Beeson Podcast, Episode #757 Name 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'm your host, Doug Sweeney, and I'm joined today by Dr. Gerald Bray, a long-time, deeply loved professor here at Beeson. Dr. Bray has been at Beeson for most of the history of Beeson. He's theoretically retired, but he teaches for us every year and remains a prolific scholar as well. We want to talk with him today about one of his recent books called Reading the Bible with Ten Church Fathers, hot off the press from Baker 2026. So, thanks, Dr. Bray, for joining us again on the podcast. >>Bray: Thank you very much for having me. >>Doug Sweeney: So even since I've been around, I've interviewed you on the podcast multiple times. I don't think we need a long introduction of Gerald Bray to our listeners, but we probably have some new listeners tuning in for the first time. Maybe it would help if briefly we introduced you by simply asking you, so how did God move you to Beeson in the first place, and when was that? >>Bray: Well, God brought me to Beeson in 1993. And in fact, it's this very week that I've celebrated my 33rd anniversary. >>Doug Sweeney: Oh, congratulations. >>Bray: That's the beginning of this month. And one way or another, I've been here ever since. I only came for a semester, and I had no intention of staying. I wasn't invited just for a job. But I'd been here for three weeks, after three weeks, and the dean called me in and asked me if I would take a job, you know, full-time job. And I actually said no because I said, “You don't really know who I am. I mean, I've only been here for three weeks.” And I said, “For all you know, I mean, I might have a criminal record or something.” I mean, you know, seemed to me to be rather rushing things. And his reply to me was, “Well, most of the people I've hired, I've only seen for an hour.” Well, if that's the criteria you're using, I suppose three weeks is quite a long time. So, anyhow, you know, it's amazing how God opens doors when they're meant to open. And a series of unexpected things happened after that. But to make a very long story short, I ended up taking the job, and I've been here ever since. >>Doug Sweeney: Well, I'm very glad you have been. You've taught as a professor of historical theology. >>Bray: Yes. >>Doug Sweeney: You've also served as our Anglican Chair of Divinity. >>Bray. I have. >>Doug Sweeney: You've worn multiple hats. And it seems like we talk you into teaching every semester in one capacity or another. >>Bray: Yes, that's right. >>Doug Sweeney: Yes. >>Bray: You know, and I still haven't been thrown out. >>Doug Sweeney: No way. Thank you very much for your service. >>Bray: Thank you. >>Doug Sweeney: All right. Well, let's tell our listeners and viewers about the new book, Reading the Bible with Ten Church Fathers. Maybe just a starter question. Why did you decide to write this book? What are you trying to do here? >>Bray: Well, as I just told you about how I came to Beeson in the first place, it wasn't really my idea. It was something that was suggested to me- >>Doug Sweeney: By the publisher. >>Bray: By the publishers. >>Doug Sweeney: Okay. >>Bray: The publishers wanted to do a series, and I don't know where they are with that at the moment, but they wanted to take 10 figures from different branches of theology or the church or something like this, put them together in a simple format as introductory material. So, it'd be like, you know, reading the Bible with 10 missionaries, reading the Bible with 10 preachers, something of this kind. >>Dou Sweeney: Sure. >>Bray: So, they approached me to say, reading the Bible with 10 church fathers, or actually, it was even vaguer than that. It was just the 10 church fathers is what they started off with. >>Doug Sweeney: Okay. >>Bray: And they said, what can you come up with, you know, I mean, who would you choose? And I said, well, there are literally hundreds of church fathers, you know, you could choose. And 10 is rather restrictive in one sense. I mean, you have to, it's a good idea to concentrate on a few, you know, rather than a great many. But how do you do this? What's the criterion you're going to use for the choice that you make? And so, this is where my contribution came in. I said, well, I think what we need here is something to stress the importance of Scripture, of the Bible, for the church fathers. Because the church fathers are quite well known in some ways, but most people think of them, if they do, in terms of the formulation of Christian doctrine. >>Doug Sweeney: Right. >>Bray: You know, the creeds and the doctrines of the early church, which is fair enough. >>Doug Sweeney: Sure. >>Bray: I mean, that's a good thing. But in the last couple of centuries, the way scholarship has moved, the reading of the Bible, the biblical interpretation, has grown away from the tradition of the church for different reasons. It's been updated, if you like, in some way, you could say that, using modern techniques, modern criteria, modern questions asked of what the Bible means, and so on. And so, the biblical interpretation of the church that the church fathers employed has been pushed to one side, remarkably. And if you read books about the early church or even get collections of writings of the early church fathers, the biblical commentaries that they wrote, and even the sermons that they preached, tend to be put aside, not entirely. But you see, if you take some very well-known person like Augustine, you can go into a bookshop, a