Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.
Matthew K 0:00
But at the end of the story when she rebuts him and gives her illustration, Jesus goes ahead and says, great is your faith, like your faith, is an example of your faith, not just for saying this, but like what you said is the definition of faith. And because of it, you're you're gonna have your daughter healed. So fait, in Mark and Matthew, for the Syrophoenician woman is telling Jesus, No, you're wrong, and rooting it, in this case, in God's justice, in morality in logic. And then saying, nope, what you've said doesn't make sense. And God goes, yep, you win. That's how you do it. Good job. That's faith. Hey, disciples, were you paying attention? This Gentile woman. This quote unquote dog just told me no, have you guys ever told me no? No, you reject my teachings all the time, but you don't ever tell me? No, you just go. Yes. So yes, sir. She said no, you should take pointers from her. That's what faith is.
Seth Price 1:13
Hey there. Welcome back to the show. I'm Seth This is the Can I Say This At Church podcast, which you should already know, because you downloaded it but maybe you have one of those podcast players that automatically auto plays and if that's the case, and you haven't subscribed, hit the button. While you're hitting buttons, click the Patreon button. You can find that at the website. You can find that in the show notes but I do hope you find it I want you to click it I want you to hit the box and support the show. This show is 100% not ad supported. So I am very thankful for every single one of you that does support the show and would ask a handful more of you to go ahead and hit that button. I will do my best to make it worth your while. Today I spoke with Matthew Korpman. Who has you'll hear at the beginning like just he's just too many degrees, like the guy is just crazy smart.
And it's a little bit intimidating if I'm honest. But we talk about a concept of literally saying no to God and how we're called to literally recognize what we think people are saying that God is saying, or a way of speaking with other people, and just putting a flag in the ground and saying, No. No to you, no to this situation, and no to God, I'm not gonna do that. And I know that probably doesn't make sense right now. But I think it will at the end. And so to add to the list of the February episodes that we're really deep and packed full of information, you know, both with Vince and with Nathan Jacobs, another really fantastic episode. I cannot wait to hear your feedback on this one. Here we go.
Seth Price 3:05
Matthew Korpman, welcome to the Can I Say This At Church podcast, and I said this to you earlier. But for those listening, my voice is more raspy because everybody in my family except for my wife and son decided to get the flu. And that was myself included. And so I'm like, 27 hours off of that, but the rasp is nice. I'm liking the rasp, so I'm going to go with it. But welcome to the show Matthew.
Matthew K 3:27
Thank you so much for having me, you and your raspy voice.
Seth Price 3:31
Fair enough. So I like to start off with this question. And I pre-warned you bet. But when I said when I would tell somebody, hey, I'm talking with Matthew tonight and here's who he is. Like, what are the things that you're like? Yeah, if you need to know anything about me, this is who I am. And here's why that matters.
Matthew K 3:48
Oi…yeah, what do you need to know about me? All right, so I can give you like the CV quickly. So I'm currently a student at Yale Divinity School. I'm doing a Master of Arts in religion, concentrating on second temple Judaism. For those that don't know that just as a fancy word, that phrase, that means that I study the period of history of the Jews from when they returned from the Babylonian exile and like for hundreds, to the time that the Romans destroyed the temple and 70.
So that involves early Christianity, the Apocrypha, early, Rabbinical, all that fun stuff, all wrapped, and even Gnosticism, all wrapped up into a fun little bow. But it's also exciting because it's a very interdisciplinary degree, which means I have to do a lot of work on the Hebrew Bible, as well as the New Testament, and I kind of have to be able to work in pretty much the whole range of history, to have a good idea of how it's working at this one point in time. Which of course, the first century in particular with the rise of Christianity is such a Extremely important and dynamic period, you really have to know a lot of information to understand it. No one aspect will help you. So I'm doing studies like that. My background before Yale was I did four degrees in my undergrad back in California. I did religious studies, archaeology, philosophy, and film and television.
Seth Price 5:25
How long have you been in school?
Matthew K 5:27
I finished the four degrees in five years, which was definitely already one year more than I wanted to stay there anymore. By that point in time, I was like, oh, man, okay. It's worth it? But I did. I got through it. I've been at Yale. This is my second year, I will be graduating in May and God willing, I'll be going on to do a PhD in New Testament this fall. So that's kind of like that is the academic sort of perspective. I've also been published in some various Academic Journals for Biblical Studies. I have a chapter coming up on the role of the Apocrypha in Protestant history that'll be coming out in an upcoming Oxford Handbook volume.
So like, I'm young, I'm active, I'm doing stuff that isn't just popular theology. So if someone's listening, and they're like, wow, this is interesting, okay, this guy is writing stuff. I don't know if there's someone snobby out there that, you know, I'm doing both. I'm doing academic stuff that's very rigorous, peer reviewed, and I'm doing pastoral stuff that I think matters to the living community in the church. And so kind of, I guess, right then and there, you kind of know I'm obsessively nerdy academically, and I'm obsessively passionate about practice and understanding the life of the church. That's probably two very important things to kind of summarize me.
Seth Price 6:51
I love it. So I almost want to pivot and just say, what the heck do you mean about the role of the Apocrypha in Protestant history? I'm not going to do that because…
Matthew K 6:59
I would love too!
Seth Price 7:00
I’m not prepared for that. But we could also just talk for…I have two hours on this bed where we could just go.
Matthew K 7:08
(Laughter both) Believe me if you get me, sir on the Canon and the Apocrypha oh, yeah, it's actually what's fun is my article when it gets released. And I'm hopeful that it'll get released this year that the volume, it'll be the first of its kind chapter that kind of explores how the Protestant Reformation treated the Apocrypha, which is not at all like how we currently talk about it. So it's revisionist, in a sense of like, it's revising what popular opinion is, it's not revisionist, in the sense of like, I'm trying to reinterpret things. It's, it's more or less that like, well, like Martin Luther he actually believed that 1 Maccabees was canon, and he states so and he stated other books he believes should be canon, but he wasn't sure. Like Tobit and Judith And then you've got John Calvin, who thought that the book of Baruch was canonical. And already right there, and then you're like, Wait a second this is…
Seth Price 8:09
This is not my Bible, I have 66. And you screwed with it, leave it alone.
Matthew K 8:11
But on top of that, this is not the narrative that we normally hear, which is like, Oh, no, no, no, the Reformation got rid of those books, or Martin Luther pushed them to the back of his Bible, because he didn't want anything to do with that, right. But there's a lot of sort of Protestant propaganda regarding like, what we'd like to imagine why those books are gone.
The funny thing is, most of the apocryphal books didn't actually get taken out of the Bible, most Protestant Bibles, until 100 years ago, like up until 1870, most Bibles had (them). So it's only been recently happening, that the Apocrypha has been traditionally missing now. So it's like it's a really recent thing and it was not done for any dogmatic reason. It was only financial, that it ended up disappearing, with the British and foreign Bible Society. So it's really interesting the history there, and you can really unpack it. But it's certainly something that Protestants need to own up to and examine.
Because Martin Luther, his seeming goal was the hope that Protestants were going to eventually deal with a cannon and actually examine these books and figure out what they believed about them. To date no church in Protestantism has ever done that. No one has ever gotten together and said, Let's examine whether the book of Tobit could be Scripture. We just kind of ignored them, push them and then eventually they just disappeared for financial reasons. So yeah, it's the weirdest thing in the world, honestly.
Seth Price 9:42
Question about when you graduate with four degrees. So I'm assuming you walked and received all four degrees at the same time. What color thing do you wear? Where do you sit? Because you know, you're supposed to sit like in the, I don't know that ….
Matthew K 9:56Y
You're the only person to ask this.
Seth Price 9:58
Well, that's the way my brain works like, I'm sitting They're thinking of you like graduating. So where do you sit? Do you pivot? Like, do you just bounce around and go out there four times? Like, how does this work?
Matthew K 10:06
Yeah, so basically, I'm trying to remember now, I know there was at least two different versions of the garb that I could wear the top part and I think one was the College of Arts. Yeah, there was two because basically, two of my degrees fell under the College of Arts and two of my degrees fell under the college of the Divinity School. So I had two different graduating garb I could wear and of course I chose the one that was divinity school because that was that was
Seth Price 10:39
Should have done half and half party in the back and business in the front or something. Yeah.
Matthew K 10:42
Which I wasn't really wanting to break out that chainsaw. But then, yeah, I mean, they give you they the day school gave me the two of their degrees on one diploma, but then the other because it was part of the same school but then the other two days.
Seth Price 11:00
Like the Apocrypha just cost cutting measures.
Matthew K 11:03
Yeah, no one wants to just go ahead and give it to you. But I actually did have when I applied for master's programs, I did have different people go, you meant that these were your majors, right? And that you heard what I said, right? It's like, No, no, no, I meant that these were separate degrees. Oh, really? Yeah, there's actually now that I remember it was Harvard that asked me that. That was Harvard. They're like, No, no, these are majors. Right? There's you didn't really do that though. I did. I was crazy.
I did have a social life. I did. I even managed to find the love of my life. So you know, it is possible to do outrageously crazy things. If you have really good professors and and a school that's willing to do crazy things and work with you.
