Cars, Coffee, Theology (Apocrypha 2:1) Jonathan Pennington - Jesus the Great Philosopher

[Music] welcome to cars coffee and theology i'm your host for the day patrick shriner my very special guest today is none other than dr jonathan pennington who is usually the one behind the wheel and asking all the questions but today we want to do a very special reverse episode to talk about his awesome new book jesus the great philosopher which comes out this week so sit back and enjoy and don't watch this while you're driving hey welcome hey welcome to the show thanks for having me episode have you ever seen this show not this version it's a great show you should check it out appreciate it they have really great guests i'm not sure about the host it's okay it's really good thanks for doing this yeah yeah so you have we're talking about your upcoming book probably when this is released called jesus the great is it moral philosopher or just great philosopher yeah obviously really meant a lot to you so you can see over here is it moral philosophy no it's just jesus okay that's what i thought do you know what the subtitle is that matters to you um no because you haven't given me a real copy yet oh well it doesn't exist i know i know yeah but i know the pdf has the subtitle it's the page groups but i need to see the picture with it i think it's the subtitles rediscovering the wisdom needed for the good life nice and that tell you what that subtitle was about three months was it well the title and the subtitle were like three or four months of beating my head against it asking a million people i had like 30 different versions of it you used the guru i mean everything and then the stuff i know decided not on that one my agent the people at baker all my friends brazos we all went back and forth forever on jesus the great philosopher and uh finally came up with that okay so what what were besides guru or their other ones that were going through yeah you know sage yeah yeah like you think about like sage king type thing yeah we don't do a lot with kingship no i don't yeah i can't remember now i mean literally there i have an evernote file of probably 30 or 40 different titles it's just a real especially because this book is meant for it's not an academic book it's really it's a show not tell book like helping people understand yeah a key biblical and theological and personal idea yeah and it was i really really wanted a title that worked for sure yep so we'll see if it does yeah i know i i definitely think it does because i remembered it so well right obviously what is it yeah great okay no i did notice in terms of because i've read your other work that this is a definitely different style of book and i really enjoyed it so you have a lot more so you didn't enjoy the other stuff yeah the other stuff was terrible right finally uh but no you had a lot more like introductions that kind of lead us into the discussions and it was also a lot broader in terms of dealing with a lot of greco-roman philosophy kind of modern view of emotions and friendship and things like that so my little pony yeah makes an appearance and my favorite story no but my doug foursett oh yeah yeah they could get places in there i was literally laughing out loud at that point because that is nick offerman yes yes that's true yeah the dark forces like all the other religions you know they just um i just decided to turn left here which was a great position yeah uh so so tell me about the process in terms of writing that do you feel like that was uh difficult to make that turn because it definitely was a turn for you in terms of speaking to a wider audience throwing in more modern applications and things like that yeah yeah it's um and i've always thought your writing is good and so this it felt like another level of reaching people uh at you know a different different kind of i think it's the best thing i've ever written honestly i mean i think it really does represent a turn for me um you know i've done uh well i've had this double life not in a hypocritical sense but i've had two aspects of my intellectual life there's the academic work yeah and i've i generally feel like my academic work is more on the readable side but then i've had a preaching and teaching life both in the classroom but even especially in the pulpit right um like i i can write and i manuscript my sermon so i can knock off a 4 000 word manuscript that i think most people would say is super is helpful but super accessible and right full of illustrations and like that's very natural but those two worlds i've never been able to bring together like every time i sit down to write i end up kicking in this academic mode so it really represents several years of intentionally trying so hard and i hope it's i i hope i did it i mean i still you know in a recent reread of it for you know final edit kind of stuff i still kind of felt like uh it could have been maybe a little cleaner and shorter at points you know but but generally i feel like i finally found my voice and it was really a sabbatical i had it was just it was last summer into the fall that's all i did yeah and i i remember late summer feeling like you finally hit your stream i found it yeah i found like how to illustrate and how to speak and i don't know just so it felt really good and my writing group was a huge part of it so i noticed that i didn't read the cover but i read the dedicated good that's all that matters today um you know it was that writing group over the last we just did our year four so we've been meeting together for three plus years now every other week um with almost no exception and my writing style has improved so much that's good and one of the biggest things they said to me over and over again was like i'd take you know a thousand words or something and they'd say yeah it's a paragraph three that you actually started saying what you're saying right i did a lot of my writing my throat clearing in it right right where it took me a while it's and right you know that's natural right it's an epistemological tool right to figure out what you think yeah but it took me a while to find out what i was saying in a in a page yeah and so i feel like after doing that over and over again i finally