In this installment of our apologetics series we ask the corresponding question to last week’s episode, Does Apologetics Help Us Read the New Testament? For this conversation we are joined by Ian Mills, who is a PhD Candidate in New Testament at Duke University and co-host with Laura Robinson of the New Testament Review podcast. Ian contends that the modern apologetics enterprise both hinders our ability to read the New Testament and makes us worse people. Over the course of our conversation we talk about both of those aspects of Ian’s indictment on the modern apologetics, looking at specific culprits and also specific examples where our reading of New Testament will be negatively impacted. Team members from The Two Cities on the episode include: Dr. Amber Bowen, Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Rev. Daniel Parham, Dr. Chris Porter, and Dr. Logan Williams. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Continuing our conversation on Apologetics we want to take the next two episodes to ask whether apologetics helps us read Scripture. This week we want to ask that question in relation to the Old Testament specifically. We are joined by Dr. Brent Strawn, Professor of Old Testament at Duke Divinity School and Professor of Law at Duke University. He is the author of The Old Testament Is Dying: A Diagnosis and Recommended Treatment (Baker), and more recently, Lies My Preacher Told Me: An Honest Look at The Old Testament (Westminster John Knox). In our wide-ranging conversation, we talk about a number of issues pertaining to the use of the Old Testament in apologetic discussions. We pose several questions to Dr. Strawn, such as, why is it that apologetics makes it hard for us to read our Bibles, why we are perhaps less open to critical scholarship on the Old Testament than the New Testament, and what we should make of apparent contradictions if we aren’t going to feed the apologetic impulse to “tame” or “fix” the problem? Dr. Strawn contends that we need to see the big picture and put everything into perspective relative to central claims of our faith. He suggests that his approach is more compatible with a classic apologetic that is not mired in modernism and modernist constraints about what counts as facticity, historicity, etc. In the end, Dr. Strawn helpfully calls us to read with the grain of the text and to consider Augustine’s position that good interpretation ought to brings us into greater love of God and love of neighbor. Team members on the episode from The Two Cities include: Dr. John Anthony Dunne and Brandon Hurlbert. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kicking off our brand-new series on apologetics we begin with the end! Our first guest is Dr. Myron Bradley Penner, the author of The End of Apologetics: Christian Witness in a Postmodern Context (published by Baker), and the Rector at the Anglican Parish of Saint Paul in the Anglican Diocese of Edmonton, Alberta. Dr. Penner helpfully kick starts this series by asking what the goals of apologetics ought to be? He draws attention to many problems with the modern apologetic enterprise with their goals essentially being to win epistemic standoffs and show a force of rational domination. He highlights that many of the key figures in Christian apologetics are engaged in a project that is ironically secular, drawing as it does upon a modernist frame in order to attempt to win a battle against modernity. In our conversation, we discuss the problems that occur with reducing Christianity to propositions, as is so often done in this mode of apologetics. In our postmodern age, we are rightly skeptical of claims to “objective,” “universal,” and “neutral” knowledge, and so such an apologetic approach is also out of touch in addition to being so often less-than-Christian. Many of the questions that people are asking nowadays are also not the same ones in which classical apologetics first began. For all of these reasons, modern apologetics needs to die; and raised in its place must be something more personal, holistic, relational, and communal. Team members of the episode from The Two Cities includes: Dr. Amber Bowen, Dr. Josh Carroll, and Dr. John Anthony Dunne. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this episode we reflect back on our Cultural Identity series and the things that stood out to us the most. We use the analogy of the table to highlight that these conversations need to happen in an egalitarian way, where we all bring something to the table for others to enjoy. The series began with Episode 68 (May 12th) and concludes with Episode 76 (July 7th). Our series includes episodes on Latin American Theology, Asian North American preaching and biblical interpretation, race relations after George Floyd, Critical Race Theory, Masculinity, and Whiteness. What we tried to stress in this series is there is no such thing as an “un-hyphenated theology,” that we all bring our cultural identities and various intersectional backgrounds to the text with us as we attempt to read it. We hoped to stress that we all have particularities that we need to be aware of, and that we also need to learn from others who have a unique access to the text because of their distinct particularities. We also hope that this series highlights how we do not want to universalize our particularities. Team members on the episode from The Two Cities includes: Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Grace Sangalang Ng, Rev. Daniel Parham, and Dr. Chris Porter. