking about how just because of things like social media and technology and all sorts of things, this idea of the top-down model, someone controlling things, everything is a lot harder to do because people can bypass you. You may think you control your church, but someone goes and posts something on Facebook. It's gone, you know. So much for that. So that's again, one of those ways technology is contributed. It's not the only thing, but it's one of the big drivers of this. And so just having ways to do that at our church in the last year or two, the pastor has tried. We do it most Sundays, not every Sunday, but most Sundays, the sermon is done. We try to have time for questions where people can ask questions. I've preached several times in the last couple of months and so you stop 10 minutes before the end of the service or 15 minutes. And you say, okay, questions and people will ask you, well, what did you mean when you said this? Or, or how would you apply this? Or what about this? This doesn't make sense with this particular experience. And I think that's a very healthy thing, because it helps people be engaged. And those questions, a person asks a question, more than likely five or 10 other people have that same question lurking in their minds, but are afraid to ask it. So I think creating the culture where on a practical much more open to that, I think is a good thing. And on a practical note, we have someone in our group that actually is looking around the room while I'm talking, usually, and she'll call on someone who hasn't talked in an hour and say, Mary, what do you think? And that's that's a good way to, not just the person like me who's speaking or talking or running it, but someone's on the lookout to get so and so engaged whenever she wants to. And that's been really helpful. Yeah, obviously, what I'm describing, which isn't nearly as as intense as what you're doing around, but I think it still reflects that same kind of more openness to say, we're not, we don't know everything. And we may not have addressed everything that you need to know about here or want to know about here. So let's kind of create space for that. And I think that's a good thing. And so, you know, those kind of models like Ron was at are really, they that's a natural part of that. And I can tell you, I study a lot more for these two Bible studies than I ever did for a sermon. So because I have to be prepared to go off the beaten track on so many different levels. And plus it just pulls in all these things I've been doing over the years to you. You never stay on one topic very long because the questions start coming from every angle. So thanks, you guys, for the chat.  That's that's been our experience. I mean, we've known each other for how long. It's good grief. 30 30 years, at least 30 something like that. I've been married 30 some years. Yeah. So I hit 30 this year. Yeah, 31 for us. Yeah. I'm the old man. We're 36. Well, thanks a lot. You're welcome. Well, we're back at ETS. And we are here essentially for part two with Ron Johnson and Carl Sanders. Now I had asked Ron to sort of give us a verbal thought experiment. So in some ways this will sort of model what we often do at these meetings, where one of us will have some idea percolating. And, you know, we just sort of throw it out.   That usually doesn't happen. But I'm interested to hear your reaction. So so to your audience, you've never heard me say this before. In fact, nobody has this. So this will be new for all of us. So we're playing without a doubt. We're used to Ron's good at this. He's had many of these over the years. So that's thinking a lot of new problems. But like I said, it does get you fired at times. Well, we won't.  Fire me now.  What my theology is, I was listening to podcast 63 a while back. It's about Leviticus. It was your introductory thoughts on Leviticus. And you mentioned the concept of sacred space. Now I had thought about that. But your podcast made me start to put some dots together and so I'm just going to throw out some thoughts to you and see what you think of them. I'm big on theological experimentation in the sense of like an engineer standing on the shoulders of someone that has come before and yet being willing to reconsider and say, have we thought about this? And then to test drive those ideas and see where they either fall apart or they work better than ever before, you know, and if if the engine runs better than it did before, then maybe there's something to it. So here's where I'm currently test driving. I'll call it sacred space. I'm wondering to myself, even as I go through this, how many theological questions, problems, issues it solves and where to stop the experiment. So starting with, let's say, Leviticus, sacred space. The idea is, and I forget actually, Mike, how much you said here, but here's how I take it. So do I. So do you. The question