Applying Biblical Wisdom Literature with Craig Bartholomew | Bible Study Magazine Podcast

[Music] before i came to faith life i was a bible textbook author at a christian publisher and i worked on a biblical worldview team applying a biblical view of life to every academic subject at every grade level i remember the moment when a mentor there helped me connect the story of scripture to the biblical worldview if every worldview tells a big story about the world then the story of scripture is the christian big story but i noticed something over time people who are captivated by the beauty of the forest the big story often lose patience for examining the individual trees the details get lost or smudged over in the rush to create a big picture not so with craig bartholomew who is known for his ability to master the details and communicate the big picture today he and i will talk about an essay of his on the biblical wisdom literature one i have read and re-read over the years i'm certain his insights will help you apply old testament wisdom to your contemporary life [Music] welcome to the bible study magazine podcast season 2 where our theme is applying the bible and i have with me today dr craig bartholomew who and i'm just going to hold up one of his many books this doesn't happen to be a lexum press book this is just the most recent one but he's done numerous luxem press books so i've been acquainted with him for a while he's also written some key essays one of which we're going to talk a lot about today which goes back a couple years to a book called the trustworthiness of god but i want dr bartholomew to tell us how do you serve the church currently and give us some of the highlights of the ways that you've served the church in the past yeah so thank you mark and it's wonderful to be with you and to have this opportunity to share and to talk about wisdom so i am an academic a christian academic i serve as the director of the kirby lang center for public theology in cambridge in the uk and this is a very exciting center it works on christian research related to the question how then should we live so and then i'm also an anglican priest and an ordained minister and so when i left school i went to seminary and did various degrees and then served as a pastor which i absolutely loved so some of the best years of my life and i never ever wanted to leave the pastorate and then being an anglican we have those things called bishops and my bishop put pressure on me to go and teach at our new seminary in south africa and that really the effect of that was to kick back uh into my life the great love of academia so and then the academic journey became and the journey of becoming a writer and an author and all those sort of things but the academic work as i understand it is in the service of the church so often the way that i will describe the sort of thing that people like me do is if you think of world war ii you had the the soldiers and the people fighting right in the trenches but then way away you had people trying to break the enigma code which was the code that the germans used and alan turing alan turing that's right so i think of myself and academics as as backroom people whose work is important but we are there to serve those who are in the trenches that is so excellent and that spirit comes out in your writing and it comes out in a number of ways that we're going to talk about in this interview lord willing there's a particular essay that i wanted to talk about and you alluded to the subject of it where we're going to talk today in this interview about how to apply biblical wisdom literature and that essay you wrote a god for life and not just christmas uh that i think came out in 2002 i guess i'm not totally sure when you wrote it i encountered it a number of years later that helped me deeply really to understand the place especially of proverbs within the overall story of scripture and then also job in ecclesiastes you spend time on those the main thing i see you doing in this essay a god for life and not just christmas is you are rooting wisdom literature all of it in a doctrine of creation a doctrine which makes up a significant part of the creation fall redemption biblical worldview that i myself have actually written on but nowhere near as much as you and i know you talk about this in many places elsewhere my first question is what is the danger for us if we don't interpret the proverbs this one portion of wisdom literature in the light of a doctrine of creation yeah so this is a very very good question mark and and of course i don't think it's just a potential danger it's a danger that we have seen acted out in far too much evangelicalism and really i think what happens is if you don't approach proverbs with a doctrine of creation what you will do is you will read proverbs just for later activities for private devotions and for the sort of personal dimensions of life and this you know far too often for example people have approached proverbs with this thing like a proverb a day keeps the devil away you know that kind of thing so so what you end up doing is you domesticate the book of proverbs and you read it for personal devotions and for your personal life and and church life now of course all that is quite wonderful and very appropriate but i think what you will then miss is the fact that wisdom in proverbs relates to all of life so you know recently uh just because i was very conscious that americans were heading into a major election and i never i never got to write this up but it was an interesting exercise i just worked quickly through the book of proverbs to have a look at everything it has to say about politics and to see if it could provide criteria for orienting one towards deciding how to vote now you know so you see if you domesticate the book of proverbs and and you haven't got the big picture of the whole of life and view then what you're going to do you're not going to see that proverbs is actually full of material about politics so approaching the book of