How Theology Nerds Are Made

Derek and Brad interview each other about their foundational theological influences. Which thinkers gave them that spark? How did looking at footnotes lead to unexpected discoveries? What surprising influences led to drastic decisions? By looking at twists and turns that God used to bring them to the understanding they have now, you will be able to examine better what God is doing in your own life. 

—

Mere Fidelity is a podcast from Mere Orthodoxy and is listener-supported. If you would like to support this work, become a Mere Orthodoxy Member today at http://mereorthodoxy.com/membership.

Get 30% of the Baker Book of the Month, The Pursuit of Character: Recovering the Virtues, by going to: http://bakerbookhouse.com/pages/mere-fidelity

Register for Beeson Divinity School's 2026 Preaching Conference, July 14-16 in Birmingham, Alabama: https://www.samford.edu/beeson-divinity/preaching-institute/preaching-conference?utm_source=Mere+Orthodoxy&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=Preaching+Conference+2026

Transcript

New Site And Membership Offer

Ian Harber 0:02

Mir Orthodoxy has a brand new website. We've completely redesigned our website with readers in mind. From the layout to dark mode, downloadable PDFs and audio articles, a new dashboard for members that lets you bookmark articles, save quotes to a commonplace book, access your full reading history, get digital editions of all the past journals, cite themes based on the church calendar, and much more. There has never been a better time to become a member of Mir Orthodoxy than right now. Through the end of June, get 20% off your first year of an annual membership or three months of a monthly membership. Not only will you get access to an incredible online experience, you'll support the ongoing work of Mir Orthodoxy, Mir Fidelity, and much more to come. Mere Orthodoxy is a reader-supported publication. We can do this work because of readers and listeners like you. Go to Mereorthodoxy.com today to see the new site and get 20% off your first year of an annual membership or three months of a monthly membership. That's Mereorthodoxy.com to see the new site and get 20% off membership today.

Book Of The Month Discount

Derek Rishmawy 1:28

Our June book of the month is The Pursuit of Character, Recovering the Virtues by Matthew Arbo. You can receive a 30% discount on this title and all previous books of the month by visiting Bakerbookhouse.com backslash pages backslash Mere Fidelity. You can find that link in our show notes to get 30% off of our book of the month from Lexum Press.

Why Tell Our Theological Stories

Derek Rishmawy 1:48

Hello and welcome to another episode of Mere Fidelity, a podcast by Mere Orthodoxy, where we think about the Word of God and the world we live in. My name is Derek Shmaui, and I'll be your host for today, and I'm joined by regular crew member Brad East. Good to see you, Brad. Glad to be here, man. All right. So today, uh, because we don't have anything else to talk about and we couldn't get anybody else on the show.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

But we want to talk about this.

Derek Rishmawy 2:12

We want to talk about it. No, we we we thought we we were we were we were thinking through and we thought we'd take a little bit of a different tact today and uh start to just ask a little bit of not quite autobiographical questions, but kind of how did how influences, theological influences, uh stories, et cetera. But basically, how did we get to where we have gotten theologically? What are some of the formative uh influences? And just trying to interrogate that a little bit. Oh gosh, I just said interrogate, sorry. Um just ask a couple of things. No interrogating. No interrogating. Um but wanted to get to hear a little bit of Brad's story, and I think Brad wanted to hear a little bit of mine, and we thought some of y'all might be interested as it's as it's reflective of kind of the weird winding path that anybody takes uh as they walk with God and they learn about God's works and ways in the Word and in the church and in the world. So with that in mind, um because I am the longest standing member on the current episode, uh, I will defer and let Brad go first and ask the question. And then he's gonna have to submit to the same question. So go ahead, Brad.

SPEAKER_01 3:17

This is exactly what I wanted, Derek. I want listeners also to know that I begged you to let me treat this as a one-on-one interview where we get your whole life story, and you refused on principle. So listeners, I'm gonna keep pushing for this and we'll see, we'll see. Derek's got a book coming out, you know, half a year, maybe. So we're gonna we're maybe we'll get him on the hot seat then. We'll have multiple podcasts dedicated to the lifetimes and thought of Rish we'll call it Rish Maui thought. Okay, here's my

Derek’s First Theology Books

SPEAKER_01 3:44

here's my question. Let's start in Media Res. What is the first theological book or author that you ever read?

Derek Rishmawy 3:54

Ooh. That you remember.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

That's really wait, because the question is, are we going back all the way to like high school or I had a student once tell me that that that my in my class she got bit by the theology bug. And and that that's sort of where I'm headed, but I want to know what the first thing is.

Derek Rishmawy 4:11

So I didn't I didn't get bit by the theology bug until much later. But I probably the first thing one of the first thing I can remember that I read that was even approaching it was um uh The Case for Faith by Lee Strobel when I was like in high school. I I got it, I was I was on the football team at the time. We were doing summer practices, and we weirdly, psyched a sophomore year in high school, after after after the weight room or in the weight room, all these guys started asking me and my my Christian buddy questions about the faith, and they just started hammering us. It was like six, six or seven of us, six or seven of them like just hammering me and my friend, and then it was mostly just me. And I was like, man, I I have some qu I have some answers. And then I found this book on my shelf. So I read it, sped read it, and you know, for the for a week of that. That was the first time anything kind of like that really um really emerged. I used to listen to sermons with my mom. Uh my mom was more the the the sermon listener uh in the house. Um I mean, my my dad was involved. He was a he was a deacon and usher, all that kind of thing. But um no, that's the first kind of book I can think of then. But then later, probably several years later in college, when I first kind of began to get my theological awakening. I want to say the first properly theological bit of theology, um, you know, after C.S. Lewis, Mirror Christianity, after a little bit of that, um was probably Augustine. Oh, for a class or on your own? In a class. So I I switched over. I I was starting to get into I was starting to get into listening to sermons. I was starting to get, I kind of felt the call to ministry, preaching all those sorts of things. Um and I started to switch my major up. I I'd gone in poli sci, I was gonna go be a lawyer, and then I got the bug, and then I thought maybe I'll do English, maybe I'll do philosophy. I I took philosophy and uh I had a medieval philosophy class with uh Bonnie Kent. She's uh she's an Augustine, she's a medievalist. Anyways, she's great. Um and she just did Augustine all quarter long. And so confessions, city of God, all those sorts of things. My first time thinking a thought, or a truly deep thought on the doctrine of God, I think, was in her class contemplating the issue of eternity. And then from there, on my own independent, probably the cross of Christ, John Stott, the next quarter, and and some Jurgen Mulmont um crucified God.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

Were you were you finding this on your apart from the class, were you finding it on your own, or were did you have mentors give uh putting these books in your hands?

