The UNWavering Podcast
Co-hosted by Monte Abeler (’12) and Cassie Plantage (’07) of the UNW Alumni Office, The UNWavering Podcast brings you fun, thoughtful conversations with the people who shape University of Northwestern – St. Paul. No matter how you're connected to Northwestern—alum, student, parent, staff, faculty, or friend—this podcast is created to keep you connected to the heart of the UNW community. Join us as we highlight the people, the purpose, and the pulse of Northwestern.
The UNWavering Podcast
God's Word is Foundational | Dr. Michael Wise
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Dr. Michael Wise, Scholar-in-Residence at the University of Northwestern – St. Paul and an internationally recognized scholar of ancient Judaism and the Dead Sea Scrolls, continues our three-part series on what it really means to have an unwavering love for God's Word.
In this conversation, Dr. Wise unpacks what it means to say that God's Word is foundational—and why that foundation matters. He explores how Christians can develop a worldview that's increasingly shaped by Scripture, reminding us that God's Word is foundational because it is, quite simply, the Word of God. God Himself is our unwavering foundation.
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Hey everybody, this is Monty and Cassie. And welcome to part two of a special three-part series. So here at Northwestern, we often talk about cultivating an unwavering love for God's Word and God's world. And in this three-part series, we are exploring what it really means to have an unwavering love for God's Word. And today we have the opportunity to talk with Dr. Michael Wise about how God's word is foundational. I'm really looking forward to this conversation.
SPEAKER_02Join as we highlight the people, the purpose, and the pulse of Northwestern. This is the Unwavering Podcast.
SPEAKER_01Dr. Wise serves as scholar in residence at the University of Northwestern St. Paul and is an internationally recognized scholar of ancient Judaism and the Dead Sea Scrolls. He has authored several best-selling books on the Dead Sea Scrolls, speaks around the world on biblical history and archaeology, and has been featured by publications including Time, National Geographic, and the New York Times. Alongside his academic work, Dr. Wise is an ordained evangelical free church minister with a deep passion for helping people understand and trust God's word. And as we recently discovered this morning, he's also a big fan of puns. So uh Dr. Wise, welcome to the podcast.
SPEAKER_00Yes, thank you, Marty, and thank you, Cassie. It's good to be here. What does it mean to be a scholar in residence? Well, the term is a is a term that's used for a special position that Northwestern created for me. It's some it's you hear it used in academia elsewhere as well. It means that I'm uh in a special position where I am in residence, that is, I stay here, I don't move around, but I'm especially supposed to devote myself to research and writing. So I do teach. I teach um uh two-thirds of a normal load. And then the rest of my time is devoted to writing and research and the related things that go along with that.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Ross Powell, it's really cool. You don't live here though. That's not the the residence part.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Ross Powell That's right. I don't live here. There's no apartment for me or anything.
SPEAKER_06Aaron Ross Powell That we know of. It's a secret.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_06That's great. Well that what what where does your research go to?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell My research is in the area of the Dead Sea Scrolls in particular.
SPEAKER_06Oh, that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00And in related texts, I'm working on related text right now. I just finished this summer writing a book.
SPEAKER_04Wow.
SPEAKER_00550 pages, which I'll now be sending off to the publisher in a little bit. I mean in the time in between, I'll be getting some feedback from other scholars who work in the field that I ask to comment on it. I send them the manuscript. That's that's uh SOP in in the field of scholarship. You ask others to comment on your stuff before you put it out there often, at least. In case you've made mistakes or forgotten to say something that you should have said, or they may have other ideas that you can get in there, or that sort of thing. So it's always wise, as you guys know. Two heads are better than one.
SPEAKER_01Well, you should be the expert on being wise, I I would say.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Well, thank you. Yes.
SPEAKER_01But um I had to throw a pun in there.
SPEAKER_00That is the way the that is the way the name's pronounced. Is it it is wise, not wise or other kinds of variants. You would think it would be straightforward. It is an English word. But most often people want to try wise.
SPEAKER_01Sure.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that makes sense. Fancy. So writing 550 pages, is that is that a chore for you? Is like is that hard, or do you have to limit yourself to 550 pages?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Well, it's not normal pages. So, for example, I I could spend an entire day writing a footnote to one of the pages because there's so much concentrated information and research involved. So it took me six years to write the book, the actual writing process, and I had done some work on it for a couple of years before that. So this is a long-term project that I'm talking about. That's why finishing it is kind of a big thing. Wow. Yeah.
