Join us for an enlightening conversation with Reverend Dr. David Maxwell, whose profound work translating Cyril's commentary on John opens a window to the soul-stirring depths of early church patristic exegesis. Our discussion traverses the landscape of scriptural interpretation, revealing the intricacies of a bygone era where texts wove together to narrate salvation's story. We delve into the pressing call for a modern Reformation within the American Christian Church, one that echoes the ancient practices of faith and discipleship multiplication. Dr. Maxwell illuminates the path for disseminating the core Lutheran doctrines, particularly justification, to resonate within the broader cultural milieu.
In this episode, we contrast the patristic approach to Scripture with contemporary methods, examining how early Christians engaged with the Bible in a way that often escapes today's theological dialogues. We dissect the art of pattern recognition that early church fathers employed, an approach that enlivens the grand narrative of salvation history. With Dr. Maxwell's guidance, we peel back the layers of tradition to re-encounter the 'exegetical elephant in the room'—the patristic tradition—and consider its relevance as a vital conversation partner in modern biblical understanding.
Concluding our exploration, we reflect on the delicate balance the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) maintains between Law and Gospel within its scriptural teachings. Dr. Maxwell provides a nuanced perspective on the controversies of typology and allegory in biblical interpretation, addressing the integration of traditional exegesis with 20th-century methods. As we discuss the importance of unity and a Christ-focused theology within the LCMS, Dr. Maxwell extends a heartfelt invitation for listeners to engage further with his scholarly work, promising a continuation of this vital theological dialogue.
Join us for an enlightening conversation with Reverend Dr. David Maxwell, whose profound work translating Cyril's commentary on John opens a window to the soul-stirring depths of early church patristic exegesis. Our discussion traverses the landscape of scriptural interpretation, revealing the intricacies of a bygone era where texts wove together to narrate salvation's story. We delve into the pressing call for a modern Reformation within the American Christian Church, one that echoes the ancient practices of faith and discipleship multiplication. Dr. Maxwell illuminates the path for disseminating the core Lutheran doctrines, particularly justification, to resonate within the broader cultural milieu.
In this episode, we contrast the patristic approach to Scripture with contemporary methods, examining how early Christians engaged with the Bible in a way that often escapes today's theological dialogues. We dissect the art of pattern recognition that early church fathers employed, an approach that enlivens the grand narrative of salvation history. With Dr. Maxwell's guidance, we peel back the layers of tradition to re-encounter the 'exegetical elephant in the room'—the patristic tradition—and consider its relevance as a vital conversation partner in modern biblical understanding.
Concluding our exploration, we reflect on the delicate balance the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS) maintains between Law and Gospel within its scriptural teachings. Dr. Maxwell provides a nuanced perspective on the controversies of typology and allegory in biblical interpretation, addressing the integration of traditional exegesis with 20th-century methods. As we discuss the importance of unity and a Christ-focused theology within the LCMS, Dr. Maxwell extends a heartfelt invitation for listeners to engage further with his scholarly work, promising a continuation of this vital theological dialogue.
Hello and welcome to the brand new American Reformation Podcast. We long to see the wider American Christian Church fall more in love with Jesus by learning from the practices of the early church and other eras of discipleship multiplication. We want to hear from you, make sure you comment and leave a review, wherever you're watching or listening, to tell us what God is doing in your life or how you feel about today's conversation. Lord, have your way in us. Let's dive in.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the American Reformation Podcast, tim Allman. Here I pray, wherever you're taking this conversation in today, the joy of the crucified and risen Jesus is yours and that you're leaning in for a fun, inspiring conversation today on Scripture and the early church with Reverend Dr David Maxwell. Served at is still serving at, concordia Seminary in St Louis for the last 20 years about a year of a pastor, but he knew he was ready to go and bless people after his PhD at Notre Dame. In the early church he was ready to go and bless pastors who bring the gospel to the world. So how are you doing today, david Good?
Speaker 3:Nice to meet you, tim, thanks.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, this is going to be fun. So, opening question on the podcast how are you praying for as you look, just 30,000 feet the broader landscape of the American Christian church here in the United States of America and the pastors that you get to shape? How are you praying for Reformation, brother?