secular bookshop, and buy his Confessions. You can buy his Great City of God, the study of human history. You might even be able to buy his book on Christian doctrine. You know, these things that he has produced and that are still widely read and available today. But his commentaries, which are few in number, I must say, and his sermons are much harder to find. >>Doug Sweeney: Right. >>Bray: You know, they exist. >>Doug Sweeney: Yes. >>Bray: But they don't really spring to mind. >>Doug Sweeney: Right. >>Bray: And so- >>Doug Sweeney: And even people who talk about his book on Christian doctrine sometimes forget that it has a lot to do with interpreting the Bible. >>Bray: Oh, it is. It's a handbook of biblical interpretation, in effect. Yeah, that's right. People just don't know this or don't think about it primarily. And this has been the effect of the way, you know, scholarship has developed since about 1800 or so. And one of the things that's happened in recent years is there's been a kind of recovery of not just the fathers themselves, but the mentality, the world in which they lived. And of course, once you start doing that, the importance of the Bible stands out. And traditionally, when I say traditionally, over the last couple of hundred years, most people would say, oh, yes, that's true, but we read the Bible differently from the way they did then. And therefore, their way of reading the Bible really doesn't say much to us. We can just put that to one side and look at them in other ways. Whereas one of the things I'm trying to show in this book is that it's actually putting the Bible at the center, which unites us with the church fathers. I mean, they believed that the Bible was Christian teaching. This is what Augustine did when he wrote on Christian doctrine. I mean, it was an interpretation of the Bible. And we believe this. You know, we dress it up, we call it sola scriptura or whatever today, but fundamentally, we believe that the Bible is the source of our faith, and the yardstick by which our doctrine is measured. >>Doug Sweeney: Yes. >>Bray: And so, in this way, we're one with the church fathers. Now, of course, you know, they might have, they have different interests to what we have sometimes. They made mistakes, but then we have to point out, well, so do we, you know. They aren't the only ones. But the, but the principle on which they're operating, I mean, they're faced with the Word of God, which is given to them, and they have to make sense of it. They have to interpret it. They have to apply it in their situation. >>Doug Sweeney: As we're thinking now about this part of your book, and in my mind, I have imaginary listeners who are active in preaching, Bible teaching, even sometimes Sunday school teaching, but they love to read books and learn and get better and better. Oftentimes, if they're evangelical Protestants, when they start reading the church fathers on the Bible, it does seem a little foreign to them. It seems rather different from the kinds of books about the Bible or commentaries or sermons they're used to experiencing right now. And it seems off-putting to them. Do you have advice for them about how to learn what we can learn and should learn from the fathers without being too put off by the differences between the way they interpreted the Bible and the way even in seminaries like Beeson today, we teach people to interpret the Bible. >>Bray: Yes. Well, of course, yes. I mean, I think we have to say the first thing they were trying to do was win people for Christ, to evangelize, to preach the gospel. And this is common. This is what we wat to do as well. The second thing, and this is again where we are united with the fathers, is you can only preach the gospel to people if you are on their wavelength. If you can't speak to them where they are, you won't communicate with them. Now, in some ways, of course, where they were, where the ancient people were, is different from where most people are today, in some ways. I mean, the obvious example is that most people in the ancient world lived in a society where many gods were worshipped, and there were statues of gods on every corner and every temple and everything else. This is not the situation here today on the whole. Of course, if you went somewhere like India, you know, with Hinduism, it would be very similar in this respect. So, you know, they're quite close in that way, but that's not our situation. So, questions like, you know, is God visible or invisible and that sort of thing, I mean, we might take for granted, wonder why they're going on about this, you know, at such length. But in the circumstances, that was an issue that had to be addressed. And so, you say, well, they had to deal with that. They had to deal with Judaism. And here again, I mean, today, we are still in this situation. We have to say, well, what is our relationship to the Jewish people, to the Old Testament, to Israel, and so on. And this is a matter of current social and political concern. You know, how are we related? And, and the church fathers, of course, were very preoccupied with this, because they had to say, well, we are the new Israel, we are the true Israel. But the Jewish people are part of the family, as it were, in a way, you know, but they just haven't heard the message of the Messiah, the message of Christ. And so, we have to try to convince them that Jesus is the fulfillment of the scriptures. And so, there's that take on it, you know, that this is a major