cleared out a lot of the throat clearing yeah i hope you got that no i definitely felt that way i will try not to drink this i keep grabbing for it so sharing drinks right now i'm sure that's what then giving her beshears he just limited ten but he said you could share he did not he actually did not explicitly say you cannot share drinks yeah i mean two things to talk about number one the writing um there i remember you talking to phd students at southern about like figuring out who you are as a writer yeah and i've always reflected on that because i'm the type of writer and just i'd love to hear what you view yourself as a writer but uh i'm the type of writer who can get out a ton really quickly yeah yeah but it knows it needs a ton of organization because i need to go through and say what am i actually saying because i kind of get out all this stuff i'm thinking and then it needs organization so i feel like i can sit down and i usually don't have writer's block like some people have noticed about you and it's your journalism background right right you have to produce deadlines right right right and then but for me then it means i need to edit i think more than most people because i kind of throw up on the page and then i usually find what i'm saying kind of like you said like halfway through and i'm like oh there it is that's okay yeah yeah how do you kind of evaluate yourself i'm the opposite i am so slow so slow like either if you look at the books i've produced in the last 15 years they're all about five years apart yeah now in between i'm writing articles i'm writing sermons i'm doing book chapters but the books are all like five-year processes which i don't feel all bad about because i i feel like they they're baked well right generally you know what i mean like well publishers are now saying like don't produce a ton of books produce influential books yeah yeah i keep saying that which i think is is actually true i i hope that's true of my work so far but i i but i'm so but what i wish about myself was that i was a little faster because it's just very laborious process um and the writing club has helped you with that it has because every two weeks now every two weeks i have to produce now the reality is for the last couple years i have been producing a lot like i've written a lot of books in the last few years and so it's they're about to all come out right the writing group has i think improved the quality of my writing gotcha more than the quantity yeah but but it has you know to have that to know that i'm gonna have to have something i've been more internally motivated to write in the last few years like i just have had a lot to say right right and so i've been able to be motivated as i've gotten a little faster yeah yeah i'm a slow writer i mean when i'm sitting there writing it is it is i labor over sentences too much okay yeah so my goal is to actually write a little faster and do more editing yeah but yeah you kind of have to figure out who you are and you do have things to help so i always try to like send my stuff to people because i need other eyes on it because it's it's usually messier than i want it to be i need more clarity the other thing i was going to say is that there is a sense in which and i appreciate this you know books from publishers seem to fall into the popular trade or the academic and this kind of sits in the middle intentionally intentionally and i love that because i think we undersell the church sometimes in terms of the more trade books but they could handle yeah because i i think actually people are are eager for more depth of thought yep uh even more intellectual but written in a way i mean this is like c.s lewis gk chesterton right they have the depth of thought but it's written at it you know at a level that people can grasp and it's not so dry and boring and um i think of jamie smith in terms of that sort of thing absolutely and i felt like this book actually fit into that sort of thank you yeah i'm glad uh realm in terms of it's challenging you intellectually but it's written at a in a way that you can actually engage with so let's get to the content of the book um jesus the great philosopher i think you got it most of us savior king lord messiah philosopher isn't a term that most people are thinking and that's yeah today that's right that most people are thinking of and i think that's kind of your push for people to see that can you just explain why you think that's not the term that comes to our mind when we think of jesus yeah i know that's a big question no it's great i mean and that was the journey that i went on my works i feel like over the last 15 years have leapfrogged from one thing to another like i didn't plan any of it but as i worked on something over a course of time through teaching and writing and speaking yeah then once i reached a certain place of understanding i saw the next vista or i saw the next corner right that i needed to turn yeah and for me this book represents um a longer turn that happened that was also reflected in the book the sermon of mountain human flourishing namely that christianity is about life itself okay it's not just about the religious or vertical aspect of our lives but it's about the horizontal aspect of our lives that jesus came to give life and give and give it abundantly so the sum of the mountain human flourishing book part of that is it certainly reflects my own journey to come to see that and it's partly an argument for well this is kind of the next step to say um you know this whole idea of human flourishing that christianity is about life itself that's deeply embedded with the ancient church's idea and the biblical idea i think the jesus is the greatest philosopher of the world he's the one who brings life now that still may not sound like a connect to us but it's because in the modern period philosophy has become not in not all branches of it but most of it has become very esoteric very abstract right i think i joke for example like is this chair here which yeah that's exactly what my professor did totally is which is a fine question yeah it's fine i'm asking it but yeah you do kind of this crazy haired person's like is this table really here how do you know right exactly