SPEAKER_06Okay. Well, that's exciting. I'm sure you've learned a lot through the process.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Ross Powell, I do. Research is always about learning.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Well, speaking of that, what is the Lord teaching you these days?
SPEAKER_00Well, I am preparing to teach this fall in the uh uh I do regular teaching at my church, which is Wooddale Church, and I'll be teaching on this topic of biblical wisdom. And I'm focused on the book of Proverbs. And so I'm reading the book of Proverbs through in Hebrew. I normally read my scriptures in the original languages because I teach those languages. And the thing it's a it's a very tricky book, actually. It's very difficult to translate and understand, but it's a book that you have to ponder as you read each proverb. I that's my principle, I would say. Read and ponder, read and ponder. You don't read it quickly. I would say five verses at a at most at a at a city. And uh and you think you have to think about what's being said, what are the connections between the words? And the Lord is teaching me a lot about this uh by my using this method. Because he just takes your thoughts and in the directions they need to go. Wisdom, I would if you say, Well, what is wisdom in the biblical sense? Of course, the Bible says that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but what is wisdom? And I would define it this way God has created the world to work in a certain way. You might say that the creation has grooves in it, and things are supposed to go in the grooves. And wisdom is learning the grooves or the ways of the world. That's the way the world that God has created is supposed to work. So I would also say that there are spiritual laws. We don't talk this way so much anymore. We in the 19th century people talk this way all the time. There are spiritual laws just as there are laws of physics, for example. And they're just as baked into the creation. And so that's what you study when you study wisdom and you study Proverbs in particular.
unknownTrevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_01What are, just for a couple examples, what are some of those spiritual laws?
SPEAKER_00Well, one spiritual law is uh you reap what you sow. People know that. It's quoted even in a secular society. But it's also true. It's how the world works. Now you have to understand that how the world works is not an absolute in the sense that every time you sow, you always reap in proportion, and if you do good, always good. It's a preponderance of the time that it works in these ways, partly because the world is not the way it was created anymore. It's been corrupted, right? As we know, by sin. But that doesn't mean that the that the operating system was changed. It just has flaws that have been introduced by sin. But that is one of them. So if you do good, this is a basic teaching of the book of Proverbs. If you do good, you will normally flourish. That means you'll prosper in your life financially, you'll prosper in your life with God, you'll prosper in your life with other people. You'll have shalom, the biblical term for where everything is in right relation with everything else. Peace has a special meaning here. Everything in right relationship. Yeah, that's the so another way to say this is learning God's ways. And that's a regular prayer of mine. Lord, teach me your ways. And it's a regular prayer that I have. My classes um pray when I teach here at Northwestern, and it's a regular prayer that we offer when I teach at church, because it's constant, and there's always more. There's always a greater depth. There's never a time when you already know all that you need to know. So you're constantly learning greater subtlety, perhaps, greater nuance, but you're always going forward, and we always will, even in cre in the future, when we're with God in eternity here, by the way, on earth, the new heavens and the new earth. There'll be no end of our continuing to learn his ways because he is infinite. That means you never get to the end.
SPEAKER_01And that's exciting. It is. There's just no end to just delighting in discovering more and more and more.
SPEAKER_00That's right. And he's good. So you're in you're penetrating infinite goodness.
SPEAKER_01So you're preparing to share the wisdom from Proverbs right now. Is there a book coming on the wisdom of Pro with Dr. Wise, there has to be, right? Wisdom. I mean, that there has to be a book. I'm gonna let the pun die after this one. I'm waiting for the book on wisdom.
SPEAKER_00We already have it, Monty.
SPEAKER_01It's called the Bible. That's good. You don't have to write that one, you can just I'll leave the podcast.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, there you go. Well, Dr. Wise and I are gonna talk now. Um So you you've spent decades studying scripture and the ancient world with the Dead Sea Scrolls and archaeology. Um naturally curious, or what keeps you being curious?