concern. But also, of course, even within the non -Jewish world, there might be a lot of people, well, there were a lot of people then, and there are a lot of people now who are attracted to, or at least favorable to, Jesus in some way or other. You know, Jesus was a great teacher. He was a great leader. He was whatever it was. But they can't swallow the whole package. They can't accept that he was God in human flesh, that he came to pay the price for sin, you know, once you get into these details. And yet, they're not just details, they're the central message. I mean, if Jesus was just a nice person who went around, you know, preaching a higher degree of morality or something like that, he would be no different from, say, Gandhi or, you know, Nelson Mandela or anybody like that, Martin Luther King, anybody like that that you might, you know, come up with today. And without, I don't want to say anything negative about those people at all. I mean, leave that to one side. But Jesus is in a different league. He's in a different category. He has a different, there's a different purpose to his, to his ministry, to his life, and so on. And this is what the church fathers had to bring out. Jesus is not just another philosopher, not just another prophet, not just another holy man. But he's God in human flesh. And, and he wasn't just prophesied in the Old Testament, he was of course, but he was alive and well in heaven with his father, and in that sense, could be regarded as an author of the Old Testament, as one of the revealers, if you like, in that way. >>Doug Sweeney: Sure. >>Bray: And so, getting that message across was what they had to do. And if you look at it like this, I think you can get a lot of inspiration. >>Doug Sweeney: They're not so different after all. >>Bray: No, that's right. >>Doug Sweeney: And I see you've got a nice array of church fathers in here. And what you're doing in these chapters is introducing readers to them, familiarizing us with them so that their biblical writings, their sermons, their biblical teaching isn't so foreign, and we can make good use of it. >>Bray: Right. >>Doug Sweeney: I'm holding the book up. Most people who listen to the podcast, listen in cars and aren't looking at us while they're listening to us talk. But some people watch on YouTube, so I brought my copy of the book so I could hold it up and people could see what it looks like. >>Bray: Right. >>Doug Sweeney: I am looking at the table of contents, and you've got chapters on Justin Martyr, Morrigan, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrosiaster, John Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Jerome, Augustine, Cyril of Alexandria, and Theodoret of Cyrus, or Cyrus as some people say. That's quite an array. >>Bray: Yes. >>Doug Sweeney: This is quite an education, reading this book. And the next thing I want to ask you, you know, I have this memory, I forget which of the podcast interviews the two of us did, where you were telling me, that in the mid -1990s, Dr. George asked you to lead our faculty in a discussion about which saints from the history of Christianity should be put up in the dome in Hodges Chapel. >>Bray: Oh, that’s right. Yes. >>Doug Sweeney: So, I'm thinking about that as I ask this. I don't think you probably surveyed the entire faculty for input on which 10 church fathers you should choose for this book, but they're not all from the same place, they’re not all from the same century. How did you decide which 10 people to focus on here? >>Bray: Well, I looked through, of course, the major ones. There's some you just can't leave out. I mean, to write a book about the church fathers and not include Augustine, for example, you know, somebody would pick that up immediately and say, you know, you've left out a very central figure, which is true. So, I mean, there are one or two people like that who are going to get in, regardless, you might say, because they're just so prominent, and have been so influential, that you can't ignore them. But that wasn't the criterion that I used. The criterion that I used was that these people, have all in their own way, made a substantial and maybe not unique is perhaps the wrong word, but substantial and distinctive, shall we say, contribution to the interpretation of the Bible. >>Doug Sweeney: Yes. >>Bray: And I put that first, because there are some very prominent church fathers, and I suppose if look at who I left out, you see, I mean, somebody like Athanasius, for instance. Well, why didn't I put Athanasius in? Well, Athanasius was very prominent, of course, in formulating Christian doctrine, doctrine of Christ, and so on. But he didn't write commentaries on scripture. I mean, he used the Bible, of course, and argued and so on. But he wouldn't be known as a Bible scholar, primarily. And someone like Tertullian, you see again, I mean, or Irenaeus in the very early days, both of whom, you know, combated heresies and did so on the basis of scripture, but they again, they didn't focus on the biblical text as such. They quoted it when it was needed and necessary, and they were very familiar with it. But they didn't write commentaries on, say, the Gospels or whatever. So that was really the criterion of choice. I mean, Justin Martyr I chose, not just because he was an apologist for the Christian faith, you know, one of the earliest and most important, but also because he went into dialogue with Jews in his own time to a degree that was unusual. He can be compared in