being asked in Leviticus, if not much of the Old Testament is not how you know, growing up, we had this picture of you're standing on one cliff and you got heaven on the other, and you got hell in between. And then, of course, across that is laid the cross and the way to get saved is to walk, you know, literally use Jesus to walk across and get to heaven. I would recommend that the picture of the Old Testament is not how to get across, but how to get in the idea of moving toward a sacred space. Let's say the Holy of Holies, one man one time a year. There's different levels of this, of course, but whether it be the atoning moment of a sacrifice or the work of a priest, dobbing blood here and there that the question on the mind of the Old Testament person, even the righteous person, was not how to get across, but how to get in or toward or how to approach an otherwise dangerous deity like Yahweh. With that in mind, I'm wondering where that ever stops. So let's play it out. In Acts 15, let's jump all the way to the New Testament epistles. Isn't it true? Here comes the experiment that the question for Paul and Peter was not how to get people into the family of Abraham. That was settled through faith, but how to get people at the same table, Acts 15 and on. Thus the question for like a Cornelius was a sacred space question. This man is a Gentile. He's unclean. How to solve his his cleanliness really runs much of acts. If not, think of Paul's letters. Are they not driving, for example, his collection of the Gentile offerings to take to Jerusalem? It seems that he's nervous he says this at one point that they would accept that money, which would have been Gentile money, unclean money. And his concern was that they wouldn't accept it. So I'm and I'm just thinking of various texts here where Paul is is trying to tell the Gentile in so many ways what Peter told Cornelius through God's help that his question of being able to approach the God of Israel is solved. It's done. There's no more nervousness that shouldn't be anyway on the part of a Gentile. And here's the question then. When did that happen? Now the sheet story of Acts 10 comes into play, but could that not be telling the story after it actually happened, thus recalling the the death of Christ that what Jesus did in atoning on the cross was a sacred space issue. Period. Are you asking when Gentiles became aware of this or when Jews became aware of it or is so far or is or is this a metaphysical thing? Well, then OK, then that's where I would back up and I would say Ruth, Rahab, Naaman, you have pictures of Gentile inclusion all the way through the Old Testament. So that is a 49 the idea that that the nations will come. So you do have portents of it. You do have pictures of it happening so that when Peter is confronted by the dream, the vision, the the reader, even besides Peter, would have known what the answer should have been. But Peter, of course, in his obstinacy has to get taught at three times. Does that answer your question? Well, I'm I'm lost. Well, yeah, I'm thinking I maybe I'll pick up. I hear I'm good. I'm thinking one specific thing, but I'm going to hold on to it. I think I think of the metaphysical part of it. So I think of the portrayal of the rending of the veil. Three times and three gospels. Well, yeah. And particularly, I think Mark's gospel. I'm not as familiar with the other ones, but I remember working through Mark a long time ago. But Mark's gospel, you've got a Gentile centurion right there, right, claims it's truly this man was the Son of God. And then you have the women who were disciples who used to follow Jesus, but have been kind of invisible until suddenly suddenly visible there. So I mean, I do too, but I mean, it's kind of hidden but the opening of the veil suddenly says this place is open to everyone. I mean, it kind of in a sense that Mark's telling the account is he's positioning the characters in his narrative such a way he's saying that now the veil is broken. It's not just Jews, it's Gentiles, it's women. It's the excluded and that's part of what's the narrative purpose. So you're arguing that the positioning of characters like, you know, women, which would have been a sort of a sub a peripheral class and Gentiles that that's deliberate and has something to do with the torn veil imagery. I think so. I think the way that's the way Mark lays that out, at least that's the way I have read that story. And so so that would be if that's the case, then I would say that's maybe the metaphysical moment in a sense the crucifixion and obviously the rest of the work of crisis associated with it. But that's kind of the dynamic moment when that's there. Now, the understanding of it, that takes some time and processing what this means would be. So I'm I'm at least I'm intrigued at least a little bit by by that. As my pastor said, and this is he's going through acts, he said in just one of his sermons, he said, if you have been told know all your life, how big would the yes have to be? And my suspicion, here's my theory, the atonement itself is the yes to the Gentile. In other words, the Jew knows what atonement is. He had it in Torah all his life. The Gentile never had it. They were never available to it. So when Jesus dies, he was 13 something, 1312, he died outside the camp, let us therefore go to him who's outside the camp.  