Derek Rishmawy 6:44

Uh those books, not many. I I picked up some philosophy stuff from from Bonnie. I I think I started reading pop level stuff, and then I had a buddy look at me, and I was telling him the stuff I was reading was kind of a it was, you know, a couple Rob Bell books or something like that. I can't remember exactly how that happened. But my friend looked at me, he was older, um, and he said, you need to look at the end notes, right? You know, Charles Spurgeon read JB Lightfoot. You need to read Lightfoot, right? He's like, you need to look at the who the guys, the the pastors who are pr who you like their preaching, you need to look who they're reading. Don't waste your time reading them. And that was uh now uh pastor books are also good in their own genre, but um that was really informative for me. So I started looking at the Amazon review, I started looking at the footnotes on stuff and then endnotes and stuff, and then Amazon algorithm uh way back in the day, 20 years ago. Uh that started kind of started me kind of down a trend with some of those things. And I don't know, the emerging church conversation was happening at the time. So, you know, you was looking at some of that, and I was okay with the thing.

SPEAKER_01 7:52

You had the theoblogosphere was up and running around.

Derek Rishmawy 7:56

Yeah, and I wasn't really I wasn't there yet, but it was percolating and it had caused some controversy in the local church I was in. They'd hired some guy who had a blog and people find out about it, and he was recommending some weird books, and it was all very exciting. And now I look at it back and I think, oh, I was that was so dorky. Why would you why would you recommend that book? But I was like, oh, this is really interesting, you know.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

Were you PCA already?

Derek Rishmawy 8:17

No, gosh, no. No, not even close. I was uh I was Yorblan, I was at a friend's church, so but it was it's a big, it's a big non-danom, functionally non-danom megachurch. Yorblina Friends, maybe five, six thousand people at the time. Um, huge youth group. Uh my my my youth pastor there was really great. He was he was he was we can talk about him later. Um but yeah, so that's it started around then. I started reading those things, but I had a really, really uh idiosyncratic start in reading theology, and I I didn't actually have a lot of guidance for a while. Yeah um I was kind of piecing it together. So there was like a lot of weird lost years, not really lost years, but formative years, that were formative in ways that I had to reform a lot. Later. Later.

SPEAKER_01 9:06

Later.

Derek Rishmawy 9:07

Uh yeah, like I have shelves of shelves of Mulmon and and other weirdnesses. Um What about you, Brad?

SPEAKER_01 9:13

Well, did you and I graduate then? What about you, Brad? I was doing it. I had eight minutes. Um did you and I graduate from college in the same year? I graduated in 08.

Derek Rishmawy 9:23

Aaron Powell I graduated in 07, but I was supposed to graduate in 08. I got out a year early because of uh credit. Yeah, actually that year, I took a year off between my master's, between undergrad and masters before I went to seminary. And I probably read like a hundred books that year. That was like that I read more than than I read in seminary. It was crazy. Um okay, Brad,

Brad’s Early Mentors And Reading

Derek Rishmawy 9:40

how did you start? What was like the first theological book that you recall that that got you going?

SPEAKER_01 9:45

I, like you, had a wonderful youth minister. Actually, for listeners, this will come out a few days from now, so I'll go ahead and recommend it. Today is two days before Father's Day. And for Christianity today, uh I wrote something that went up this morning called um My Fathers in the Faith. And it's about the five or six men at the congregation I grew up at. And I grew up at the same congregation from 18 months to 18 years old, and my folks are still there. Um and uh where I tell stor I I tell stories about these m men who in various ways impacted my life and formed my faith. And one of them, his name uh was Spence, and he was uh a youth minister who was getting an Mdiv at a local seminary and had theological interests, and later in life he went on to get a PhD in systematic theology, and he he clocked me early as a kid who had questions, theological questions. And my experience of those questions was not in the form of doubt. Like I kind of took for granted that Christianity would have answers for me, or at least would have pointers in the direction of answers. Um and honestly, had I had like a different kind of youth minister or set of mentors who either were told me to stop asking so many questions or just like didn't know, did not know or or like um the intellectual riches of the tradition. I I think it honestly would have been very different for me. Uh, so I'm grateful. But anyway, he he put like late middle school, early high school, he started putting Lewis and Chesterton and Bonhoeffer and um Kierkegaard in my hands. Um and of course I didn't understand half of what I read.

Derek Rishmawy 11:34

It's early days, dude. Or very early. Early days.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Um especially, you know, like I read I read discipleship like as a sophomore, and I you know, I look back now, I didn't know I didn't know I I don't even know what sense I could have possibly been making of it at the time. But I kept reading, you know? I yeah, uh and I I read a few Kierkegaard books, I read a lot of Chesterton and a lot of a lot of um Lewis. So if if that that those were all the seeds that were planted.

SPEAKER_03 12:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:08

And then I did unlike you, I did my undergrad in Bible, which is really like Bible ethics, theology, you know, all all all of the above, um where I teach where I currently teach theology now in Abilene Christian and West Texas. And my sort of trajectory was um biblical scholarship, which led me to sort of um like biblical theology, which led me to works on ethics or theology by New Testament scholars, like you know, Moral Vision of the New Testament by Richard Hayes, um uh which led me then then Howard Wass was my gate key, what my my my gateway drug. Like like I like you said the end notes, I read him and then I just started reading who he saw whom he cited, which books he cited. Which and he read everything, right? Reads everything. Um and by the end of my undergrad degree, that that I was kind of like you, I even as I was listening to you, I was thinking, what was it like to try to find without the help of teachers, to try to find authors and books? It's not pre-internet, but it is pre-social media podcast landscape. Like and and it really was like I remember reading, for example, like um Ben Witherington. Um Testament commentaries, and they they really taught me it all with Erdmans, and they all taught me weirdly important things that that that will not seem important to anybody listening, I think, but like how that like the dialect in the footnotes of biblical scholars, like how they interact and how they quote, how they disagree gently or not so gently, what what CF period means, you know, things like that. You know, it really is it's an induction into not just a conversation, but a but uh but a dialect.

