Beeson Podcast, Episode #679 Doug Sweeney Date >>Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your host, Doug Sweeney. >>Doug Sweeney: Welcome to the Beeson Podcast. I am your host, Doug Sweeney. I am joined today by my friend, Collin Hansen, who serves as Vice President for Content and Editor in Chief of the Gospel Coalition. He also co-chairs Beeson’s Advisory Board, I am pleased to say. Collin is here today because we’re recording an interview about a new book of mine and he’s going to kind of chair our conversation today and ask me some questions. Collin, thanks very much for being with us and why don’t we turn it over to you? >>Collin: All right. Thank you, Doug. We are talking about this book here, “The Substance of Our Faith: Foundations For the History of Christian Doctrine.” I had a chance to read it recently. A lot of things that we could talk about. We’ll see where the conversation goes. But I think, Doug, just one of the most basic questions ... I get this question all the time as an author. I know you do as well. Writing a book is not easy, even if you’ve done it a few dozen times like you have. Why did you write this book? Give us a vision for this book. And also it’s not alone as a book. There is another one that will follow it. So, just give us a little bit of that context. >>Doug Sweeney: Yes, this is the first of what will be two volumes on the global history of Christian doctrine. This is the short one. Conceptually it was a little bit more difficult to write than the next one will be. But the next one is going to tell the story of the history of the teaching ministries of our churches over the course of 2,000 years. So, that’s kind of a daunting thing to do. And I’m in the midst of that now. But this first book kind of sets the stage for the significance of that by talking about the importance of doctrine for Christian discipleship. And talking about a range of issues that’s useful for teachers in our churches to know about so that they can be more faithful, effective, and fruitful as they minister Christian doctrine in our churches. The most important reason I’m on this project is I spent my whole life in discipleship ministries of one kind or another, in churches and in schools. And I think faithful Christian discipleship involves a lot of learning; learning from the Lord. In the bible, a disciple is a student who follows Jesus and learns from him so as to become more like him. And honor him with his life. I think we need a reinvigorated kind of discipleship ministry in our churches today. So, that’s the main reason why I did this book and why I am on this project. There’s another academic reason – this is more of an academic book than some books that I’ve done before. I’m trying to provide an updated history of Christian doctrine for pastors and teachers and seminary students that is as rich and detailed and comprehensive as some of the old famous ones written by a lot of Germans 100-150 years ago. But it is really aimed also right at church people who are as excited as I want them to be about pursuing discipleship ministry in our churches. I’m defining Christian doctrine in this project as church teaching. What we teach people in our congregations about Jesus and the gospel and the bible for the sake of shaping their daily Christian lives and their witness and their every day activity in the world. I think that’s tremendously important and I’m trying to develop a project that kind of deepens the well of resources from which we do that in our churches. >>Collin: Sometimes, Doug, an author ... when they have a burden like this they’re writing in reaction to something, or they’re writing out of appreciation for something. When you consider the problems in the church today or some of the challenges that you’re trying to address through these resources – are you writing out of reaction? Or are you writing out of appreciation? >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. I think for me reaction would be too strong. I don’t want to operate as a reactionary. And I do appreciate the wonderful discipleship ministries that we find in lots of our churches today. But I am concerned, I must confess, about the pretty dramatic decline in biblical literacy, theological literacy among lay people today. I think probably there are too many churches today where people aren’t helped to grow as disciples, to get to know the Lord and his word and his will for our lives better and better over time. So, yeah. I want to step in and do what I can in a humble and loving and respectful way to encourage a more serious approach to discipleship in our churches, and to help provide resources. I love teaching in churches. This comes out of my teaching ministry in congregations as well. >>Collin: This is a dangerous question to ask a historian, because when you talk about the decline of something your horizon could be 50 years, 100 years, even 500 years! A lot of times when people are talking about the decline they might think ... I mean, you’ll hear about 25 year olds talking about the decline of the church and it’s from something they perceive to have seen in a youth ministry or something like that. When you talk about this juvenilization of the church, this declining biblical literacy, and all that sort of stuff ... give us a little bit of the timeline on that. Is this is a relatively recent phenomenon that goes back to, say, the decline of Sunday schools in favor of small groups? Or is this a bigger problem going back to the declining influence of the church across the West? Or could it be way further back than that? What do you have in mind? >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. Well, there are a number of ways we could talk about this. You could chart it over the long term, but it might help our listeners to talk about short term declines, because that feels more real to most people. >>Collin: That’s what I was asking ... as a church historian you could go back and give us trends from who knows when. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. Well, one book that’s weighing heavily on my mind these days is written by your friend and colleague, Michael Graham with Jim Davis and Orlando called “The Great De-Churching.” Which documents in technicolor the decline in church attendance and church membership and even commitment to things like church membership – just in the last generation alone. I think those guys say in that book that in the last quarter century about 40 million American adults have stopped going to church. That’s about 15% of the adult population. Younger adults especially aren’t even sure why church membership should matter anymore. The pollsters tell us that for the first time since they’ve been measuring these things carefully less than half of Americans are church members today. So, that’s a pretty significant decline. And then when I add on top of that set of data a lot of other data that I get regularly from pollsters about the decline in biblical literacy among lay people ... I don’t want to say the sky is falling. I’m not Chicken Little. I really do believe that Jesus should be taken at his word when he said in Matthew 16, “The gates of hell will not prevail against the church.” We theologians use a word “indefectibility” to refer to what Jesus was saying there. God has promised that his church will prevail in the end. And I believe those things wholeheartedly. Still, I think as a teacher, as a seminary dean this is really important work. I can’t imagine what’s more important than encouraging discipleship, growth in the knowledge and the love of God and our neighbors among Christian people. I want to see measureable improvement over time. Now, I’m a Lutheran. I don’t want works righteousness. I don’t want to lay heavy guilt trips on people all the time. But I do want us to step in and really help people grow up in maturity in Christ and I think there’s a lot of room for improvement these days in that area. >>Collin: It might help to explain a little bit of what you cover in these books because ... was there a specific ... did you know as much about Eastern Orthodox theology and doctrine? Or did you have to study more of that to prepare for this? Because this isn’t just for evangelicals. This is a book that covers mainline protestants. It covers Roman Catholics. It covers the Orthodox Church. And I think when you put it into that broader context about Davis and Graham, evangelicals are not in the best shape that we could be in. We’re a little bit more steady. When you compare us to Catholics and the mainline Protestants in particular. So, talk us through a little bit of that process because part of what you see in terms of the decline is really significant in some denominations, in particular. Less so in some others. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. So, sort of two things there. First thing – yeah, I’m writing this project as a say in the introduction for Christians who mean it. So, I don’t assume there are going to be a lot of liberal protestants who read this book. But I do assume that other people who share my concern about where we are with discipleship today share my appreciation for helping people understand the main teachings of the bible and the Christian faith. And really want to take Christian orthodoxy, Christian growth and grace seriously, will read this. And I’d like even just for educational purposes to try to account for the doctrinal or the teaching ministries of all serious churches. Clearly, I’m an evangelical protestant. But I’m trying to write it for all serious Christians. All Christians who mean it. And then, as you suggest, that’s involved some learning curves for me. (laughter) So, I was trained as a young church history student in a pretty western way. And this is a global history of Christian doctrine. So, as a church history teacher, historical theology teacher over the years I’ve learned a lot about the history of Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. But I hadn’t learned as much as I should have learned about the teaching ministries of churches outside the Western world. And I’m 58 years old now. I’ve written a bunch of books and they’ve sort of clustered around themes that have to do with early protestant history and modern evangelical history. So, at my age it’s kind of fun, really! It’s a nice new challenge to learn some new things and incorporate them into a project on the teaching ministries of the churches. >>Collin: But