Speaker 3:Well, I would say that I would like us to sort of capture what's really moving about Christianity, because sometimes you can get ensconced in your own tradition and you're sort of doing preservation of your own identity or something, but you can kind of miss what's really striking, especially to people outside the church, about your own tradition. And I think one of the ways to do that is to look at the early church and see how Christians from a different time and place interacted with the scriptures and what did they find, you know, striking and moving in those scriptures?
Speaker 2:Yeah, amen. And what are so in our tradition, being in the Lutheran Church of Missouri Synod, confessing Lutherans. What are some of those traditions, those teachings that you think, man, the wider church needs this perspective. What are some of those, David?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, of course, for Lutherans, the doctrine of justification is the center of everything, but the problem is nobody knows what that means outside of the church especially. I mean you see the word justification and you think that this is something that Microsoft Word does to your document. Right, I mean, it has nothing to do with theology, and so I think part of the challenge, especially with that doctrine, is to articulate what's at stake. I mean what you know, and so, if you so, my colleague Bob Kolb has done a lot with this. You know, trying to paraphrase the doctrine of justification in a way that communicates to the culture. So, for example, you know, maybe you don't talk about justification, but you sure talk about where do you get your identity or security and or meet where's meaning in life. I mean, these are all ways of getting at what the doctrine of justification is trying to give. So that would just be one example, yeah, no, I love it.
Speaker 2:And Dr Kolb has been on this podcast and he's a gift to the church, so I love that you guys get to get to work together. So what inspired you to tell the story a little bit, dr Maxwell? What inspired you to dig deep into biblical New Testament, specifically exegesis?
Speaker 3:Well, actually I mean the original impetus for me going into the early churches. I wanted to know what the early church thought about justification, and so I soon got into a wider kind of pool in terms of just well, how did they read the Bible? And the thing that got me into that was it wasn't exactly my own choice, it was I was at a conference and Joel Olowski, who's now a colleague at Concordia Seminary, took me out to dinner and said we you know he worked for Intervarsity and he said we'd like you to translate for us for our new ancient Christian text series. And so he got me into translating Cyril's commentary on John, which took me about 10 years to do. And while you sit with a thing for 10 years and you sort of realize, oh, this is quite different than what we do, I mean it's very moving and it's got its own kind of coherence to it, and so that it was Cyril that sort of drew me into the whole area.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, and we're going to. We're going to get to Cyril here in a little bit. You wrote a thesis article I don't know what they call it for Concordia Journal, but it's called the exegetical elephant in the room and a lot of our conversations going to be dealing with that. So a little shout out to that amazing piece of work. What is? So? We're getting into the patristics here. What is? And sometimes we use words and I know we have listeners from a variety of different backgrounds. So I know we're going to break things down for folks, make it super accessible. But as we think of patristic exegesis, define that for us, dr Maxwell.
Speaker 3:Well, patristic is a word that refers to the church father. So we're talking about, you know, from the New Testament times through. Well, you can cut it off at different points. I tend to go up through about the sixth century. I mean it goes, there's church fathers later than that too. But and exegesis is just how do they read the Bible? Because we actually there are quite a number of Bible commentaries that were produced by the early church, including Cyril's commentary on John, which is a pretty massive work, but he's got commentaries on a whole bunch of other books. Origin was an earlier church father that was really instrumental in kind of creating the genre of a Bible commentary.
Speaker 2:So could we pause right there when, when you're talking Cyril and origin, put them in relation to the early church? How closely connected were they to? You know, the church in 50 AD to 100 AD? Because we're talking pretty close here, David, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so origins in the 200s and Cyril's in the, you know, late three, early 400s.
Speaker 2:So some people would say, I mean, that's a, that's a pretty big gap. What's going on in the church to have that big of a gap between, say, the writings of Luke and Acts and others, and then you finally have there were others.
Speaker 3:You have. You have fathers like Clement and Rome or Irenaeus that are pretty much like second century, right after the New Testament, so it's not like there's a gap. It's just that those writings tend to be kind of smaller, and the farther along in time you get, the longer these texts tend to be.
Speaker 2:And the biggest. Well, that's yeah, that's wonderful. And tell us why those texts began from a historical perspective. Why did those texts, like from Cyril of Alexander in relation to John, why did those texts start to become longer? Was there, was there teaching? Was there heresy that was going on in those, in those seasons, that led toward deeper acts of Jesus, Dr Maxwell, Well, I think you have a tradition of Christian scholarship that gets going.