proverbs with a rich full doctrine of creation is just essential if we are going to hear proverbs speak with all the power with which it does speak and the comprehensive range of what it addresses now i i grew up in an aspect of american evangelicalism that perhaps because it's influenced by classic dispensationalism uh tended toward the the ditch i'm not gonna say it fell into that ditch of saying why polish the brass on a sinking ship the the application of the bible was mainly to our individual and family lives but we all did want to follow the bible and we had the sense that when god says something his authority carries over everybody so there were times when we saw that the statements of the bible spilled out far beyond the domestic you talk about the the domicile the domestication of proverbs and when i later in life found the kyperian tradition that you write a lot about this doctrine of creation book it says it's a constructive kyparian approach i'm hearing kyperian themes and all the stuff that you're saying here am i right yes yes absolutely so you know i have learned an enormous amount from abram kaipa so and and maybe one way just to get at that is to continue what we were just talking about is i grew up in south africa was thoroughly converted out of a nominal christian home into south african evangelicalism now of course the culture in which i lived was one in which white supremacy was legislated across the country in the name of apartheid you know now the the sad thing was that the to a large extent the evangelical church of which i was apart had absolutely nothing to say to the racism that was staring us in the face every day and then through various ways i came to realize that christian faith is not just about my private life and church attendance but that the gospel relates to the whole of life and the word that really really helped me in articulating that was to say my faith is a worldview and in the history of christian thought in the second half of the 19th and early part of the 20th century there are two theologians who rarely reached for the word worldview to express the comprehensive range of christian faith the one was the scottish theologian james all and the other one who you've just referred to mark was abraham kaiper and both i think are tremendously significant but what i found in kaipa was someone who really tried to unpack for his time and his culture what it meant that christianity was a world view so i found kaipa very helpful i don't feel any need to follow him slavishly but i've found him a tremendous resource for retrieving this creation-wide vision of scripture i've just finished reading the james eglinton biography critical biography of hermann bavink who was sort of the theologian uh companion of kuiper not that kuiper was not a theologian in fact lexing press has put out volumes of his work with the acton institute i can't say i've made it through a lot of kuiper but i'm gonna i'm planning to start with bavink i've dug into al walters i know you know him and you cite him repeatedly i do too his book creation regained was so so helpful for me i'm kind of going into that tradition backwards okay but i don't want to get off on kyperianism i just wanted to mention it i wanted to get that name out there uh i i think i wanted to hear you say that was helpful you use the tradition you don't obey it slavishly okay now let me ask you let's get right to praxis that's what i promised in this season of the bible study magazine podcast and in this episode on applying biblical wisdom literature you said in this essay a god for life and not just christmas and i somehow did pick up the the reference that was a dog for life and not just christmas some commercial from the aspca or something years ago okay you said in proverbs there are two major types of wisdom the wisdom of god and the wisdom of humans and the bridge between these is that same doctrine of creation that we were just talking about a minute ago so i want to get practical i want you to talk to an engineer that i'm actually thinking of right now who loves the lord he wants to follow him he's gotten deep into bible study he has longest bible software he doesn't at all feel called to full-time ministry however he still feels called to provide for his family and serve his neighbor by being an engineer and in fact he works on bridges so help him to bridge the wisdom of god and the wisdom of humans through the doctrine of creation what practically does that mean for this christian man yeah so mark uh i love this kind of question so it's just an absolutely superb question and just tremendously important you know because the sort of christianity that i was converted into tended to say that it was only if you were in the pastoral ministry or if you're a missionary then you were in the full-time service of god so so one caveat just if i was to talk to your engineer that you're thinking about i would first of all just remind him that if a person is a follower of christ all followers of christ are full-time so the notion that there is such a thing as full-time ministry i mean i know what people mean by it and and that's fine but that's full-time pastoral ministry and the word the word ministry simply means service and so every christian is in the full-time service of the lord christ the only question is where and in what area of life are you in his full-time service so so that's one thing i want to say to the to the engineer uh you two are a full-time servant of the lord christ and you know eugene peterson i think captured this so beautifully when he writes we are all in holy orders you know so which is a beautiful way of putting it now how does the engineer connect with wisdom well this is something that that i personally find just tremendous and very very stimulating so if you read the book of proverbs you'll find uh the two places one is in proverbs 3 and then the major places on proverbs 8 where the role of wisdom in creation is explored and in proverbs 8 wisdom is personified so she's personified as