Understanding Critical Realism in Biblical Interpretation

There’s no such thing as a neutral reading of the Bible. Every reading is inflected by first-person experience, cultural context, history, and more. In this episode, biblical scholars Janette Ok and Jordan J. Ryan join Mark Labberton to reflect on The New Testament in Color, a groundbreaking new biblical commentary that brings together diverse voices across racial, cultural, and social locations. They share how their own ethnic and cultural backgrounds as Asian American and Filipino Canadian readers shaped their understanding of Scripture, the importance of social location, using the creeds as guardrails for hermeneutics, and how contextual interpretation deepens biblical authority rather than diminishing it.

Episode Highlights

• “There is no such thing as a neutral reading of the Bible.” —Mark Labberton
• “It really dawned on me the importance of being aware of who I am, my family background, my history in the United States, all these things.” —Janette Ok
• “Filipinos I think are always sort of on the margins… trying to understand how Asian we really are or aren’t.” —Jordan J. Ryan
• “Objectivity is nothing more than the fruit of authentic subjectivity.” —Jordan J. Ryan quoting Bernard Lonergan
• “Colorblindness is actually something that's not true… particularity is fundamental to the gospel.” —Janette Ok
• “It was one of the most freeing experiences that I’ve had because it finally gave me permission to do the thing that I’d always wanted to do.” —Jordan J. Ryan

Helpful Links and Resources

• The New Testament in Color: A Multiethnic Commentary on the New Testament (IVP Academic)

About Janette Ok

Janette Ok is associate professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary. A leading scholar in Asian American biblical interpretation, she is a co-editor of The New Testament in Color and author of Constructing Ethnic Identity in 1 Peter.

About Jordan Ryan

Jordan Ryan is associate professor of New Testament at Wheaton College and Graduate School, and author of The Role of the Synagogue in the Aims of Jesus and From the Passion to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. His research explores Acts, archaeology, and Filipino American biblical interpretation.

Show Notes

• The New Testament in color and contextual biblical Interpretation
• “There is no such thing as a neutral reading of the Bible.”
• Janette’s growing up in a Korean immigrant church in Detroit, carrying “the weight of assimilation.”
• Asian American literature, especially Bone by Fae Myenne Ng
• Opening our eyes to the power of articulating immigrant experience
• Jordan Ryan’s mixed-race Canadian upbringing—Filipino mother, white father—and early encounters with Scripture through unhoused communities.
• “Filipinos are always sort of on the margins of Asian America.” —Jordan Ryan
• Contextual reading of the bible
• All readings are contextual, contrasting liberation theology, unhoused readers, and Western academic traditions
• Challenges and dangers of contextualization
• “The first danger is to think that we can remove ourselves from the work of textual interpretation.”
• Social location is not an external lens but intrinsic to the gospel.
• “Objectivity is nothing more than the fruit of authentic subjectivity.”
• Archaeology that informs contextual questions
• “Colorblind” readings ignore particularity and miss the incarnational nature of Scripture.
• Biblical authority and the living word
• Biblical authority as central: “It’s why I teach at Wheaton College and not somewhere else.”
• “When we say the Bible is the living Word of God… it means it has to speak to us today.”
• Preachers already contextualize every Sunday; The New Testament in Color makes this explicit and communal
• New Testament in Color was initiated by Esau McCaulley in 2018
• Preceded by works like True to Our Native Land and Women’s Bible Commentary
• Distinctive by gathering scholars from African American, Latino, Asian American, Native American, and European American backgrounds in one volume
• Goal: Embody diversity without sacrificing particularity or biblical trust.
• Commentary on Acts, including Filipino American theology and diaspora identity
• “It was one of the most freeing experiences that I’ve had.”
• He traced themes of foreignness, colonialism, and God’s care for the imprisoned in Acts
• 1 Peter and Asian American biblical interpretation, wrestling with exile, belonging, and “perpetual foreigner” stereotypes
• Home as central theological concern—“not everyone feels at home in the same way.” —Janette Ok
• Editing, diversity, and reader reception
• Balancing freedom with theological boundaries rooted in the creeds
• Diversity created unevenness, but also richness and authenticity.
• “The fingerprints that make it so living.” —Janette Ok
• Professors report the book resonates with students of color whose lived experiences often feel absent in traditional scholarship
• “Sometimes people don’t know where to begin… I encourage my students to always consult scholars who read and look differently from themselves.”

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.