Speaker 3:I mean, it is also true that there were heresies. Cyril is responding particularly against the Arian heresy, which says Jesus is not fully God, and his whole commentary on John is oriented towards that question. I mean, he finds evidence in every verse that Jesus has got. I mean it's kind of overdoes it. But the but yeah, I think I think part of it is you get their opponents that people are reacting to. But then there's also, as I said, increasing Christian scholarship, because one of the things that Christians have to deal with is that the tradition of learning and education in the ancient world is based on Greco-Roman mythology.
Speaker 3:So what are you going to read when you go to school? You're going to read Homer. You know you're going to read Virgil, and Christians really had mixed feelings about this, because you're teaching your kids by having them read all of these immoral stories of God's behaving badly, basically, and so they really had to wrestle with. Okay, well, what do we want to do about this, right? Do we want to just put up with it, or do we want to completely withdraw and like not be educated? And there are people that thought that way too, and I think you know what ended up happening was Christians decided well, we can't give up education. You know, we want to be educated, and so you got some really brilliant minds in the early church Orgen and Augustine come to mind right away who are highly educated. You know, augustine is educated in all of that stuff. And so what the church ends up doing is saying, all right, well, we have to critically appropriate it. I mean, so you have to read it, right. But you have to realize that not everything in there is good. And so you have documents like Clement of Alexandria, who's you know earlier, like he's right for Orgen. So second century has a whole work detailing, you know, all kind of Greek mythology, even myths that we don't even know about. I mean, we only know it through him.
Speaker 3:And just trying to help Christians sift and say, okay, well, this is good, this is not good, and so that was a real challenge for them is how to, how to live in a culture that was the whole educational system is kind of alien to the faith. And so you don't, but you need it, right? I mean you can't, just you can't just say, well, we're just going to be stupid, you know. I mean, so what do you do? And so that was their, that was their answer, and the image that they often used was that plundering the Egyptians. This is this is from the Exodus story, where the Israelites took the silver and gold from Egypt. You know, as they left Egypt, and so the early church saw themselves as well, we're going to take the learning from the classical tradition and we're going to plunder it. I mean, we're going to use it for our own purposes, we're not going to kind of be subverted by it.
Speaker 2:And now see it through the frame of the crucified and risen Christ, right, and so let's, let's get in. I mean, I could go down the path. Right now we're doing a series on return of the gods. And how? Same devil, just new names in our very materialistic world in which we live, individualistic, and all the gods which are no gods. And now how we're called. You know, act 17, I think I see all of these gods. Can we start to name a lot of these gods that present themselves as nothing but mere idols doing the work of the evil one, the liar, the deceiver, satan, who wants to steal, kill and destroy, divide us from the truths of who God is, revealed in the person and work of Jesus. And so it's a great time to actually look through the frame of the early church and then the early church fathers.
Speaker 2:Dr Maxwell, I think it's a wonderful time for the work that you're doing. Talk about how the patristics dealt with the scriptures and what we can learn from them. You you talked to just a fan into flame in your in your article. You talked about first dealing with the text, then dealing with the spiritual meaning of the text, which leads toward pattern, pattern recognition. Go a little deeper there, if you would.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Well, I think the most general way to describe what they're doing in the early churches I use the word pattern recognition because, they see, you know a similarity between two texts and they connect the texts, or even the same word used in two different texts, so they interpret them together and fundamentally, I mean, if I can just kind of compare and contrast what I take to be the modern approach to exegesis versus the ancient one- so for the modern the modern approach is to say that the meaning of the text is to be found in the original intent of the human author as it was understood by the original audience, and so it's a very historically oriented way of reading a text.
Speaker 3:Is that you're trying to discover the, the original intent of the human author, whereas in the, in the early church, what they're trying to do is is to place the text in the larger story of salvation, and they're not as concerned about, well, what did the human author think? They're kind of more. Well, they're approaching it with the assumption that this is all about the story of salvation, writ large, and so every piece of it, the goal is to fit it into that larger story. The goal is not to discover the, the intent of the human author.
Speaker 3:And so what that means is yeah, what it means is that they're going to make connections that modern exegesis won't make.