That's why small liberal arts schools are sometimes better than than the bigger because when they get monster, they don't necessarily want to work with you.
Seth Price 11:55
That's cool.
I didn't know that. I don't think I've heard you say that anywhere else. But to be fair, I've only listened to you. I have no one to play. That's an exclusive. You know what I do? That's fine. Why not? So I also before we started recording, so I expressed my ignorance. And so I'll do so now in public because I'm not going to edit this out. It's too much work. Like I don't see you in your book Saying No to God. I don't want to bury the lead there. In your book that you've written in your free time between all of these degrees, Yale Divinity School, sounds like you got married, and I did whatever is happening with these balloons here. Whatever that party was.
Matthew K 12:34
That would be Valentine's. Oh, it’s a little early?
Seth Price 12:37
So a little its hours away…
Matthew K 12:39
A little, it's tomorrow!
Seth Price 12:42
Fair enough. Um,
Matthew K 12:44
I hope that wasn't news for you,
Seth Price 12:47
No, I knew that it was. I'm happily married many, many years. I'm going to get myself in trouble. So you talked about in your book a couple times and you reference others “pillars” in your in your denomination of adventism. And so by that you mean Seventh Day Adventism, correct?
Matthew K 13:07
Yes, absolutely. Adventists like to cut down the name.
Seth Price 13:11
fine. I'm not overly familiar with either, because if like most Protestants, I'll let myself in there as well. You kind of get in your own two or three little ponds. And you don't swim in other ponds. Because, yeah, I know the language in this pond. And I know the way the currents work and etc. So what are the what are some of those differences and kind of how does that inform the way that you do theology?
Matthew K 13:34
Yeah, so, okay, I'd say that, as with every denomination, you kind of have to talk about it on two different levels. One, there is the way the denomination is presently experienced widely by people in this present context. And then there is what are the foundations that kind of made this denomination what it was and you know, still gives it life. Those are always going to two different things.
So, on the one hand, I'm going to give you right now the description of its foundations, which will sound great, right? But then like in practice, you know, there may be a bit of a disconnect in terms of the average, or not the average but a, a number of Adventists, you might end up meeting depending on your location and so forth. So like Adventism has a number of core beliefs. So the full name Seventh Day Adventism tells you two of the main beliefs. Wow, the first one is Seventh Day, which refers to the literal observance of the seventh day Saturday as the Sabbath, similar to the Jews who keep Saturday. And we do it the same way, Friday sundown to Saturday sundown, the Jewish and Biblical way of reckoning days and nights.
But the other term Adventist is literally A reference to Advent. And in that regard, it doesn't refer Immediately, like first, like, at least its original intention wasn't to like be the reference to Jesus's Advent as a child. But as Advent as in like the “second advent”, which that was a term and phrase back in the 1800’s. So the second coming of Jesus, the second return of Jesus. So, that might not sound like that would be a dramatically interesting belief to put in your name. Like, yes, Jesus is coming back like, okay, don't we all agree on that. But actually no in the 1800s, most Christians didn't believe Jesus was coming back without other stuff happening.
So there was a wide belief in the idea among Christians that they had to become perfect, and perfect the world, before Jesus would ever return. And this was the majority view. Most Christians laughed at the idea that Jesus could come before the world was perfected. They It was very much influenced by sort of this Constantinian Imperial Christianity that had been for so long, this idea that the Christian Empire was going to expand across the world. And so it was very revolutionary and rebellious for certain Christians to suggest that actually this was sinful, that Christianity for all its attempts to change things was going to end up failing, that God was going to need to come. Now, it's just like, “Oh, this is the tradition. This is just the widespread view”. But back then Adventists. And at that time before Adventists Millerites because that was kind of like the Millerites were sort of this movement that eventually led to the Adventist Church that we have today. They were distinct and different, but kind of like the millwrights were this movement that was all popularized by a Biblical interpreter who suggested that he could predict the date of Jesus coming. He predicted it for 1844 and of course that didn't happen.
Yeah, and most of the people in that event lost their faith, but a number of people refused to lose faith in Christianity after that. And they went on in different groups and the ones that ended up growing into Seventh Day Adventism were a collection of individuals who found hope in this idea of the Sabbath. So the name Seventh Day Adventists grew out of this kind of like these two major doctrines that started everything. The idea that if the Bible tells you that Saturday is the Sabbath, and it was only Imperial Christianity that changed it. Well, let's go back and value the Sabbath just like the Jews, and then let's not allow ourselves to be lost in the idea of an imperial Christianity that's going to somehow make the world perfect through human effort. Let's readjust our eyes towards God. So that's the name right long story.
But okay, where do Adventists fall on the spectrum? Well, Adventist typically, well, overall, it's a denominational belief that the dead are not living. So they believe in something like soul sleep. Which is to say that when you die, you blink. And just like when you sleep and dreamlessly, you close your eyes and suddenly it's morning again. Basically, that's what happens, people die. And then the resurrection occurs and it's one second later, and suddenly, they're at that day in time.
So Adventists don't go around thinking that there are people in heaven who are looking down at them. Precisely because there's not really a lot of Biblical evidence for that belief among early Christians. That's something that most Biblical scholars recognized that this was kind of early Christians didn't have that idea yet that kind of came more with Platonism and with Christianity getting more involved with Greek culture. So Adventists as you can already tell from these few doctrines, they're very much like, “let's go back to like the way things were; let's dig deep into what the historical beliefs were”. They are anti-hell. There is no held doctrine. In fact, one of our founders Ellen White declared that the eternal hell doctrine was a Satanic heresy. That (it) was a deception created by Satan in order to paint God like him. So people were annoyed with Rob Bell suggesting questioning whether there was a hell questioning whether they…
Seth Price 19:29
I’m not sure that he suggested much he just kind of said here's all the views….
Matthew K 19:31
Yeah, here's a lot of questions. And have you ever thought of them? No, no our denomination started out with like, you can't be Christian if you believe this, because you basically worship Satan. Is that God do you think of that's running Hell is Satan. Yeah, the funny thing is Rob Bell gets a lot more hate nowadays than Adventists do in Evangelical circles. So makes no sense. But you know, that's that the way the ball rolls.
So Adventists have these unique and I'd say like those are already the biggest ones except there's one more and that really plays a role in terms of like where I come from and how this book shapes and that is that Adventist don't believe in inerrancy. We are not supposed to believe in inerrancy. It's, we're kind of like dabs smack in the middle of the liberals on the one end and the conservatives on the other end. Because we believe that the Bible has human fingerprints. We don't believe that it's completely without error and every factual detail that it has, and we still believe that regardless, it's authoritative. So it is this weird middle ground where it's like no…don't we're gonna affirm God's doing something in this book and it is inspired. And not only is it inspired, you can't try to cut out things and say that's not inspired and that is like inspiration is working in mysterious, powerful ways.
On the other hand, it definitely has human stuff in it that you can't just say that these are dictated words.
Seth Price 21:12
So you're using inerrancy, the same way as you're using inspire the to equal each other because the way I'm used to inerrant is, nope, this English version of this translated version of this translated version of this translated version of Jerome's translated version of that other translated version. Mine's definitely the only right version not even the Spanish one, just mine.
Matthew K 21:29
Well now we’re getting King James onlyist.
Seth Price 21:32
Well, you could you could use NIV it doesn't really matter to me.
Matthew K 21:36
There’s just not that many people with that view..
Seth Price 21:39
But you know, that's what I hear for inerrancy. And so but you're saying inspired so you're using inerrancy and inspired in the same way?
Matthew K 21:45
No, I'm saying like for Adventists inspiration refers to like God is using these texts. These texts are not like any, like they may be written in similar ways to other human texts. But their usefulness and their way in which they are being utilized in the church is surpassing what would be simply a standard human text.
So it's not just like, “Oh, it's inspiring”. But rather, there is something that animates this text, that animated the writers who wrote this text, that still speaks today, in spite of the fact that it should have only spoke to its context. So no, inspired here has a much more dynamic and fluid and less, less rigid kind of meaning, again, as it's supposed to. Now, here's the deal, Adventism and I mean, the deal is, when you go outside of what the foundations are, and you start seeing how people technically are in practice, it can sometimes be kind of a jolting experience.
So, you will find specifically in the area of inerrancy, that Adventists unfortunately, have had way too much intimate contact with evangelicals. And that has led to the ideas of inerrancy getting very much ingrained into people without the word. So what I mean is, is that like Adventists are very into Bible prophecy, because “Advent” and second coming. That's just kind of it comes to be one of those interests pieces. Adventists are very dedicated to thinking that they need to pay attention to these things and know. So unfortunately, most televangelists in adventism have been highly influenced by evangelical pastors and inerrancy.
And I think many of them hold to an inerrancy kind of belief. So what ends up happening is when they're preaching on the TV and lots of Adventists are listening to them. They're not technically saying, “today we're going to talk about inerrancy.” We're going to give you the doctrine, it's not a doctrine. It's not part of our belief system, but they'll talk about the Bible in such a way that you are inevitably forced to think that this you know, you can figure it out like alright well God said it and we can trust it and man I think I figured out what inerrancy is… You know without anyone having to spell this out for me to just naively think like this is this is where it's going.
