In this episode, Nate sits down with Dr Glenn Kreider, Professor of Theological Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, where Nate is currently pursuing his PhD under Dr Kreider's supervision. After briefly discussing the PhD program, the conversation moves to God's declaration at the end of Exodus 33, and how that lens helps us make sense of God's character and faithful presence with his people through the rest of the biblical story.
In this episode, Nate sits down with Dr Glenn Kreider, Professor of Theological Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, where Nate is currently pursuing his PhD under Dr Kreider's supervision. After briefly discussing the PhD program, the conversation moves to God's declaration at the end of Exodus 33, and how that lens helps us make sense of God's character and faithful presence with his people through the rest of the biblical story.
Well, today we are live from Texas, which is unusual for us in this podcast. I'm here today with Dr Glenn Crichter at Dallas Theological Seminary. How are we doing today, dr Crichter?
Speaker 2:Great, I feel like I have to call you Dr Crichter. It's a great day in Texas. It is a great day in Texas. Texas Rangers play tonight. Hopefully can sweep the orals and move forward.
Speaker 1:You know so, and then it's going to end up being Rangers and probably Astros and that's going to be a bitter, very bitter feud for whoever's going to make it to the World Series? Yep, but you feel good about the Rangers.
Speaker 2:I feel good, man. It's been a long time and you know, a month or so ago they looked like they were going to tank on us, but yeah, they played well the last couple of days.
Speaker 1:It probably did you some favors that the Astros snuck in and got the divisions and then they got the. Well, actually they didn't get the week off, did they? Because it seems like the teams that get the week off, they come in a little rusty, don't look so great. Dodgers didn't look great. Braves didn't look good in the first game, the Rangers having to start off, they got a hot streak going and keep the streak going.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So by the time you all listen to this, hopefully the sweep has happened and they've moved on to the ALCS. It's ALCS, isn't it? Yep, that'll be next.
Speaker 1:So, as much as I would love for this to be a sports podcast and just talk to theologians about sports instead of theologians about theology, we are not here today to talk about baseball. We're here today to talk about the importance of theology, which is probably not something we have to sell people on. But in an earlier episode you all remember that Ben and I talked about our respective PhD programs and we didn't really go into detail about it. But I thought today it might be interesting to hear from Dr Kreider about his perspective on overseeing PhD students like me in this program, and we talk a little bit about how academic theology is relevant, not just for theologians. It's supposed to be relevant for the church and then maybe how some of that ties into our current series in Exodus. But maybe before we do that, dr Kreider, can you just give us a little background? The listeners have never heard you before on this podcast, because you've never been on it before.
Speaker 2:You grew up in the southeastern Pennsylvania on a dairy farm. My family does not go to school and I've spent most of my adult all of my adult life, in education. I've been teaching at Dallas Seminary since 2001, part-time a couple of years before that, so I teach theology courses, also what they call it now the coordinator of our PhD program. Yeah, which is how you and I connect.
Speaker 1:I mean actually for the listeners, because history is important. You and I connected first time through on THM and we had classes with you. In my last year we did a colloquium in systematic theology, which meant we read a systematic as a group and just really did a deep dive on why is the author making the arguments that he's making and then outgrowth of that. You were actually my last class because we did that independent study on book reviews. That kind of set me on this reading and reviewing books.
Speaker 1:That then turned into kind of a placeholder for PhD work, because PhD studies is a lot of reading and reviewing books, but at a higher level. And then I bumped into you at ETS two years ago now and you mentioned the PhD program was starting to provisionally accept people like me who were interested but didn't necessarily relocate to Dallas. But we could do an AV exception and maybe I should look into it. And then here we are, almost two years later. I'm in my second semester. We're sitting in your office recording a podcast.
Speaker 2:It was an experiment and so far it looks like the experiment has worked. Yeah, and.
Speaker 1:I was skeptical at first because I've had some video classes and it's like well, it's not really. You actually can feel pretty close to being in the room.
Speaker 2:Even though you're not in the room, it doesn't replace being in the room for sure, but and a lot of it depends on the technology, because we started with a stationary camera at the back of the room. It was much less felt, much less like you're in the room. Then we have better cameras that move around and larger screens in the room, and so the technology that we're using now is much better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, as I say, if you're just through the stationary camera, that's not that much different than watching a prerecorded video, which is what many people maybe have in the back of their mind. If you're doing distance education, so you're just watching videos, it's like. No, I'm actually at least in my case for this program, I'm present in class every day. That class happens on Wednesdays.