a woman who is created by god and she's there as he's bringing this glorious creation into existence now the point of that is that uh what is going on in proverbs 8 is that god's attribute of wisdom is portrayed as a person okay this is just one of the ways in which literature works and what we learn from this is that it's through his wisdom that god creates the world and that means that buried into every aspect of the creation is god's wisdom okay and then which is where this becomes very exciting what humans are called to do is to find that wisdom to excavate it to live according to it and to develop every aspect of the creation in line with that wisdom so an another metaphor we might use is a carpentry metaphor maybe the engineer would like this more of the grain of wood so it's as though god has created his world such as there's a grain to the creation and what will you know and that's because god has put it there and we get wisdom when we discover the grain and we work along the grain now you know the engineer i mean is hugely significant in the modern world so every day i mean you and i are in buildings where we're driving through towns or whatever and all around us is a way of forming culture that is designed by engineers okay and so uh you know it's very important for example that if we look at a literal bridge that the engineer has done his or her work well and it follows the laws of physics and so on and it doesn't collapse so so there's that way at a mathematical level if you like that the engineer is in touch with the order that god has built into his world he's discovered wisdom well yes i think so because you know why is it that the world has these qualities well proverbs said to us because that's how the lord has made it but of course you know engineering extends way beyond the mathematical i mean we're very aware nowadays that city planning uh the way we do roads bridges there's all sorts of other dimensions to that dimensions which are environmentally friendly or environmentally damaging dimensions which facilitate community or dimensions which for a straight community so so there's now i'm not an engineer but when i talk to my friends who are they can come up with all sorts of examples of healthy versus unhealthy engineering so i think i think the engineer you know he's working every day with god's wisdom and so i think to become conscious of that and then to revel in it and then to help us to produce engineering that enhances this world as a place for human flourishing and to the glory of god amen you know there's actually a pastor right down the street from me whose last name you might know he's from a prominent dutch reformed family and he was an urban planning major in college and now he's a pastor he's in touch with that kyperian tradition in part because of his heritage but in part because of that calling that was in his life for a time to study and the insights he comes to are very interesting in that way you're making me think of a passage that al wolters brings up in creation regained i want to say it's isaiah 28 where the farmer threshes his grain in a certain way and uh and and then the the prophet says his god teaches him as if as you by trial and error figure out what threshing methods are the most and least effective not only are you discovering wisdom you know unpersonified as it were you're actually learning something from the person of god god is telling the farmer this is the way that my creation works and if you want to go with the grain of it it very literally is threshing that grain then you need to do it this way same with the bridge designer he's discovering he's i think as andy crouch says who's also in the tradition um he you're uncoiling the potentials that god has placed into creation i believe that tyndale's plowboy the average person should have the bible in contemporary language that bible translations therefore are key tools for the great commission that christ gave us to disciple the nations to teach them to observe everything christ has commanded us i believe that regular christians can and must read and study their bibles on their own i believe that we're not on our own that the spirit will guide us into all truth and i believe that one of the spirit's most important tools for doing this is other human teachers despite our own failures i believe in bible study and all this is why i find myself constantly turning to logos bible software and all my work it makes the bible text accessible to me at a level of detail i just don't get elsewhere and it also gives me quick and inexpensive access to the work of many many careful bible teachers the new logos 9 now makes it even easier for me to do this and i want to show you what i mean if i type in any bible passage into the passage guide i get a prioritized list of links to all my commentaries logos 9 is all about small improvements that add up to something bigger and now in this new release logos 9 logos gives me extra information about all my many commentaries including even what denomination their authors come from this is information that does help me in my bible study i'm all the time doing this checking on my commentators getting help from them understanding scripture logos 9 has other small but big improvements like dark mode for all you dark mode people out there i'll never understand you but more power to you it has the totally revamped fact book a great place to start your study on all kinds of biblical topics christianity can get unmoored from the bible and what a horror it is when that happens don't let it happen to you use the best bible study tools there are use logos nine go to logos.com and check out some of our base packages download our mobile app and start using the tools there if you listen to a podcast about bible study you're probably pretty serious about it you should not remain content with the free resources available on the internet check out the new logos nine okay and you did a great job it's really easy and i've done this too i've been interviewed to um be