Derek Rishmawy 14:11

Yeah. Well when I was I'm trying to think at that time when when I was early twenties, I think I started reading theology. I think I I I graduated and I was right around right before I turned 21. And around then that's when I started reading a bunch, and I was more interested in New Testament stuff. I I had uh I had caught the NT right bug early in Harvard. Oh, yeah. Sorry, it was it was there. I still it's still fairly foundational uh for in the back of my thinking in terms of just biblical theology and gospels, all that sort of thing. I was always iffy on I was always iffy on the justification stuff, guys. Don't worry, don't worry. But um, but but but I also wasn't, I mean, I wasn't I was not reformed at all, at all. Um C.S. Lewis, um kind of Arminian, so on and so forth. And um the Calvinists seem weird. I had a I had a Piper hyper buddy who he's still one of my best friends, and so I was like, these Calvinists are terrible, and then and then um I I got over it over time. But but uh oh, one deeply formative thing, my prof, Bonnie, Bonnie, um, I asked her right when I was graduating, like, how do I, how do I, how do I, how do I expand? And she recommended Yaroslav Pelikon's five volumes on Christian doctrine. Yeah. And I slowly read those over the next year. And those five volumes just were a huge I mean, they they're they're not like granular in the sense of like, hey, you're gonna get detailed now, but it was it was comprehensive and giving you the scope of what the historical conversations looked like. Um so those are still remarkable. I think those are still helpful. Um but that kind of gave me a sense of the breadth of things. And then it was it was very piecemeal, things I things I was getting uh hold of, right? Like uh that year I started reading a whole bunch of Moltman. I got a hold of Panemberg, uh, you know, worked through a few of those volumes.

SPEAKER_01 15:59

What did you make of Multman? Like what was your experience at the time? Not present day, Derek, but then Derek?

Derek Rishmawy 16:04

Well, he was exhilarating. It was really interesting. And um he was doing Bible stuff.

SPEAKER_01 16:11

Yep.

Derek Rishmawy 16:12

He was doing metaphysics, and I I was a philosophy major and I I liked some of that. I was iffy on some of that. So I ditched impassibility for a while, but I didn't know how I could ditch immutability. Uh and I also didn't understand at the time how weird it was to try and ditch impassibility and and keep immutability at the same time. I didn't I didn't recognize the incoherences. But I I I but that tells you I had a loose grasp of the tradition. And so you're getting you're getting their meat, I was getting his mediated takes of the tradition. So I was, I was I was like, oh yeah, the filioquay, it's bad. Uh we shouldn't do that because of him. And uh that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_01 16:51

Well, I mean, he you know, he he could have been right about that.

Derek Rishmawy 16:54

Uh so so um but I was like, this is how you do theology, but I'm I I was interested, I was interested in uh all the all the emerging church stuff. And uh I read some Hans Fry and some Lindbeck. Trevor Burrus, Jr. You read some Fry on your own? Oh, yeah, Fry and Lindbeck. How do you think it was It was Amazon and and uh and a couple other things, part of it because I got I got interested in I wanted to read um I I saw Kevin Kevin's book, Drama of Doctrine.

SPEAKER_01 17:23

Ah, yeah.

Derek Rishmawy 17:24

And it looked really interesting, but I didn't want to get there before I'd read a couple of things because I knew he was gonna engage that or whatever it is. So I think I went out and bought the nature of nature of doctrine before. And I read that before, and then I engaged Kevin's book. Uh I think I was I had yeah, I was like six months into being 21. It's Christmas. Christmas. Uh my my girl, my then girlfriend, now wife, bought it for me.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

Look at that.

Derek Rishmawy 17:49

She knew how to use my Amazon list. She's a good woman. Um yeah, yeah. So but that was a year before somebody and that that I'll say Kevin's books and those books, they were fascinating coming out of my undergrad with speech act theory and Surle and all that kind of thing. And it's like, oh, you you can do both. You can you can actually play at that level and and use this stuff well. So uh so then looking at once you get the like Kevin's footnotes or things like that, you know, you start you start, as they say, you start cooking with gas. And and um and it was it was but again, it was really piecemeal. It was really scary. But about you, what about you?

SPEAKER_01 18:30

I mean, because

Learning Theology By Following Endnotes

SPEAKER_01 18:31

like I'm I'm I'm taking lessons from this, uh not just from my own past, but also for for my students or any listeners who are in their 20s, uh like who who are kind of at the front end of this. Like it it tells me a couple things. One, like there's really no there's no way to enter the circle of theology than just by starting somewhere. And it it it's a remind like Moltman is a reminder. Like if Moltman knew anything, he knew that God was interesting, and you sense that and the vitality, the existential stakes of his prose. And it's a it's a reminder, I just take it as a reminder to myself, but for all of us, that I would always rather read interesting theology by by someone who was gripped by the unsurpassable like existence and reality of God than stayed just bore boring, you know, like like where there's just no there's nothing like like everything hang like I like I have I have learned from theologians and writers with whom I now have profound disagreements, but they really did teach me many things, but one thing in particular was that like this is worth wrestling with and giving your mind over to. Um the fire hose approach, you said piecemeal, like I think of it as a fire hose.

SPEAKER_03 19:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:58

I sometimes worry about making sure I give my students the right things and the right sequence with the right doctrine. And some students need that, but the truth is like you're gonna read stuff that's off kilter or that I that you're gonna disagree with later. You can't this kid this just never gonna be like a safe process where you always read the good guys and the correct guys all in the right order and you miss all the bad, you know?

Derek Rishmawy 20:21

Aaron Powell I will say yes. And also providentially Providentially I got saved from some stuff, and I think providentially it was good that I had read my undergrad was in philosophy with some people who knew what they were doing. Like like I said, Bonnie had a huge influence on my thinking. She was she was trained in in Aqu Thomas and Augustine and all those sorts of things. And so being able to like read Augustine and then go to Multman and then see what Multmann's saying about like the the the kind of like stone, unemotive, yada yada. And I think, well, Augustine isn't like that. Yeah. I don't think that has I don't think that has to bottom out. So I I will say there there are problems with starting in the 20th century, right? Um and I I think the way that I went about things and historically I've had to do a lot of catch-up over the years. Um yeah, it it's it was kind of despite the fact, I will say it nevertheless throwing people in on the deep end in terms of difficulty and um and uh the depth I think is worth it. So um not thinking, oh now I I do think there's some people you have to on-ramp and there's reading comprehension issues and all that sort of thing. And and and Lewis is always a wonderful place to start. Calvin. Calvin is so good to start actually for a lot of people because Calvin is when I I I I started I I read him right before I started seminary, right around the right around the time I was in seminary, second year. Actually, the timeline's fuzzy, but he is magnificently uh clear. And lucid and not overly technical while still getting you into the depths. That I think is part of why classic writers are very helpful. In that the the pre pre-academic or you know, pre-German academic theology with all without all of the footnoting and without all of the need to uh create dissertation kinds of approaches to theology, the simplicity of the form and the straightforwardly theological and ecclesiological orientation to those texts makes their accessibility uh very it they're deceptively accessible even while going deep, right? Even though you have to like pause over some sentences and things like that. So I don't know. I I don't I don't always I don't recommend how I did things. Um it worked out, but I don't recommend it. Like I wish I could have done I wish I could have like crafted my my my my my pattern differently. But but I mean you did Bible and then what'd where'd you do your master's?