Speaker 2:And that's an important thing for us we're not doing an online degree.
Speaker 2:We'll never do, at least I hope, not an online degree, but using synchronous video to make it possible for people who are not in Dallas to actually join the classes, to continue their ministry, continue their work where they are. And I mean, as I said, it was an experiment, not for you but for us, and we've had a number of students who are doing this. The first one completed all of her coursework. Now she's in comp stage that she did everything from Arkansas and it seems to be working.
Speaker 1:Yeah, say a little bit more about that. Let's give people, just very briefly, a map. I know a lot of people are not necessarily into the admin, but when you say I'm getting a PhD in theology, what all does that mean? You said comp stage. I know what you mean.
Speaker 2:Yeah good, our program has a number of coursework hours 32 hours in coursework. Meanwhile, along the way students propose a dissertation research topic. We work at refining and narrowing and clarifying that through the coursework and then you sit for a comprehensive exams where we evaluate your comprehensive knowledge of a couple of subjects, assuming that goes well than the writing of a dissertation. So it is most optimistic. Timeline to students spends two and a half to three years in coursework, six months or so in comps, two years in a dissertation and they're done in three, four, five, six years.
Speaker 1:Six years. Okay, I'm not on track for that, but I'm pretty close. We'll see if I can maybe catch up some ground. I'm hoping by the time I'm 45, which would be six years from now. No, that seems dual.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 45 years, still young, and you have 30, 40 years in front of you.
Speaker 1:I would hope so. Yeah, I mean I was 25, 27 when I graduated the first time, so now I'm back for round two, so I've enjoyed our discussions in class for people. I think I initially called it as like fancy book club which that's maybe too a little too not derogatory, but it really is.
Speaker 1:We read really significant books together and then we get together in class and somebody leads a discussion centered around the books. And so last semester you led the class. Well, you didn't lead the class, you were facilitated the class on ecclesiology and we talked about the importance of the church and we tried to define more clearly what is the church and thinking through the church's mission and other things related to that, and so that kind of prompted me thinking, like we're doing these. It could be ivory tower, academic theology that theologians are only interested in, but at the end of the day, we want it to be relevant to people in the local church, and I know you're passionate about that as well, and so maybe we could tie it in here.
Speaker 1:This passage from Exodus that you said is one of your favorite passages, where we, just as people, are listening to this, we're around the 10 commandments. So in a few more weeks we're going to be getting to this second time where God reveals his name to Moses. We're talking about the end of it's Exodus 33, right at the towards the end there, and then the beginning of 34.
Speaker 1:In the beginning of 34. So we had the you know people are familiar from last fall. We preached on Exodus 3, exodus 6, and so now we're coming back to it again, but now it's expanded. So can you tell us a little bit about what the significance of that passage may be for you personally? But, also really just thinking about the discipline of theology, what we're doing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, theology is words or discourse about God. It's reflecting on who God is and it's a task not simply for the ivory towered academics, but hopefully all Christians are concerned about knowing who God is and responding to him appropriately. And I just love the way as that story unfolds where God again says to Moses I want you to take the people to the land and I will go with you. And Moses says you're not going with us, you're only going with me. If you're not going with us, then I'm not going, because what marks us as different from the other nations is you, and if you're not with us, then we're just like all the other nations, because a God who doesn't exist and a God who's not with his people is basically the same situation.
Speaker 2:There's something in there about how important it is for the people of God that they live in the presence of the God who is with them all the time, and that's a pretty big deal in the biblical story Deuteronomy 30. I will never leave you or forsake you, quoted again in Hebrews 13. I will never leave you or forsake you, this constant, faithful presence of God, which is a little bit more than the kind of the sterile God is omnipresent kind of thing which sometimes is a great comfort to us, and sometimes it's not such a nice thing.
Speaker 2:We kind of like when God is with us, when we want God to be with us, we kind of like him to leave us alone but he never does.
Speaker 2:He is always faithful. That's what I mean. I think that's what Moses is wrestling with here. If, in fact, this God doesn't go with us, then we are no different than anyone else. I love God's response. He said okay, I'll do that because you asked.
Speaker 2:It was another really important theme in the scripture. James says you don't have because you don't ask. That God seems to take pleasure in responding to the prayers and requests of his people. Another pretty significant theological tension how can the God who knows what he's going to do before anything happens, be influenced by prayers of his people? So we wrestle, without all Christian traditions, wrestle with that.