Seth Price 24:22
Yeah well to be clear I don't also don't hold an errand See, I'm also not an Adventist, but wow, so don't hold you in here and see, so it's fine. Why do you say wow, I feel like there's…?
Matthew K 24:36
What! Isn’t this like the most conservative podcast out there?
Seth Price 24:40
Mine. I doubt it. I doubt it
Matthew K 24:43
You have deceived me sir.
Seth Price 24:47
Have I? I don't believe I have. Um, I don't know I one time had a guest say.
I've had a lot of guests say a lot of things. Now. This is definitely not the most conservative podcast. I know. I'm more of a literalist, if by literalist allegories, allegory metaphors, metaphor, hyperboles hyperbole to the culture that it was written to at the time that it was as opposed to America or Britain or Australia. You know, whatever country we happen to be in today. That's probably a better way to read literature. Like, anyway, that's a side note.
Seth Price 25:45
What are you getting at and Saying no to God, and I do want to be clear, I know what you're getting at because I've read it, but for those that haven't read it, and honestly, I like the book enough upon the second reading. So one of the patron things is about 10 or so people, I send them a book every month. This month was Illia Delio latest book, which is fantastic book. Mine comes tomorrow. I've read portions of it.
I think I'm gonna send yours for March because I think it's fantastic book so Wow, yeah, I just I just buy them and your honor just buy them and send them. So anyway, What are you getting at in saying no to God because the cover itself is enough to make people go. Well, here we go. So this is another another book that the covers like, Yeah, I don't want to read that. Like Me too. I don't have any I don't want to why would I want to read that like saying no to God? Why would I…of course I won't say no to God. I'm God fearing person. Why would I want it…
Matthew K 26:38
Sounds like an atheist title. Like it sounds like it's a new Richard Dawkins book, you know, but the thing is, it's the subtitle that gets you because it makes everything confusing, you know, a radical Okay, I'm with you. It's definitely radical, radical atheist, you know, a radical approach to reading the Bible faithfully, right. What do you mean faithfully did this just suddenly get Christian on the me, that doesn't make sense. How can you faithfully say no to God? And I think this is where your podcast title kind of comes in perfectly. Can I Say This At Church‽ You know, like this is this is a pretty good litmus test like this. I wouldn't be surprised if this might be one of the most radical things you've ever had a guest suggest the question, Can I Say This At Church? Can I say in church, no to God? Can I reject God faithful in church? Is this something I can even bring up as a discussion point? And for most obviously, on both sides of the spectrum, liberal or conservative, the answer seems to be like, “nope”.
I remember one time I was at a scholarly convention, and there was one of the most liberal progressive Christian publishers who will be not named, but you can probably guess, that had a booth out and I was talking with one of their staff. And as soon as I started pitching it, I was like, well the book is titled, and no sooner had I finished the title, then this girl turns and looks at me and goes, “why on earth would I ever want to say no to God?”. And I mean, dumbfounded, like dumbfounded look, and she was so nice. She was such a nice person. very genuine. But she was so sucked into it. Up until that point, I knew that my book would be controversial for conservatives. I did not realize that it is just as totally ingrained in any progressive liberal, that the same principle is true.
Like the only difference between liberals and conservatives about inspiration or inerrancy is not about the doctrine itself. I'm pretty sure liberals and conservatives both adhere to inerrancy; one just thinks they don't have it, right. So conservatives are like “this text inerrant”. It's not that liberals are claiming there isn't such a thing as inerrancy it's not like they're saying God wouldn't be inerrant. They're just saying, “this text is not it”.
And so the problem comes that when you get a title, like my book, saying no to God, I'm not saying saying no to the Bible, the progressives can get on that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That Bible is definitely not inerrant. Now, suddenly, you point the direction at God Himself and now suddenly, you're like, “Oh, I touched a sensitive spot here”. You know, this is this is the real holy grail of like, where your belief system is tied in with, this idea, this authoritarian concept, that you if you really had God in front of you (that) you would not be saying no to him. And on top of that, why would you say no right? On what for what reason?
So it's really good you asked about like that Adventist history and inerrancy plays a big role in this because since Adventist don't technically believe in inerrancy, but we've been affected by the doctrine of inerrancy. It left me in a very unique position in college, in the sense that, as I was deconstructing my faith due to reading different various scholarly literature and so forth, I realized I don't have a dog in this fight. I don't have to pick a side per se. I'm not in the traditional spectrum. So I'm able to look at this somewhat a little bit differently than most people who are in this debate, because I can think, well, the Bible can still be great even if it's not inerrant.
But then I realized, “Ah, wait a minute!” there's something this debate has completely missed and sort of as a result of missing it, gone totally astray. And that is there are stories in the Bible in which human beings tell God no. And God says, yep, you were right. Or you won, or you defeated me. Like, no, I'm not kidding for those listening, there is a Bible verse that says, You defeated god. I'm not kidding you. It exists! It's in Genesis, we'll maybe talk about it.
But the thing is, is that these texts are really interesting because inerrancy works on the premise that if you had God in front of you, and he told you something and you knew for sure it was God, you knew it was inerrant, and you're hearing it straight from you know, God's own mouth. Well, then that changes the whole ballgame. Now you know that whatever God says is true, and you got to go do it. But that's not what the Bible teaches because the Bible shows examples of people who have the perfect inerrant Word of God given to them, and they rejected and God ends up telling them that they were right for doing it.
So right then and there these unique often overlooked stories both in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, with Jesus, illustrate starkly that inerrancy is a completely worthless debate, actually. Because the Bible itself tells us that, in fact, inerrancy isn't really the quality that we're looking for. It's not whether or not we can know for sure we have God's words, there's something even more important that you need in order to evaluate those words. And that's really where the book kind of drives towards is not only dealing with the issue of inerrancy, but dealing with the question of “what does the Bible frame as the real important question for understanding how one interacts with God”?
Seth Price 32:58
Can you break through or break apart two of those? In the book you talk about, there's a lot of Old Testament stories and there's a handful of New Testament stories as well of where people have been like, nope, not doing it. Don't feel like doing it or you know, struggling back and forth with God. Because I think, here's the reason I asked…when I hear you say that and kind of also when I read it as well, like a part of me kept coming back to like, Alright, well, I'm just being tested then like, is this a Is this a trick question? Like, am I supposed to do this? Was I not supposed to do this? Maybe I screwed up again? And one of the things I wish you'd given some time to and I may ask you about later if we have time is saying no to to like a Joel Osteen type of theology of you know, I did it right. So obviously I must be hearing the voice of God because look, look at this nice shirt. Look at his nice shirt! So can you break apart maybe one core central theme or story in the Old Testament and then maybe one in the New Testament of where people have just said flat out no or or beaten God?
Matthew K 34:02
Yeah. So, I mean, I can answer your illustration with one story I think pretty interestingly well and that would be the story in Exodus 32. Where Moses goes up onto Mount Sinai, the Israelites down below have gone ahead and set up a golden calf. And God gets so angry in the story he says to Moses, forget it. I regret I ever saved these people. I'm turning my back on all my promises. I'm going to go and murder every single man, woman, and child and I don't care. And then he says, and I'm going to completely enrich you! I'm going to make you Abraham's start the whole thing with you. We're going to make you the promise people you're going to have your status elevated from prophet to the progenitor the new Abrahamic start. And, you know, as far as a typical evangelical inerrancy framework would go the correct thing. The answer from Moses should have been die will be done, you know, on earth as it is in heaven, you know, your ways are not my ways. What seems bad to me is ultimately not my decision because I have a faulty mind.
You know, you could just list these things we say. Moses does not do that. Moses turns to God and says, “No, you cannot do this it's evil”. And, and I mean, he says that, and then, on top of that, he argues that if he does this, nobody in the world will believe him or trust in him anymore because he clearly can betray people. In fact, he says, pretty much they'll almost rightfully think you lead them out here to kill them. Because, I mean, if you knew the future you kind of did. And then on top of that, he points out, well, God, you would be breaking your promises.
Now in all that regard it's fascinating that Moses routes his rejection of what God is saying, in God. In fact, what John Calvin describes it as in his commentary is that it's like fighting against God through God, or going from God, or I think Karl Barth describes it as you searching within the heart of God for the power to resist God. In other words, Moses tells God that I know your ways, and these aren't them; this is not who you are!
So he's not saying, I've got all this reason in my head and I've got all this brainpower and I'm smarter than you and I'm telling you don't do this! He's rooting, faithfully, every objection to God that he's giving in something that he knows to be true about who God is…and then in chapter 34, two chapters later, God says, alright, I'm going to show you what my ways are. And then it's everything Moses had hoped for. I am ever merciful, always forgiving, always kind, always long suffering; right, everything opposite of how he's acting in Exodus 32.
So, of course, most people have just tried to skip the story. Because it is, for them, the part that screws with their mind is when it says, “and God changed his mind about the evil that he was going to do”. And that's usually where people focus on or even some theodicy is focused on where they're like, oh, let's talk about how much does God's foreknowledge know and blah, blah, blah. And those are all interesting questions to some degree. But the much more interesting question is, why can Moses tell God no? That is far more fundamental than anything to do with God's foreknowledge or anything else. What's fundamental is (that) there is something about the divine human relationship that's being depicted here. How does Moses have the authority and the ability to stand up to God and win? To tell God your will not be done? And God says, yep, yep, yep. And then at the end to confirm that that really wasn't his will—that Moses was right, his ways, were not those ways that he was suggesting.