right i don't know is it here or as i joke you know if your daughter or son comes home after their first year colleges says they want to be a philosophy major you know the bumper sticker for that is you know would you like fries with that said the said the philosophy major you know so their funding is immediately cut out exactly and so this is the problem is that that is not what philosophy was in the ancient world right in the ancient world philosophy was the most important field of study because it is the field of study that brought all things together what we call metaphysics it brought together how to live well that you might experience true goodness yeah what we call ethics right it brought together the the questions of how do you know what's right and this is what we call epistemology and also how do you structure society and relationships what we call politics yeah or we could even add in there another element of anthropology what does it mean to be human which i don't deal as much with in the book yeah yeah but the point is those are the great questions that actually shape and form our lives and that's what philosophy used to be about now today philosophy has some elements of that and then it has other things it's interested in but for the most part philosophy doesn't ask those big the big big questions of life those have been shipped off to other departments or especially shipped off to well that's religion that's right and so what i'm trying to show is that christianity is not not a religion it's definitely a religion because it's dealing with divine realities but it's it's more than a religion it's actually a philosophy of life it's actually answering the great human questions that drive all of us yeah and then when we go to the bible the bible's not afraid of those questions in fact it has here's maybe the easiest summary of the book the bible has incredibly sophisticated and meaningful answers to the great human questions but we've stopped asking those questions right we there are a whole set of questions we stopped asking about the bible yeah when we do we realize this is a beautiful amazing philosophy of life yeah yeah that's really helpful and you know i was in portland the last six years and one thing we've noticed just being in a kind of west coast city uh is that the questions have changed in terms of christianity like the apologetic yeah yeah method is just shifted completely because it used to be about like proving resurrection or true being trustworthy of the bible but really the questions now are more along the lines of like does that provide satisfactory answers yeah for kind of life as a whole and that's what it was in the ancient world as well that was what christianity offered yep a whole life that's right yeah so do we so i think when most people again think about jesus we have evidence that they viewed him as a prophet is your argument that people as they saw jesus viewed him as a philosopher how do people think that yeah what is what evidence like would you point to because i think a lot of listeners of this amazing show probably read the bible and they're like so we care about the bible yeah i mean we really do i mean that's yeah um so what like what would you point them to in terms of is it more holistically because sometimes i think we do think of just like does is he labeled a philosopher uh i also have no idea where i'm going yeah i've noticed yeah it's okay it's good uh so what where would you point him to in terms of this is clear that he was you gave some historical examples and you get biblical examples as well you wanna yeah some of those out for us yeah i do and you know if this were only an early church and later conceptualization of jesus that would still be helpful to kind of reap to think of jesus this way and i show that it is and i i tie it into all the way up to modern psychology and philosophy and jordan peterson and nick offerman i mean i tie it into all these kind of oprah you know every everybody who's offering a philosophy today that would still be helpful i think but i'm also showing in the book that this is a deeply biblical idea okay both old and new testaments that that the bible presents itself as a philosophy of life and so i use the big categories and you know it's always so hard to know how to structure a book and i and i had 20 different versions of the book before we finally landed on this but i ended up using these big big words but they're helpful categories from philosophy that i just mentioned metaphysics what's the nature of the universe how is it structured and how does it work um epistemology how do we know things how do we know what the nature of the universe is ethics what is the good and how do you live according to it and then politics yeah that is how do you structure relationships so i i just talked about each of those in ancient philosophy briefly and showed that there's a context to the bible that it's working in the ancient world and then i go to the bible all the new testaments with those exact same categories and say does the bible talk about these and sure enough right it does in fact not only does it it's just you that it's a large part of the point of the bible that we've neglected that it's actually trying to give people a metaphysic an epistemology an ethic and a politic right yeah and an anthropology which again i don't deal with the book that's the next book coming gotcha is how the part yeah it kind of is it going to be yeah that's the book is what how the bible speaks about what it means to be human oh nice yeah so because it's really the other big topic of philosophy that i couldn't deal with in this book so so the point is that this is these are deeply biblical ideas um i didn't make all this up i'm leaning on some great works for the old testament or the hebrew scriptures especially joram hazoni's work on the bible the hebrew bible is philosophy and other people luke timothy johnson in the new testament has done a lot of good work on this because then when you get to the new testament and jesus in particular it's so obvious he's being presented as a philosopher it's just that we don't have the categories of that because philosopher is a weird category for us in the modern period but