SPEAKER_00Yes, Cassie, I am naturally curious. I think no scholar is a scholar who isn't curious. That's what draws you into scholarship. You can do other things if you're incurious, right? There are lots of in-curious people. They make a good living, but they don't do it as scholars. And so, yes, I'm I've always been curious. I'm a curious person. I have all kinds of interests. I cannot feed all my children, you might say. That is, I can't go as far as I would like with all my different interests. And that's also my wife. We're we're like that. We have we are one spirit in that regard. And so, yes, I have constant curiosity. And I as I've studied the Word of God and has studied the world of the Bible, I've found that there's no end to what you can learn. Of course, with the Word of God, I've already said that. But even for the study of the ancient world, we're always learning new things. There's always another way to think about something we already knew. That's what scholars do, right? They propose new ideas, new hypotheses, which try to explain the facts we have. The best hypothesis is the one that explains the most facts in the most economical way. Occam's razor, the old saying, right? And so, yes, I'm a curious person, and my curiosity has never been satiated. Yes.
SPEAKER_06How did your curiosity lead you to the Dead Sea Scrolls?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Ross Powell My interest in the Dead Sea Scrolls, this is a longer story. I'm not going to give you the whole nine yards. Okay. I'll give you the short answer. My interest in the Dead Sea Scrolls was stimulated by one of my professors that I had in my graduate training, because that was one of his areas of research and specialty. And when I had my first class with him in the study of that, I was intrigued, partly because he was such an excellent teacher. I think you guys may know from your own educational processes that you tend to get interested in what your best teachers teach. For sure. Even if you weren't before.
SPEAKER_04Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_00And that's what happened to me with the scrolls.
SPEAKER_04Okay.
SPEAKER_00And in those days, this was the late 80s, they were new. I mean, there were most of them were still unpublished. You may not know this, but the the Dead Sea Scrolls were unpublished, half of them, from the time they were discovered in 1945 to 1956, over that period of years, half of them were unpublished until we get got to the year 2000. That is a biblical generation. Wow. And more. Literally, a generation of scholars died, who had been there when they were discovered and never got to see what was found.
SPEAKER_06Wow.
SPEAKER_00That's sad. It is sad. It is sad.
SPEAKER_06What would I'm curious, what was the what was the holdup?
SPEAKER_00Why did they well the holdup was a multifaceted? Partly it was a matter of there was too much material for too few people. The original team only consisted of eight people, and there were 931 partially complete manuscripts that had to be fitted together out of thousands of fragments. And partly it was that the people who worked on the project were debilitated at different times in their lives by circumstances and by their own behaviors. A couple of them became alcoholics. So and partly it was because they w were selfish with them. They wanted to keep them for themselves and use them to create a kingdom. They would give little fragments to their graduate students. No one else could see them till those students published. That meant that students got jobs, then they got positions out in the field from which they would support their mentors, and so the mentors would have a kind of kingdom. A scholarly realm in which in which people would not disagree with their ideas.
SPEAKER_01Right. Right. Right. Well, as you know, we're we're bringing you into a series where we're talking about what it means to have a love for God's word. And here at Northwestern, with our phrase that we are unwavering, we we say all the time that we're gonna have we're gonna be unwavering in our love for God's word and God's world. And it's easy to say that and then to to go on with our life that's really fast-paced and to just kind of live on. And it's tempting to make that sometimes just a phrase if we're not careful, to actually enjoy the love for God's word. Uh, we just had a conversation about how God's word is rich. And uh and today I'm really excited to talk with you about how God's word is foundational. And I want to start maybe with a definition, um, but what does it mean for us to say that God's word is foundational?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell To say that God's word is foundational means that we build on it. We start with it. It's the foundation, the for the place where everything begins. In a technical, more technical theological way, if you're asking if you're asking as a theologian, you can tart you can start this question in one of two places. You either start with God Himself, or you start with God's Word. Theologians actually argue about what's the proper place to start our theological reasoning. We know about God from His Word. So you can make that your foundation because everything else comes after that. But God was there before his word was, and his word comes from him. He's the source of it. So how can you say that he's not the place to start? So this is actually a theological argument, you could say. But the basic meaning, Monty, of the of the idea is that we start with God's word because that's where truth begins. And it's also where wisdom begins.