SPEAKER_01 23:10

Yeah, so I did my master's at Emory in Atlanta. Um and some I was doing much. But by by the end of my uh MDiv, I was I was I had sort of found my way to teachers who were giving me um what I was what I was looking for in terms of books and authors. Um I you know, I I mentioned how yeah, I like you, yes, 100% into right. And yeah, I I really believe in in filial piety, including in the intellectual realm. And uh it does, you know, uh right and right and I disagree on things. Uh you know, another another person, actually I have a review of this coming out in a month or two, uh Walt the late Walter Brugemon. Reading Brugemon reading Brugemon was I didn't know I didn't get into Moltman, but but Brugemon in in college and especially Brugemon has has this amazing ability to exercise Marcion from the room in like a page. Like he he he forces students who have come from churches that that that do their best to pretend the old testament doesn't exist, and he just grabs them by the shirt and shakes them and forces them to read the old testament. And so he was he was reading his big fat theology of the old testament book was was a wonderful, wonderful.

Derek Rishmawy 24:24

I read that I read that cover to cover after after my master's. Yes. And tons to disagree with his theology of like actually how scripture works is terrible in many respects. But um, but in terms of like grappling with the text and and actually having a covenantal God who is uh a covenant partner who's a who is I I I I always love there's uh there's there's a phrase he's got that is his uh colossal, colossal self-regard. And and say there's this it was a tremendous like, oh yeah, he gets it. Yeah, that's that's that's the Lord. Um he he does regard himself. It's good. And it's and it's good actually, right? It's good actually. So there's all there's all sorts of stuff to play with there. There's a lot, yeah. Brugman.

SPEAKER_01 25:10

Yeah, Brugman, uh, Wright, Ha Harawas, uh uh Harawas led me to I mean I started buying Harawas's books like a bit of a madman in seminary, just reading them on my own. And he pointed me in two different directions. Uh uh one direction was Yoder.

SPEAKER_03 25:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:30

And uh and actually the person who led me to Harawas, I should say, in the summer of 2006, I read Lee Camp's book, Mere Discipleship. And he, like, I was raised in Churches of Christ, and he was raised in Churches of Christ, and he was a professor for decades at um he did ethics at Notre Dame and then and then taught for years at Lipscomb in Nashville. And he he he could speak my dialect, and then that led me to Harawas, and Harawas led me to uh Yoder. Um and then uh Howerwas also pointed me in the direction of Jensen, and then Jensen was my gateway. He was my gateway to the tradition. No one had quite led me to class. Like I came to Augustine and the Fathers a little bit later. Uh it was late in my MDiv, and then the first the first two years of my PhD where I did like this mega crash course. I had a wonderful, wonderful um patristics teacher named uh uh Felix Osiedou, um, who was uh a visiting a visiting lecture lecturer at Imrive. He's from um, if I'm not mistaken, West Africa. And he did some private reading uh classes with me and where we read Detrinitate and um The City of God and and Confessions, and uh it was just it was just everything you would ever want, everything you would ever want, intellectually speaking. Um and that went on to that went on to other things. But but yeah, Hower Wass and Jensen were my uh my doorways into both the state, the state of the guild in the latter half of the 20th century and all of the names and conversations and topics that mattered, but then also they were both in their own ways pointing me backwards to read Aristotle and Aquinas and Augustine and and and Nyssa and so on and so forth. And that those were so important for me.

Doctrine Of Scripture And Classical Theism

Derek Rishmawy 27:28

Kevin was that for me in a lot of ways, Van Hooser. Um, you know, drama of doctrine, drama of doctrine saved my doctrine of scripture when I was thinking of ditching like inerrancy and all that sort of thing. And then I realized, oh, you can you can do all that stuff, you can do all the fancy philosophical stuff and and still have a have a really, really orthodox doctrine of scripture that actually sharp shapes the way that he actually introduced me to a whole bunch of more traditional reform stuff that I that had i he had all the fancy packaging on it, and then there's like Meredith Klein right there in the middle on the structure of covenant uh theology and and how Jesus is teaching the apostles how to read the New Testament. Oh my goodness, oh yeah, Jesus taught so it it was one of those things where like I didn't know how little I knew until I was reading that. I was like, man, there's stuff on every page. And then you know where he's getting it. But um but that that kind of thing, just realizing the broad range of the schools, same thing, honestly, with re mythologizing theology later. Um that one saved my doctrine of God. After all of after after all of the after all of the Pannenberg and all of the Moltmann and a little bit of Jensen, I never I could never understand Jensen's uh uh statements about the nature of God and time in I read I read systematic theology. Well we'll have to have a whole episode on that, volume one, and I just I I couldn't I couldn't make sense of some of it. I'm not that good of a metaphysician. Um but but his that book because it took the biblical text seriously, uh the whole thing was like, how do you do theology, theology of God off of the Bible while thinking through metaphysics, and you know, you can handle Bart and you can you can you can play you can riff on Thomas and and you can engage the open theists and the relational theists and and all those sorts of things that um it was that one was that one was uh I've read that one several times through. And um yeah, yeah. So that one was a big one for me as well in resetting and becoming extremely comfortable just identifying myself far more with more classical thought, classical theistic thought. It was also I was also reading that's around the time I was starting to become actually reformed, uh, slowly. It was like 24, 25.

SPEAKER_01 29:42

Via Calvin, via Bob Inc. Via what?