Now, what does that mean? What does that kind of leave us with, it's a confusing story? God's acting contrary to God's self. Moses knows this. But then why in the world are you following this God? What is he doing? Like this is a really messed up story. And it gets even more complicated because in the middle chapter 33, it actually describes their bickering and fighting as an example of how God and Moses used to speak to each other like friends. And so this is divine friendship. This arguing over whether God is evil and so that just strikes is like, this is a really weird idea. Like, if I didn't read it in the Bible, I would swear there is no way that it's in there.
So, when you look at that, you have to struggle to say, “Okay, well, if God is acting contrary to his ways, why?” Is it that God is is changing, but then God's not? Because God is still at the end of chapter 34, the same way as Moses claimed he really is. So then what's happening? Well, Martin Luther argued, and Calvin agreed, but Martin Luther really pushed this view that this was a test. That basically God was putting a was putting Moses to the test as to whether or not Moses understood who God's character was. Did he know God's ways and could he tell the difference between God's ways and say, a foreigner God like Molech’s ways? Is it that Moses was following and obeying whatever “God”says or did he know Yahweh specifically?
Now that kind of a difference is important because Peter Rollins when he tells a kind of modern parable. He says,
Well, what happens if you get to heaven and Satan sitting on the throne? And what if Satan says, ‘Well, I actually beat God, you know, Jesus is in hell now. And I'm sitting in the throne. So I'm God technically now. But don't worry, I'll honor all of the agreements. I'll give you your eternal life’
…all that jazz. It's a really complicated, sudden situation because now the question is, were you only following God because he was going to give you eternal life or was there something about his character that made him different from Satan? Right, is it just that Satan's an angel and God’s God or is there a character difference that makes God who he is so that even if Satan's sitting on the throne, he's still not God? Because he doesn't have that character? Moses, Martin Luther argued, was being pushed on this point. That God was putting him to the test to see, will you know that this is not who I am? And will you stand up against me? As like an analogy, this would be similar to a teacher in a classroom who has spent 20 minutes on a topic, and he wants to see whether or not his students have paid attention. And so suddenly he contradicts everything he said. If nobody reacts, he knows that he wasted his whole 20 minutes.
Seth Price 41:47
Yeah.
Matthew K 41:49
If somebody raises their hand and says, “isn't that the opposite of what you've been saying?” He goes, “congratulations, you got an A, you were paying attention!”
Seth Price 41:53
And everyone else fails.
Matthew K 41:55
So it's like that kind of an analogy here. Moses already knows God's ways. So he's going to recognize when there's suddenly this huge deviation. And so God deviates, and Moses immediately reacts. And God says, yep, you're right.
Now, this is also important because this is a penultimate moment for Moses. This is when he suddenly is going to make, you know, he's going to lead the people from Mount Sinai. This is him coming as the law giver, you know, it matters, whether he knows who is the God who he's giving law to. With that regard then, it is so fascinating to realize, like an argument that was also given by my own denomination, one of their leaders, Ellen White, who argued that in this story, God was also testing the selfishness of Moses. So you said the Joel olsteen effect. Will Moses be captivated by the idea of getting rich off this that he has the ability to elevate his status and his family in a way that Abraham only had been given before? And you know, he can throw all these people away and suddenly have a whole new dynasty start with him.
And, you know, but what had God done? He had tasked Moses with protecting these people with leading them, right. So this is also a deep test, that Ellen White argued, was regarding whether or not Moses would really be a leader, and would choose to put other people ahead of himself.
So in that respect, right, this story has several elements to it. The question that kind of leaves us with is, is this a one off or is this something that's supposed to like occur multiple times? So a much shorter story is Genesis 32, where suddenly you can look at Jacob by the Jabbok River who gets attacked by God, God suddenly wrestles with him. I mean, the word in Hebrew means “to get dirty to get dusty”. So basically it means you're tumbling around and around, like, both of you are trying to kill each other. And so it's just an all out brawl. This isn't like a WWE competition, like there's no kind of holding each other—it gets that way, eventually, by the end of the story, but you realize this is a very dirty fight. And by the end of the story, the sun is coming up. They've been wrestling all night. All this time, Jacob has not known who he's fighting with. He doesn't know it's God. He's thought that this is just somebody who wants to kill him. Now he sees that it is God or it is God's Messenger, whichever. And instead of saying, oh, oops, this is the Divine Will Oh, oops, I gotta obey what God is clearly intending. He fights even harder. Even after his hip socket is displaced. He's still holding on and managing to keep the individual from fleeing.
So he tells this cursing agent, this thing that came to kill him, he says, “I'm not going to let you go unless you bless me.” And then this angel or God himself says to Jacob, “well, I am going to go ahead and give you a new name, your name is going to be Israel. And I'm giving it to you because you have fought God, and you have defeated him”.
Now Israel means “those who fight God”, especially in the context of the story, that's how it's being understood by the author those who fight God or, you know, the God fighter. So, here we have a really strange story. Jacob tells the one who seeks to kill him, or curse him, I'm not going to let you leave this with a curse, you're going to give me a blessing. And then he gets the blessing that he will and his descendants will continue to fight God and defeat God in order to keep getting the blessing that comes from fighting God; you see, it's like a vicious circle, it just keeps going. So it's very strange what's happening here. And it seems to be illustrative of basically what the story in Exodus is talking about-divine friendship. This idea that when Jacob is faced with an image of the Divine which seeks to curse, which seeks to give ill will, he refuses to accept that and demands that he get a blessing instead. By demanding a blessing from something that looks like it's cursing, you're essentially affirming that you believe the true nature of what you're facing is a blessing.
In other words, you wouldn't ask Satan to bless you. Because it is not in Satan's nature to bless you. It is not within the demonic’s ability to give good. So when faced with something demonic and you say, I want the good, I want the blessing. It's very much like Moses saying, These are not your ways. Show me your ways.
It's saying that you are coming at me as something I don't believe you are, and I want the blessing. So now what name does he get as a blessing? You will fight God just like now, that means you're going to fight more cursing images of the Divine, and your descendants are going to do that, and you're gonna win. Now, who are you really defeating?
Well, it's not really that you're defeating God, per se. And that's the reason kind of why God is giving this as a blessing. You're not defeating God, you're defeating the bad image of God, this “what God looks like to you”, you're overcoming that. And then you're continuing to struggle constantly in this battle to come to a better understanding of the blessing of who God is, and your descendants, Israel, will continue to fight.
In other words, this is a very progressive view of how the people of God will come to understand in their divine friendship who God is; and that friendship is going to mean a lot of wrestling, a lot of rejection of bad images of God, and a real affirmation of a god a blessing. Now, that's incredible as an image, because not only does it just outright destroy the idea of inerrancy, it's meaningless. Suddenly, it's not inerrancy that matters; whether God said it or didn't say it. What really matters is it doesn't match God's character-is this who God really is? Like, that just changes the whole ballgame because now you're looking at trajectories and implications and all these kinds of things that get a big 10,000 feet from above portrait, not the nitty gritty I'm in this one moment.
So you know, in order for Jacob to reject that image of God in order for Moses to reject God's words, they needed a whole bunch of other stuff, a large collection in which to draw from and judge this image of God from. Which just tells you like, this is exciting in a whole deeper kind of way than we’ve typically been thinking of like, what God's words are.
It's not that just God says something and it's right; or God does something and it's right, it has to match his character. And if it doesn't match his character, that's when you fight. So that's when you would say no.
But you also asked like, okay, is this in the New Testament, right? All right. Okay, this is great. We've looked at the Old Testament, we've seen things there. Did this all change with Jesus? I know there's people out there who would say okay, Red Letter Christians and I mean, I nothing against Red Letter Christians, but I mean…
Seth Price 49:42
By that you mean the organization or…?
Matthew K 49:44
No, not the organization. Oh, no! I mean the many Christians who like to say that I’m a red letter Christian because I just read the red letters of Jesus and that's what matters. Okay.
Seth Price 49:56
Sure, except for Jesus was quoting the other things that you didn't read.
Matthew K 50:02
Yeah, yeah. But I mean, like, there's a lot of good people out there who espouse this and their answer to everything is, well, I judge what Jesus said. If Jesus said this, that's what I believe, right. I don't deal with all that messy stuff in the Old Testament. I don't deal with this other you know, what Jesus said thats it. So basically, you've gone from these people have gone from saying that the whole Bible is like a divine command theory. God says it, I have to believe it because he said it.
And they've kind of moved it now to a canon within the canon. Now it's Jesus's words and read, because some Bibles for those that don't know print the words in red of Jesus just in case somebody doesn’t know.
Seth Price 50:41
This is just a small aside as a joke. Do you think that Jesus’s a canon within the canon is better than Paul's canon within the canon because some churches only preach on Paul and none of the words in red except for Easter.
Matthew K 50:54
I think that everybody's canon within a cannon is usually constructed at best because of the context that they're in.
Seth Price 50:59
Fair enough.