SPEAKER_01Well, that makes me think of the text in Matthew 7, where it talks about like Jesus said, Those who hear my words and put them into practice are like the wise man who built his house on the rock, right? That's right. That it's our foundation. Are there some other key texts that you would pull in? I know we just talked about that, you know, we could start actually with who God is as our foundation, but are there some key text from his word that would be a starting point for us?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So you could the the classical answer to that, any evangelical would probably give, is that we start with 2 Timothy 3.16, right? For the word of God is God breathed. The Greek word theapnostas means breathed out by God. That's what that term means. God has produced it. Now, Paul, when he wrote those words, was writing about the Old Testament, because that's the scriptures that existed at his time. He was actually producing new scripture, but it hadn't yet been seen that way, as such, not quite that categorically, let's say it that way. And the same, the Gospels didn't even exist at the time Paul wrote. They were written, all the letters of Paul preceded all of the Gospels in terms of the chronology. So the scriptures are breathed out by God, that is, they're produced by God, and they're profitable, we're told, for all the things that people need to know in order to do the works that God has called them to do. That's basically what the word says. There at that point, including, of course, for instruction and rebuke and correction and training in righteousness. Those are the things that the graphée, the Greek word there is graphée, which is the technical Greek word for scripture, meaning the Old Testament scripture. So that's the classical starting place for most evangelicals, because we start with God's Word, then we find a place in God's Word that specifically addresses the question we're talking about, the authority, the foundational character of God's word. It's not actually where I start my own personal reasoning on this question. I think that the inspiration, the authority, the inerrancy, the foundational character of God's word, these are all things we're talking about here, begins with God Himself, right? It's the character of God that guarantees what God's word is. You say in in a in okay, when you say that, you mean in contrast to what? Well, for example, in contrast to what the most recent archaeological discovery might be. Like we're still waiting for facts which will prove God's word. Something we find that's we that we can lay up next to God's word and say, oh, okay, that's good. Now we know that that one's true, or something like that. I just don't think that's the way to reason on this. It is actually the way a fair number of evangelicals kind of think. They think that archaeology, I get this question all the time because I study the Dead Sea Scrolls. They think that archaeological archaeology and archaeological discovery has the capacity to prove God's word, and that's why we can trust God's word. And although there is, of course, plenty of evidence that comes from the study of those things that backs God's word up, I think it's fundamentally a flawed way to think because it's like we're waiting to make sure that the next fact doesn't disprove God's word. It's like we're looking to the archaeologist as our authority for the factuality of the truth of God's word. And that's not the basis for it. It's God Himself who is the basis for it. His character, pure, good, true, he can't speak anything but truth. That's the foundation.
SPEAKER_01His word reflects him. It does. Uh seems similar to if you're in a boat and you throw out an anchor, your hope is not in the anchor, but rather in the in the rock that the anchor hangs onto. Right. That's really the source. Um, you just mentioned that scripture, you know, to be foundational, it's the source of truth. It's a source of wisdom. How how can we know that the Bible is true? I mean, you you've spent time working with fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls and studying this. How how can we know scripture is true?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Ross Powell Well, that's an interesting question. Just hearing it as a scholar, I'm I'm going I go straight to definitions because how you think about questions is very much tied to how you think the words tie together and what they mean. So when you say no, how can I know that the Bible is true? Is that an intellectual knowledge, or is it a knowledge that leads you to live in a certain way that what we might call a spiritual apprehension? The scripture specifically says, Paul specifically says, that people who do not have God's Spirit cannot recognize the truth of Scripture. He's talking about that in the beginning of 1 Corinthians because that was a whole question at Corinth. Was the wisdom of the Greeks something that we not we had to tie together to God's wisdom to get the true wisdom? And he was trying to tell them, no, the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men. And in fact, he has made his truths look foolish. And he goes on to say that the idea that somebody dying on a cross after crucifixion was the absolute bottom of all that that world held important in terms of honor. So if you die you you have to remember, the our pictures of the cross are all very a little bit literally dressed up. You would be crucified naked. You would be crucified at eye level, your eyes looking into the eyes of the people who walk by, not up on a cross high up, eye to eye, so people could spit on you and they could curse you. And so the it was literally a of course they're torturing you to death, but they're also robbing you of that which the ancient world in the Mediterranean held as even more important than life itself, which was honor. It was an honor and shame society, right? So if you strip someone's honor, you've taken what's more important than life itself for many people. And that was the whole point. So that that person, that person is the wisdom of God? Which is exactly what Paul's arguing there in 1 Corinthians? Yeah, it's absolutely contrary to anything that one would arrive at by cognitive processes, if that's what you mean by knowing. So how can we know God? And how can we know that his word is true? Well, we know that is true, and we know him by the Spirit, God's Spirit, ultimately. There are many evidences that we can, and those aren't worthless, right? Evidence that demands a verdict, the famous book, right? What's that all about? The idea is that evidence helps us to have confidence that if we're talking about these kinds of things with secular people, but it's not the basis for our own understanding. That's not how we know. We know because God makes us alive. His spirit touches our heart, and only then can we come to Him. And as we do, we know Him. Scripture ultimately, this is an important thing. We can know God without the Bible. That is to say, imagine that somebody's on a desert island and they haven't been able to bring their Bible. Does that mean they don't know God anymore? No. The Bible is the is points us up. And we the relationship with God is not through the book per se, not if you technically it's apart from the book. It's direct, it's primary.