He died out there. The out there then is used by the writer to say there it is. There's our Gentile atonement that we've been waiting for. And that's well, I can say that's my thought experiment. Is that enough? Is is is atonement relegated just to sacred space a big enough reason for Christ to die? I think in our current Western model, we would say no. And we run toward all sorts of atonement theories as though we've got to have this big, well, we have to have have have meaning far beyond sacred space. But if sacred space is important to that world enough that Peter would not allow Cornelius at the same table, and Paul was commissioned by Jesus three times in Acts, it's clear it's to a Gentile audience he's going to go is sacred space a big enough issue to run the engine of the epistles of acts, even of Jesus atonement going back into to mark itself. And when he would walk around and he would say, be cleansed, what is he doing? Then he says, go to the temple and show them. To me, that's a sacred space issue once again, forgiveness of sins. We often think in the judicial sense of going to heaven, because I'm forgiven, I don't see it that way again, go back to, you know, to Leviticus when they were forgiven of sins, it was for a sacred space moment, or for a sacred space solution. It wasn't for a moral one, you know. And so right, it was to make make them fit for sacred space to decontaminate sacred space, right, protect it from defilement. When Jesus when Mark is a two, he's eating with sinners and they're upset about it. And Jesus says, well, I didn't come for the righteous, I came for the sinner. Again, to me, that would solve or the question of sanctification even, a purification of cleansing. Jesus isn't actually going out metaphysically doing it. He is showing what has already come true in the character of Yahweh in all these stories leading up to, you know, the Messiah coming. So the John 117, he, you know, the Torah brings us the law, but Jesus brings us grace and truth, grace and truth in the sense of a kind of favor that the Gentile needed that they didn't have under Torah and the kind of truth telling or promise keeping is that word usually is used, that there is a promise being brought to the Gentiles that again, what I'm saying is the Gentile could be right with God be, you know, before Jesus came. We know that, but did they know that? Did the Gentile know that they could approach the God of Israel without Jesus? If he had never shown up, if Jesus had never come with the Gentile know that they're accepted. And it seems that no, they wouldn't have without what Jesus did and without Paul explaining what Jesus did, whether in his death or even the resurrection, you know, being the Lord of all Acts 10, he is now solving priestly actions for all people, not just the Jew. I think there's some interesting things here. And certainly, I mean, we don't, we tend to just kind of because of the people we are, we don't think in the same kind of geographical way that biblical writers and early readers did. Think of where Jesus does his work, that's in Galilee. In Galilee, Galilee is a different place than Jerusalem and the journey to Jerusalem is such a big deal in the Gospels as well and all that. So there's certainly something there that's worth, historically Galilee had a lot of Gentiles. Yeah. So there's certainly some interesting things to explore here. I wouldn't probably at least one level I push back. Then this happens a lot of times when you have an idea you're playing with. Maybe you're trying to push it too far to make it the exclusive. I mean, I'm kind of a kaleidoscope guy on the tone.  I don't need to pick one. So I don't know how come I don't let me challenge you back because because they're different. I think is the in the biblical text, there are different ways of describing the Atonement that seem to describe different things. And you can this would be this would be another this could be another one that I think could be a useful thing to build this. Okay, sacred space. Fine. Well, who occupies the sacred space? Well, right. That would be God. So you have this reconciliation sort of thing going on. Second Corinthians five. It's right there. So but the ministry of reconciliation. But notice what comes after that. You still have to respond. See, the difference in this view of Atonement now would be that the Atonement causes the question to be asked. It doesn't solve it for anyone. It just means now the Gentiles allowed in. The wall is down collagens to. But now you've got to make a choice. What are you going to do with this God? And so to me, the Atonement question is solved in this sense. You don't have to worry about universal or limited. That's 16th century. Just leave that and go back to the text and say, what does the Atonement actually do? It makes everyone have to answer the question, what you will you do with Yahweh? He knows I'm not going to fight him. I know you're happy about that. Oh, I was going to say on this one, the three synoptics, they are written after Paul, right? They're written late.  