Derek Rishmawy 29:46

So via yes, but more so it was kind of idiosyncratic. It was, it was uh it was a semester where I all my all my health issues flared really bad. So that's a whole other story. But I was I was in a lot of pain, whatever. I got a free ticket to a desiring God conference and um with my friend and my buddy's dad took us and he was a lawyer and he gave us each like a hundred bucks for the book table. So I bought I bought like a hundred bucks worth of stuff. So John Owen, some Kevin Young, some some Calvin stuff, some whatever things. And so um it was a slow process, but I will say it was Alvin Planinga, uh his reformed epistemology actually, uh, was big for because he he taught me like he taught me actually you need the whole the inst the internal instigation of the Holy Spirit to even get your your cognition of God off the ground and to be able to recognize scripture as scripture. So so he actually he was how I learned the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit as like a as like a significant epistemological point that matched also with Soren Kierkegaard on in uh in philosophical um fragments. Uh similar point. So that that got me in like the Holy Spirit actually has to move you for you to come to faith point. Um Kevin's drama doctrine was was huge because it was actually a reformed substructure. Uh and then uh Tim Tim Keller's preaching lectures. Uh I I never actually took a preaching course in college. I listened to those lectures several times, and uh I worked those out with my um with my youth pastor at the time, and we I was his teaching intern, and we worked through those over and over again, and he introduced me to that kind of reformed covenantal biblical theological structure as a preaching um point. Like how do you see Christ in all of Scripture? So he pointed me to Edmund Clowney. Um and then I was reading, I actually was reading Calvin at the time and reading, uh found out the Hideword Catechism was awesome. Um and so I slowly but the la the last thing that came for me reformed-wise was the soteriology. Everything else came first. Like all the best people on atonement were reformed, and so I was more sympathetic there. Uh covenant theology made sense, uh, union with Christ. So I got union with Christ from N. T. Wright, right? His all of his in the Messiah. In the Messiah, in the Messiah, oh yeah, that that makes sense. That's why we he can be our representative and substitute, et cetera, et cetera. And then I realized, oh gosh, that's just that's just that's just that's just uh that's just reformed, that's just reformed union with Christ, dogmatics, and federal headship. That's just federal headship. And so I got it from weird sources that like I never had a real cage stage stage in those early years. Um I kind of went kicking and streaming, kind of dragging my feet in, where every other Providence, Providence came before. And then this is gonna be a weird one for you. Uh Etienne Gillesong, his book on Thomas, the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas got me to grasp the metaphysical point about God's sovereignty and the way he relates that. So that was huge for me. So again, when I say I weird sources made me reformed, or not weird, but non-typical. How about you, man? Brad, what are you?

Beeson Divinity Scholarship Spot

Derek Rishmawy 33:13

And now for a quick word from one of our sponsors. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational evangelical seminary on the campus of Sanford University in Birmingham, Alabama. I've been there. It is actually a lovely campus. Uh, led by world-renowned faculty, Beeson forms students in person in a kind of a community-oriented model of theological education. And they have top-ranked scholars who engage their students at kind of very uh small um class sizes. It's a warm, uh, it's a warm environment. And now, thanks to a generous gift, Beeson is actually offering uh new full tuition scholarships for the 2025, 2026 incoming class for their flagship degree, the Master of Divinity. So this kind of makes the whole thing more affordable than it's ever been. Uh now these scholarships cover the cost of tuition for and fees for three years, which is the average time it takes to finish the MDiv. And I'll be honest and say I wish I had known about this or had an opportunity to look at this one when I was heading to seminary. So if you're interested, you can apply and learn more information at BSendivinity.com. How about you, man? Brad, what are you? You are like, how did you end up? How did you what made you you?

Jensen And Ecumenical Hope

Derek Rishmawy 34:26

Obviously Jensen.

SPEAKER_01 34:29

But well, the Jensen bit, you know, I was kind of half with Jensen on his revisionary stuff for a while, a little bit like you. It was kind of like it made me hold a lot of things loose. But the nice thing is, I was joking before you with you before we started recording. I I in my view the revisionary borderline heterodox stuff in Jensen is the right stuff by contrast to um a Pannenberg or a Maltmont for the following reason. Jensen taught me to receive the counsels and the fathers as given, yeah, and his his revisions as subject to the judgment of the church. And if the church took what he said and in the year 2050 or or or or thirty-fifty said, you know what, we sifted it and tested it and tried it, and Jensen was wrong, and uh John of Damascus was right, then Jensen, then Jensen was like, Cool, thanks, church. Like, I'm good, right? Like Yeah, yeah, yeah. He he Jensen had a sense of the boldness of theology, and he hated how timid much modern theology could be. But he also had a sense of the of the weightless like the weightiness and the weightlessness that like academics arguing about the being of God do not determine anything. Um he had a he had a good sense of like, and if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. Like my faith and my hope are not in my being right. They're they're in Christ.

Derek Rishmawy 36:02

Aaron Powell Which is very much the kind of attitude that you have among many of the fathers when Augustine will propose a thought. And he says that oftentimes, and you know, if if if if you guys find this right or wrong, if you find this wrong, etc. etc. Yeah. That that that is a that is a good instinct on Jensen's. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 36:19

That's really exactly here are seven interpretations of the parable. If you if you reject one, that's fine. You know, that's fine. Um and uh so then Jensen ended up pointing me to um like what what was important to me about Jensen, and I continue to read Jensen, like he edifies me. It it it's similar to Bart, but in my view, better than Bart. It's it's it's uh for it's all it's formal and stylistic. It's formal because of his commitments and and and to whom he looks as authorities, not least scripture, but also the tradition. Um uh it's stylistic in the way that he wrote, his his prose and his voice, but then finally um it was his ecumenical posture. Um Jensen labored um from the late 50s, early sixties till till his dying days in 2017 um for the church to be one. Uh and he remained a Lutheran. He he wrote he wrote, I think in the late 90s, that by conviction nothing was stopping him from swimming the Tiber. Um, but he didn't feel compelled to because what he wanted was for God's divided church to be one, for Jesus' prayer to be answered and for the spirit to move in a way that we could never imagine. And that that witness and later Ratzinger and Ephraim Radner are kind of my holy trinity of ecumenical theology in terms of um I I I of not being hyper-denominational or hyper-confessional and trying trying to labor both both on behalf of or in concert with the ancient the ancient church, but also with a view towards um the one church of Jesus' prayer sometime in the future. So that was deeply important to me from Jensen.

Derek Rishmawy 38:21

That's interesting. So on that point, I think so Kevin's stuff, I keep whatever, I don't care. I'll own it. I've always been I've always been a Van Hooser fan. I might like whatever. I'm I don't care.