the way he's presented as a teacher and a king you know that king teacher the way he is um the words he's using about offering what true happiness is makarias that's all straight-up philosophy the way he's um the way paul for example talks about what it means to be the talia sonair the plead or whole human okay that jesus is the complete human and then we can enter into teleossity this greek word telehouse james paul jesus all talk about talias that's a deeply aristotelian biblical or aristolean philosophical idea so a big part of the point i was saying is that the new testament is aware of its own surroundings it's speaking real language using real genres that are common in the first century greco-roman world yeah and in that world philosophy and the way we were talking about was what held things together yeah right in other words people like seneca or earlier right uh the stoke the stoics they were the jordan petersons the oprah winfrey's the nick offermans the heidi klum they're they were the people who were influencing and especially the stoic so yeah we can talk more about stoicism if you want but that was the world that the new testament finds itself in so naturally rightly appropriately they're going to present biblical truth divine truth yeah in categories that make sense in the real culture yeah and so that's a big part of the point of the book and my other work i'm doing is that when we ask of the bible a certain set of questions we see things that we hadn't seen that it was trying to say it that was a very circuitous way of saying that the bible is speaking into its own culture and time right but because we're separate from that culture and time we've often stopped asking a set of questions that it's actually seeming to answer okay okay that's a big part of it yeah when you think of the new testament and you think of philosophy you can easily think really quickly of a negative thing like colossians 289 do not be right uh taken by taken captive by philosophy right right right and so that might seem to go against the whole book um i think i addressed that in the book a little bit i think i probably shortened what i had a whole long section on that originally um what's being talked about there is the dark side of philosophy right from a new testament perspective which is philosophy that is purely speculative and which happen in the ancient world too and isn't practical about real life on the one hand and also especially from a christian perspective has the wrong ultimate foundation yeah right has the wrong metaphysic or right to use biblical language and philosophical language the wrong lagos yeah right the lagos is going to get to is the structure of the universe right the blueprint of reality right and the great claim the crazy claim of the new testament is that jesus is actually the logos right right which is yeah there you go yeah that's great so yeah viewing it from that end in terms of him being the logos john's definitely speaking into the philosophy i mean everyone acknowledges that but that's right people haven't taken that a step further that you haven't said we need to extend this argument and say he is he is the great philosopher which is how the church fathers talk too right that's the thing is it's not just me making this up those people that were right in that world naturally saw jesus foster they talked about in that way and we've lost that for various reasons and you spoke about is it durapos yeah yeah that's right so what images do we have in the early church of jesus well that's just kind of that's just representative of almost all of the sacred art for the first four or five centuries present jesus and a toga like we think of him like in a jewish robe in a movie he's wearing a toga of some sort and he's wearing he's wearing the clothing and with the haircut um of a philosopher okay and the illustration i always give is like if someone walked up to you at least in united states culture and had a 10 gallon hat spurs and a big silver gun you wouldn't i never said the word cowboy but you would know cowboy right and he evokes all these things they're putting him in that sphere for sure all the images of jesus so verbal images but i mean verbal language about him but for sure sacred art all depicts jesus as a philosopher for centuries right because it was just a natural understanding yeah yeah of who he was that makes now but i i guess i didn't really answer your question though still though on the greco-roman and jewish they're inter they're embedded in each other already but the whole synagogue model is based on the greek philosophical the idea of gathering people together into schools with a wise age who makes disciples that that language is disciple is philosophically that's right and the synagogue is already several centuries into this modeling itself in a jewish version but still modeling itself on the philosophical schools of athens uh no we'll have to go a little farther that's okay yeah that makes sense so yeah so again jesus it's very natural that he is a rabbi so to call him a rabbi i used to call him as a philosopher gotcha gotcha i read a piece have you seen this book christ associations by john kloppenberg i think is his name have you heard of him uh scholar yeah i mean he was part of the jesus seminar and all that yeah he did this really interesting book with yale where he's comparing the group of like associations like guilds of that time with the church yeah he does a lot of historical work on just what the typical house church would look like and then how are you perceived in its culture yeah basically and like what's different about the christian association would probably be both male and female yeah and different ethnicities greek enrollment and socio-economic yeah exactly and so he was just trying to bring that historical perspective and i think he does talk about philosophical groups in there as well he's good i'm sorry i missed that yeah yeah it's a really interesting book even though i only got halfway through it but yeah no that's that's exactly that's another example of what trying to get out here is that we need to read the new testament in its social environment to make sense of what it's asserting right both similarities and