They're they're aiming all three synoptics are aiming for the Passion Week. They get to that moment. Jesus finally dies. And they've had 20, 30 years to think about it. They all say the same thing, the next verse. What happens when Jesus dies? The veil is torn. I'm just I'm just saying that if you've had all this time to think about it, and you have all the options of Atonement ready and waiting, you know, waiting to go. And you're given this narrative. And you've aimed all your life to say one thing that Jesus does, why did they choose a sacred space analogy or picture? I think it just works for me. What is the mystery then? Is that was it a mystery only to Jews then that Gentiles, the Gentiles could be full heirs of Abraham without proselytization. Okay, so I think that's so it's the scales are on the Jews eyes there. That's they're the ones to whom the mystery is hidden. So that that would that would be a historical thing. It wouldn't be a metaphysical thing. Right. If that's the case. Well, that's the beauty of it is that you can go back through David's lineage and see a Ruth and a Rahab who got in. I love Ruth's or Rahab's statement in Joshua 211, your your God Yahweh is the God of heaven and earth. And then she even says, would you make or will you promise me on your God's name character that you'll save me alive. I mean, she's making this this beyond sacred space. I mean, I think she's trampling over it's frankly saying I'm going to depend on the character of your deity for my well being in the well being in my family, whether or not I had that I have sacred space to worry about. So I think there's all these little moments where you see people Daniel praying to the West without a temple. He's understanding before it's actually happening that sacred space is solved because of the character of the God he's dealing with. Yeah, I think it's there's a lot of interesting things that are running through my mind right now. One is just I struggle with exactly how to explain Gentiles in the Old Testament, not that they can't be saved if we can use modern theological verbiage. But there does seem to be something that happens in the New Testament that changes their status in terms of the way God's people are organized. Do you think that's Hellenism? I don't know.  Cornelius, when you look at how he's described in that extent, he's described as a God as a Gentile who fears God a couple of times, right? And he prays to God and God hears his prayers. He's not really an unbeliever. Not at all. He's a Gentile believer. And Peter won't have nothing to do with him. And Peter. So when Peter preaches to him, this is not a conversion story to go back to our last conversation. It's not really a conversion story. It's an inclusion story. Exactly. Yeah, this is quite different than the way it's normally preached or taught, by the way. Yeah, well, like an unseen realm when I go through, I have this chapter called, I think it's infiltration, where you have the reclaiming of the nation start with acts to and it's a deliberate play on it's an incomplete but a deliberate play on the nations of Genesis 10 that were disinherited.  Yeah, you know, and the order is significant because you start out with places that are significant that are connected to Jews and their inheritance in the Old Testament, you get Samaria, you've got a Zodus, which is like a throwaway place, you've got Damascus, as if to make the point. OK, you know, Jew first and then we'll get to the Gentile. But all of these places that are significant to the inheritance of the seed of Abraham, the gospel goes to those places. And then as soon as all the Jewish stuff is gobbled up or at least included in the list, then you get this. You get Cornelius episode. You get the conversion of Paul. You get all these things. And then it shifts to this Gentile territory. Paul's like, I've got to get to Tarshish because that's the last thing on the list. You know, the book Western goes point. So it's intriguing to me for those kinds of things because that's reconciliation when we talk about sacred space. Again, it's really about access to God in a place where God is. So you have the access you've got.  