SPEAKER_01Yep. We can't lose the wonder of who God is when we're studying his word. We can't stop there. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00Right. We know God. We know God experientially. And that's really important because Christians are suspicious of experience, many of us. Because we say, well, you could have all kinds of things that you say you've experienced. That doesn't make them true. And some of them are actually from the evil one and that kind of thing. Yes, but that doesn't make experience unimportant for us as believers. Experiencing God is important. God knows that. That's why he sends the spirit among us. Paul tells us in the book of, again, 1 Corinthians chapter 12, that the spirit and the spiritual gifts are manifestations of God's presence among us. We want to experience him. He understands that, and he wants us to experience him. We shouldn't be suspicious of that. It's just that we don't want to put that over against the truths of scripture and say that somehow experience outweighs the truths of scripture.
SPEAKER_06I think it reminds me of that verse, taste and see that the Lord is good. I think the Bible reminds reading the Bible makes me think of the tasting. Seeing is my experience. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there's multiple facets to this of, you know, from a head knowledge perspective, you're getting at if it's just head knowledge and you compare this to the wisdom of the world, then it's crazy. But we can also study and know and trace back that scripture is true. And even more importantly, his spirit lives in us, which which testifies to his word, and we we experience him through his word.
SPEAKER_00Yes. And the spirit uses his word enormously in our lives. So as we read and study and pray scripture, that's how we grow. So don't misunderstand what I'm saying. I'm I'm not saying that somehow the Bible is secondary in uh some kind of a categorical sense. It's uh we have these two ways that God has given us to know Him. We need both. And we need them in tandem.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's good. I know when um oftentimes when we talk about the Bible being foundational for us, it also comes with the fact that the Bible is our ultimate authority. So can you speak to why it's important that Scripture, rather than culture or politics or personal preferences or chasing whatever, is our ultimate authority?
SPEAKER_00The reason that scripture is our ultimate authority is that, again, it goes back to the source. It is it is God's word. It's God who speaks. So he is the one who created us and everything that exists. And this is what he has to say to us. The very nature of the situation is what makes it authoritative beyond any other approach. And of course, to the degree that any other approach is not in accordance with Scripture, it's it's not true. So if you start with that idea that the scriptures are the Word of God and are God-given, God-breathed, that isn't, from a logical point of view, it would be fallacious and illogical to start somewhere else. And uh indeed, when you do, you're starting in the wrong place and you're gonna get in trouble. You're in the weeds to the degree you follow that path. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Oh, that's good. And I mean, we can probably all kind of relate with our own experience, but what happens when we begin to uh interpret scripture through culture rather than interpreting culture in our life through that lens of scripture?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's a good question. And let's just talk be technical about it for just one second, and then we'll get to the what people really care about with a question like that. I understand what you're trying to get to, but I also want to make this point. The Bible was produced in a particular culture, actually in different cultures, down through a long period of time, Old Testament, New Testament, very different worlds, right? Early Old Testament, later Old Testament, already very different worlds. And God used human beings to write the words. He inspired human beings. And so it's the Bible is an interesting thing in the sense that God didn't just float it down, in a sense, something like what Islam thinks about the Quran, right? God used human beings to produce the word and to pass the word on, copy the word. We're part of the process. That speaks to who God is and how he views us. He works through us in this world, and he bound himself to that in the creation narrative. He talks about it. He makes human beings sovereign in the world alongside him, right? To rule over it, to uh order it, to care for it. So all that is to say that we can't take culture out of interpreting the Bible, because we have to understand it was produced by people in a culture different from ours, and we have to understand that we carry culture with us integrally so that we can't really divorce our hearts and minds from the culture we live in entirely. It's just how we're it's just how it is. So, with all that said, just kind of being technical about it, if if you start with culture and you say, okay, and this is where a lot of the things that are going on in our culture today are problematic for Christians, right? We're gonna we're gonna have a different view of marriage, let's say, than what we find in the Genesis narratives, and we're gonna argue for that. And there are good Christians, actually, who are taken in by that, that follow that, that believe that. But what's happening there is you've started with an answer and now you're looking for the reason for it, instead of starting with the question. So it's it's it's very tricky, right? Because we have questions, and when we have questions, we we look at the Bible. But you have to ask, what's the Bible actually saying before you ask the question? I know that's round, that's wrong way round the way we often think. I'll give you an example. Does science disagree with uh the Bible in terms of how about how about the creation? As we look at Genesis 1, is that in contradiction to or in some kind of strong tension with science? And most people would say yes, even Christians. And the answer is no, it is not. Why not? Because the author of Scripture there, we believe Moses, right, um, isn't answering the question modern people ask, which is what? Did God create? How did he create? No. Everybody in the world that Moses lived in knew that God created. And they weren't interested in how he created, they were interested in why is the world the way it is? And how is it supposed to be? And so we what God does in Genesis 1 is he begins to set out order. This is the ordered creation I have made. And it goes through along those lines. So if we ask the question that we're constantly asking of that passage, we're asking a question that isn't written to answer. It's not the right question, and we're not going to get an answer. That makes sense. It's like asking uh a sonata, why did God create? You see what I mean? Something written for an entirely different purpose. It's illogical to ask that question.