then in the context of your work at Beeson Divinity School, because one of our distinctive’s is being an interdenominational seminary. Let’s say that somebody picking up this book from Baker Academic is an evangelical protestant. What would they benefit from learned from other serious Christians? Of course, at Beeson we are evangelical, so we don’t extend to those other traditions, but there’s a similar principle at work in that learning from other Christians is beneficial. How do you explain that to people? Admittedly, what we’re doing at Beeson and have been doing since the 1980’s is not the way that most people do it. >>Doug Sweeney: I explain this all the time to groups of prospective students who wonder about the differences between going to a denominational seminary on the one hand and going to an interdenominational seminary on the other hand. And there’s pros and cons to both. So, I’m not the kind of guy who says, “Everybody should always only consider one or the other.” But the advantages to being in an interdenominational setting are that in my view you learn your own denominational and confessional traditions better. Because you’re not just told by those who are already in your denominational group what the right way is to think about things and how we want you to preach and teach about these things in our churches. You do get that because there will be people from your denominational tradition on our faculty. But you’ll also learn about how your group is similar to and different from other groups of people and thereby I think you learn your own tradition better. Because you have to figure out not only why in your churches you do things the way you do, but you have to develop a certain amount of sympathy and appreciation at least for the ways in which God-fearing, bible-believing people in sister denominations do things. I think along the way you also develop a more comprehensive understanding of the Christian faith. You learn more about the ways in which your cousins in other denominational traditions or networks of churches are doing things. And frankly, this is part of what animates this whole project. I want people to know the Lord better and know his word better and know it’s main teachings better so that they can love and serve him better. And there’s an analogy here when we talk about interdenominational learning. I think we can get along with, love, and do gospel ministry together with other kinds of Christians better, more faithfully, more fruitfully when we know them better, more faithfully and fruitfully. It’s hard to love people you don’t know well. It’s hard to serve well together with people that you’re really only mostly suspicious about. And you don’t have any appreciation for. >>Collin: That’s one of the questions I was wondering, though, because studying our differences and seeing them in a couple of volumes could actually lead to greater disunity, of course, where you see, well, I really understand now why I’m not in that church and some of that is just necessary on this side of Jesus’ return – even as we continue to pray John 17 along with him. But how does understanding those differences and even studying them actually breed a certain measure of unity? How do you intend that at least? >>Doug Sweeney: It doesn’t necessarily yield unity. But when you learn about them in a context fully of teachers who agree with the Apostle Paul who said in his letter to the Ephesians that “We serve one Lord and have one faith and one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in you all.” That kind of unity then is more credible and is more powerful in your life after you’ve already seen what’s being united. The kind of differences among people ... and they’re not just denominational or doctrinal. There’s all kinds of differences in the family of God – ethnic, racial, you name it! There are ways of so emphasizing diversity without an emphasis on unity that you just lead people into despair. There’s no way we’re going to be in the same family. But if you believe in one Lord, one faith, one baptism – you’re going to be somebody who with biblical theological help, with the help of the Holy Spirit, is showing people how we have unity in the midst of our diversity. And I think the biblical authors do that very well for us. And I think good church history teachers do that well for people also. >>Collin: Speak to one of the major themes in the book which is the unity and continuity of the church across space and time. It seems to me that ... and correct me if I’m wrong on this ... evangelicals tend to be better at the space part of it. Probably because of our formation out of the missions movement, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries. But probably not as good about it with time. (laughs) In part, because we’re protestants and sometimes there’s a feeling of rupture in there, and a critique of what came before in some ways. But of course your book is doing both. It’s introducing people to teachings that they don’t know around the world, like you said, in non western parts. But at the same time it’s really trying to root us in that continuity over time. Tell us a little bit more about why that is important, especially to somebody who might be