Now Paul could say to a Gentile, you can approach the God of Israel through that house over there, go into that house and talk to those priests who are, by the way, Jesus of Nazareth, I think.  Yeah, the end of acts, which and Rome is the center of power, the end of the universe. If you will, in a sense, you know, I think of the old foundation series from as Bob, you know, Trantor all roads lead to Trantor, right? Everything goes to Rome, right? It's it's like this is the place, right? And so now the whole world has been claimed in a sense, at least, you know, in terms of the the geography of the mind, right, except for Spain, because he writes the Romans, I can't wait to see you guys, but I'm only going to be there. I know, it's kind of symbolically claimed. Yeah, that's right. You know, so it's like if there's a capital of the world, it's this place. Right. So it's it is again, that geography stuff that we kind of pass off as kind of almost indifferent to the story. It's not indifferent because they view the world as the place that God is claiming. It's his kingdom that he's gradually to find the whole world into sacred space in the sense, right? This is kind of a wild card, but OK, the church at Rome, we don't know who started that. There's no indication that New Testament who started it. We know that Aquila and Priscilla come from that because of the expulsion and the Claudius, but they're it's they're Jews who are somehow either either started this thing or were included in or like what's the exact relationship there. But it just seems to sort of happen independent of what's going on in Jerusalem before Paul even does his thing. So it's almost like, I mean, you could say, OK, that's a derivative of acts, too, in some way. If somebody goes, you know, this converter goes back, but we're not told. So you could have that kind of thing happening all over the world where essentially the spirit is acting to create this set of circumstances. And if you have a Pentecost, we have these Jews from all these other places that here and some of them go back. I mean, they seed these various locations with that presence now of the inaugurated Kingdom. And I would recommend when you follow through on the sanctified by faith in him or sanctified by faith or sanctified through Jesus, take that word sanctified again as a sacred space, you know, momentary cleansed so or purified so that they can approach God. So it seems to be when the like when when the spirit comes in acts eight and acts ten and then as it's redescribed in acts eleven, their point is the spirit came thus showing that they're cleansed and they're cleansed by faith in Christ. It's both. And it's interesting that Paul used that space wasn't if if they're if that temple was defiled, it wasn't fit for occupation by the spirit. It wouldn't spirit wouldn't have showed up. So you and you have both the corporate temple, the church and the individual temple, the believer. You can do this logist word search, just, you know, type in sanctification, look at the Greek use of it. It's a one time punctilier moment in the life of the church where repeatedly someone is sanctified. And I think especially when you come to Gentile stories, it's the spirit showing up in a visible manifestation, specifically saying you guys are OK. Now, they're already saved. They're already mean. They're probably already X X X 19. I agree. I agree that that's because it calls those people believers that's a perfect example. But but the fact that they can believe that they do belong has to be validated. So you have to have to send Peter and John up there to check it out, like what's going on? And and it immediately validates what's going on here because it links it back to the X experience. As my pastor said, too, I found this more humorous than the audience. But he said, people were getting saved in X, but then they were showing up for church. It was causing all sorts of trouble. And I think that's exactly what I mean. There are some modern analogs to that, by the way. I mean, you know, the the undesirable so I got to church with another wild card here is I mean, I've done some reading in Second Temple sources about the veil. For instance, Josephus and if I remember, he serves me a little bit in Philo where they did not look at the at the veil. Kind of the way we sort of suspect as this I don't want to say it. Let me let me let me approach it a different way. I've run into some New Testament guys that will use certain things second set said in Second Temple sources to argue that the tearing of the veil was not about access. But it was like when you kill the Messiah, it was like the eruption of chaos. Like it it presents this disorder out of order. So looking at it more abstractly now, even if that's the case, I don't think that that's a problem because it's not like Second Temple Jews ever thought the same way about anything. So you can have just this