SPEAKER_01That's good. So the question that I asked was, yeah, how do we what happens when we begin interpreting scripture through culture instead of interpreting culture through scripture? And what you're saying, if I'm catching this back, let me just say back to you. The authors who got inspired to write scripture were living in a culture at the time that they wrote it. So, like there is, as we even begin to understand, first of all, what is the the word really saying, we need to start understanding the person, the culture, the questions that they were asking and answering in the text before we begin to try to use those texts to answer the questions that we have today. That's right. And in that sense, it goes back to how you're talking through Proverbs, that this isn't a quick Google and search and respond thing. Like there is a deep understanding of not just God's all of God's word in its full context together, but who he is as we begin to pursue truth and the questions that come up in our culture today that are really important and pressing in our communities. It's important for us to understand who God is and what we know of him through his word and what we've been learning.
SPEAKER_00That's right. Another way to say it, Monty, is that the Bible is not an Encyclopedia Britannica with the answer to every question we want answered. It wasn't written for that. Of course, it's true on any question that it intends to address. But if we come to it with a twisted understanding of what's going on in the process, we're not necessarily going to get what we're looking for. It's not for that. What is the Bible for? The Bible ultimately is about God's plan to redeem a broken people and creation. And if you have that as your understanding, it goes right through the whole of Scripture. And it's not necessarily answering other questions. So, for example, it tells us very little about heaven. We have all kinds of questions about heaven. It actually tells us very little about hell. The things that most people think about hell are actually derived from medieval paintings where you've got these people in flames and tortured and this kind of stuff. There's very it's a perversion of what Scripture says at that point. So, again, we don't necessarily find the answer to every question. We have to go there with the understanding, what is the Bible trying to say? Start there. That's good.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I uh I have so many more questions to go, but before we go any deeper, maybe we can talk about a little application, even just from our initial discussion that we've had so far. Yes.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. So how can Christians develop a worldview that's shaped by scripture and not the culture around it? We've touched on that a little bit, but what what advice would you give to Christians to have a biblical scripture-based worldview?
SPEAKER_00Uncouple from the Internet.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, Monty.
SPEAKER_00I'm on it. I'm on it. No, I'm we listen, we live in a world. Scripture talks about this world. It what does it say? It says that the God of this world, Small G, is still in action here. So what kind of culture do you think this world would give us? Everything that we see in this world is going to be tinged with that reality. Now look, he's in a he's in a he's fighting his way to the abyss, isn't he? His back, he's backing up all the way. The kingdom advances, but he's not gone. So we have to start with the idea that our worldview is probably going to be skewed even as we begin by the fact that we live in this culture, we breathe this air. And so we're constantly striving to correct what isn't correct, what is and and kind of get ourselves where we need to be. We're not where we are supposed to be. It's a constant process of correction. That's as scripture says. So how do you do it? It I think that there's nothing new to be said about this, but it's got to be said again and again and again, and we need to hear the Bible again and again and again on the very same topics, on the very same points, because of the nature of the situation. We need to read scripture every day. We need to read it prayerfully, not just read. So pray with scripture. We need to expose ourselves to God for some time, not a five-minute. I mean, some days that's the way it'll be, right? We have to be real. But that's not the ideal that we should be seeking. We want we want to sit in God's presence and experience Him and His Spirit touching us. And we can't do that unless we've quieted our hearts, we've gotten rid of distractions, we've put ourselves in a situation where we can just hear him. And that's not easy, and we have to learn, and God knows that, and he'll teach us. Some people call it just kind of sitting in the sun, right? Having the sun of like get you're just in the sun and you're getting a tan, but this is God, and you're in his presence. And his presence has an effect.