Speaker 3:I mean just to give you one example, a modern approach.
Speaker 3:Let's say you're going to read the Gospel of Matthew and you're going to maybe write a sermon on it or something, and so a modern exegesis is going to tell you well, if you're going to deal with Matthew, then you want to stay in Matthew.
Speaker 3:You don't jump over to John and grab some passage from John because you're trying to stay within the kind of world of Matthew, whereas this wouldn't occur to the early church, because they think it's all kind of part of the larger story. And so they're not even only going to jump to John, they're going to go to some obscure text in the minor prophets or something too, and make some weird For us from our perspective, some weird arbitrary connection between your texts from Matthew. And so what happens then is modern readers look at what the church fathers do and they just think it's weird in many cases. And so the temptation is just to write them off and think well, they don't know how to read the Bible. But I think it's a better approach would be to say well, they have a different set of presuppositions than we do.
Speaker 2:So before I love that so much, a deep part of our discipleship today, teaching the Scriptures, is inviting them into the narrative of Scripture first as kind of the foundational presupposition where all of the Scriptures kind of fit, from creation to recreation. So for the listener and get us into your classroom right now, Dr Maxwell, the student raised their hand. So what is the story? Could you define for me the story that all of Scripture kind of points to? What would be your? Give me your one or two minute. You can go deeper if you want, but one or two minute kind of explanation of the grand story of Scripture.
Speaker 3:Well, I mean creation and redemption would be the short answer, but the thing is that that can be explicated in so many ways, so let me give you a couple of examples. So the one that Lutherans usually do is that God created the world. Adam and Eve fell into sin in the Garden of Eden when they ate the fruit. And then Jesus came and he died to pay for our sins, and then that's redemption, and then he rose from the dead to give us new life. So that's a pretty basic version of the story of salvation. Now let me give you a different one.
Speaker 3:This is from Sirle of Alexandria. So God created Adam and Eve and they sinned in the Garden of Eden, and things got worse and worse after that until finally the Spirit departed from the human race. In Genesis 6, right before the flood, god says my spirit will not abide in man forever, for he is flesh and the spirit departs from the human race, but in the person of Jesus, at Jesus' baptism, the spirit descends on Jesus and John says he remains on him, and so that represents the return of the spirit to the human race. The Holy Spirit is rooted once again in our nature and the person of Christ never to leave again, and that's salvation. So now that's a version of the story of salvation. It's not even centered on the cross, it's centered on the baptism of Jesus. Now that's not to say that Sirle doesn't also tell the story of salvation centered on the cross and the resurrection. He does that too, but that doesn't stop him from doing the baptism first. So there's multiple ways you can unpack the thing.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love that so much. You talk about the scriptures in your article. Exegetical Elephant in the room. Before I ask this question, why did you title your article the Exegetical Elephant in the room that we need to kind of expose Everybody sees it. No one talks about the elephant, but we need to kind of. I love that word play. So how did that title come about?
Speaker 3:Well, because nobody talks about it. The fact is that you have this, you know, multiple thousand year tradition of reading the Bible, and here we come along at the end and we don't really interact with it because we know how to do it right. We've got our own method and that determines everything. And my thought is well, look, I mean not that you have to follow everything the church fathers say, because they're not modeled, they disagree with each other, but at least they ought to be conversation partners, you know.
Speaker 1:And so absolutely.
Speaker 3:So when's the last time you read a Bible commentary that took the church fathers seriously as conversation partners? I mean a modern. I mean there are some, like Bill Weinreich did a commentary on the Gospel of John where he interacts intensively with Cyril and with other church fathers, but that's pretty rare, you know. Usually your conversation partners in modern Bible commentaries are other modern Bible scholars.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, I think we could do better. How does this interact, that struggle? Let's just go deeper there. For those who are into history, how does that interact? Or how is the higher critical understanding of scripture? And then I think flowing out of that are modern interpretation of scripture. How is that kind of? Is that why our higher critical understanding of scripture? We are more hesitant to look back to the early church. Fathers say something there, dr Maxwell.