asked to give a specific uh bible passage and then to talk in generalities but something i've really noticed about you not least in this new book of yours which has tons of these little sections in small type um full of exegesis you do dr bartholomew an excellent and diligent job and not just in this book with bruce ashford but in other writings of not just talking in general theological categories but actually digging down into bible statements which always makes me uh not only get instructed but just feel safer i want a theologian who is actively in touch with the bible okay so i'm going to ask you another bible question help me apply proverbs here and help our listeners many of whom maybe most of whom are on social media in some way you said way back in this essay before social media came out it's no easy matter to know whether to speak up in the context of folly or to remain silent i i think you're referencing proverbs 26 4 and 5 ants are not a fool according to his folly i'll quote it in the king james lest uh lest thou be like unto him answer a fool according to his folly lest he be wise in his own conceits you said each situation has to be addressed assessed i'm sorry on its own merits can you give us an example without naming the guilty of when you've applied proverbs 26 4 and when you've applied proverbs 26 5. i mean i think this is a very pressing question when do i answer on social media when i see folly yeah i know so thank you mark i mean that's a beautiful question and so you know so just to to preface my answer one of the themes and proverbs is that wisdom is discerning what is hitting to a particular context you know so so and that's tremendously important you know sometimes we treat uh truth and wisdom as though it's it's just one shape fits all now there are parts of the bible that i think are like that but one of the great things about wisdom is working out what is fitting for a very particular situation and that's why i love these two proverbs because you know some people treat the book of proverbs and wisdom as though it's a technique or a software program that you can buy off the shelf and then you've got it you know whereas the thing with proverbs and wisdom is it requires discernment and it requires thinking very hard about particular situations so i thought about this and and i think i have some examples so if we take the second verse first which is to answer a fool according to their folly well you know i was thinking about this and i thought a great example would be let's say i'm pastoring and i meet a young convert and he or she hasn't realized that christian faith relates to all of life in fact they've bought into this view that if they really want to serve christ they must sell everything abandon university and go off to seminary and head to the mission field okay now i think although uh you know some people listening to this or watching it might not agree but i think the bible would call that a form of folly okay and especially if i meet this person and i'm a pastor and as i get to know them i realize this person really doesn't have the gifts for the pastorate you know this person could be a phenomenal something else and maybe called into something very different now then so i would say that that young person or person is being foolish but it's not the kind of foolishness i should just ignore it's the kind of foolishness that i should engage because they are open to being taught and i can save them a lot of misery okay so that would be answer a fool but then uh i think all of us now i mean i can give some examples but they would be fairly provocative but all of us would have met people who want to argue but actually they don't really want to have a civil discussion and they're not really interested in the truth all they want to do is to hammer away at their own point of view and you you soon know that no matter what you say they're just going to beat you up with their own view now in my opinion that could be a case where the wise thing to do is to not answer to refrain from getting into such a discussion and see i think which you know uh you you've you've alluded to in in the questions you sent me and maybe you'll get to this but my hunches i i try and stay off social media but mahantas because social media is often fairly abstract and you're not actually seeing the face of the person you're dialoguing with right that it lends itself to this kind of bullying uh uh unattractive behavior and posturing people don't want to lose faith and i think uh in in that situation you know uh the the appropriate thing is is to remain silent move on don't engage those conversations because it's not fitting you know yeah i i think of another verse that i i in my line of work right now have to think of often because in my line of work i'm on social media and i do hear from people who are willing to engage openly i think of two verses philippians 4 5 i think it is let your reasonableness be known to all men i have run into people who disagree with me who nonetheless express an openness toward me that i find refreshing and we can have civil discussions even though we can't see one another's faces but i also run into plenty of people that make me think of matthew 7 6 i think it is where jesus says and i have to quote the king james again is what i grew up with cast not your pearls before swine lest they turn again and rend you and i've sort of thought okay how do i know when somebody is swine you know that i shouldn't cast my pearls before well it's a pretty good uh indication if they turn again and rend me right off you know if they're just attacking if they're going for ad hominem right off the bat then i'm not going to engage and that has saved me countless times but i'd like to say that on social media one of the reasons i stay on although i do not push anybody else to be on if it's against their conscience in any way they think they've got better things to do they probably do is that i have seen people listen i've and i've seen enough of them and i feel like it's