Matthew K 51:01
I agree and I don't think there's a single cannon within the canon that can work universally, by virtue of the fact that it's a canon within the canon, right? The only canon that works universally, is the entire thing. Because you get to choose your canon within it. It's like it's within the nature of a cannon within a cannon to be limited in how good it is. It's just being useful for whatever context you need to limit it for.
But like the truth is, the only universal part is really the whole that you get to choose from. Because you get choice there's a lot of material there that you can hone for whatever context you're in. Yeah, that would be my answer there for that. But no, I mean, unfortunately, some people have sort of just assumed that well, and I mean, I can kind of understand why they would. Jesus is the incarnate, living image, self revelation of who God is. He's the image of the immortal. Okay, he comes to Earth. Here we go! Now we don't have to get it from Moses or from a prophet, we got God Himself incarnate on Earth.
All right, that sounds pretty legitimate. And so people think if Jesus said it, I believe it.
Now, aside from that, you still run into the issue of the fact that like different people remember Jesus's statements differently. And you have different versions of the same teachings, and they don't all agree. And avoiding that the truth of the matter is Jesus Himself is not depicted in the New Testament, as at all espousing this. And it kind of makes sense. If God does not change, then it makes sense that the image of God we see in the Hebrew Bible, especially in something like rejecting cursed images, and embracing positive probably is not going to change when God comes. And in fact, that's what we find.
There's a few stories in the new test. In which Jesus faces somebody and presents himself in a very unflattering way to them, in order to basically do the same thing as with Moses, to provoke them. So the story that I'll give an example of this is in the Gospel of Matthew, where I mean, it's in both Mark and Matthew, but it's the story of the Syrophoenician woman. And this is a story that troubles many Christians. And it's kind of frustrating to me that Christians have not picked up on this idea so that they understand what's really happening in the story, especially in Matthew's version for sure.
So what we have here in the Mark version of this story, you have a woman who comes and finds Jesus when he's trying to hide away from people and she says, Oh, please, Lord and she drops at his feet. You know, please, heal my daughter, who's who's, you know, going to die. And Jesus says well, look, here's the deal. Miracles are kind of a zero sum game. If I give it to you, I don't give it to the Israelites. And you see, the Israelites are children. And well, we Jews like to call you dogs. So understand what you're asking from me. You're asking me to give the miracle either to the dog or to the child. And now I mean, really, you're a mother, you understand! That doesn't make any sense. I can't do that. I can't not take care of my kids, and give it to the dog instead. I hope you understand I just can't help you out.
It's a logical argument that Jesus is presenting, a zero sum game I cannot give to you and to them. So then the woman comes back to Jesus and basically rebuts him. And it's amazing how many people who comment on the story literally do not notice that she is rebutting him. Martin Luther definitely saw that she was rebounding him he was like, darn this girl is smacking Jesus like, in fact, the way Martin Luther describes it is that she has taken Jesus under her grasp and yanked him. Like she has just grabbed that dude and said,
Seth Price 55:17
You will listen to me…
Matthew K 55:20
…literally! Martin Luther says
this is the beauty of the story that Christians are called to be like this woman and grab God by the neck and like not let them go.
And the reason why she couldn't do it is because she points out that Jesus is pretty much completely flawed in his logic. And she does this by giving another illustration using Jesus's illustration. Hey, guess what, when the kids eat, they're messy, and the food falls to the ground and the dogs can lick it up. So guess what, you're wrong. It's not a zero sum game. It turns out that actually, the dogs end up getting at least some part of the miracle.
So now Jesus in Mark's story turns to her and says for saying this, for this part. And what was that rebutting him saying no to him for this, you will have everything you want. The thing that was like the key to your success is not accepting what I Jesus have told you, congratulations.
Now in Matthew's version, it helps clear things up. Because in the Mark story, you're just like, okay, that's weird. Maybe if I know the story and Exodus and stuff, I can kind of hear the echo of what's going on. But Matthew clearly hears the echo. When he takes Mark's story, he says, ah, Mark, you didn't write it good enough. You didn't give enough hints that Jesus is toying with this woman. So I'm going to make it clear.
So in Matthew's version of the story, he actually has the woman not just come to the house, he has the disciples walking with Jesus and the woman is crying out after him. And Jesus is purposely ignoring her in the beginning. And the disciples recognize that something is wrong because although Jesus is ignoring her, he's not telling them to send her away. And they recognize, in the story of Matthew, that something is wrong here. Because if you didn't want her, he would have sent her away. But he's not talking to her. So this is just annoying to keep hearing her cry after us.
So they actually come to Jesus. And they say, hey, what is going on here? Why have you not sent her away and Jesus does not send her away, does not deal with it. So they go in the house, and the woman comes in. Now this part of the story is just like Mark, but at the end of the story when she rebuts him and gives her illustration. Jesus goes ahead and says, great is your faith like your faith? This is an example of your faith, not just for saying this, but like what you said is the definition Have faith. And because of it, you're you're going to have your daughter healed.
Seth Price 58:03
Hmm.
Matthew K 58:04
So faith in Mark and Matthew for the Syrophoenician woman is telling Jesus, No! You're wrong! And rooting it, in this case, in God's justice in morality in logic, and then saying, nope, what you've said doesn't make sense. And God goes, yep, you win. That's how you do it. Good job. That's faith. Hey, disciples, were you paying attention? This Gentile woman? This “dog” just told me No. Have you guys ever told me? No, no, you you reject my teachings all the time. But you don't ever tell me? No, you just go. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. She said, No, you should take pointers from her. That's what faith looks like.
Seth Price 58:49
I can't remember where I read it or heard it. It might have been my pastor. I can't remember. I don't even remember which gospel it was in. But someone had told me at one time, you know, everywhere that he's trying to show the disciples how to be…they always end up screwing it up. But it always ends up centering around a woman like you did it wrong. But you see her she did it right. And you in this other story, you did it wrong. She did it right. And you you did it wrong. See what she's doing. She did it right over and over. And it might be Luke, I can't remember where it was. And now I'm going to have to go back and search for my notes. I remember writing it down. But something you said that reminded me of that.
It also, in all of that, all I keep hearing is, you know, you know, my sheep know me and they hear my voice. Like my kids. They know my voice. And they know when I'm angry. And they know when I say something untruthful, even if I don't want them too. Because they know me. They've always known me.
You know, and that's an overgeneralized metaphor, but you know what I mean?
Matthew K 59:50
Oh, it's very true.
Seth Price 59:52
You build all of that in the first half of the book, and then you pivot into some things to say no to. So you like to say no to prejudice, say no to patriarchy. Say no to ahandful of other things. But there's a section in here that I want to ask you about. Oh, gosh, where did it go? It's in the saying no to homophobia.
Matthew K 1:00:12
Oh, wow, you're gonna go there. Okay.
Set Price 1:00:14
Yeah. Well, it's this section on David and Jonathan. And so can you break that apart a bit? And so what are you getting at there you say in here, this is how you start it, you know, with the increased attention to such an issue, as homosexuality that has garnered socially. And I added in the homosexuality part and equally growing attention has been given to people to the Biblical material, and its relevance to these issues. And so what does David and Jonathan have to do with homosexuality?
Matthew K 1:00:40
So yeah, it's interesting that for those who have researched this is familiar for those that have not ever researched, this will be surprising. And that is that in the Hebrew Bible, when it describes David and Jonathan's relationship, it describes it in terms that are usually reserved for romantic relationships between men and women. So, some examples I give, you have in 1 Samuel 18:1,
Jonathan loved him as his own soul.
And when David weeps over Jonathan's death, he states that,
your love to me was wonderful passing the love of women
2 Samuel 1:26.
And so, some scholars will make the suggestion that there is potentially a bisexual relationship occurring on David's end, because we know David liked women, but David has something going on with Jonathan here. So there is something that goes beyond what is a typically evangelical idea of what is acceptable romantic relationships and there's also other verses that give you a reasons for potentially thinking this, for example, the text reports that Jonathan and David kissed each other in 1 Samuel 20:41. And it reports that Jonathan strip naked for David to prove his loyalty in 1 Samuel 18:1-4, and Saul actually accuses his son Jonathan of shaming his mother's nakedness, which is kind of a statement that carries a sexual connotation.
So (if) people want to see that that's 1 Samuel 20:30. So when the text states that Jonathan took great delight, and David, which is 1 Samuel 19:1, it uses the Hebrew word that we use to describe Shechem’s sexual desire to marry Jacob's daughter, Dinah in Genesis 34. So there is sexually charged language going on here that leads some scholars to suggest that it would not be improbable that David and Jonathan had something going between them.
Now, here's the thing some approaches to this whole question really try to push this For you know for LGBTQ apologetics they really want this because of course I can understand it you know it would be great for them to be able to have a prominent character in the Bible, or characters in the Bible, that they can they can see and identify with and connect with on that level. For evangelical apologetics this is like it's crazy in their eyes! Like oh my goodness, this is nuts. You know, what have you done? This is this is baloney. You know, this is natural affections in the Middle East men kiss together and they really do. Actually when I was in the Middle East, I saw two men and suddenly on the street, go ahead and we're kissing and on the face and stuff and hugging each other. And some guy nearby me turned to me quickly thought that I was a dumb American and was like, No, no gay!!!!