you can have a segment over here to look at it this way and then you can have what's going on in the New Testament be another perspective. But it could even be polyvalent in a sense, right? I mean, it could have. I mean, it could be could be viewed as doing multiple things. Here comes your different one in the gospel. You're different atonement theories. Couldn't they all in a sense come back to this issue of sacred space so you can have a Christmas picture? OK, he's trying to do the theory of everything. This is really good. Erick's theology says we're always interesting models out there. We're going to squeeze them all into penal substitution. And I just tell my students, you can judge how well he does that. I'm not so sure he's very effective, but he's trying to get the one, you know, say we're going to kaleidoscope guys. Yes, well, give me all the kaleidoscope images and I can get it back to sacred space, probably case the Colossians to wall coming down. There you go. OK, you get the triumph motif. The trial is a victory over Satan. Yeah, well, I guess how would that? I don't know. That's OK. I'm stumped right now on that one. All right. Maybe you can maybe you can do it. I'm not saying you can't. I'm just saying I tend to be suspicious. Let me let me play Mr. Abstraction here. And I'll run. OK, go ahead. You can do that. OK, Satan is the Lord of the Lord of the earth. It's not just air. It's underworld. But unclean spirits. All right. But but he can he can be said to be the Lord of everyone because all humans die, which includes Gentiles. OK, and so you could theorize, you could postulate that since this was sort of the primeval enemy and it's specifically of Adam and Eve. And if you think in Adam and Eve being prototypical or archetypal to Israel, you could, in theory, as a Jew, be happy to get this tunnel vision here, you know. But but it's it's really wider than the tunnel vision. Adam is real parallel. It includes all people, which is all the nations. See there there. I gave you gave you a lifeline, right?  This is a work in progress. No, I mean, I think it's an there's some interesting things there. And for me, I'm I'm I think I could pretty quickly make this just another aspect of my kaleidoscope, and that doesn't cause me much difficulty at all. It doesn't cause you much stress. No, I mean, because because I think I just tell my students, I always say, if the if if the Atonement is really what we say it is Jesus is really who we say he was. His death is is not easily captured in a single limited finite idea. We shouldn't be surprised that it it just overflows in surprising ways. And we can look at it from different perspectives and see elements of that that we wouldn't see otherwise. I find that useful to me. But, you know, is there a pre Johnson theory of the Atonement that is about reconciliation, like that has reconciliation as a primary focus of Ju Gentile? Not really. Yeah, I'm not. I can't I can't really think of one. I can't think of one either. But I figured if there was one, Carl, you would know.  We'll take all that data and throw it in or. Yeah, thanks. I can't. You know, when you go through the normal, the six or seven traditional models, it's now not the primary feature of any of them. One of the weaknesses of my view that I've noticed or that I have to continue to work on is the we language in Paul, where he's going to use the president or the first person plural to describe his situation pre Christ. But I think like in Galatians, he's trying to bring in the Galatian Gentiles into that storyline so he can say we in Galatians four, you know, we were under he uses we for the being under the tutelage of the powers, which I can't imagine that Jews. I'm just saying that when you have like a Romans five, eight, let's try this out. While we Gentiles Rome, right, while we Roman Gentiles were yet without strength, classic definition of a Gentile, Christ died for the ungodly, the non-Jew. In other words, could Romans five, eight through 10 even be a statement of or entire atonement right there? If Paul's writing it, he hasn't he hasn't let the Jews classify themselves as the godly versus the ungodly, but that's how they saw themselves. Well, in other words, as they're hearing that, right. So well, again, if he's talking to Rome, it's getting into the hands of a majority of Gentiles, isn't it? Yeah. So as they're reading this as a Gentile, how would it sound to them that when we were yet without strength, when we were weak, literally, and that's a classic definition of a Gentile, Christ died for. Why did he say ungodly? Why didn't he say all of us? I think there's a possibility he's trying to get the Gentile to see Christ's death as atoning for his lack of purification.  