Speaker 3:Well. Okay, before I do that, I want to make a distinction to higher historical criticism and historical grammatical method. These are two different things but they are related, All right. So historical criticism means you read the Bible and you're trying to discover the intent of the human author. But the historical critical exegetes feel that they can make decisions like well, of course Jesus didn't, wouldn't really have said this, you know, or they do. The source criticism where the Bible is this patchwork of things that are added together and you don't really have access to what really happened.
Speaker 3:Now, in the Lutheran Church of Missouri Center in the 1970s, we rejected the historical critical method I think rightly, and what we do sometimes. We call this the historical grammatical method. The historical part is the same meaning. The meaning of the text is to be found in the original intent of the human author, but it doesn't have the word critical in it, because critical implies we're going to sit as a judge over the scriptures, and that's what we don't want to do. We want to use our reason and our understanding of grammar hence the term grammatical to figure out what the scriptures say and then let the scriptures themselves be the authority.
Speaker 3:So that's the modern approach in the Missouri Center and other conservative church bodies to conservative evangelicals would probably agree with this. But the thing that those two have in common is the historical part, right, and that's where the early church is a different animal. I mean, it's not that they discount the human author, they're interested in that too, but they just don't think that that's the ultimate goal. I mean, that's a step on the way, but the ultimate goal of the exegesis is to place the text you're reading in the context of the larger story. So how does it say something about Christ?
Speaker 2:Before I leave this topic and we get into typology and allegory and the like, what's the difference between? As you, because we're Lutherans, give me the general difference between how a 16th century Lutheran writing the Confessions would have understood the scriptures over and against? Maybe did they go to? I guess this is the question did they go to the early church fathers? Maybe even more than we do in our modern context today? Say something there, dr Maxwell.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Well, I'm not an expert in the 16th century exegesis, but I have noticed that they seem like they're a little bit of both to me. I mean because sometimes you know, and maybe Lutheran, the length and our kind of get at both poles of this, the. So I'm going by memory here, so I'm not sure this is right, but I think this is right. No, this is great, yeah. Well, so in Luther's small catechism there are these woodcuts that illustrate all the parts of the catechism, and in the one on the third commandment, in the Ten Commandments, there is a. This is remember the Sabbath day.
Speaker 3:The evangelicals use a different numbering system, but for Lutherans and Catholics third commandment is remember the Sabbath day, and for Lutherans this has to do with hearing God's work. So the illustration in the catechism is a picture of Luther preaching, and so it's Luther in the congregation, and in the middle there are these like sheets flying in the air. But like the story is that originally it was a crucifix in the middle and the sheets are like Jesus loincloth right. And Melanchthon insisted well, no, this is the Old Testament and so you can't put Jesus there. So Melanchthon's a little bit more historical. And so they took the crucifix out, but they left the sheets for some reason. And so this weird looking picture where and that kind of gets out, Say for Luther, no, it's the Old Testament is about Jesus, so that's a little bit more of a patristic approach.
Speaker 3:But if you're going to take the view, well, the Sabbath day isn't really about Jesus, so we can't represent him in the third commandment illustration. That's a little bit more of a modern historical attitude. And so I think you see both of these things going on in the 16th century.
Speaker 2:So good, so you're back to your kind of article here. You're an expert in helping us understand the difference between typology and allegory and how we often simplify typology as good seeing Christ through every page of Scripture and allegory as something that's bad. What's the historical context in the LCMS regarding this struggle and, as you get into that, even help us have room for both typology and allegory.
Speaker 3:Well, I actually think that's not a helpful distinction. So the problem is and my colleague Peter Martin at St Louis University has written about this that in patristic he studies origin, and in patristic scholarship he's kind of demonstrated that nobody agrees with the definition of typology and allegory is. The only thing they agree on is that typology is good and allegory is bad. And so let me go into a little bit of the background in the 20th century, because typology and allegory are ancient terms, I mean, they weren't invented in the 20th or 21st century, but they do take on a certain implication in the 20th century especially. So what happens in the 20th century is the rise of the historical critical method. So, as we talked about, this implies that you have to read the Bible historically, you have to be concerned about the original authorial intent and you can't just be making random connections all over the place like the churchfathers do. So problem what do you do with the churchfathers?