worth my time okay that was an excellent answer you are answering on a hot topic here social media let me get even hotter you're on the hot seat you're a theologian this is what we pay you for you know the christian church needs you i won't ask you to reveal your personal views on the utility of masks and social distancing you can if you want but i want to ask how the wisdom books help us approach such an unprecedented situation with with all the roiling concerns you've got various parties in society including christians who are sure and at least in the u.s i gather that the uk is similar christians who are sure that masks are the leading edge of the totalitarian state you know entering into our lives and surveilling everything that we do and those who think that the first group of christians are a bunch of conspiracy theorists who are uh wasting the christian reputation out in the world on needless alarmism so get us out of this mess would you through the wisdom of the old testament yeah well i i doubt that i'll succeed that's a tall order yeah yes well i think it's a tall order because i think uh you know one has to ask what kind of phenomenon is one encountering in these kind of incredibly deeply entrenched views and my own hunch is that often what one is encountering and this can be on different sides of the debate is a kind of irrational kind of commitment so so it's kind of ideological it's not uh so sometimes you know the this is uh you know if it's uh if it's irrational then it goes back to our previous conversation it might be better for me to remain silent okay but but it's such a good question and you know i think the answer to this is that uh if we really do take scripture seriously we have to try and listen to scripture rather than simply reading our own views into scripture and then rejoicing when they come back to us so that's one thing the other thing i would say is that we need to think very hard about these issues so uh one of the strangeness of our times is that we are amidst a pandemic but it is only although in america of course the numbers are now really getting out of control it still is only having devastating effects upon a minority of the population so one of the results is that experientially it's very easy to enter a bubble where you feel this actually isn't that serious and for example myself when we first went into lockdown here in the uk i suddenly had so much work to do that i felt that i was disconnected with the pandemic until an american friend of mine's mother died of it and then his whole family got it and then he was an icu and so it was that that really connected me very strongly with the the horrible horrible reality and dangers of it now you know what i will do with that long introduction is just quote one verse of proverbs uh and this is from the niv translation the fruit of the righteous is a tree and the one who is wise saves lives hmm oh that is so excellent yeah so it's a very interesting thing now i should tell you and i haven't had the time to check this in the hebrew and so on that there are some versions translated a bit differently but i think this is a tremendous wisdom insight that wisdom is a tree of life you know so it brings life and in this this little phrase it saves lives okay so knowing what is fitting and how to operate in particular situations can actually save people's lives now so what this would mean is i mean if one wanted to do the whole investigation one could one needs to take the science very seriously because at its best science is an engagement with god's order in his creation it's discovering the wisdom he placed there that's right so you know what proverb says to you is this is something that evangelicals don't always understand is there's lots of stuff you you have to learn not from the bible so you know the bible and this is what proverbs is telling us you know that wisdom is found all over the creation and there's tons of stuff we have to know every day to live that doesn't come from the bible it comes from observation of god's world and the study of god's world so so science in in the best sense of the word is very important so i would think you know especially i mean if i'm going to a doctor for surgery or something i want to know that the guy knows what he's doing you know it's no use in being a devout christian and he has no training in the area of surgery and medicine and whatever he's going to do to me so christians should should be if they want to take proverbs seriously you make sure you're very well informed and you listen to good science now then if wisdom can save lives is as far as i'm aware the the the consensus is that wearing masks may help others getting the virus from us and it may help us from getting the virus okay now in my opinion if that saves one life it's worth the discomfort of me wearing a mask so so i mean it just seems to me that there's a priority here that saving lives is more important than my individual freedoms and i think that is wisdom that that's helpful yeah this is such a tough topic and i did give you a tall order and you gave us some good bible for it now i want to spin off of something that you said you know you might possibly have made listeners to the bible study magazine podcast mildly uncomfortable to say that we sometimes learn things from outside the bible now this is a guy who fills his books with bible i mean it's bible bible bible and right at the beginning of your doctrine of creation you and bruce ashford are talking about the necessity well your approach is a confessional one the bible says that god created the world and you start there you're starting with faith however um let me let me try to interpret what you said bounce it off of you and get you to either affirm or correct what i say uh the longer that i have tried to live in accordance with the wisdom of the wisdom books in discovering the wisdom and creation the more i have a place in my life for using the special revelation of the bible as lenses to look at the general revelation for which one