some ways to the anonymous author of the Epistles of the Hebrews in the New Testament, you know, for the way in which he goes into the Old Testament and shows, you know, how it was fulfilled point by point. Now, Justin's a good example here, because obviously, some things are perfectly clear to him, like Isaiah, for instance, chapter 7, you know, about the birth of Immanuel from a virgin, or chapter 53, the suffering servant. And he could argue with the with the Jews of his time, saying, well, if you put it all together, if you put all the prophecies of the Old Testament together, that the Messiah is going to be a descendant of David, the Messiah is going to come and save Israel, the Messiah is going to do this and that. And he points out the different things. He said, Jesus not only fulfilled these criteria in his own life and ministry, but no one else has come anywhere close or even tried to. And now that Jerusalem and the temple and so on have been destroyed, because he was writing after the destruction of Jerusalem, it won't ever be possible. And in this respect, you see, you could say, well, Justin is surprisingly modern, because if you if you look at modern Judaism, I mean, no Jewish person today would know whether they were descended from David or not. I mean, some of them probably are. But, you know, in Jesus’ time, everybody knew if they were or not. You know, the genealogies were preserved. The temple worship and everything, you know, connected with that, and the law, the fulfilling of the law of Moses, I mean, again, for better or for worse, that is, that's a thing of the past now and it has never been reconstituted. You know, the modern state of Israel may, to whatever degree it resembles ancient Israel, at its heart, there is no temple. There is no resurrection of the Old Testament worship. And of course, that had all disappeared in Justin's time as well, I mean fairly recently, of course, where he was concerned. But he made this point; he said, well, the prophecies that you want to see fulfilled now can no longer be fulfilled in this way. You see, that era, that historical period has gone. And so somehow or other, you have to work out how is this possible? And he points out, for example, he takes Melchizedek, you know, which again, from the letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament, very prominent. And he points out the Jewish people of his time didn't know what to say about Melchizedek. I mean, it was a mystery to them. They couldn't figure it out. And so, Justin says, well, this is what it is. And of course, he's pointing to the New Testament and the scriptures. But saying, well, you know, you'll never figure it out otherwise because it's all to do with the priesthood. And you know, if the priesthood no longer exists, or is no longer functioning, then all of this has no meaning. So, he does it like that. Now, of course, and this is the other side of it, there are things that Justin says that sound a little odd to us. For instance, he notices when the spies went to Jericho, when Joshua was invading the land of Canaan and they went there and they hid in the house of Rahab, that Rahab, after the spies left and so on, they told her to put a cord in the window so that the invading Israelites would recognize that that was her house and leave and spare her. And he notices that the cord was red, scarlet red. And he says this is because the red represents the blood of Christ. Well, I think we could agree that that's taking things just that one step too far. You know, I mean- >>Doug Sweeney: At least Rahab wouldn't have known that. >>Bray: Rahab wouldn't have known that. And it's not really relevant to the context either, you know. But this is Justin being overly enthusiastic, you might say, I mean, in a sense. So modern readers have to look at that and say, well, his intentions were good, but he went a bit far, you know. And admit that, say, well, you know that he said this as part of his argument, but even if we don't agree or we don't follow him in that particular detail, this doesn't invalidate the basic principle as a whole. >>Doug Sweeney: Sure. This is a good segue to the next question I wanted to ask you about this book. Let me set it up. I don't mean this in a tendentious way. I just mean it in a very practical, contemporary way. I've known, I bet you have too, we have known many seminary teachers, pastors, students of the Bible, people who love the Word of God, and teach it, and want to teach it better and better, who will say to us things like, well, you know, we're just so much better now at interpreting the Bible than Christians ever used to be. We know so much more about the Bible than the church fathers did. And when I'm preparing a sermon or a Bible lesson, I only have so many hours. And I'm going to use those hours not to read the church fathers, but to read very modern, more contemporary commentators, because I think that's a better use of my time as I prepare. What do you say to those people? Should they in preparing to preach today, teach the Bible today, read the church fathers, even though there is a sense in which we can say we know some things today about the Bible that maybe Justin Martyr didn't know? >>Bray: Oh, yes. Well, I mean, undoubtedly, if you're talking about facts, you know, information, we have a lot more today than anybody in the ancient world had. That's certainly true. However, I think when you're looking at people in the ancient world, there are two things that