differences i mean right i hope it's clear i'm not saying that jesus and early christianity is the same as aristotle or seneca or anything yeah it's critiquing it all and saying it's superior to all of it yeah but it's still dealing with its same set of questions and saying world view you know same world anyways i've been working on acts as we talked about a few years ago in this car conversation that shirts held up well and act 17 is the classic of course that's uh low fruit but yeah i just labeled that section after doing my commentary a superior philosophy yeah where paul goes in there and addresses their philosophical system and there's a huge debate in act scholarship is he pulling more from um philosophical traditions to address those or is he pulling more from the old testament and i think it's a false dichotomy it's solely false that he's bringing them both together and critiquing their philosophical system with the superior philosophy yep which is based on the risen judge lord jesus who is he's arguing is just a better philosophy than and it's more coherent yeah and that was hugely influential influential for me just to see that and i think that just ties into what you're doing so what do we miss maybe one another question we could ask is what do we miss if we don't see him in this way and maybe we've already somewhat got to that but again it's coming back to the original question seeing him as savior king judge yeah yeah lord that's all what we usually think but what do we miss if we don't see him as a philosopher what what pieces are we how are we limiting kind of our view of jesus yeah and christianity so there's a starbucks up on the left here if you're getting that lane how far up is it uh after this next light okay it's a new one they built uh yeah you know it's it's always a good question and an important part of maturing and just intellectual virtue as a scholar is to not take some idea that you've discovered and make it everything right right and and to make and due to the scorched earth policy on everything that's it right exactly yeah i mean yeah and that's what you were very careful about as we're talking about too it's it's you know it's exciting when you find something new or it's usually rediscovering is what we're doing we're not finding anything new and and you begin to see connections between it and it's tempting and many scholars sadly do this scorch earth everything else everything we've ever said is wrong you know i finally figured it out exactly we don't need atonement we don't need you know whatever it is on the topic and so you know i think i've seen that enough times to know that's not wise uh to do that so i can go up here yeah generally um and so i'm not saying that you know jesus philosopher replaces jesus as savior or gang or lord or anything right uh instead it's it is an aspect of who jesus is that we've lost i don't think it's uh just a little bump i don't think it's just a a little um that's a bad i don't know what that metaphor means i don't think it's just some minor little detail that kind of is you know for hipster people or something right right i do think it's foundational to do we want me to are we just doing this for the yeah i don't know what our appearance is can i get one birthday cake pop totally you know these are coming to starbucks uh just a second still the question is what what have we lost or what might we gain yeah positively by rediscovering this and it kind of rediscovery is is key to the whole vision of the book because i just want to help people enhance uh their understanding and i and i think a big part of it is that i want to help people see that christianity is a whole life philosophy a very very thoughtful and and sophisticated if that's a negative word for anybody i don't mean it negatively i mean very i mean very positive like it is a very thoughtful nuanced practical comprehensive beautiful vision for life yeah and so that i i don't think without my book you can't you can't be christianity that way but i think rediscovering this vision that that the whole bible is a whole philosophy and that jesus is the center of that yeah um old and new testaments hebrew scriptures and apostolic teaching that that'll help us regain some categories that we may have lost so in the first chapter of the book i talk about nick offerman ron swanson and i talk about his autobiography and i think he's a good example of someone who had some experience with christianity early on but it didn't apparently satisfy some of the largest questions he was asking and he liked to smoke weed as he says in there too but it it didn't answer a lot of those questions and i think a lot of people that either never are interested in christianity or people that leave the faith especially very intelligent people is because they've been presented to christianity that only deals with the vertical aspects of life right and only and yeah i guess just that only deals with the vertical aspects and doesn't answer some of the big philosophical questions and or another thing is that we christians often separate our lives into kind of a chest of drawers and that jesus and christianity is part of our life yeah but not the whole so i'm really hoping that this book will help people rediscover this sort of holistic whole life philosophy of what christianity is about yeah and that's a joy so so i apply it as you know if you read it i don't know quick read i read everything quickly now um but i apply it we can apply this christian philosophy lots of things but i apply it to three of the biggest issues in ancient philosophy because they're biggest issues in human experience and that is um what is it emotions right um relationships basically which includes everything from friendship to governmental relationships and then happiness what it means to be really happy well again those are those things we're not driving a stick those are not the only philosophical questions but those are some huge ones like you know how do you handle emotions right how do you live in a relationship and what does it mean to really be happy yeah and so i show that the bible has great answers to that and i think if again if we don't think in those categories it's really easy to experience