Speaker 2:And then, as I read the story, the reason why they were in this mess back at the golden calf is because they wanted a God they could see and God they could see and carry with them. And then I hear Moses saying to the Lord now show me your glory, which on the one hand sounds like a positive thing, that Moses actually wants to know God. But this is the guy who's been up on the mountain with God talking to him, by his own admission, face to face, literally in Hebrew, mouth to mouth. They've had this intimate personal, and by personal I mean person to person relationship as God has revealed himself to him and for that, for Moses to want more than that. There's a way to read that negatively that Moses just like the people. Or there's a way to recognize that Moses knows there's more to God than he is ever able to grasp and understand, which I think is also incredibly helpful for for lay people. I know is helpful for me as a student at Dallas Seminary. I came to Dallas Seminary with my theology pretty well established.
Speaker 2:I just wanted to learn Greek and Hebrew.
Speaker 2:And I would spend the rest of my life telling people what I learned here. But I learned fairly quickly in my project here that I didn't know as much as I thought I did and that pursuing this discourse with one another about the God who is infinite and transcendent and omni everything, means that our task is never finished. It's never complete. The more we know about him, the more we realize how much more there is to know about him. I love God's response. I can't do that. So this is what I learned in Sunday School. So I'll cover your your eyes with my hand. When I walk by, you'll see my backside, yeah, when I get on the other side, which is really interesting.
Speaker 2:Whole series of metaphors which raises another really important question how do we interpret these figures of speech, this description of God as if he is embodied, when God's not embodied? And then you expect there to be this, because this is what happened back when God gave them the law and the Ten Commandments. Come this great display of power and volcanic activity and fire, and the earth shakes and people are terrified. What Moses hears is God's declaration that he is Yahweh. Yahweh.
Speaker 2:He says it twice, which I take as a declaration, not so much that this is what God wants to be called, but he wants to be known as the God who is. That's what's different about him than all these other so-called gods at the nations. And so he declares his name. And then he declares that I am gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. I'm gonna read that text, having read through Genesis and the first half of Exodus, saying that actually is the whole point, doesn't it that this God who has created the universe is, is imagers rebelled against him and his response to that is to them, under their rebellion has been merciful.
Speaker 2:In gracious yeah, in compassionate, he doesn't destroy them and start all over again. He is slow to anger. He does get angry. He's angry at the people when they Rebelled against him as they do. Yeah, every chance right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the numbers is right around the corner. There's a lot of, but it's also an exodus.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, if you obey me fully and completely, I will feed you every day. In the next words, a rebel against him. And he feeds them anyway Because he is gracious and compassionate. Which doesn't mean that we can do whatever we want. It doesn't mean we can ask for forgiveness instead of permission. It doesn't mean that we're not antinomian, that what we do doesn't matter, but it is a nice, consistent, faithful reminder that this is who God is and he is consistent in his character.
Speaker 2:That language is so Significant that seven or eight times that those words are quoted by the biblical writers numbers 14, when Moses repeats it back to God, nehemiah, jonah the Psalmist, use the means. Almost like the people of Israel said if you're gonna know who God is, this is where you start. This, this summarizes who he is, and then, if we're looking for phrases From that description, they're everywhere in the biblical text. So, having grown up in a tradition when I was presented a God who is harsh and mean and who is like Santa Claus, he's looking to catch you in in better watch out for you, gotta watch out, he's watching all the time, but to realize that God God doesn't Take sin and rebellion lightly.
Speaker 2:He does, he takes it really seriously. But that's not what defines who he is. He is gracious and compassionate, bounding in love and faithfulness, forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. That that, that's his character.
Speaker 1:It's almost as if the temptation might be that we try to look at all the different parts of scripture and then try to work our way up from that to well, this is what God is like, and instead it might be we should look at where he defines himself to Moses, and that's the lens that we then use to read the rest of scripture, and then it just sort of pops out at you. You're like oh yeah, I see it here, I see it here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's exactly my claim. Moses wrote the book of Genesis to the people of the Exodus and I think we should read Genesis through the lens of Exodus 34, 6 and 7, but I think we read the rest of the scripture that way. And so when I teach Trinitarianism, the theology proper and the doctrine of the Trinity, where we deal with attributes of God, have students write a doctrinal synthesis paper and I always tell them you can start wherever you want, but if you don't Engage who God claims that he is make, you're missing something really Significant. What what I will many of us have been trained to do with divine attributes is look for a Bible verse defending an attribute yeah, whereas here what we have is God's declaration of who he is, and then we test that and say is God consistently acting in Consistency with? Is he acting according to what he has said? He is and he is it. That's that is who he is. That's that's what he does.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean even even the rest of the deuteronomic history, like you, to use the Overly technical term on accident. But you know, joshua judges, samuel, kings. It's like, really, that takes a long time for them to get to exile, even though they earn it pretty early on. They still get chance after chance, profit after profit gets sent to call them to repentance, to stop their idolatry, to stop their Religious ritualism, to stop oppressing the poor and the needy, and they just Keep refusing and then eventually ex-alcums. But it takes a long reading.