a little bit skeptical to say, “Well, why can’t we just leapfrog all that stuff and just why do we need more than the bible?” It’s fair, we got the bible ... why do we need this whole history of doctrine? >>Doug Sweeney: Well, as a church history teacher, I’m here to tell you that people with the right view of the bible oftentimes disagree with one another over matters of teaching. And oftentimes disagree with one another in ways that have pretty harmful affects. I’m a scripture principal protestant. I think the bible is the only norm that should norm our faith and practice. But that’s not to say we shouldn’t use other resources for interpreting and teaching and preaching the bible to people. And the kind of folks who resist learning about the Lord and learning about his word with the help of other Christians past and present at home and around the world – we can become the kind of people who too easily kind of invent our own theology in separation from the rest of God’s family. >>Collin: In reaction to ... >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah, and that’s frankly what a lot of the most notorious in the history of Christianity have done. >>Collin: And you just repeat those heresies over time. You think that they’re novel. That’s just Aryanism again. >>Doug Sweeney: That’s right. So, obviously I’m a church history guy. I’m writing on the history of doctrine. I’m a very traditional sort of person. But I don’t think as a protestant I’m supposed to hold tradition up at the level of scripture. I’m simply supposed to do biblical ministry, preaching and teaching ministry in the communion of the saints – with other Christians throughout history who have gone before us and played important roles in kind of defining the doctrines that we teach people in our churches. And with people in other parts of the world. And I would say you posed the question suggesting we do better at teaching across space than across time. I think that’s probably true of western evangelicals. But as I’ve traveled the world in recent decades and tried to do teaching ministry together with people from outside the West, I’ve learned that one of the struggles of non Western evangelicals in particular is teaching across space with Westerners. There are a lot of, say, Chinese brothers and sisters today who are in situations where other Chinese people who aren’t Christian believers will say things like, “Well, one more Christian, one less Chinese.” You can’t be authentically Christian and be authentically Chinese at the same time. And I’m trying to help friends like that with resources that show people that you can indeed. If you get Westerners to teach the faith with the help of other Christians from around the world, it will be easier and more credible for non Westerners to suggest to their own friends and relatives at home that we can be part of the one holy catholic and apostolic church as well without giving up our, say, in this case Chinese ethnic identity. >>Collin: I want to ask a question about theological retrieval. Some of the listeners and viewers here, they don’t know what that is or they don’t know about that trend in academic theology right now. You seem to mark a bit of a skeptical take on some of that. But I wonder about with retrieval, is there any way to retrieve without ... I mean, don’t we have to basically pick and choose on these things even in retrieval projects? Explain a little bit more of what retrieval is and what you are perhaps critiquing in this book. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah, I really do like a lot of what goes by the name of retrieval theology. But one thing I’m trying to point out in this book, which is providing resources for the teaching of the Christian faith in our churches, is that the methods of retrieval theology have been learned in the wake of another teaching movement among theologians in the modern period called constructive theology. And the methods of constructive theology were the ones that I was taught in grad school by liberal protestants and post Christian theologians. Who were so suspicious of the ways in which traditional Christians have used the tradition to marginalize certain groups of people that they became kind of anti traditional. They taught us that the Christian tradition should not be seen as authoritative in the life of the church, it’s been more oppressive than it has been liberating. So, what you need to do is go deconstruct all the assumptions you were raised with about traditional Christianity. And then kind of go back into the tradition and find bits and pieces from the Christian past that you can assemble on your own in a very late modern way. And create new understandings of God and God’s relationship to the world that you feel like are more liberating for more people. Well, that kind of picking and choosing from the Christian tradition is also what a lot of people do in the name of retrieval theology. Retrieval theologians tend to be more theologically conservative than constructive theologians. But they too go and choose from their favorite texts, their favorite authors from the history of Christianity, and kind of pull abstract from their writings and their lives principles that they can sort of bring