Speaker 3:They don't fit the demands of historical exegesis. And so this is. Now there is a papal encyclical in the 1940s called Divino afflante spiritu, in which the pope calls for Catholic exegetes to use modern exegetical methods, which was new for them because they were resisting that until then, but then, at the same time, to draw on the riches of the church. And so the question is well, how on earth do you do both? This is a contradiction in terms, and so what you get in the 1950s is a whole slew of articles by French patristic, roman Catholic patristic scholars out of France trying to come to terms with this and trying to figure out well, how can we appropriate patristic exegesis. And so what ends up coming out? Not only from the Catholic side, but the Protestants too. They kind of settle on the word typology to describe a version of patristic exegesis that quote respects the history of the text, because that's the key for the post-enlightenment.
Speaker 3:You know historical readings, that you have to respect the history of the text, and then allegory is any reading that doesn't do that. Now, the problem, of course, as Peter Martin says, nobody knows what it means to respect the history. I mean, they're all over the map on what counts, I mean? Does that mean, you know? I mean, it could be as vague as that they take the historical context into account, okay. Well, how do you know they did that right? Or they connect one historical event to another historical event, all right.
Speaker 3:Well, in that case, any kind of Christological reading of the Old Testament counts as typology, not allegory, I mean. So it's not at all clear, you know. But that's why you have the distinction is because of the fundamental contradiction between a historical approach to scripture and the patristic approach to scripture. And it's really an attempt to rescue the patristic reading. And even more than that, I mean more basic than that, I would say it's an attempt to rescue the Old Testament. And what I mean by that is that one of the things that's fundamental to Christian exegesis is that the Old Testament testifies to Christ. Amen, you know. That says. Well, jesus says in Luke 24, the law of the prophets and the Psalms testify to me and Christians. Even in the 20th century, with the rise of the historical critical method, christians kind of recognize well, we can't just get rid of the Old Testament and say it's not about Christ. Maybe that's not an option, and so so typology is a way to try to rescue a Christological reading of the Old Testament by claiming that in some sense it's historical.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh man, there's a good motive.
Speaker 3:There's a good motive for doing this, it's just that it's it's just as clear as mud when you realize that nobody actually agrees on the definition of typology and alligor.
Speaker 2:Well, let's just talk about a better way to go about. It is just talking about Jesus jumping off every page of scripture that in him and to him and for him hold all things and he is a center point of all of human history God becoming flesh to redeem the world. And so talk a little bit about how we can rightly view the Old Testament. I mean, I'm not to throw a pastor, evangelical pastor into the bus, but I'll stand. He's Stanley right. I mean he said some things about the Old Testament. Like you don't even need to read it and our preaching team here is just kind of doubled down on Old Testament, teaching and allowing that to, to bring Christ to light.
Speaker 2:And viewing, viewing this scripture with the Jewish intent that Jesus came as a Jew. God's work was, through Israel, to redeem, redeem the nations from a man right, abraham, in the Old Testament. Like we have to see Jesus as a fulfillment for the Jews and through the Jews to to the nations. That was always God's intent Genesis 12, genesis 18. So help us rightly understand the Old Testament. I think you use even like an architects blueprint, go a little deeper, deeper there in terms of our desperate need for the Old Testament Right.
Speaker 3:Well, the point of a blueprint is that you don't read it on its own, you read it with the understanding that it's referring to some fulfillment. That's coming the actual bill. And this is an image actually that comes from relative to a sardis who's an early church father it's one of the earliest Christian sermons that we had actually where he uses this image of of a sketch we would say blueprint of a building. And so so you, if the sketch is important because it tells you what the outlines of the building are, but you don't feel like, well, now that you've got the blueprint, that's all there is, but you don't stop with a blueprint, you want to see the, the finished building. So that's Melaton's take on.
Speaker 3:On the Old Testament, now I would say, I mean you mentioned the term fulfillment, the Old Testament being fulfilled in Christ, and I wanted to say a little bit about that, because I think very often we think of, like, messianic prophecies being fulfilled in Christ, and I think what the early church would say is well, it's not just the prophecies, it's the narratives too. I mean, and if you think about like the Exodus story would be the prime example of this that the Passover, where the Passover lamb is sacrificed. That's finds us fulfillment in Jesus' death on the cross. And this is not only the early church, this is the New Testament, right, I mean Paul says Christ, our Passover is sacrifice. I mean, so the Old that's another piece of this is the New Testament is reading the Old Testament in this patristic way, yeah, finding finding Christ not only in the prophecies but in narratives too. And then the I mean it's so easy.