Speaker 1:My Bible reading plan right now is going through Kings. It's just, we've just started the Post Solomon, rehoboam, jeroboam, split, and so we're on that initial decline, and it's just. You know, there's a sense in which a book like second Kings is boring, but it's, I think, is probably to some extent it's teaching you that sin and rebellion are boring. It's the same thing over and over again, and so it you're like I feel like I read this about this King three chapters ago and it's like, yeah, that's that's where Rebellion and disobeying God gets you. It gets you not where you want to go and by the time God's anger burns most brightly.
Speaker 2:Generation after generation after generation, who deserved his judgment have lived and died mmm and many of them have lived and died in prosperity, while God's anger is becoming me. There's just something about that slowed anger, having spent most of my life among people and I might actually live in the body of one of those whose Anger Is set off and it becomes really strong, really quickly.
Speaker 1:It's not there. And then all of a sudden, yeah, here it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, and. And to watch, you know, through those stories, and to watch how God is so gracious and patient, he sends prophet after prophet, he, he Blesses them and feeds them in. And here this steady, this steady progression of non David-like and David's not Perfect either, but these non David-like kings. It takes him a long time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's like why couldn't they? It feels like the eggs out could have started like two generations after Solomon, and it would. They've. Solomon did all the things the king is not supposed to do. He's multiplying horses and Cumulating gold and forcing labor. It's like, oh, that's it. He just yeah, it said very, very explicitly in Deuteronomy If there's a king, he's not supposed to do these things. And all of a sudden Solomon's doing.
Speaker 2:It's like oh, I love what what the Lord says about Solomon. I'm paraphrasing You're despicable. This stuff you have done is the very things that a king is not supposed to do. But because I love your dad, I'm Gonna keep the promise I made to him. It's not because of you, it's kind of in spite of you, and it's ironic to read that then, when it's followed by the split, that that that follows, that I mean this. God blesses and keeps his promise to the sons of David, but none of them deserve you what they've received. Neither does David, nor Solomon, nor any of the rest of us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which gives us pause too, because we were reading some of these Old Testament stories and we're like, oh, they're so. You know, how could they screw up like that? And it's like, well, it's easy to see it in someone else.
Speaker 1:It's a lot harder to come to terms with it in yourself and you know that's probably that we could trace it forward, if we wanted to, to the Gospels, and that's probably part of Jesus's harshness with the religious people who think they have it already figured out and already know what God can and can't do.
Speaker 2:And I think that's key in that we see it's easy to read the history of Israel and the history of the disciples and say what's? What are these goofballs doing? But that's actually our story too. But it also is fascinating to my trainer thought I had a really good idea. It flew out of my head that happens.
Speaker 1:The train's coming in and then you think it's going to stop in the station and it just, it just plows on through.
Speaker 1:It's just, yeah, it's going Well let me I'll redirect us a little bit because I do one of the things that people are aware of. I should mention this. But we're calling this the second half of Exodus series. It's Exodus, the power of God's presence, and so we're making the presence a theme and this passage that we kind of used as a jumping off point to talk about who God is, that's actually sort of the climax of this series, leading us into a series for our Advent, our four Sundays of Advent.