I've heard like some angelical apologetics will be like, yeah, this is just what's going on with David and Jonathan. They're just much more open with men to men relationships, they're, you know, it's not sexual. Of course, that's ignoring the fact that there is sexually charged language use. But my point in that chapter is to kind of bypass both of these arguments and to say, look, here's the deal. Maybe it is just Middle Eastern, you know, men, bromance, right? That might just be it might just be a really good bromance, if that's the case okay. But here's the problem. Even if it turned out that this was a homoerotic relationship. What is the problem here that drives evangelicals to be disgusted by that idea?
And see like that's where you can really point out homophobia, right? This is not a question of saying, you know, you disagree with their actions, right? I mean, characters in the Bible kill lots of people all the time; if you think killing is wrong, yeah, that should disturb you, right? You should be disgusted that genocide and all these things, right? But then like somebody says, oh, it might have been that David was bisexual. Oh my god, this is horrible!
At that point, you have to say, why is that disgusting to you and the genocidal factor isn't? How come you know you're totally down for the idea that women just got raped and pillaged in this event over here? Yeah, well, that's just the man's world. He lives it right, but now suddenly bring in the relationship with Jonathan, potentially. And now like your whole view of David changes and your whole view of Jonathan. That's homophobia. That's where you are unable to accept that characters in the Bible have this specific experience, and you're going to now have your whole view of that…that's sinful.
It does not matter whether you are a conservative Christian thinks that homosexuality is wrong, it really doesn't matter. Because if you are disgusted by the idea that your favorite Bible character, or this Bible character might have had that issue, okay, and that this is potentially portrayed in a non negative, or at least a non judgmental way in the books of Samuel, if that is your biggest issue that is saying something deep about your own soul and your own homophobia that you have not dealt with. Because you shouldn't have those feelings and those reactions to that, and specifically your opinion of David or Jonathan should not change because of that. That is judging people based off their sexual orientation. That is homophobia.
Seth Price 1:06:58
Yeah. Is this view of Jonathan and David new like, does this have like, like a lot of views? Like they come in and out of the modern, I guess psyche, you know, when you start research, you're like, Oh, this is a new people been talking about this for 500 years, it's just we didn't really read about it. Like or is this something where it's like, yeah, you know, now that we know this, and we know this and we know this, or does it have any historical context going back through the centuries?
Matthew K 1:07:27
I cannot answer the question of whether it has a historical context. I can tell you that it's been pushed mainly now that there are, and is, a reason and an audience of people that this could really matter for, okay. Definitely drive scholarship to pay attention to issues that it might not have. It's possible that people have brought this up in the past, but again, in the past, there was not an environment that really was allowing for such a discussion to you know, occur in that way. But I would definitely say you should ask That question of a Bible scholar who is doing that work. Because they might know some really interesting stuff about it. I can't tell you a definitive answer on that.
Seth Price 1:08:09
I appreciate the honesty.
Matthew K 1:08:10
It definitely is most prominent now because of just the new expectations, the new desire, on the part of LGBTQ people to know what Biblical scholarship has to say that could affect their lives. It definitely has been something brought up again, it may very well be the case that again, you know, the conservatives are right, and isn't really, you know, a different sort of relationship between Jonathan and David. But even if it was, why the heck should that matter? Why the heck should that change anyone's view of those characters? Why should their sexual orientation make a darn difference in regards to who they are as people? That is the essence of homophobia, and that's what drives me so mad and crazy about when people are debating these things.
But of course, you know, I imagine you probably would want to also mention kind of the non literal way in which people are reading those texts, like in Leviticus that talk about, you know, the death penalty for being gay.
Seth Price 1:09:15
I'm a big fan of, and I'm sure you've seen it, maybe you haven't, and if you haven't seen it, I'll find it and I'll send it to you. There's like, it's like a Dear Abby kind of thing from a Canadian newspaper many, many, many years ago. Have you seen this? You know, I'm talking about I think so. It's like, you know, Hey, I heard your issues with homosexuality. So I just got a question. You know, 14-15 whatever questions that's my neighbor. He gets really angry. You know, when I'm out here on the day that I'm supposed to you know, butcher this cattle and he's really upset about the smell and you know, it says that I get to kill him. I'm just curious you know, if you think it's okay. And, you know, what's a good going rate, you know, for my oldest daughter, because, you know, times are tough and my wife won't stop mixing her garments, you know, with she's not doing it right and I just want to know if you think it's fine if I kill her? Because you know I just need to do it you know, I gotta be faithful here really gotta be faithful and I'm badly paraphrasing; it's very tongue in cheek also very funny. I'll see if I can find it I'll send it to you.
Seth Price 1:10:55
Do you have time for one or two more questions I've
Matthew K 1:10:58
Yeah!
Seth Price 1:10:59
I’ve well exceeded my hour that I promised you.
Unknown 1:10:59
No, I'm here for you.
Seth Price 1:11:01
Thank you. I'm so for fear of being heretical because I don't care. I'm gonna read you a part of a right how you open saying no to exclusivity, because when I read it, I literally highlighted it. And I stopped reading, because I was actually kind of afraid to go to the next page. Not because I was worried about what you had to say, mostly because I hadn't really phrased it in the way that you did. And I didn't know what my answer was for myself, if that makes sense. But I think that has to say more about how I view the end times and what the kingdom of heaven looks like and what hell looks like, as opposed to what Christianity is. But here's what you say
there are around 15 million Christians in America, and 25 million worldwide, who identify as evangelical among many widespread beliefs such Christians hold to is one that has a particularly caused unnecessary pain and division both in and outside of the church. What is this harmful doctrine? It is the teaching that being a Christian is the only way to find salvation. Or in other words, get to heaven.
And then you go on to say,
that idea of Christianity is exclusive, barring all other paths, is not new nor is it novel,
and then like to pivot there to the quote at the very beginning, where you just say,
I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me. I have other sheep that are not of this fold.
And that would be Jesus.
I actually have yet to finish that chapter. And so in earnest, what are you getting out there? Because I would like to finish the chapter. But I'm still uncomfortable with answering those questions for myself. And so I'm curious, where are you going with that?
Matthew K 1:12:41
So one of the things that I really wanted to do in this chapter and I think you'll enjoy the chapter. I think it will surprise you in terms of not being…
Seth Price 1:12:55
I just skipped it intentionally, every time.
Matthew K 1:12:57
I think what you kind of probably have noticed in the book is that even on topics that have been done to death, even the homophobia chapter, I am a trying to give a perspective and approach to the issue that has not been beaten to death by other people. I'm trying to give something unique that will help people like yourself to look at an issue with completely new eyes, even if you've heard it 1000 times. Hopefully, like my version of it makes you go, “oh, wow, okay, there's something new here. Like I didn't see that aspect of it. That's interesting”. So in this chapter, what I try to deal with is looking at the entire Bible, from the beginning of the Hebrew Bible to the end of Revelation, examining how God is depicted in relationship to other nations, in terms of how he respects their religious identities, and as well as how revelation understands where the limits of salvation actually are.
So some of the things that are covered are for example, some extremely radical and really cool texts in the Hebrew Bible such as Malachi Chapter One where God tells the Israelites—they had just come back in Malachi from exile, they had rebuilt the temple—and God says, You know what you guys are worshipping so badly. You have so little of your heart in it. You know what, I wish that you would close up the temple, and just stop all your services and just not worship me anymore. Because it is just horrendous! And then he says the most one of the most radical things he says,
Every nation around you gives me perfect praise. They all praise my name and give perfect incense.
And it is just the most shocking text because it's basically saying all these other nations are somehow worshipping me correctly, and you don't and that my name is glorified. Even though obviously like, that means that like when someone's worshiping Marduk like if they have a good heart, they're worshiping Yahweh. It is this remarkable text, so remarkable, that actually translators change it if they're evangelical.
So if you will open up Malachi 1 and if you're not reading the NRSV, or a Jewish translation, if you're not reading a good, really solid Bible scholar translation, you are going to see translators, with their evangelical bias, change the text to “future“. So now it's God says all these nations “will“ give me perfect praise, they “will” eventually give me perfect incense, and there's naturally no justification for that in the Hebrew. That is just them adding that in and the King James Bible did that too. But at least in the King James, they put it in italics. So you knew that that was being added in. But you don't know that necessarily would be an NIV, you don't know that.
So you could Read the Bible in these translations and sometimes for the text that they change, you would have no idea that you were just reading one of the coolest passages because they changed it to something not cool. So like another great example is in Micah 4, where I talked about how Micah has this vision of the New Earth, where he says that all the nations with all their religions are going to come to the temple. And they're going to walk in and YAHWEH going to be in there and he's going to directly speak one on one with all these people. And he's going to teach them his ways is going to teach them how to turn their swords into plowshares his beautiful vision, and then they're going to all leave the temple. And Micah says this remarkable saying he says, well, every nation will continue to march to their God despite their interaction with Yahweh, they'll all call their god their specific name. We Israel, we will come continue to call God correctly as YAHWEH. And the reason it's okay is that all the other nations they'll still call their god whatever name they want, but their ways have been transformed by YAHWEH. So they are now worshipping their gods in the way that Yahweh wants to be worshipped. Even if they can't accept that it's Yahweh who's really their God. So Gods, okay, in Micah, like it's alright, you can keep calling me whatever you want to call me, as long as you can all figure out what my teaching is and start living the way I intended.