SPEAKER_01 38:32

Are you reading your invisible mentions right now? What are you doing?

Derek Rishmawy 38:34

No, I just I you know, whatever. Um his stuff on I I have always liked his stuff on I have a mere evangelical streak, mere Christian streak, Lewis, all that kind of thing. I I think I, as much as I joke and am convinced of Presbyterianism, I I I think I get along actually pretty well with Methodists, Baptists, et cetera, random other folks, as long as we're clear. Um but I think the the Bob Ink was really helpful for me on that broader notion of reformed Catholicity of, you know, the best way you can be Catholic in the universal sense, confess the universal uh truths of the faith is is to kind of like own your tradition well and inhabit it well. Uh you can like you, you're nobody nobody can nobody can hang out in the hallway, right? Like Lewis said. Yeah. And so realizing um I no getting over getting over the conceit of a lot of, and I'm not saying this is all of them, but a lot of kind of generic non-denom Christianity that when you are when you are a non-denom 18-year-old, oftentimes your idea is, well, why are we why don't we just we're just all Christians. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:53

Yeah.

Derek Rishmawy 39:54

And I I say this, sorry, I'm a convinced RUF campus minister and I work with other great campus ministries who love Jesus and I'll do that kind of thing. But the idea that we're the we're the denominational, particular campus ministry, and those are the more like, well, you know, everybody's welcome. Everybody's welcome to mine, but every everybody's welcome here. And it's like, no, that's true, but you're Baptists, right? You're non-Baptists who you're congregationalists who don't believe in baptizing babies, who like you actually have a whole bunch of takes, you just haven't thought them through, or you won't name them, right? And getting over that element that um that you can have some sort of null set or send, you know, I'm I'm just a Christian. Nobody's just a Christian. You are a congregationalist, you are a Baptist, you are an Episcopalian, you are all these things, whether or not you own it or not. I just want to own it and be honest, and also just recognize and rank and tier the the relative levels of centrality to each doctrine that either does or doesn't allow me to recognize you as my brother in Christ who happens to be wrong about ecclesiology, right? Whatever it is, uh that kind of thing. And I think I think somebody like Bob Ink actually embodied that really well of like, hey man, uh this such and such, you know, Roman Roman theologian makes this point marvelously, and and the Lutherans here and this or that. Nevertheless, on this point, they're tendentious and yada yada. Like, but there's there can there's a there there can be a gracious humility to your holding very clearly to the particulars of your party, of your church. And I think so so Bob Inc was kind of a master for me there, as it were, and Kevin too, and and Calvin, Calvin in his own way, right? Calvin in his own way, uh, when he's not calling the Anabaptist stupid.

SPEAKER_01 41:46

Yeah, yeah. Calvin Calvin Calvin was polemical. You know who we have who whose name we haven't uh said yet is uh John Webster.

John Webster As Shock Treatment

Derek Rishmawy 41:53

Oh, Webster. Webster I got to later. What when did you hit Webster?

SPEAKER_01 41:57

I read Holy Scripture. Because we both like Webster. Yes. I read Holy Scripture, a dogmatic sketch in the spring of 2011. And I actually got to it again. How do we find books? I got to it because that little series of which it was a part, like uh Donovan's Just War Revisited. Great books. Uh uh some and and and and um The Little Cambridge or whatever. Yeah, the little the Little Cambridge books, they got bigger over time.

Derek Rishmawy 42:26

They got so much bigger. But they were many.

SPEAKER_01 42:29

Um can yeah, Kat Kathy Tanner's uh Christ the Key, all those. Um and it was a slim volume. And I would say I don't think it would be too strong to say that it rocked my world. Um and it it rocked my world. So you read what it sounds like for you, um we we had uh similar, not quite parallel journeys in terms of the doctrine of scripture, both in terms of where we were and where we ended up. But like you, you, you, you read the drama of doctrine, and that helped settle some things.

Derek Rishmawy 43:02

I was giving me a broader framework, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:05

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I I had kind of come from biblical scholarship world and was late to realizing that I had to figure out what I wanted to do guild-wise in terms of uh area of specialty. Did I want to be trained as a theologian, an ethicist, a New Testament scholar, what have you? And you know, all of the premises, as you know, all of the premises of biblical scholarship, including 90%, maybe 99%, of the most Christian or Protestant or evangelical, what have you, biblical scholarship, um, is historicist and historical critical and often either all theological or anti theological.

Derek Rishmawy 43:46

And uh the grammatical historical guys knew what that what that meant in 500 years ago versus what it means to some folks now.

SPEAKER_01 43:55

Yes.

Derek Rishmawy 43:55

Or at least like like late eighties, like like early eighties, late eighties, you know. Evangelical inerrantist scholarship is a different thing than classical Protestant uh approaches to scripture sometimes. For sure. For sure. Spicy take.

SPEAKER_01 44:10

No, no. Yes. No, that's a hundred that's true, but I would also add uh spicy to you. I would add that like there was there was a kind of loss in the 16th and 17th centuries on the Protestant side of ways of reading scripture. It got it got overly, overly constricted. But we'll leave that to the side. We'll leave that to the side.

Derek Rishmawy 44:28

What Webster did for me was Autobiography here at this point to you.

SPEAKER_01 44:33

What Webster did was he spoke, again, you you're sensing a theme. He spoke with such intellectual and rhetorical boldness in saying a flat no to and and he had the chops. He knew the philosophical literature, he knew the hermeneutical literature, he knew the German and French, uh postmodern, modern, pre-modern, he knew all of it. And he called Bunk on like ostensibly philosophically serious, but actually undercooked uh like Department of Religious Studies approaches to scripture. And he just nuked it from orbit. And I honestly was like, I don't think. Like I didn't know what to think anymore. Like I didn't know you could be this bold, this smart, this informed. And at the time he was at Oxford. So it was like, I I didn't know they let guys like this, you know, teach at Oxford. Well they still made him. And then he and then he left. Uh he, you know, he had and by then he'd actually already left. But when he wrote the book that it said he was at Oxford. And uh so I that led me that like I almost, I almost at the time, I I was never, I I it would be incorrect to say that I was ever liberal or a liberal, but I was kind of trending in the direction of like losing all the attributes of scripture, losing the perfections of scripture, um reading it like it's any other text. Uh and and what he he kind of like gave me some shock treatment, you know, to say that like actually you can be a serious, informed, intellectual, theological person in the 21st century, and you can maintain classical Protestant and pre-modern small catholic commitments about the inspiration of scripture, the truth of scripture, anachron, you know, what I would call, from a historicist perspective, anachronistic readings, Christological figural readings of the Old Testament. And it took me a while to kind of recover. And then I ended up writing, you know, he was a chat, he was a part of my dissertation because he he just left an impact. And then I read every word he wrote after that.