christianity as again just this part of our lives not as really dealing with these fundamental things and so we look to other places then yeah if we don't if we don't understand the bible that way we look to other places to kind of supplement our christianity yeah and there's nothing wrong with other gurus we need help in all kinds of areas from lots of people but i think we we can find in christianity and in the bible a whole life philosophy one of the topics you deal with is emotions and i think we have a complicated relationship and at least yeah we made you actually i was gonna ask you what type of friendship do we have you had three categories we have a complicated this is yeah this is where it finally comes out you wait till we're recording i want to talk about our complicated relationship we have complicated emotions no i mean i think in evangelicalism especially we viewed emotions as just kind of these things that we don't want to base anything on and it feels like there's been a recovery of thinking more holistically about emotions and that's what you're getting at and you say something about reason only functions when it is paired with emotion so you actually take it because you we pit reason versus emotions and you're trying to bring those two back together just kind of speak to why you're doing that and how this kind of biblical philosophy is helping yeah great question uh the those chapters i wrote two chapters on emotions where i talk about emotions in the ancient world and philosophy all the way up to modern neuroscience of it and then go to the bible and say what does the bible say about it and in all of that i mean i'm leaning on the excellent insights of many many other people people philosophers all the way up through historians and neurologists and everybody in between martha nussbaum and all these kind of people so this idea that reason and emotion go together that is you know verified and talked about again in everything philosophers to neuro scientists and and that's a recovery of a more ancient understanding that's the point yeah is that in the modern period but it was actually already happening in the ancient world too there are different views of emotions and some people view emotions very negatively yeah but a lot of people from aristotle on have viewed emotions as an absolutely essential part of living well and this is where the stoicism comes in interestingly because stoicism comes from aristotelianism largely in some ways but there's a real break here between what what the aristotelian tradition and what becomes the dominant the philosophy that kind of wins the ancient world around the time of jesus and before and after was stoicism yeah and a big part of their whole philosophy was not anti-emotion that would be unfair to say the stoics or anti-emotions but a arm's length relationship to emotions in the sense that emotions are what will make you unhappy and so you've got to really learn to let emotions be a very compartmentalized part of your reality nothing wrong with having joy but you are always a little suspicious of emotions because you'll never be truly happy if you base anything on circumstances or emotions okay yeah and so i'm pushing back against that along with many other people and saying biblically emotions are a huge part of what it means to be fully human right right you think of the psalms and the commands to both rejoice and lament there's a ton of language that the bible's very affirmative on emotions yeah and and yet again it's a very sophisticated nuanced view of emotions that both affirms their value of being human their necessity of being being human and being christian but also that they're not the only reality they need to be shaped and educated so i call the chapter educating emotions they can be shaped and formed in certain ways yeah so that's that's one of the areas where again i'm the book is interacting with ancient philosophy modern philosophy and neurology but also saying the bible is super thoughtful about these things it's not just this sort of clunky people saying funky things about emotion yeah yeah very thoughtful that's good yeah so like that ties into cog you label them cognitive judgments yeah and when we educate our emotions is that where you respond emotionally well to like the good is that what the bible's trying to form in us yeah re-educate us about the good is that how you it's a great way to say it that's a very good philosophical way to talk about but or another way is to say that the bible and maybe particularly the new testament is shaping our sensibilities in certain ways our values and our loves yeah and you know we can talk about jamie smith and other people here as well but in augustine yeah the idea that the bible is about shaping what we love and shaping us to love certain things in certain ways and so that is non-negotiable when it comes to being a human and being a christian is to have your loves shaped in certain ways yeah and that includes and loves is maybe that sounds too gushy of a term right but loves means perceived values and things that you have both affections and dedications and allegiance to because it is good yeah yeah you know that's good and the the problem is this is augustine again our loves can get perverted and distorted we can love the wrong things or love good things in a wrong way addictions right loving certain things often in a wrong way right or loving the wrong things but it all comes down to what we love and so i actually don't talk about that probably enough in the book of loves particularly yeah but the emotions is is certainly part of that does this change how you view like the two greatest commands love god and love others because sometimes that's how i view them might change other people view them but no in terms of like i think i always hear love is an act of the will which i think is true but i think at one point in the book you say it's it's also more than that right right and so i think that you can hear when you say love is the act of a will that we don't want it to be an emotion totally and so that's what i mean in terms of and this is i talk about desiring god in there i talk about john piper briefly because this this was his genius yeah so early on