Speaker 1:That's kind of going even further into the presence theme and tracing it really from the garden to the New Testament of. You know, the God was with his people in the garden, but then it was the, then it was the tabernacle, and then it was the temple, and then it's Jesus is the ultimate expression and the church. And so maybe we could, we could wrap up a little bit. I know you've written on this before with your book God with us. It was about God's presence and you've brought that up before. But maybe give us a little bit more about this. The significance of this theme moving out of Exodus you touched on it in Exodus it's as they're leaving. It's significant that God is with his people and not just a God that they can call on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think the way you've outlined it is exactly right that there's an increased reality and experience of God's presence with his people on the earth. He's with them in the garden. He kicks them out of the garden, they move to the east, they are away from him and you've got these stories of individuals walking with God. But then he's starting with Abraham. When he creates this, this people, the descendants of Abraham of all nations, he limits himself for a bit with the people of the Exodus, the descendants of Abraham, isaac and Jacob, all of which is looking forward to this great hope that one day the reign of God would be experienced on the earth. One day righteousness will be experienced. One day mercy and grace and justice will cover the earth like water covers the sea. And then here comes Jesus, who is God with us, and all of these messianic expectations of righteousness and prosperity and blessing and God's presence seem to be right on the cusp. And then Jesus dies. But before he dies he tells his disciples you should be glad because I'm going to leave you. You should be glad because then God will send the spirit. So the presence of Jesus is inferior to the absence of Jesus, because the absence of Jesus brings the presence of the spirit who is in and with us, and I love that section of the scriptures.
Speaker 2:We, as the disciples, are wrestling with their expectations not being realized the way they expected them to be realized, which is for many of us, I think, really for almost all of us we have expectations of what our lives will look like, how things will go, and nothing ever goes exactly according to plan. But there is a God in heaven who is merciful, compassionate, bounding and loving faithfulness, and he's working that plan, all things he uses for our good and for the good of those who love him. And then we see the. So Jesus leaves and disciples are freaked out by that. The angel says why are you looking up into heaven?
Speaker 2:He's coming back and then they go to work establishing the reign of God on the earth, in through the church, and the expectation of the day when he returns to make all things new. One of the last things he says before he leaves is behold, I am making all things. Well, it's not before he leaves. It's to John and yeah, behold, I am making all things new and ultimately he will do that.
Speaker 2:So what we do as we are increasingly experiencing the ex the actually experiencing the presence of God. But but in each of those eras of expectation, we know that they all pale in comparison to what is to come. That because our goal, the goal of the biblical story, is not heaven. The goal of the biblical story is that the earth that God created, which was cursed because of human sin, is made new, and in a new heaven and new earth where the triune God not simply Jesus and not the spirit, but the father, son and spirit make their dwelling on the earth with us forever. Which it's just, it's unbelievable, it's mind blowing, as we used to say back in the 60s, that the creative of the universe, who has his vast universe, lives and dwells on this one little blue speck.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean whether we can travel to other planets and stuff that's beyond my ability to speculate. But, there is this increasing experience of the presence of God on earth that is at the heart of the biblical story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, we were actually just talking about that last little piece. In one of our commissioned communities that I lead, that's, we're reading through biblical critical theory in a book club, essentially, but in one of the chapters he's talking about Genesis one and it kind of slips through this like all and every gets repeated over and over in Genesis one and God's creation is. There's a super abundance to it. It's almost gratuitous. If you think about it, it's like, yeah, why do we need this huge universe for us and we can't even see all of it? Like, even even now, with our technology that we've developed, we still can't see everything. We can postulate what's there, but we can't see it all. And yet it's all things new would include all those, all of that as new. And it's this universe, that it's this one planet, in our understanding at least, that God has visited. It's a visited planet where he became one of us to save us so that we could be in relationship with him for all eternity.
Speaker 2:And when, in all eternity, we are in relationship with him, it's in our world, not in God's world. I don't think it's too strong to say that when God, the Son, took on flesh, he then becomes an earthling. He is. He is a person who needs a place and Heaven is not a place for embodied creatures and so he. This is his home, this is our home, and so I mean I get, this world is not my home. This one as it is is not our home.
Speaker 2:Yeah but this world redeemed the way it is intended to be, because we live in a world where things are not the way they're supposed to be. This is the planting of Brevieria's Brevieria sin book. Oh yeah, the way it's supposed to be. So that I mean that just that phrase so encapsulates the reality of what sin has done to the world in which we live and the universe in which we live. Gratuitous is a really nice word.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a bit mean and, like the Gratuity says it, it's a, it's over a bundles of grace, it's a gift, yeah, but which brings us all the way back down to this is Back around to.
Speaker 2:This is who God is. His grace is limitless. His compassion and mercy are limitless. He forgives His wickedness, rebellion and sin.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, I think that, even to take it even a step further back, to tie it into theologies, that's what we're doing when we're doing theology we're coming to know this God in A deeper and ever increasing way, and that really is an? S based on what we've just said. That is an eschatological Activity, it's something that will continue on. It's not a. We just do it for this life and then, when we get to heaven, all of a sudden the full knowledge of God gets downloaded into everyone's Brain and then we're everyone knows God the same way. It's like, no, it's you. You come into Eternity and now you have the opportunity to continue to grow in your Relationship and knowledge with God.