Derek Rishmawy 46:48

Yeah, I got I got into I got into uh Webster later. Um I checked my Amazon purchases July 2012. Uh so I got there a little bit later. I also had encountered Horton and Bobink at that point a little bit more. So Horton pushed me, and Horton Horton can do fancy, fancy footwork too, with all the contemporary folks. He gets he his early his early Covenant Dogmatics series is actually fairly is actually really sophisticated stuff that I think gets under uh that is underappreciated by that. Well, I think I think I mean I think he's playing at the same level as the guys he's interacting with there and Milbank and all that kind of thing. Um but uh but I got those I got him I got Webster via ke via Van Hooser and then and then Horton in some ways, and then I got to him and then it was like, oh, oh, okay. And uh and then later, you know, uh on on the dom domain domain of the word and God without measure, all the essays and stuff like that. So uh his little book, I'll just say, and this is like a side, we didn't we didn't ask this question. I'm gonna ask you this question. I'll just answer a question. Um trying to think here.

The Best Small Dogmatics Picks

Derek Rishmawy 48:01

If you had a book that was not a single volume dogmatics that you had to recognize uh and you had to recommend as the best single volume dogmatics, or close to it, right? This is not what it's actually supposed to be, but it functions that way. It can function. It turns out to be that way. I would say top two or three contenders is John Webster's um essays in God Without Measure, volume one, because you get all of his ones on you get Trinity and Creation, Eternal Generation, um, like God is a lover of life.

SPEAKER_03 48:40

Lover of life.

Derek Rishmawy 48:41

Lover of life and lover of love himself, et cetera, et cetera. Um, you get an atone atonement, you get Christology, you get it's actually stunning what happens in those 220 pages. Uh and it's hard to beat as like a s slim single volume. Um there's probably a couple others, but what about you? If you had one that was like, man.

SPEAKER_01 49:06

Yeah. Uh I I I I I I'm I know that I would think of others, but I'll actually give you the uh another more recent one. This is this one is by one of my teachers at Imory, who remains important to me, Ian McFarland. Okay, yeah. A Lutheran systematic theologian. Um, his books are are brilliant, and I think continues to be under-recognized as a great living uh theologian. And and talk about clear prose. You never know what he doesn't. You never know.

Derek Rishmawy 49:32

McFarlane is McFarlane's a hitter.

SPEAKER_01 49:34

And and and and his book on Christian creation exe hilo called From Nothing, I think is is it is a mini dogmatics because it's about God, it's about creatures, and he roots it in the incarnation. So it's just you got everything, you know?

Derek Rishmawy 49:47

Yeah. There's there's two or three like that. I but I yeah. I I you know, and to my shame, I haven't I haven't read that one. But when I think about it, if I wanted it's one of those ones, the Webster one is one of those ones where like, okay, I've got a really dense uh I've got I've dense treatment I need to look at, I need to do, or whatever it is, and like, okay, shortcut. I need to go get the right answer.

SPEAKER_03 50:09

Yep.

Derek Rishmawy 50:09

That little volume is one of them, you know, in in the last 20 years or something like that, if it's not like compendium of theology or Calvin or Bobinks. You know what you're making, whatever

Permission Structures In Modern Theology

Derek Rishmawy 50:19

it is.

SPEAKER_01 50:19

You know what you're making me think of is a I I identified one thread for me, which was like a kind of a kind of boldness rooted in the gospel, taking theology seriously. And another thread for me is um authors who gave me intellectual permission to believe something that most of my teachers or most of my textbooks told me you're not allowed to believe in the 21st century. Um I thought I've thought of it for two reasons. One, we both went to seminary, different kinds of seminary. We both got doctorates. And I've even in my undergrad, I was constantly facing authors, ideas, and sometimes teachers, but mainly authors and ideas. And it there was a kind of social pressure via their writing, which was you, you, you can't think that anymore. You know, the the the standard, the standard like example here is like Bolt Boltmann saying you can't believe such and such in the age of like electricity and the the age of the light bulb. But but it really is like our education is as much a social formation as it is anything else. And you learn by osmosis, oh, like I'm not allowed to believe that anymore. And I remember coming back as a 31-year-old to West Texas, and I a lot of people here clocked me to use that phrase again, that just assume, oh, you went to an Ivy League for a PhD. I know what you believe already. I know you, I know the the beliefs you got rid of and the beliefs that you have now, and they were always wrong. And and and they never came back to me. Like let's say we were having a friendly conversation. They never came back to me with an argument. They came back to me with, oh, I honestly didn't know we were allowed to still think that. You know? And uh the reason I thought of this was that Ian McFrollland wrote my favorite book on original sin called uh In Adam's Fall. And unfortunately, it's with Blackwell, and the book is like $120 or $90. We'll do that. I don't know anybody who's gonna stop, but it it's marvelous. And what he did was he didn't engage the scientific controversies. What he did was he combined, he distills down uh the substance of the teaching via Augustine, uh in scripture, of course, but but articulated by Augustine, and then and then uses Maximus to reframe part of it. Then he brings in a few other figures from the tradition.

Derek Rishmawy 52:48

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 52:48

And then he says, he he explains the logic of why this is not only a good or worthy or defensible, but necessary, it's a it's a logically necessary implication of the announcement of the good news in Christ. And ever since I skimmed that book, The Library's Copy, in 2010 or 2011, it made such an impact on me and it taught me that lesson that I kept learning in my PhD, which was you're allowed to believe things that are not socially popular in the atoms. If there are good reasons to do so. Um and and theological works won my won my admiration if they if they did that.