is that especially within the reformed world that tended to have very large foreheads and very strong catechisms you know that that there wasn't a lot of people saying you actually you have to feel something like like it meant your heart matters now he's not only saying that you know piper's very theological very cognitive yes um but he he was on to something he recognized so he called it hedonism which i think is overwrought actually it's fine i don't mind the kind of prophetic punch of it but it's just from but the hedonism i don't like because in the philosophical world that was explicitly the opposite of philosophy and piper's not doesn't really talk in philosophical terms yeah but the genius is that we need to actually loving is not only a matter of the will it certainly is that but the will is well will is is actually not a bad term for it but the way we mean it is loving is just the thought like if you just think about it and then you do the right thing that's not that's not enough we are whole people that denies our embodiedness it denies our emotionality yeah that the bible affirms is good yeah and that we need to be whole people so loving includes our emotions i think and you didn't speak about this in the book but maybe i can just ask in terms of you're a pastor at a local church here has this affected all your work on emotions how you are discipling and preaching just in your or even your own personal life yeah any thoughts in terms of just how pastors or others can continue to think about these things and have it form even how they um train others in the christian faith yeah it has and that actually reflects how i how these things affect are part of a much longer journey for me that goes back to the human flourishing kind of idea and how much that has shaped my ministry that the gospel is about god's work is about bringing us into fullness of life now that fullness of life is not going to look like gold rolls royces and everything's happy and better the next day than the last it's going to involve suffering and pain and loss yeah right yeah people that only have one shirt and buy teslas and things um but but it is so it's you know it's complex and it's sophisticated and it's very realistic right that happiness includes a lot of brokenness in fact in an odd odd to us way that's jesus way you go down so that you can go up it's the great j curve of of life you know so death before ascension listeners might want to look i've done a couple of uh sessions where i've taught about emotions from a biblical perspective that you could watch me teaching on this as well in greco world for the village and for my own church yeah but but i think it's it is part of this larger vision that i feel like i've gotten from the bible over the last 15 years or 10 years of um that again god cares about us as whole people as embodied real people that he wants to bring to flourishing to shalom and that that's something we can experience now imperfectly and with brokenness and suffering but it is still real he has come to bring us life and that's not just in the future and i do think crucial to that and credit goes to a lot of good people i've read on this that i reference in the book and my old and dear friend eric johnson a psychologist and counselor and professor a lot of this goes to recognizing that emotions are part of what it means to be human right and that we've got to learn to pay attention to our emotions right as windows onto what's going on in our souls and as part of what it means to be fully embodied and so i do think unfortunately a lot of christian counseling or especially a certain branch of it um doesn't have much space for emotions and views emotions negatively yeah and yeah that's a lot of times those almost like the emotions are more fallen than other aspects yeah you know what i mean like that's right you start thinking like blowing up and saying what are we saying and that there's a sense in which like everything else was intact but our emotions fell right like i just nobody would actually say that yeah there's a sense of very suspicious emotions so we've got to learn to embrace uh emotions is what it means to be human so that's something to address in there and so yeah how that affects real life ministry and that in my preaching or in my counseling or discipling people i give lots of space for emotions yeah like i'm not ever trying to tell people not to have their emotions i'm trying to redirect and give them hope and reshape their sensibilities to feel and love and be in certain ways rather than to deny emotions that's not the way forward yeah definitely that's great basically the bible again is a philosophy of relationships yeah and relationships go from everything from interpersonal yeah all the way up to society you know people relating to society and that was what we in english might call politics yeah but they would understand it all more broadly as relationships yep exactly formation of societies for yeah yeah so a great philosophical question that was asked you know way back was how do you structure society so that people can live well that's right and christianity again i think is offering an answer to that totally and so that would be the biggest thing i would say there's more to be said yeah the biggest thing is that christianity is offering a politic meaning how husbands and wives relate to each other how parents and children relate to each other how friends relate to each other we were mentioning before like that it has very specific things to say about rich and poor relationships racial relationships yeah that that's a really thoughtful philosophy and it's one that's bucking against even its own current philosophies um it would most people challenge the household codes i mean you can read aristotle's household yeah exactly and you can see paul is definitely riffing on that saying this is what a well-ordered structured society household should look like under the reign of because that'll bring you happiness that's right and it's interesting as you look at the household codes that again and again it's like in the lord you should do this in the lord in the lord i mean he's the christology of it is just driving compared to obviously aristotle's kind of view