Speaker 2:What you started in this life continues into the next because we're creatures and creatures are Finite and creatures are always growing and always developing. Otherwise we turn into little gods. There's a religion that actually believes that that is, yeah, that's right, that's not what Christians believe. Yeah, when we see him become like him doesn't mean we turn into gods.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're still still creatures.
Speaker 2:still, there's still a finitude to it, so it's not like we can fully comprehend so, as fun as it is to have theological conversations and to have Uh, what did you call it? Theological book club, yeah, yeah as fun as it is to do that in a fallen world, imagine doing that unencumbered by technology, unencumbered by tiredness, unencumbered by Books that you have a hard time understanding, unencumbered by running out of coffee.
Speaker 1:I mean all the, all the, yeah all the things that make life worth living.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this, this is a life, not only a lifelong pursuit, but it's an eternal pursuit. Yeah of coming to understand who this god actually is, and he, he delights in that. I think Not only do we delight in coming to know him, I think he delights in his children Coming in to know him and responding to him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I mean, if you got that with uh, I don't have the exact verse in In mind, but the passage in zeff and I, where it talks about god's singing over us With joy and that's, if that's not delight, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know where else you would find it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and and I know that's a figure of speech but Everything we say about god we say by Analogical language right, I do believe god delights. I mean that that's. It's a strange. It's a strange parent who doesn't take delight and pride, enjoy in seeing His hurt children, flurries and thrive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and if we have what you know, what we have in the new testament, where god, you know, jesus tells us to relate to god as father, he's drawing on what we understand, what we know. This is the way you should think of god that you could have come up with some other way. You could have read stories here and there. So it's really, it's a plea, for when god defines himself in the old testament, we take it seriously. When jesus tells us what the father is like in the new testament, we take that seriously and we don't try to get behind the text and Figure out other things or try to reconstruct it differently.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the, the, the elephant in the room and conversations like this Is always so. What about that last section In exodus 34? And he does not leave the guilty unpunished. He punishes Children for the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generation, and For many people that is that trumps the section of gracious, compassion, abounding and loving faithfulness. Because to see, they say see. In the end people get what they deserve.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the reason why I do what I do, the reason why I get out of bed in the morning and fight Dallas traffic to come here and do this, is because the good news of the gospel is that what I Put out does not come back to me, that I don't actually have to pay For the sins that I've committed, that they, they have been. Salvation has been provided for me by this gracious and compassionate god in In the, the death and resurrection of his son, and I think that's the greatest. I know, that's the greatest of all possible good news that you don't have to be perfect to be acceptable to god. You have to be Chosen by him and blessed by him and being a recipient of his unmerited favor, his, his mercy and grace. And I would hope as well that it's probably easier to convince non professional theologians of the reality of that than it is Normal people yeah, that's fair.
Speaker 2:Uh, because those of us who have experienced gods Forgiveness, those of us who have experienced forgiveness from Others that we've wronged, have an appreciation, forgiveness In a way that those who think more highly of themselves and they ought to think yeah, I mean to be to be fair and criticizing Theologians. I know a lot of them and most of them are really good thinkers and sometimes spend most of our time in the head instead of yeah, well.
Speaker 1:I'm glad we kind of we tied, tied this in a little bit at the end of there is the danger of it turning into just a theoretical or a academic only which we, you know we talked about at the beginning or even just a. It's just about thinking and there's not an experiential. It's one thing to understand the proposition god is gracious it's another thing to actually have felt it and experienced it. And theology flourishes when it's the knowledge and the experience in tandem. Not just you know, we use the head, heart Idea of. You know, it's not just head knowledge, it's heart knowledge.
Speaker 2:But it's, yeah, it's both and and emotional health and experience, and Because we're holistic beings, right, yeah, so yeah, you bring up emotional.
Speaker 1:We're doing an emotional health thing with our staff right now too. So that's, that could be a whole another separate podcast, but I know very little about emotional health.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I know what it is when I see it okay.
Speaker 1:Well, we can. I got a book for you then. Well, dr Crater's been great talking with you, just talking about exodus and Wandering to and fro the god who is gracious. I'll look forward to another time, I'm sure.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much.