of my best friends is he's been on this podcast actually um is more the theologian i'm more the exegete sometimes he warns me that my category of general revelation has gotten too large but i tend to say if all truth is god's truth then when i look out there and i see that the sky is blue that is a revelation of god to me there is some moral obligation that comes to me when i see things with my own two eyes now i've got to interpret it by the bible i've got to interpret my experience of general revelation of the world through the bible that's the only way i can get an accurate view of that other book of god's creation for example i need to know that the fall has happened so i see mosquitoes out there and i don't conclude what a cruel god this god is to make these creatures this way no the fall is what brings pain and sorrow but i feel that over time i'm able to dig deeper into my bible by looking even more at the world that god made to discover wisdom and understanding there how does that all sound to you yeah no so so i think uh in general that's absolutely correct so and you know i personally i think if you don't see this you know people think if they you know sometimes you get these very spiritual people who think gee i look for the answer to everything in the bible and i remember once when i was pastoring in south africa i heard a woman walk out of church and she said now fortunately i hadn't just preached but someone else had preached and she said i'm very encouraged now to look to the bible for all answers to my depression something like that and you know and i think so of course now does the bible relate to the issue of depression absolutely does the bible give us a theory of what depression is and how to treat it absolutely not and and both are desperately required so you know calvin said that he used the image of of the bible as like spectacles or glasses that bring the world into focus and mark you and me both wear glasses i don't know if we have the same problems uh with our eyes but it was i still remember when i first got glasses that i was suddenly seeing things again that i probably hadn't seen for a while you know so i think that that's what scripture is there to orient us to the world authoritatively nor normatively in a way that is fully trustworthy but there's it's not there as a science textbook or a theory of medicating depression or those kinds of things that has to be explored and discovered through research and observation and looking at you know these patterns in the lives of people you know just i think it's a tremendously important issue and you know what i would do with my students so i'll stop here is i would ask them questions like all of us this may sound real dumb but i think it illustrates the point all of us would say it's normative if you can for a human being to walk up straight okay so if i met you mark at church and i came in doing leopard crawl into the church you know and there was no reason for it you would say to me no craig what's wrong okay now there's nowhere in the bible that it tells you it is normative for a human being to walk up straight this is something we discover by living in the creation now of course there are some people who by virtue of uh injuries or or some kind of defects can't do that so we fully understand that but generally the norm is for human beings to walk up straight now we know that from observe observation and living in the creation not from the bible let me um return to something you said just a little bit earlier because i want wisdom i want understanding and it seems to me that the line between what the bible directly addresses and what i learn by the general statements of the bible being applied to the general revelation of experience you know empirical methods scientific methods we usually call them today what used to be called natural philosophy okay let's go back to depression isn't it given your your use of the term worldview in that kyberian tradition isn't it to be expected that a materialist worldview that now reigns among elites in the us a view that matter and energy are all that exists there is no supernatural there's no upper story to use francis schaefer's words isn't it isn't it uh wouldn't we expect people with that worldview to jump to material solutions to what they perceive to be material problems because they don't perceive spiritual problems at all so um although i i might have a space for medicating depression i'm not going to get there as quickly as the non-christian down the street who's got a psychiatric practice because i'm prepared to ask the person in front of me what guilt are you experiencing in your life what is causing your sorrow is your view of god needing an adjustment from the bible okay how that's a huge question i don't want to get too far off into a very difficult complicated matter but i do want you to help me use biblical wisdom to find the line okay between uh when i'm gonna go with the special revelation of scripture specifically and when i'm going to use it as a lens to uh to judge the science the general revelation out there yeah well so of course just an enormous question and such a tremendously important one so but you know what is so interesting to me so if you're not careful you get what i call a profound reductionism on both sides so what you get with people who are let's call them bible-only people okay they think they have such a high view of the bible that they look to it it must answer every question we could ask or problem we struggle with okay now they are always in danger of reducing a phenomenon like depression to something spiritual okay on the other side of the spectrum as you pointed out they will be in our culture people who think everything has a chemical basis to it and so they will be in danger of reducing depression simply to a chemical deficiency okay now uh you know the answer is a plague on both houses yeah you know because many christians have discovered to their detriment and to their damage that you know simply to treat depression as