and there's reversals and all these different things so that's good well it's all metaphysical i mean that that's the idea is that that's not like a really snitty thing so it's all about a physical no but but the idea that metaphysics is what is the nature of reality yeah well aristotle has a metaphysic atlan de baton has a metaphysic right oprah has a metaphysic the bible has a metaphysic and so whatever metaphysic you adopt is going to frame and shape every other aspect of household codes ethics everything and the radical metaphysic of the bible is that jesus is the logos again he is actually the center of the universe the creator the you know co-creator of the universe through him all things are created uh he's the ascended one that's right that is reigning and meditating and it's usually the triune god together so that's that is a metaphysic that affects everything you know when you start to understand what lagos meant in greco-roman philosophy that he is the substance of the universe it begins to blow your mind what john's doing at john 1. yeah it's incredible yeah yeah we've touched on a couple times and i do think it's a john 1 such a great example of the greek and jewish worlds greek and coming together yeah that he's consciously yeah aware of both yes that he's saying yeah i mean he's not just doing greek and roman philosophy he's saying uh the word that's referring to god's speaking creation right already and at the same time he's saying lagos meaning the great philosophical ideas so it's just perfect this brilliant i mean that the moment he thought of that he's like that's it that is the perfect way to start my gospel you know nrk ain't ha la gaza that's it right that was like the perfect the perfect way to say it so blowing up we talked a little bit about biblical studies and biblical theology but in terms of new testament studies do you have any thoughts on why it feels like for a long time it's been jewish jewish jewish jewish jewish backgrounds but i know historically in new testament studies it was a lot about hellenism and it feels like it's there's a shift that's either already happened or is happening and just how do you teach students and how do you think through kind of understanding both of those worlds i've found it harder to get students to see the greco-roman side because it's not contained in the old testament you know i mean like the jewish side you've got you've got so much i mean you have other literature as well but i think for everyday pastors it's easier to kind of see the jewish side of it verse yeah the greco-roman side how do you how are you thinking through like even that movement yeah yeah i think a lot about that um well of course if you had to choose one or the other then the old testament's a better background than seneca or something for sure because the new testament sees itself as the completion of the story and yes reality of israel right so and that's why it is more natural especially in a biblical studies heavy era which the modern period is you know it's just easy to read the bible together it's actually not easy to read the whole bible together what i mean is it's easy to see that uh these two parts of the canon that we bind together should be you know the priority and then really should be but on the other hand i think a big part of the reason we have lacked another aspect of the context to read the new testament well is that few of us are trained in classics anymore craig keener would be a rare example and the people that have been educated in greek and roman history and philosophy and language and religion luke timothy johnson other people those people they so naturally see that the bible is speaking from and into that world just as much as it's leaning on the old testament or i don't know i don't want to give a quantitative right right right it's both together they're both together yeah just to sum it up you know we need both and we don't have to choose between them yeah um but the lack of understanding of classics has hindered our ability to uh see what's very naturally going on in the new testament that it's speaking from into its own kind of quicker hormone culture so for me it's been a journey too to understand that um to to increasingly appreciate that background and this book is a kind of reflection of that some of the mountain human flourishing is to some degree as well yeah um and again there are some just great scholars that have helped so much um i think blue timothy johnson's probably at the top of the list for me and when you read him he just so in terms of people reading more on this side of it ebony luke timothy johnson yeah the original works right go back and read seneca yeah as soon as you do you'll start to see all this stuff right now okay so what do you hope people get out of this book every book kind of forms people in different ways so like big picture what do you hope people take away from this book yeah uh that's a great question the elevator speech yeah exactly i i really do hope that non-christians might read this and recognize that the bible and jesus himself is offering true life the life that people long for and for christians who read it was probably most people i hope that they will come to see that their faith is more than just sunday morning it's more than just a compartmentalized part of their lives but that our faith is again a very robust thoughtful life-shaping reality that is not afraid of the greatest and deepest questions we might have so i really do hope people come to see that jesus savior king lord and philosopher great it's a great book thank you so pick it up thanks for coming on my show thanks hey thanks so much for watching three really quick things if you like this video subscribe to our youtube channel and connect with us on social media we'd really appreciate it secondly check out the comment section below we've put a bunch of program notes and links to interesting things there and third check out some of our episodes you can see linked here thanks we'll see on the road peace [Music]

Channel: Cars, Coffee, Theology

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Id: MUlcDV1KVzY

Length: 50min 34sec (3034 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 20 2020