you would have to say, I would have to say. First of all, culturally, they were much closer to the world of the apostles, the world of the Old Testament, and so on than we are. >>Doug Sweeney: Right. >>Bray: You know, the mentality, the way of thinking, and so on was much closer to this. So, things that they would take for granted, you know, and not really talk about very much because everyone just assumed that, you know, whatever it was, is that's the way we do it and we've always done it and here we go. You know, they, they moved in a world that Jesus and his disciples, or even the people of the Old Testament, would have recognized and felt closer to in that way. So that's one thing that has to be said. The other thing that has to be said, which is actually more important when you think about it, is that the church fathers had a very clear sense of the importance of spiritual things in human life. >>Doug Sweeney: Yes. >>Bray: Not just in the biblical revelation, although, of course, that was central. But generally, you know, that the world is not, cannot be reduced to matter, that there's more than this. Now, today, people know this implicitly, but the way we tend to deal with it is to invent disciplines like psychology or something like this, and you know, to account for the nonmaterial side of life. But that's kind of added on, the material is taken as the basis. And then, you know, we kind of explore this, and lots of people today go seeking after spirituality of one kind or another and that's become a big thing. Whereas in the ancient world, of course, it was the other way around. I mean, they lived in a climate in which the spirit world was taken for granted. And it was a question of discerning the spirits, you know, figure out what's true and what's false. And where you see this today, and I think this is what I would say, go to somewhere like Africa, or parts of Asia, you know, where Christianity has penetrated fairly recently, modern times, and immediately you will sense that people feel much closer to the Bible, to the world of the Bible, the Old Testament, and, you know, tribal conflicts, and all that sort of thing. And, and they know, you see that, that they live in a spiritual universe, in a way that we confess, we say we know, but we don't really know. Or, I mean, to take an example, you know, if you ask Christians today, do you believe in angels? Well, most people will say yes, because they know that's the right answer. But what difference do angels actually make in your life? >>Doug. Sweeney: Yeah, none really, if they’re being honest. >>Bray: None. And, you know, and people don't really believe in the devil or hell or these things. I mean, you know, I mean, it's all kind of mythical language and so on. Whereas for the church fathers, this, these were the realities, these were the most important things. And they weren't too bothered about, you know, the kind of things that we worry about today, like, you know, church and state relations or social issues of one kind or another. I mean, they, they recognized they were there, but that wasn't the key thing. The key thing was what's going to happen to me when I die? You know, am I in the right relationship with God? And, and this does make a difference. >>Doug Sweeney: Oh, it makes a world of difference. >>Bray: Yes. And this is what we have to tell people because, you see, so often modern pastors who read modern or just read modern commentaries, they're full of information about, you know, this and that. But you can tell when they get up and preach their sermons that basically they're lectures on the way of life in ancient times or something like this. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah, like a history talk. >>Bray: Like a history talk, yes. And it's all very interesting, but it doesn't actually touch the heart and speak to people where they are. And this is what the church fathers did, you see, because like it or not, and whether we understand it or not, they were instrumental in converting a hostile world to their beliefs. And for all our erudition and modern technology and so on, we live in a world which is going in the opposite direction. >>Doug Sweeney: Yes, we do. >>Bray: You know, I mean, we have more Bible versions, Bible studies, Bible this and that today than anybody ever had before. And yet fewer actual believers, you know, fewer people who actually read it and try to follow it in their daily life. So, I would say, you know, you may think you know a lot more than they did, and maybe in a certain way, you might, but proof of the pudding is in the eating. And if this is really superior, why isn't the gospel and the church winning the battle in the secular world? Why are we fighting a secular society just as much as the church fathers were? You know, but with less conviction in a way, you know, because we tend to take on the world's way of thinking and we talk about the same issues and so on. And I'm not saying that they're not important in their own way, but, you know, the church fathers kept their eyes on the prize, as it were. They knew what they were about, and what they were about was getting to heaven and getting other people to heaven, you know, not building utopia here on earth. >>Doug Sweeney: That's fantastic. This will probably sound a little nerdy, two church historians talking to one another, but one of my hopes for this book and other books like it is that the instincts and attitudes of these wonderful Christian church fathers will rub off on us in a way, so we spend time with them. >>Bray: That's right. And well, I think that's right. And one of the things I've tried to do, you know, in this little book, is present these men of the ancient world in a way which is favorable to them, in a way which is realistic. I'm not putting them up as perfect people who knew everything. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. >>Bray: But this makes it as people who we can relate to, you know, who we can see ourselves walking in the same path and learn from them both to concentrate on the essentials, you know, what really matters, to be humble, to recognize that we may get things wrong, but also to recognize that even if we get things wrong, if we do it, I don't know how to put this in the best way, but if the spirit inside is right, our weaknesses will be overcome, you know. As God said to Paul when Paul prayed that the thorn in his flesh should be taken away, and God said, no, it's that my strength is made perfect in your weakness. And this is what we have to learn. And I just say on this, you see, one of the things that I find most moving about the church fathers, and again, taking back to Justin, to Justin Martyr in the second century, when he was part of a church which was being persecuted, the Jews had rebelled against the Romans and suffered the consequences. But as Justin pointed out, actually, the Romans were very tolerant of Judaism. They allowed Judaism to survive. And it was the Jewish rebelliousness, which brought them, got them into trouble. It wasn't that the Romans wanted to persecute them, particularly. But the Christians, right from the beginning, were persecuted. And you have to ask yourself, why? What were they doing that would bring this on? And Justin said, well, you know, outwardly, we're loyal subjects of the emperor, we're not rebelling, we're not doing any of this, and yet we're persecuted. We're persecuted not because of anything we've done, but we're persecuted for what we are, for who we are. This sort of brings out the truth, you see, that the truth is never popular. And even if you don't do anything, you know. But then it's interesting in his dialogue with the rabbi, that the rabbi isn't converted. It's not one of those stories, you know, how I persuaded the rabbi to accept Christ. I mean, he doesn't in the end. But in the final paragraph of the text, the dialogue that he has, they part as friends. And Justin says, we will pray for one another. We're going to pray for you. And I pray that, you know, God will show you the truth of what I have said. But, and the rabbi says, well, go in peace and, you know, hope you get home safely sort of thing. It was a very sort of friendly parting. >>Doug Sweeney: We could learn a little bit from that as well. >>Bray: A lot. I mean, religious dialogue, I'm afraid, is not always very friendly with people that you really disagree with. And that's very touching, really, because, you know, he knew that he was going back to persecution. And indeed, he's called Justin Martyr because he was martyred for his faith. He died for his beliefs. And we have to remember this, you know, that, well, at least in the Western world, United States, I mean, people may be looked down on for their beliefs, and they may have all kinds of problems like that, but I don't think very many people are actually put to death for them. You know, it hasn't got to that stage yet. But it could happen. >>Doug Sweeney: Sure. >>Bray: And we have to say to ourselves- >>Doug Sweeney: And there are many places today. >>Bray: Oh, yes. In the world. >>Doug Sweeney: Not so much in the United States. >>Bray: Right. Oh, yes. And I mean, around the world, Christianity is the most persecuted religion that there is. And, you know, we're just extraordinarily well off in the sense that it hasn't hit home to us yet. But, you know, people who have antenna to pick up what's going on, I mean, we ought to realize that this is an abnormal situation that we might have to face this, and that a time will come where we will have to stand up and say what we believe. And that will be extremely unpopular and may bring about considerable suffering to us. And how would we react? And the church fathers knew how they would react. They stuck together for all their faults, for all their, you know, idiosyncrasies and everything else, when the chips were down, you know, witness to Christ came first. And all the, you can, the rest was forgiven. All the mistakes they made, all the oddities that you find pale in comparison with this, you know, the central thing, they knew what they what they believed. >>Doug Sweeney: What a great way to conclude. The gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is true, and it's worth dying for. >>Bray: Yeah. >>Doug Sweeney: As some of the authors represented in this book testify. >>Bray: Yeah. >>Doug Sweeney: Listeners, this has been Dr. Gerald Bray. He is a professor of historical theology here at Beeson Divinity School. His new book is Reading the Bible with Ten Church Fathers, Baker Press, 2026. It's a wonderful read. Please pick it up. Pray for Dr. Bray and the students of Beeson Divinity School. Remember, we're praying for you. We love you, and we say goodbye for now. >>Mark Gignilliat: 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 Mark Gignilliat. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our Producer is Neal Embry. 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, YouTube, and Spotify.