So in the Hebrew Bible, you have these examples of just remarkable texts that give you this portrait, a universal portrait of God, who's very particular YAHWEH, but has a universal aim and has a lot of grace towards other people in how they want to identify him as. When you come to Revelation right revelations a book that's just constantly graded as being something that's like a damns everybody you know, the world's going to hell in a handbasket (laughter from Seth). But actually, that's really, really not true for the book of Revelation in fact, the book actually has a number of passages that tell you that the majority of people end up getting saved. I'm not kidding, like there is a “reverse remnant” as some people have described it in Revelation not that there's a remnant, a small people who get saved, a reverse remnan. Like the majority end up getting saved and a small remnant ended up getting screwed over by Satan.
So you have visions over and over again, where you will be told that you know, there's a city of 7000 people, and there's a great earthquake that shakes the city and of course in Revelation, a city is usually representative of the world. So the city falls and a third die and two thirds repentant and are given salvation! And it is like wait a minute! What was the moral of that story? What's the moral of that vision? Two thirds of the world gets saved and one third ends up getting lost wait…that seems like I heard differently by the televangelists. He told me one third gets saved and the two thirds go to hell in a handbasket! So you see this again and again.
Revelation has this terribly violent imagery, you know, oh, look, there's all these locusts and they, these angels go out and slaughter, you know, a third of the earth. But what's amazing is like, how many angels it says go after a third of the Earth it's huge, that number. And the fact that that many angels can only, if you go with the imagery in Revelation, they can only kill that many people on earth. Right? It still means that the vast majority of the Earth has not been touched by this.
And you see this again again. So like, although, the violent imagery can starkly strike you, again and again, Revelation presents this portrait of nope, most people are doing good. Most people repent. Most people choose the right option. And then as you get towards the end of the book, things get even messier with that imagery. Because suddenly you're told, like, oh, there's this great battle. And you know, all the kings of the earth, go to war with the Lord and then they're killed and the birds are eating them and feasts of the gorge. Right. But what did it describe as what killed them? It says that, oh, there was a writer on the white horse. And you know, he was the word of God he had written on his thigh and he had a sword coming out of his mouth. Wait a minute! Te sword he kills people with his the sword of his mouth, but it's the sword that comes from the word of God. So wait, is this really just an allegorical representation of God's teachings putting people to death, right? But then if you're teaching put someone to death, that's kind of like baptism, because that's like you're putting to death the old ways, because there's a new way. And someone can go “wait wait…you're reading too much into that”. But guess what? The kings of the Earth are like the big baddies of the book of Revelation. They're terrible, terrible kings of the earth and the nations those are the two big groups, they're always in the wrong.
And so again, they're supposedly killed and eaten after God kills them with you know the word of Gods sword. Well, guess what happens? The New Earth is made we get the heavenly Jerusalem, and what does it tell us? It tells us and the kings of the earth and the nations will come into the New Jerusalem and their glory will fill it.
What! The! Freak! What's going on‽ They were dead. They've been a stable character in this book, and they just got wiped out and here they are, and their glory fills the people who are the enemy, and the whole book is now suddenly they're filling it? And then that's the kings of the earth, right?
But then you have another reference in the same chapter where it says, “Oh, yeah, and there's the tree of life, and its leaves are for the healing of the nations”. The nations, the other group that died, they're going to get healed through a tree, right! Like, there's, there's so many aspects to the text of Revelation. People have either unfortunately bought into the violent imagery and let that twist their view of God, or they just reject the book and say, lNope, it's just a bad vision”. The truth is, the book itself is chocked full of really complex imagery. It is not asking to be read as just a simple understanding.
Like in the Hell chapter, I talk about revelation how Revelation says that God throws hell into hell. Like that's one of the ideas and he throws Death and Hades into hell. Now, here's an interesting question. How can anybody end up being thrown into hell, if death and hell already got thrown in? Because in Revelation, Hell is not an eternal place it is a lake of fire that's built, it's literally made, at the time of judgment it starts, and then it ends because it gets wiped away with the new earth. So it's like a process here.
So once you get thrown in, except the only people who are told to burn forever and ever in Revelation is, Satan, the False Prophet, and the Beast, those are the three.
Seth Price 1:23:47
I want to clarify all of that. So you're saying all streams, same river, basically? Like all signs point to God, it doesn't matter the faith? I'm not necessarily disagreeing by the way.
Matthew K 1:24:02
Well no. I'm not exactly saying that, no. The reason why I'm not saying that exactly is, for instance, with Micah 4 his vision is not that all the religions on the earth are doing it, right. They're not. That's why they're having wars with each other. It's that YAHWEH is going to teach them all is okay. And they're going to change, right? It's not that they don't know anything. It's not like they've completely they obviously do know some things because Malachi can say that, you know, they're worshipping him perfectly. So clearly, they do know things that allow them to have a relationship with God and understand things. But at the same time, I think like Karl Barth would say, all religions are flawed, including Christianity. We're all screwed up. We're all in need of God to guide us.
So it's not like oh, you know, yeah, all paths will end up getting there as Karl Barth would probably be, you know, pointing out none of the paths are getting to Rome, including our own. You know, it's only by the grace of God that you know, Heaven is coming down for us, we're not going to get there on our own, we're going to just keep wandering.
But the interesting point of kind of like, taking that look in that chapter of all that the Bible has to say, is to understand that the vision it has for humanity is that we're all together in this like in the first chapter on doubt, right. I quote Paul, in 1 Corinthians 13, where what does he say about Christianity? You know,
for now, we see only in part, but then we'll see face to face
right. Most Christians would probably think that that was like, oh, a description of before Christianity. Right before Christianity we saw them in part in the Old Testament and then we got Jesus and now we see face to face. No, no, Paul says what? Faith in Jesus is an enigma. That's the word in Greek that gets translated sometimes “loosely” as like a glass darkly, the word is an enigma. And it works much better as an image for people who know that word. It's a perplexing, distorted image. That's what Jesus is, according to Paul.
And, you know, according to Paul, this distorted, perplexing image is wonderful because before Jesus, we were really in the dark. We had hopes and aspirations; we thought we were going in the right direction, but we didn't have anything concrete to kind of point us. And when we got Jesus, we got a good nudge in the right direction, bbut we didn't necessarily have something concrete.
And I think that like, this kind of comes down to the idea in the Gospel of John of the Holy Spirit. Which is, you know, Jesus saying to the disciples, I am not able to tell you things right now. I can't guide you into all truth right now. But don't worry, the Holy Spirit is going to do that the Holy Spirit is going to guide you into truth that I can't. And not only that, but you're going to do greater things than I'm currently doing. You're going to surpass the enigma, and continue to learn new truths that shed light.
Seth Price 1:27:16
I have 98 more questions, but we don't have 98 more hours, or time, we just don't we don't have more time. So I want to ask you this last question. I actually really want to ask you about why you don't address atheism, specifically, like just say no to all of it. I don't think that look. You can answer it if you want. If not, I'll ask you that larger question that I asked you at the very beginning that's entirely up to you.
Matthew K 1:27:46
I can definitely roll with it.
Seth Price 1:27:48
The question I actually wrote down, I only scripted three actual questions, the rest I have thematically what I wanted to talk about. But my question was, how do we reconcile your book with a view of an atheist? Like, why don't we just take it to its logical fruition? Which then made me question about there's people that call themselves like agnostic Christians. But that's a different thing than necessarily atheists, I think anyway, but how would you address your book or what what do you think you would say to someone in that mentality?
Matthew K 1:28:14
Well, okay, so this is where I get the plug in my sequel that I’m writing. I'm writing a second book, more academic that's called Fighting with God; A Theology of Confrontation.
Seth Price 1:28:27
How many pages if it's more academic? it's
Matthew K 1:28:30
It's already past the word count that this book was.
Seth Price 1:28:36
(Laughter from both)
And it's not lorem ipsum just for typing it out there. It's not just typesetted in there.
Matthew K 1:28:44
No.
So what I'm trying to do here is to take what I wrote here, and this book is very popular, practical, you know, lay introduction to this idea, and I'm just trying to build it into a much more rigorous systematic kind of theology. Like, let's look at this really nitty gritty, let's go into the every possible argument, you can think about this and what could go wrong. So hopefully, when this is finished, if somebody says, “Man, this makes a lot of sense from this book”, they'll read the other book, and they'll say, “Oh, I can take these ideas now and go head to head with the greatest apologetic, theologian, and I will be able to walk circles around them with these ideas”. That's what I'm trying to do there. But part of the project is dealing with atheism. Now, I didn't deal with atheism in this book, and you're actually the only person other than an atheist to ask me about this. So kudos to you that you did.
Seth Price 1:29:55
Okay.
Matthew K 1:29:56
The reason why was, again my goal in writing this book wasn't to try and deal with the question of whether you did or did not believe God, it was to kind of take at face value that in the Bible, all these characters do believe in God this is part of their religion, right? So if Israel, in its very name means those who fight God, if the whole religion of the Bible is built on this foundation of resisting God for the sake of God, then I figured, well, you can't say it's logical to take it to its conclusion that we just reject God altogether. Because the whole religion, apparently, is built on this premise of doing this fighting.