into the present and use to assemble something new and better than what they’ve inherited in the Christian tradition. And for academic purposes, that can be a helpful thing. As you’re training young theology students to do something that offers some new research for the rest of us. I just don’t think it’s a very helpful method when it comes to teaching people about Jesus and the gospel and the bible and the Christian faith in our churches. I think people in our churches need what I’m calling in this book the whole feast of faith, not just the teacher’s favorite dishes, or the teacher’s own idiosyncratic preferences. >>Collin: The reactions, in part, which is very common in academic and in ministry circles. Just kind of wanted to ask that question early on. (laughs) >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah, and I know you struggle with this, too, because the Gospel Coalition has a lot of very well known preachers and teachers who are featured there, and evangelicals can become a little too enamored of their favorite. Their favorite preacher! Their favorite teacher! And if that favorite preacher/teacher is not careful and faithful, he can lead people astray. >>Collin: Yeah. Well, give us a sense of where you are right now in working on the Successor book? What’s something that you’re getting excited about right now in that project? >>Doug Sweeney: Well, right now I’m working on the chapter on the doctrine of the church. I’m excited about all of the doctrines. But probably the thing that is the most refreshing to me, the thing that is the most kind of animating to me about work on this second volume is the material that’s new to me that I am learning and trying to incorporate in the story. And this takes us back to what we were talking about ten minutes ago. I mean, the big burden I feel as an author of this project is that I truly believe for biblical reasons that we share one holy catholic and apostolic church, as we say in the creed. As a church historian I see our differences all over the place. I teach students about our differences. The exciting thing, the difficult thing to do is tell a unified coherent edifying story about the history of our teaching ministries in the churches that does justice to our diversity without just leaving it as diversity all the way down. We’re one family of God, and for spiritual theological biblical reasons I’m excited about telling the story of unity in our diversity, in the teaching ministries that we share. >>Collin: I think another distinctive of this project, Doug ... and this goes back to my first meeting with you in 2007. You’ve always excelled at being able to teach things well that you don’t necessarily agree with. And certainly in my work in apologetics that’s very important to be able to represent people in a way that they would recognize. But it’s important for any professor with integrity and any teacher within the church with integrity, trying to cover this kind of ground. Because you have to represent a lot of people you might not agree with on a number of things. (laughs) But hopefully in a way that those people who do agree with them would recognize as their own. So, I have no doubt that that will continue to characterize the remainder of your work and make it valuable for the church for many years to come. One last question, just how can we be praying for you in that project? Or Beeson in general? >>Doug Sweeney: Well, as we suggested earlier in this conversation, these are difficult days for Christian leaders in churches, in seminaries, at the Gospel Coalition. We’re surrounded by the kinds of diversity that can lead to a lot of divisiveness and nastiness and meanness in our Christian institutions. Church membership and attendance are declining fairly dramatically. At least across the board nationally, generally speaking, these days. For the last generation, seminary enrollments have been declining as well. So, these are not the easiest days ever to do the kind of ministry that we do. At the same time, I really do believe in the indefectibility of the church. I really do believe in the kind of seminary education that we offer here and the Lord has blessed Beeson despite all the difficulties we’ve been going through the last generation or so. So, if folks are going to pray for us, pray that we’ll be faithful. Pray that we’ll take the Lord at his word and continue to do discipleship right, continue to do seminary education right, not become so worried about the challenges that we force false ways of improving things for the sake of near term gains and at the expense of long term growth in grace in discipleship. >>Collin: Thanks, Doug. We’ll pray for that. >>Doug Sweeney: Thank you, Collin. Thank you, listeners, for tuning in. We love you. We’re praying for you. And we say goodbye for now. >>Rob Willis: You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast; coming to you from the campus of Samford University. Our theme music is by Advent Birmingham. Our announcer is Mike Pasquarello. Our engineer is Rob Willis. And our show host is Doug Sweeney. For more episodes and to subscribe, visit www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast. You can also find the Beeson Podcast on iTunes and Spotify.