something spiritual can actually cause much much more damage you know so so depression it varies it's a complex phenomenon and it needs to be investigated through the spectacles of scripture you need to have somebody who understands that in the words of anthony hokuma the human person is a psychosomatic unity that our existence is fundamentally bodily you know our our our spirits um and our bodies god has placed them together in a way that is indivisible which points to the power of the word because hebrews 4 12 says that the word can even divide the indivisible the the soul and spirit so once so what this brings into it is what does it mean to be human okay and this is by the way where the book of proverbs ends with the proverbs 31 woman as a glorious embodiment of what i would call wisdom incarnate you know and she's a multifaceted full human being and so what psychosomatic unity would alert us to is that things can go wrong in the so-called spiritual areas that can affect the body and things can go wrong in the bodily and other areas that can affect the other parts of a human person and the person is so constituted that to find sort of the border line between those is you know ultimately impossible that is um they are different they're different aspects of the human person but it isn't like there's an utterly clear line and it requires wisdom discernment to know how to address problems okay back to proverbs you talk about the act consequence structure of proverbs and i i want you to contrast that with what you see in other wisdom literature that we haven't talked about yet job and ecclesiastes we're coming down to the wire in our time for this discussion so this is really what got me to want to have you on the bible study magazine podcast i felt this insight was so helpful help us contrast the different uh kinds of revelation that these genres are proverbs versus ecclesiastes and job oh thank you that again is a really really good question so first of all one thing to note is that in recent decades in biblical studies a very important development has been the discovery proverbs as a book is not just a random collection of proverbs but that it's actually structured as a literary whole so just uh this has been argued in great detail but just to give you and the viewers uh one example of this proverb starts in in chapter 1 and verse 7 with its big motif the fear of the lord is the beginning of knowledge or wisdom and then the book ends with the proverbs 31 woman as an incarnate example of what embodied wisdom actually looks like okay so uh i just i'm assuming that one can read the book of proverbs as a whole and that's very important because in one to nine proverbs sets out the basic principles of wisdom what i call the abcs but then in later chapters of proverbs that is nuanced to a much greater degree okay so for example the act consequence structure is that the way you live has consequences it's as simple as that okay and the point is that if you want to live in a way that is blessed that brings peace and shalom and prosperity then you must seek to live wisely if you want to put yourself under the danger of calamity and disaster and so on and so forth then by all means go and pursue the root of folly or foolishness so this is the act consequence structure that and you know this goes back to the doctrine of creation that you are most likely to flourish if you live according to the grain of the universe so now i'll just give you an example from proverbs 3 verses 8 and 9 verse 9 which says this honor the lord with your wealth with the first fruits of all your crops then your bonds will be filled to overflowing and your bats will brim over with new wine okay so in other words you know you you see what the uh the writer is saying that fulfil your religious requirements to god and make sure god is first and then the result will be tremendous prosperity your bonds will be overflowing and your vats will bring over with new wine so this is very clearly teaching that wisdom leads to human flourishing and some form of prosperity act consequence act consequence okay now of course uh some people would then take this in the direction of what is called prosperity theology that this you know if you're not prospering and you're not wealthy it's because you're being sinful now that's why reading proverbs as a whole is so important because the book as a whole just won't let you do that so uh if you move into the later parts of proverbs this this is where the abcs the act consequence thing is is far more nuanced and there is a very real awareness that in lots of our lives at lots of times there are exceptions to that flourishing so for example and one thing to look at in the later chapters of proverbs are the better than proverbs better a little with the fear of the lord than great riches yeah so you see here's one and in fact chapter 19 is very interesting because it's full of discussion about the poor now if you go for prosperity theology there's something wrong for you with you if you're poor right okay but listen to this proverb better the poor whose way of life is blameless than a fool whose lips are perverse okay and so and you know there's a whole host of of such proverbs but it's very clear if you read the book of proverbs as a whole that wisdom does not guarantee in a full and broken world economic prosperity but the general principle is absolutely true is that living according to the grain of the creation is the way to flourish and to prosper so you've said that job in ecclesiastes can best be understood as complementary to proverbs like those later proverbs okay they explore wise living in the midst of particular exceptions to the act consequence structure because our world is fallen righteous acts don't always bring immediate prosperity consequences that that's really helpful and i want to end with what is a personal question that i think can be helpful to our listeners um and i this is kind of my style i actually have real questions that i myself want to get wisdom on within the last