Derek Rishmawy 53:24

I I think that's a really important point. Uh Webster's that way. I think, again, ke Kevin's that way. He's usually the thing I think about Kevin that was so helpful is that he was also he was usually really adept at expounding the arguments, if there were arguments, the arguments that people had for saying that it was no longer tenable to do that, and then like steel manning things before collapsing them from within. Um it is interesting. I think we probably have slightly different relationships to that because you know, I came from more explicitly well, you Cypress of Christ is is is is evangelical in its own way, if you think about a certain kind of whatever if you're not getting too particular about it's narrowly reformed, et cetera, et cetera. But you know, I had I had that kind of trial by fire early phase with my undergrad in philosophy, being the lone public, being the lone public Christian in my philosophy program or evangelical kid who was like willing to say stuff, sometimes obnoxiously, sometimes not, about all sorts of things. Um, and that came with a certain kind of conservative Republican kid at the big liberal school ethos of like, I know you libs are trying to get me, so I'm I'm not gonna fall for it. I I I cooled a lot, but it was helpful and I'm I got along with my professors. I did, I did, I I did. I wasn't I wasn't a jerk. But that element of having to nevertheless defend things against students who were just as smart as you and professors who were smarter than you. Um I got that earlier. And then later, theologically, I was not in liberal institutions or more not liberal, but you know, more liberal institutions. Azusa was kind of um, you know, it was weird. I went in, I went in Wesleyan and I left reformed kind of by reaction. Um and then Ted's, I was already just Calvinist and or I was already reformed and I just became more PCA. Um but that element of the way I think this is probably in a conversation from another time, the way evangelicals relate to broader scholarship, uh the broader at least broader scholarly work world. Um there's the whole permission structure about what you're allowed to believe. There's the the element of like, well, y'all are the unwashed uh evangelicals anyways, and oh, y'all are the y'all are the heretical liberals anyways, who cares what you think? Um trying to not just fall into that as a a complete posture of dismissal while at the same time not kind of bending over backwards to like, oh my gosh, somebody from Duke thinks I'm smart, or like somebody from, you know, I somebody from one of the outside, somebody from the outside world thinks I made a good argument, right? That that kind of there's and there's a certain kind of evangelical scholar who like lives that way. For sure. You can tell. For sure. Yeah. Um while at the same time, you know, if you get to like, oh, who cares what they think? Well, I don't know. I mean, it's got a good point there. It's a good argument. There's there's 15 footnotes to support it. You should you should be able to deal with it, you know, even if you don't care about the social standing issue. So it it's it's interesting. That that was there for me. I think maybe a little different um than for for you. So it's just it's interesting on that.

A Final Question To Land It

Derek Rishmawy 56:51

Um, Brad, we probably have to land the plane here. Uh I'm trying to think I don't know where we got, where I don't know what people can take from this other than other than the Lord was the Lord was in the work. There's so many twists and turns I think both of us didn't narrate.

SPEAKER_01 57:07

But uh Can I get can I give us a final question to land the plane?

Surprising Influences We Still Need

Derek Rishmawy 57:10

Yeah, one one one quick final question.

SPEAKER_01 57:11

I'll I'll answer for myself and then you then you have the final word. So the question I want to I I have in mind is who is it, you know, in one way you already answered this uh with with Momana Pennenberg, but it's a little slightly different question, which is what what book or author not just at the time but remains important to your theological development that people would be surprised to hear. Not surprised because because you now because you know the they would think you would hate them. But I and I'll give you, I'll give you mine. Um Herbert McCabe and and and a kind of a small assortment of figures around him and like him, like if I'm saying his name right, Robert Sokolowski. Uh uh mid-century mid-century Thomists and and quasi-Tomists.

SPEAKER_03 58:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:04

Yeah. Who just set me the blank straight on the doctrine of God and the the the bedrock importance of creation from nothing and what Sokolowski calls the Christian difference. And my my my my advisor, Kathy Tanner, was helpful on this and others, including McFarland. But McCabe was the one who, with his punchy, his punchy uh British prose uh and his deep Thomistic instincts just like cleared the ground, you know, like with without ever and I never, you know, and set me, set me on the right path and and and never look back. Um Dennis Turner, like the the these folks with the I I'm not a philosopher. Um my I have at best half you know philosophical half chops. I I but like reading these deeply philosophically serious uh theologians on God and and it gave me eyes to see and ears to hear in such a way that when when I hear fellow Christians, especially, especially biblical scholars talking about God, it it it like you find yourself flinching because you just want to hand it, you know, like you have been given a grammar that tradition has given us all a grammar. And thankfully it's a grammar that Catholics and Protestants don't disagree on for the most part. And then to hear it, to hear people, to hear the kind of theological solecisms, it just it it makes you wince. And that that was so I can't I cannot overstate how important that was to me.

Derek Rishmawy 59:45

You know, I I um I'm trying to think here. That's hard. I think I've named a number um of foundational folks for me that way. I'm trying to think who I come back to repeatedly. Um it's hard. I Augustine's always gonna be foundational. Some of the substructure there is right. Obviously, Kevin, um, Bob Ink, Calvin, so on and so forth. Uh one name that hasn't come up that was just big for me existentially, and I think theologically in his own way, although that came out later, uh, was Kierkegaard. Um Kierkegaard, and then a little bit of early Bart drawing on him with some of the just the absoluteness of God and the way that he and his demands press on you um existentially and directly, uh the contemporaneousness of Christ, all that sort of thing. I went I went through uh Kierkegaard phrase and training in Christianity and um some of those upbuilding discourses and and uh sickness unto death. Um it's always in the background deep subterranean structure there. Uh something about I I I I over time have have gravitated towards churchmen, established thinkers, uh kind of, you know, people who write dogmatics and and respectable, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But some, you know, weird, fiery, you know, Danish man the wildness of the prophet. Wildness of the prophet, it's still there. Yeah and and that I think theology has to be able to pronounce that way. If you're dealing with an absolute God who, you know, shoots down fire uh to consume the offering with with Elisha versus all the prophets of Baal and all that sort of thing, that kind of the churchman eventually has to be able to pronounce and proclaim God in that way against you know, contramundum, if you need to. And if your theology can never get off the ground that way, like I'm sorry, I can never imagine Paul Tillik's ground of being provoking a you know, a ruckus in the temple or in the or in the halls of the academy or anything like that. You can't. So Kierkegaard's God could. Kierkegaard's God could. Yeah. So so yeah, I think he's he's there.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:32

That's good. That's good. I didn't know that, Dirk.

Derek Rishmawy 1:02:34

Yeah, yeah. Brad, this has been an interesting show for me. I don't know how interesting it's gonna be for me. You've kind of bullied me into this one. Uh we'll we'll have to do something like this with uh we'll get Alistair and James and some of the other folks do this, but but for now, I don't know what we're gonna call this one, but the the the making of theology nerds. Uh but for now, if you've listened so far, thank you for your time, your patience. Uh, and if you'd like to rate and review us on iTunes, Spotify, uh, this has been Mere Fidelity.