Speaker 2:It's so easy to see. I mean, the apostle Paul does this over and over and over again. Obviously, the book of Hebrews is one of the case studies for this sort of a, this sort of an approach. I was preaching on Hebrews 13 yesterday. This outside the gate. Christ went outside the gate, the sacrifices took place outside the gate. It was a wonderful handle. And now, what does the church do? We go outside the gate in anticipation of the new Jerusalem coming. Revelation 21 on the last day. This is just what we do, I think, in our preaching today, and it's so. I just wanted to double down. As you look at the apostle Paul book of Hebrews, it is. It jumps off the page If you have the right lens to see it. Anything more there, dr Maxwell?
Speaker 3:Sorry to catch you out. Well, I just also say you know, when I presented this to different audiences, it's usually received very well. You know, I have not gotten a lot of pushback, and I think the reason for this is if you grow up in church you're trained to think this way, whether you realize it or not. Right? Because hymns do this all the time. I mean, if you open up the Easter section of the hymnal you're going to see Exodus references all over the place.
Speaker 3:The lectionary does this. They'll pair, like the story of Jonah with Jesus calming the storm. Well, that sort of invites you to make a connection, right. I mean, the Jonah story is fulfilled in Jesus calming the storm. You know liturgies will have these kind of metaphorical connections. So I think about, like the complying service starts off, lord Grantus, a quiet night and peace at the last. If you think about what that's doing is it's taking the sunset and using that as a figure for death. I mean, so that's just the way you think, right in church. And so it seems real, natural then to approach the scriptures the same way.
Speaker 2:I mean not to get too simplistic, Dr Maxwell, but that's what Jesus does about himself, right? Luke, chapter 11, he's talking about Jonah. You don't believe Jonah, you're not going to believe one greater than Jonah, you know at least, they were repenting in sackcloth and ashes. You guys, you Pharisees, teachers, you're not doing any of that. And then, obviously, on the road to Emmaus, jesus opens up their minds connected to the scriptures. It's obviously not new, it's all Old Testament stuff that he had to suffer. He had to suffer and die. So I think, if Jesus kind of views himself through the lens of the Old Testament, like we've got to do the same right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, these two lights ate man in the desert and Jesus is a true man in John six.
Speaker 1:I mean yeah, it's not subtle.
Speaker 2:It's not it's right there. It's all over. So I love how you defined the main theme of all of scripture and I'll give it how you've just said it in one sentence the active reign and rule of God Say more about that being the main theme of all, that's not my, that's Jim Velt, jim Velt, well you quoted the two. Is I okay, dr Velt's Good job. Do you agree with Velt Maxwell? I mean, are you going to go against Velt's? What are your thoughts?
Speaker 3:No, I think that's fine. I mean again, though I would say there's multiple ways of describing the theme. Like you know, return of the spirit to human race isn't bad either, but active reign and rule of God that works. I mean, as long as you understand, reign and rule through the lens of Christ and the cross, right, it's not like it's not a power move so much as he's ruling by saving us you know, yeah, yeah, good, good, so that we're coming down the home stretch here.
Speaker 2:This has been so much fun. Dr Maxwell, thank you for your generosity of time. So you talk about how, as we look at the Lutheran Church, missouri Synod and the way confessing Lutherans understand the scripture. I think we have a lot of gifts to give to the wider church. We may have some things to to receive as well I think we always, always do but our understanding of how we interpret the scripture, scripture interpreting scripture, and then a lot of the distinctions in understanding the Bible as law, gospel you know St Center now not yet all of our kind of tension filled ways that we orient ourselves in relation to the word I think these are all helpful gifts to to the wider church.
Speaker 2:What you talk about in your article, the Holy Spirit serving maybe as a trump card in exegesis I don't know if you remember the context of of that and how and how. Today, one of the struggles I think is well, the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit told me to do X, y or Z. Say X, y or Z, but it may not necessarily be connected to Scripture. How could that be a slippery slope in saying man? The Holy Spirit told me this, especially as we use it in exegetical work.