SPEAKER_06When would you say that's how scripture becomes foundational and not just informational, is when we spend time with the Lord soaking him in, giving ourselves to him daily.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell It is. It is, Cassie. There's an important thing to be said about knowing God, and that is you have to obey. If you don't obey, sin has the effect of putting a barrier between you and God, not from his side, but from your side. You're not perceiving him, you're not caring about him, you're not in tune with him. And the only way to get back where you need to be is to turn back to him and confess sin, and then you're immediately restored. But so if you learn something about what God wants and then you don't go do it, you're sort of stopping in place. You need to do as well. Scripture says that that though as people draw near to God, which happens by doing all the things we're talking about, but also by obeying what God says to us as in this process, God draws near to them. So this is a a feedback kind of mechanism. As we obey, we also believe. As we believe, we we obey more. As we obey more, we believe more. And so it's a kind of cycle that we're talking about. It's part, but it is a way the Christian life works.
SPEAKER_06Aaron Powell So as we wrap up everything we've talked about, and you've just touched on some of the habits we create and obeying, but can you sum up in one encouragement for Christians who want to start building their life on God's Word? What would you say to them?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Understand that the God you're seeking to know is good. In fact, theologians say it this way: every quality that God has, and goodness is one of them, he has infinitely. Think about that. Everything we say that's true about God is also is infinitely true. He's infinitely loving, infinitely patient, infinitely joyous. By the way, joyous. Think about that. So that's the God that we're seeking to know, and he loves you. He wants you to know him, he loves you, he wants to spend time with you. So be encouraged that that's who you're trying to talk to. And he's gonna help you and help you and help you and help you. So it's not like he said, he's saying, Ah, I don't think most people are gonna figure this out. But if they can, I'll give them this. No. Think of it this way: you're a little girl, two or three years old, or a little boy, two or three years old, and you're sitting on your dad's lap. How's your dad gonna treat you? He loves you. He's tender. He knows that you have a long way to grow. Is he gonna be mad if you get in a mud puddle again? He's gonna say, you know, we gotta clean you up, but he's not gonna slap you around, right? He loves you. He's gonna fully restore you and help you to continue on the right path.
SPEAKER_01He's infinitely loving and infinitely more loving than even the best dad could be here in our creation, right? He is. He is. What is the more you've studied scripture and just lived out what you were just talking about as an encouragement to each one of us, but the more you've studied scripture, what's something that really has surprised you about what you discovered about who God is?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Monty, I I don't really like the word surprise. I'll I'll explain. I'll explain. Like I'm astonished, that is to say, I think the right word is mystery. A mystery is a surprise in a way, right? Um something mysterious is something that you can't plumb. You can't get all the way in. And that's that's what I would say as I've studied the Word of God more, and I've I've come to know God better and better in living out the life of a Christian. I'm struck by the number of paradoxes that our faith presents. Mystery paradox. For example, Jesus is fully human, 100% human, and fully God, 100% God. I can't understand that. And a paradox is a situation where you've got two statements that are known to be true, and yet they're in apparent conflict. And how do you solve that? You can't sort of decide, well, I'll drop that that one and I'll just hold to this one. Jesus is fully God, because He's also fully human. And so if you don't keep both of them, you're actually giving up truth. That's the nature of paradox. Another paradox uh is the Trinity, right? The fact that there are three gods, three persons in one God. I almost misstated it. The fact is that honestly, if you ask most Christians in the pews, they would be they would be revealed as heretics on this point. Because it has to be stated very precisely to satisfy theologians. Okay. But these are the things that as I study, I have more and more learned that paradox is at the center of all human knowledge, really. The fact is that we can't answer the basic questions about this creation that we live in because we're not smart enough. We don't have the capacity. So I spend a lot of time studying language. But you know what? Linguists cannot define what a language is. And physicists can't tell you what light is. They can't tell you that they'll tell you it's two things, right? It's it's particles, it's also waves. So how can it be both? Right? So the fundamental questions of any field of uh human knowledge, I think you'll find, have to be taken as axiomatic. An axiom is something that we postulate as true for the for the purpose of reasoning further, but is not itself provable because we can't get to it all the way. That's how studying God is. I've learned that. I guess that's a surprise in a way. It's a mystery.