To me, again, this is my my little problem. But by the time you come out of the old, we all have problems. By the time you come out of the Old Testament, we all think they're little, you already have the placeholders for godly and ungodly, righteous and the wicked, you know, Psalm one, God knows the way of the righteous but the way of the ungodly parish that you've got these categories pre Christ of whether you're godly or not. So could Paul use those in Romans after Romans three to also still claim we're you're not saying that an Old Testament Israelite would think all his fellow Israelites are righteous. Oh, no, no. But, but could, you know, Ephesians four, he's talking again to Ephesus people who are probably Gentile. And Ephesians four talking about we were dead in sin. But now we are. Could could that dead in sin be talking to the Gentile pre Atonement that because of Christ's Atonement, we are now part of that again, think think visually of not getting across a divide but walking into a temple where I get to or I have to account for myself to that deity in that place.  Again, I'm presenting Atonement as causing the question not solving anything. One thing you might explore. I am thinking like the stuff feels done with the with the earth and others, you know, earth as a becoming a temple, a logical temple and things like that, which again is a sacred space kind of language. So that would that would be some stuff that might connect with this. I'm not quite sure how it fits exactly, but I'm I'm just trying to think of other things that could just follow this and follow through on the like Hebrews four brought to God and approach God. There's a lot of approach language that keeps coming up after you see Christ really writing to Gentiles, though. I mean, I'm not I wouldn't exclude in Hebrews. I mean, yeah, I wouldn't exclude Gentile readers to me when you read Hebrews nine where it talks about things as though no duh, you know, there was a thing called a temple. It had a this it had of that for me. If I'm a Jew, I'm saying hello. Do you think I don't know? Yeah, I would say the audience is mixed. I would. Yeah. And well, then how about at the end where 1312 he died outside the camp, let us go to him. It's as though it's trying to say, I know he didn't die the way a sacrifice should have died, but that's OK. To me, it's arguing or helping the Gentile feel welcome to a religion that has for centuries said you're not part of us. Yeah, I wouldn't dispute that. Let's go back to before you wrap up here. Let's go back to when you said you think your view is that the Atonement, I'm trying to remember how you just said it prompted the question. OK, but it prompts the question, but the solution is still the event. It's faith. Right. Well, it's the cross event. No, see, I'm going to stick my neck out and say the cross does not save people. The cross presents the question of what are you going to do with this Lord of the universe? So now the cross is the means for us to to the Lordship of Jesus. So I'll never, in fact, as you read Jesus talk about going to the cross, he always includes resurrection. He never stops at the cross. OK, so you're right. The way people talk about the cross tends to be the crucifixion only, right? As opposed to the whole the whole thing. Yeah. Yeah. I think I mean, that that's fair because, you know, you you got to have a resurrection before you can have an ascension. You got to have the ascension to be rena. You know, the whole complex is important. Well, that was my traditional reason why I got in trouble with my atonement theory was that I argued if you're going to see penal substitution as the solution, then that's tied only to that one part. He doesn't need to resurrect. I mean, it's nice that he did. But you but you've seen what you've solved the wrath of God on Friday night at six o'clock. And I'd argue, no, if you follow this view, it it pushes the gen I get this mind or this picture in my mind of Jesus pushing a Gentile into the holy woods now saying, OK, you've got to make a decision. There's nothing stopping you. Acts 10 45 because of this. Now, everyone who can. But to me, that's kind of catchy. You know, Jesus didn't solve the problem at six o'clock and on Friday. I mean, I when I when I when I talk about the work of Christ, I always talk about the fact that one of the problems with penal substitution. But again, I'm not willing to necessarily. I'm not willing to necessarily discard it as one of my kaleidoscope, right? This is why we're kaleidoscope. We can just grab everything. We don't have to make any other theory of everything. But but but it certainly is true. Yeah, what's the resurrection? I mean, the penal substitution doesn't answer that. It doesn't talk about the transformative elements of the gospel that it actually changes us into new people and empowers us to live it to be the rest of life. It doesn't deal with the cosmic dimensions of redemption. It's not just about humans. It's about all of creation being restored. So all of those things that I don't think the death is it's not sufficient to explain all of those things. So we have to have a bigger picture of the work of Christ. So so, you know, I try to make my, you know, like in my one class, one of the discussion questions is always when's the last time you heard a sermon on the Ascension, right? And it's like, I've never heard a sermon on the Ascension. It's what's that? What is it?  