year or so somebody that meant a lot to me apostatized uh josh harris he left his wife and apparently left the faith although i still pray for him ardently i hope and i pray that his story with christ is not over and one of the criticisms that he received and really an avalanche which i just wonder how that affected him spiritually was for his early book written when he was a real young pup i kissed dating goodbye in which he says himself in a in a documentary he did fairly recently that he was a little bit too close to prosperity theology it was act consequence it was if you stay chaste then god you know that's your part of the deal and then god's part of the deal is he's going to give you an awesome spouse and great marital sex okay that didn't work out for a lot of people um and they their the avalanche of anger against him was really intense uh it was painful for me to read many of these testimonies from people and i felt like on the one hand we have people who are blaming somebody else for poor choices that they made even if he influenced them on the other we have some people who are saying well then let's just toss out the the bible's uh commands to avoid fornication uh because if there is no act consequence structure if if staying chased when i'm a teenager doesn't guarantee me you know a good marriage then why should i bother so i wanted you to help us use wisdom to avoid the two ditches of thinking on the one hand that if i just stay chased as a teenager then god guarantees me a good marriage and on the other hand i might as well just toss out the commands of the bible to avoid fornication because clearly there are all these exceptions people who follow the rules right didn't even kiss until their wedding day and their marriage is over in two years yeah well so i mean just an excellent question and of course uh immensely practical you know so and see you know so many thoughts on this and and so tremendously important so just to preface my comments lest they be misunderstood what you'll find in the early chapters of proverbs the abcs is very strong warnings against adultery right the forbidden woman that's right john is the portrayal of the adolescent male is being lured into you know the house of the adulteress a woman and this is clearly warned again so so i think proverbs lines up with the ten commandments and the old testament that really sexuality in its full sense is the place for it to operate is within the marriage bond let the marriage bed be undefiled that's right yeah so but i think you know uh that's not the end of the story so i think what we have to think through and this comes back to all our previous discussion is you know what is the nature of sexuality i mean we're in cultures now where we're in deep trouble on this issue of the nature of sexuality our cultures are living against the grain of god's creation to an incredible like truly unbelievable degree yes and i think uh that is true the question is is the church in the midst of this culture being wise you know so so the notion for example that uh you know avoiding so some christians would argue you know virtually not holding hands never kissing i mean you know gets to this level is that wise i mean i i think [Music] not necessarily but you know so we would have to think through carefully i think in in the lead you know when when a a guy and a girl are developing a relationship of course there's always a sexual component and one would have to ask is okay you've been going out for several months what is fitting in the relationship at that point and then okay you're engaged and you're heading towards being married now what is splitting at that point and so and i think this will reply a hard thought and also it may vary from person to person you know so you know as jesus says of your eye causes you to sin pluck it out whereas some of us you know our eye is causing us trouble so we rush around plucking everyone else's eye you know so i think you know part of it's this balance of which the church has not always been good good at is that sexuality is a great thing it's a very positive good of the creation and one way to distort it is just to indulge in that whim another way to distort it is to treat it as something dangerously weird until suddenly you're married so so this i think is a huge area where we need to think hard you know and work out what is fitting we have had a wide-ranging discussion dr bartholomew and i found it stimulating i enjoy your work and i'm really bummed to use an american expression i i guess as american not to have encountered your work earlier but we've got multiple lexum press books from you i read uh a work that you wrote on preaching which was just excellent and we'll have a link in the show notes i've been showing off your new book i really appreciate the time that you've taken to help us apply biblical wisdom on the bible study magazine podcast thank you for having me [Music] this has been among my favorite conversations ever on the bible study magazine podcast because watching bartholomew work has made me realize afresh the kind of theology i want to do myself a kind that is very attentive to the words of god and very capable of connecting those words to the big picture of real life i want wisdom i want my life to be a continual search for wisdom wisdom in the word and wisdom in god's good creation my son if you receive my words and treasure up my commandments with you making your ear attentive to wisdom and inclining your heart to understanding yes if you call out for insight and raise your voice for understanding if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures then you will understand the fear of the lord and find the knowledge of god you

Channel: Logos Bible Software

Views: 982

Rating: 4.826087 out of 5

Keywords: application, theology, wisdom literature, general revelation, biblical counseling, abraham kuyper, kuyperianism, mark ward, craig bartholomew

Id: VJ85i7tsfCg

Length: 62min 36sec (3756 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 18 2020