So this isn't something that like we're coming up with as progressive modernists who are like trying to understand Nietzsche so we're coming together to understand how we can reinterpret our Scriptures. No, this is an idea that's been in the Scriptures the whole time. We just have been ignoring it.
So when I wrote this book, I thought, okay, I'm going to just focus on that element. How do I just deal with the internal hermeneutics People who do believe in God and are reading Scripture, or even agnostics who want to understand whether or not Christianity has any truth claims to it. And I think that this book tries to kind of give some reasons to say, yeah, you you, there is another option.
Now, what do I think? Well, in the new book I'm writing and I kind of give a preview of it, what I'm trying to do is kind of, I'm doing a lot of philosophy in this, but definitely delving into some big names and trying to think very carefully about some aspects about this conversation. One of those aspects is this: I don't believe it is possible to be an atheist in the sense that new atheists claim that they think they're doing. So when Richard Dawkins will go ahead and say that you know, I am an atheist. I just do not believe that there are any gods. And I do not believe, and I am against all ideas of gods. And yeah, I don't think that's philosophically possible. Because the way that life and reality works is I can only reject the thing I see. I can't reject something I don't know that exists. So I have to imagine it. I have to conceptualize it. And unless I can do that, I cannot actually make a meaningful, philosophical, statement that says, I reject this.
So if I don't know what hate is, I can't say I reject hate. It's meaningless. I can say the words, but I don't know what hate is so I don't know what I'm rejecting. If I do know what hate is, right, then I must know what its opposite is. If I reject hate, then it means I know what trajectory goes the opposite direction. Because, again, this goes to the idea of implication everything we say imply something that we didn't say, if I say I like you, it means I don't not like you. This is the way language works. We don't think about it, but our brains always hear two things every time we speak.
So again, like we're very specific creatures, I believe Dawkins when he says, “I reject ‘this’ god, I reject this god”. But Dawkins wants to take it a step further and say, as atheist, I can say, I reject all possible gods. And I don't think there is such a possibility, you will always be limited to rejecting a specific god. And the reason you're rejecting that specific god is usually going to be or is often rooted, for some atheists, in moral arguments. You know, so when they say, this is not a God because he does this, this this. The implication of that is often well, so you were really saying that if this God wasn't those things, you wouldn't have that against it. So for some atheists, there's a book out currently that says…like, it's called The Seven Types of Atheism. So when I say that, I mean that, you know, I'm acknowledging that there are many different forms. There's no one atheist and they all fit into that category. Some are pure naturalists who their rejection of God is because they fundamentally believe in materialism, and they don't think that the idea of a spiritual realm can fit within that understanding of the world; and how metaphysics you know, there is no metaphysics it is just physics. That's a different kind of atheist, right? Their understanding is going to be rooted in science. But there are atheists whose views are fundamentally a protest against the images of the divine that they see.
Seth Price 1:34:53
When is this book out?
Matthew K 1:34:55
So I mean, if things go well, I'm hoping by the end of the year.
Seth Price 1:34:59
How many more words, pages do you need?
Matthew K 1:35:03
So it’s at about 110,000 words at the moment. And I think that it's still got probably another 30-40,000 more to go for some some aspects, there are a few chapters I still have at the end that I have to fill out. Yeah, I mean, essentially, you have to kind of look at the fact that there are atheists who are rejecting these images of God. And in that capacity I don't think that they can go beyond that they can't reject things they don't know. So in my opinion, like, you either are an atheist towards specific things, or you're agnostic towards all possibilities. I don't think you can apply atheism towards the possibilities you can only be agnostic. No idea. I haven't seen it. So how would I know?
I think like that's philosophically the truth of like where you need to be if you're atheist write the A in atheist in the Greek can mean “not” but it can also mean “against” it can mean to be against something and many atheists are using it in that sense, where they're like, well, I'm against this religion and here's my reasons. I think that in that respect, they are very much like a Jacob. They are very much like a Moses, they are very much like the Syrophoenician woman, they are seeing a problem with this image, whether it be logical, whether it be moral, and they're saying, “No, I reject this god, this is not who I would worship. This is not who I think makes sense as the creator, and I'm not going to deal with it“.
And in that capacity, there's a lot of resonance between those kinds of atheists and prophetic figures in the Bible. So I think that what Christians and I hope that book will kind of play a role in is Christians need to view atheist as helpful conversation partners, also as potential prophetic voices. To really help them realize like, the prophets could be rash, Isaiah would walk around naked, Ezekiel laid on his side for a year, you know, people do crazy things, okay, who believed in God, right! So if you have an atheist who's angry, and like, this is crap, and this image of God is horrible, right. That can still be a prophetic voice, regardless of what you like or don't like about the presentation of there's real substance to that content that they're pointing out, there's a real problem here. That's a prophetic voice, that just like Jacob rejecting a cursed image, and just like Moses saying, nope, this is evil it needs to be listened to and it can help guide Christians in terms of how they're thinking through these issues, I think.
Seth Price 1:37:51
I referenced it at the beginning so gave you a fair warning, which to be honest, is better than most people have gotten. The first handful of people I just sprung it on them. So this question is my favorite of the year so when you Matthew say, here's what God is, here's why it matters. Like when I say, the divine, or God, whatever word you want to use, what are you actually saying? Like, what is that for you?
Matthew K 1:38:14
God for me, is like, God is what is above what we use the words to describe God. God is a call for us. Like for me personally, God is the God that's spoken of in the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. It's the God that Jesus Christ comes to show. But God cannot be really accurately confined to those descriptions. I can't just say, look at Jesus. Look at YAHWEH, right? Because what is YAHWEH? It's a continual struggle that Israel has to discover who he is.
And with Jesus, it's the Holy Spirit continuing to guide us into better and more truth. So when I say God, I'm referring to the God that Jesus came to reveal who YAHWEH claimed to be. And at the same time, I'm saying, the best images we have of that God are always an enigma. They're always in part. They're always, like Paul says, with a huge dose of humility. So the God that I'm looking for is both a God that is near and dear and personal, and at the same time, holy other very much something that I am just trying to get my head and grasp around.
Seth Price 1:39:27
Nice. I like it.
Where do people go when they they hear this and they're like, “Okay, this guy knows more things than than I do. And so I want to read more”. Where do they go to either grab your book, learn more about what you're doing, follow you on the places like where would you point people to?
Matthew K 1:39:45
Well, if they haven't been bored yet, (laughter) by going through this very long interview, then I suspect that they will be interested in something else. So that's a good sign that they made it this far.
Seth Price 1:40:02
(Laughter) if you are still here clap once. (More laughter)
Matthew K 1:40:03
They can go to the books website, www.sayingnotogod.com. There's links there to Amazon and Kobo and you know, the gamut of different booksellers pretty much any major place where books are sold the book should be available so they can go there. I also have an author website if they'd like to see different things, articles, etc. Other interviews have linked to this podcast again if they lose it. That's at www.Matthewjkorpman.com. So lots of good stuff there interviews, etc.
If they want to connect on social media, they can find me on Twitter @mkorpman. And they can find me on Facebook, I have a Facebook page Matthew J Korpman. I'm definitely open for community If people want to reach out, they want to ask questions. They want to be like, what is this? What is that? Yeah, I'm down for that. You you think there's somebody out there who should debate me or talk about this issue? I'm fine with having a conversation with anybody. And this is a major thing about me because of my academic training and like humility, about knowing what the limits of knowledge are. I am perfectly fine with somebody saying, Wait, you're wrong. You've got a you missed this. You got this argument bad. Wait, no, I don't agree with that. Great. Give me a good argument; give me a good logic shoot me down like the Syrophoenician woman shot Jesus down and I will be happy and I will change I will recant. I'm fine with that. If you haven't done that, don't expect me to drop everything I think just because you disagree.
Seth Price 1:41:50
Fair enough. Well, thank you again. I have enjoyed your time and I'm sure thank you to your wife as well for for letting me borrow you for y’all’s Valentine's Eve. So I appreciate you.
Matthew K 1:42:03
Thank you so much for having me on. It's been an honor and a really great interview and conversation.
Seth Price 1:42:18
I appreciate it.
I have been at a loss for almost a month on how to end this episode. I found it hard to wrap up all the stuff that we talked about. Matthew just brought so many different concepts and viewpoints that I'm just not really used to entertaining. His book does the same thing. It is 100%, but I just the concept of saying no to God, of recognizing what is the voice of God and just literally saying that doesn't sound like you is not something that I've really entertained a lot. And the way that we say no to oppression and say no to patriarchy, and say no to homosexuality, and say no to fundamentalism, say no to all these different things that don't really bear the image of God. I find that beautiful but really hard, really hard to do and really hard to really communicate well and explain to others. A very special thanks again to Salt of the sSound for the use of their music. If you haven't listened to their stuff you need to more music is coming. I promise I'm almost caught up on all the back catalogue of transcripts. I've already got quite a few things ready to rock and roll on that I just need to find the time to do it right. Be patient with me. But in the meantime, again, thank you to the Salt if the Sound.
I cannot wait for next week for the next episode and I hope that you're blessed.