SPEAKER_01But a mystery captures it really well. And there's joy in solving a mystery or attempting to better understand a mystery and keep getting pulled deeper and deeper and deeper into that. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00There absolutely is, Monty. Joy. I I like to think about that, guys. The fruits of the Spirit are what? Love is first, and then joy. That's interesting, isn't it? Do you think about Jesus that way? That he's so full of joy? What it'll be like when we're with him, walking and talking and spending time in his presence. It's gonna be a lot of laughing. He likes jokes, he even likes politics. Aaron Powell Humor is an expression of joy. It is. No, we we all all agree that not all humor is actually funny. But even that is fun. As we kind of say that and we all groan.
SPEAKER_01So Okay, I have one more bonus question for you. Because you would probably consider yourself a theologian, correct?
SPEAKER_00Technically, no, I'm not a theologian. I'm a scholar of the text. I'm a textual scholar. You get into the professional ranks, theologians have a specific kind of training and they're ask asking certain kinds of questions. And people who are scholars of the text, either Old or New Testament, are trained a different way and asking different kinds of questions, although there's overlap. I'm not even going to get to my question.
SPEAKER_06Yeah. Wow.
SPEAKER_00This is it's okay. You can say I have theological opinion. You have theological opinions.
SPEAKER_01Yes. In a way, you know, I think a lot of times we will this conversation this let me back up. This conversation has been deeply enlightening. Like it's and it's a depth. We're just barely scratching the surface, right? Every question is just a starting to a whole series of conversations. Um about it is we're having these conversations. And a lot of times we'll just say, you know, we're gonna leave this theology stuff to the theologians, you know, or the the studyers of the Bible, the biblical scholars. Would you say in a way that we all get to be theologians? I'm sure that question's not perfectly right, but this reasoning that we get to do is not something that we just get to have the opportunity to hear you do, but we all have this joy.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. We all have these things. Theology, technically speaking, comes from two Greek words, the word for God and the word for study or knowledge. So anybody who's a Christian is a theologian in the sense that they study and know God. And in fact, there are many Christians in the pews, you might say, that know God much better than a lot of theologians. Because head knowledge, which is what theologians make their living from, they have these degrees, they teach in universities, right? They may or may not have a very strong living relationship with God. They may not be living in obedience to God. Listen, if you're not living in obedience to God, you have a screen between yourselves and Him. You're not going to see through. So Yeah. I I was answering your question as a scholar would answer it. That is, I want to be careful that people don't think I'm claiming to be a certain technical thing when I'm really trained to be another technical thing. But yes, we are all theologians. We're all theologians, all of us who want to know God, even by the way, guys, people who don't know God yet, if they're pursuing that question, if they want to know him, they are studying him in a sense. That's cool.
SPEAKER_01Well, Dr. Wise, thank you so much for joining us today on the Unwavering Podcast. This this has been a really fun conversation and insightful, as I mentioned earlier. For you listening, we've started and just scratched the surface of so many different conversational topics. So this by no means is the end of a discussion of God's word or the fact that his word is foundational in our life, or even deeper who he is. So as you've been listening today, I just hope that you caught the theme throughout this conversation that yes, God's word is foundational. But even more, don't lose the fact that God's word is God's word, that we are going back to him, to God himself is the foundation of our life. And I just pray for you as you listen to this that, yes, that your head knowledge would grow in your understanding of the word, that it could be foundational and an authority in your life, but even more that the spirit of the Lord would open your heart and open your eyes and your mind to grasp his truth and to continue this cycle of building it and growing our relationship with the Lord. So what a conversation. Thank you so much, Dr. Wise, for joining us.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Monty. Thank you, Cassie. It's been a pleasure. I've enjoyed it.
SPEAKER_01And we have one more part of this three-part series coming up this Friday. We're gonna conclude this series of studying God's Word by talking with Dr. Robin Bell about how God's word is alive. So tune in again for us with us for that, and uh, we'll talk to you then.
SPEAKER_02Thank you for listening. To hear more, subscribe and leave a rating wherever you listen. And if you know an alum, faculty member, staff, or student of Northwestern doing amazing things out in the world, let us know at alumni at unwsp.edu, the unwavering podcast, highlighting the people, the purpose, and the pulse of Northwestern.