Read the New Testament. That's a big part. Resurrection, Ascension are a huge thing. And so there is something that's missing there. And so that's one reason I'm not willing to commit just to that single model. I think we have to have more. But I'm not quite willing to abandon it entirely. It captures something, I think. Well, I mean, you could certainly abandon the emphasis or the way it's talked. Well, certainly. I mean, not as certainly as the exclusive model. I certainly I don't do that. But but I mean, again, if you if you have this kaleidoscope or this collection of I think Scott McKnight uses the the bag of golf clubs imagery one thing that just doesn't sound as good as I know, but I think it's in this book. People call the tone. That's right. People call the tone. I think it is. And we have a bag of golf clubs. So which is the which is the best golf club? Because it depends on what you're talking about doing. If you're pitching or sand in a sand trap, it's different than putting on the green or driver. So he says all these theories have their or at least a number of these theories, not all theories, but there are at least a number of theories that are going on. You're letting go of the fast ball and you that's right. To me, I would love to do penal substitution sometime because to me, I've got 31 reasons why I just can't buy it just. OK, 31. That's a very precise number. It's come down for me to where I actually am opposed to it because of theological problems.  But there's there's something in Ron's child. So that could be. But anyway, I still love you. I know if you had gone to where Carl taught, it would be the beats of the Coos Coos. Yes, that's right. Well, I have this picture in my mind of my son on our bed and and he is sinned against me. And I say, go get Kirby.  My dog in trouble. In other words, if I'm satisfied by the death of not the person who did it, but someone else, what does that say about my character? We've got to talk about that. At least to me, that's a discussion point. If I can actually mean, does any judge do that today? If you sin and then you say, can my brother serve my sentence? And I say, hey, all I need is somebody. That says something about me, not more, you know, more than you. And I'm and at least I want my penal substitution friends to talk about that and say, how do you come up with Old Testament? Start with that. How do you come up with the judicial system? Sacrificial, you know, wherever you want to go that allows by the time you get to the New Testament, someone to say, oh, yeah, Jesus died in my place.  Where did we come up with this whole version of a God that would be satisfied? You're assuming that. Well, I don't I don't I don't want to say you're assuming, but it would seem that there's only one possible sacrifice that could accomplish all of the things that are wrapped up in resolving this problem. In other words, saying I have that view. No, no, I'm saying that. Is it really again? Hey, Kirby, you'll do here. It let's say that there's only let's say that Kirby was the only way, the only sacrifice that could possibly be made to really restore the relationship between you and and your son. Right. And we'll throw in everybody else here.  So yeah, Kirby is the only thing that's going to and plus it is a little different in the sense that Kirby in this and now if we're going to push the volunteers. Yeah, I can get it. It is different. Kirby, well, that's all I'm asking for is a conversation about the actual path to get to that point. But that's another subject. So I was going to say one more thing about about Kirby. No, no, no, about the the atonement, but oh, well, we start doing the Kirby thing and he lost it. That's right. All right. Well, this was fun. Thanks a lot, you guys. Thank you. Thanks. All right, Mike, well, I feel like I just got through peaking behind the curtain to see how you theologians think out loud amongst yourselves and watch it happen in real time. So that was interesting for me. You know, well, it's I guess it's the way the sausage is made. I don't know. Yeah, I got to see that. But, you know, either way, it was good because we are in Rhode Island. Rhode Island. All right, well, good deal. And I want to thank everybody for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. God bless. Thanks for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit www.nakedbibleblog.com to learn more about Dr. Heizer's other websites and blogs. Go to www.brmsh.com.