Speaker 3:Well, this is actually a modern concern coming out of the modern historical approach to exegesis, and I think again, jim Veltz is the origin of the term Holy Spirit Trump card. But that's bad right to appeal to the Holy Spirit as your Trump card, because you really need to appeal to the text. And so this is a it seems to me a legitimate objection that modern people could make to the patristic approach is because they sort of well, I mean Augustine articulates the view that the Holy Spirit is involved not only in the production of the text but also in the interpretation, and so any interpretation that pops into your mind when you read the Bible, augustine would say, well, that you know it's probably the Holy Spirit, I mean, unless it's theoretical or something, and I think you know modern people, you know probably not.
Speaker 2:Probably not. Yeah, no, I think that that's helpful. Last question let's talk about because we've been kind of dancing around, the wounds, if you will, of Seminex. You referenced it a bit ago. Do you think we're still battling over the Bible today? Are we still? Do we still have some of the wounds of Seminex? And so I'll give you my perspective. I think I think yes, in some circles, and it leads us. It leads us to maybe put labels on one another, if you're, because we're.
Speaker 2:We have modern worship instrumentation, still highly liturgical as a community, but some of the worship wars, there's some some wounds there, but I really, I really feel like the guts of it. I think we're labeling people around maybe more liberal view of the scriptures, when it may be something else that's that's going on, maybe even sociologically in our church body, but we're trying to justify it Maybe. I know I'm dancing around this a little bit, but I think the wounds are still there and I think it colors the way we treat one another from time to time. But for a guy like me, 42 years old, like this was my dad and my grandpa's conversation. This wasn't necessarily my conversation. It's not something I even remember hearing a lot about or wrestling with when I went through from courtier seminary in St Louis. So just love to get your kind of historical perspective and how, being an exegete, how we're working toward because this is my prayer, we're working toward unity within the LCMS around the way we understand, understand scripture. Anything more to add there, david?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, I don't think. I don't think it's seven X. I mean that's about the scriptures and also about third use of the law. Just that's a tangent I'm not going to go into. But I don't really see any anyone in the Missouri Senate taking a liberal view of scriptures or replicating the seven X view.
Speaker 1:So I don't think that's what it is.
Speaker 3:I mean, certainly you've got the worship wars in the 1990s in our context, which always struck me as a different animal than I mean. Maybe it's connected, but I don't see any obvious connection between that and seven X.
Speaker 2:So yeah, we've got issues but I wouldn't pin it all on.
Speaker 3:Biblical interpretation or something Well, and I think that should color the way we talk to one another.
Speaker 2:I think it should give us a lot more charity and kindness with one another, who have various ideas about how the church in a Neopagan, secular whatever you want to say context goes about carrying out her word in sacrament sacrament work Like we have. As a church body now pushing 200 years old, we've weathered some storms and I think the wider church needs a united, confessing Lutheran church body like the LCMS, to unite around the central teaching of Christ and Him, crucified, resurrected for the world soon to return, the one to whom all of scriptures will be in the same place and the one to whom every knee will bow and tongue, confess on the last day that he is King, king and Lord, and how then he delivers his story, his grace, to us, how he invites us into it through our sacramental reality. I mean, we agree along these lines, and so you may or may not know, dr Maxwell, but I have a lot of. There are debates around different topics on various podcasts connected to the United Leadership Collective. We're running a number of different tests to raise up local leaders and the like, but none of that work has meant toward compromising, short circuiting our deep love for and the need for seeing Christ popping off every page of scripture.
Speaker 2:Anything more to add on that, dr Maxwell? No, I agree. Okay, good, yeah, this has been fun. If people want to connect with you and your work, how can they do so?
Speaker 3:Well, my email is Maxwell D at CSLedu. I'm happy to receive emails. The ConcordiaTheologyorg is the seminary's website for where we post theological material. I've got some stuff on there. I think there's a video in my whole presentation on the elephant in the room thing. Love it. I also got some stuff on artificial intelligence and other things.
Speaker 2:Cool. I'll have to talk about that next time for sure. It's an honor to get to know you and this has been so, so fun. Sharing is caring Like, subscribe, comment wherever it is. You're taking in podcasts like the American Reformation podcast, and I pray the joy of Jesus rests upon your heart today. We'll be back next week with another episode of American Reformation. Thanks, dr Maxwell.
Speaker 3:Thank you.