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Concluding our series on Cultural Identity, we are joined by Dr. Willie James Jennings, who is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Africana Studies at Yale Divinity School, and the author of The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (Yale University Press), and, more recently, After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging (Eerdmans). Dr. Jennings begins by explaining what Whiteness is and isn’t, and specifically how it has nothing to do with phenotype, cultural heritage, bodily characteristics, biology, etc, but rather is a particular way of seeing the world as revolving around the self and as something to be mastered. Over the course of our conversation we talk about how the church and theological education have been ensconced in Whiteness. Given that dynamic, Dr. Jennings relays to us how to call out its particularities, overcome internalized racism in the academy, and addresses what sort of “crucifixion” white evangelicalism might need to experience to be on the side of resurrection. Throughout his book, After Whiteness, Dr. Jennings interweaves anecdotes with poems that he’s written. As a special treat for us, Dr. Jennings reads one of his unpublished poems that didn’t make its way into the book. In the end, Dr. Jennings provide a beautiful vision of hope for the gathering of the multitudes together as the people of God after Whiteness. Team members on the episode from The Two Cities includes: Dr. Amber Bowen, Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Grace Sangalang Ng, Dr. Chris Porter, and Dr. Logan Williams. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this penultimate episode in our cultural identity series we discuss the role of whiteness in New Testament scholarship with Prof. David Horrell, who is Professor of New Testament Studies and the Director of the Center for Biblical Studies at the University of Exeter (England), and the author of Solidarity and Difference: A Contemporary Reading of Paul’s Ethics (T&T Clark, 2005), and, more recently, Ethnicity and Inclusion: Religion, Race, and Whiteness in Constructions of Jewish and Christian Identities (Eerdmans, 2020). Over the course of our conversation, Prof. Horrell talks with us about his new book on the particularities that contribute to the modern state of New Testament scholarship, and specifically the particularities that have contributed to New Testament scholarship on the relationship between Judaism and nascent Christianity, that the former is particular and ethnocentric, whereas the latter is non-particular and universal. Prof. Horrell situates this within a Euro-centric perspective that lauds western liberal values, with many implications that continue to impact New Testament Studies. In our conversation Prof. Horrell also reflects on his former research under this light, particularly his studies on Paul’s ethics, and helps us consider how we can come to see the effects of whiteness on New Testament scholarship as “strange” by de-centering white western perspectives on the text. Team members on the episode from The Two Cities include Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Dr. Grace Emmett, Dr. Chris Porter, and Dr. Logan Williams. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode we carry on our broader discussion on cultural identity with Dr. Robert Stegmann, who is Research Fellow at Stellenbosch University in South Africa, and the author of Contested Masculinities: Polysemy and Gender in 1 Thessalonians (Lexington). Over the course of our conversation, Dr. Stegmann explains his work on gender in Paul, in which he contends for multiple possibilities of masculinity in the text rather than a static conception of gender. As he does so from a postcolonial and gender-critical perspective, he is very aware of his own cultural situatedness as a white male New Testament scholar based in South Africa. In drawing attention to his background explicitly and consistently, he provides a great model for what we are trying to stress in this series—self-reflection on our own particularities as we approach the biblical text. Team members on the episode from The Two Cities include: Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Dr. Grace Emmett, and Dr. Logan Williams. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this episode in the Cultural Identity series we are joined by Dr. Janette Hur Ok, who is associate professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary and the author of the forthcoming monograph Constructing Ethnic Identity in 1 Peter: Who You Are No Longer in the Library of New Testament Studies series. Dr. Ok addresses a number of key issues related to contextualized readings of the New Testament, noting first of all that western biblical scholarship is also contextualized. In other words, there’s no such thing as an a-contextualized reading of Scripture. As such, Dr. Ok tells us a bit about how she developed her own Asian American approach to biblical studies, and we talk about her forthcoming monograph on 1 Peter in particular, which provides an interesting approach to the issue of ethnicity in the letter. As the conversation continues we discuss a range of important topics that help to round out our series, such as various issues of intersectionality, like Asian American feminist scholarship. Team members on the episode from The Two Cities include: Dr. John Anthony Dunne, Jennifer Guo, Grace Sangalang Ng, and Dr. Kris Song. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Continuing our series on Cultural Identity, we are joined by Norlan Hernandez, who is the Director of the Jesse Miranda Center for Hispanic Leadership at Vanguard University and a PhD Candidate in Intercultural Studies at the Cook School of Intercultural Studies at Biola University. Norlan joins us on the podcast for a second episode on Latin American Theology, following on from last week’s more historically-focused episode with Dr. Octavio Esqueda (Episode #71 – “Journeying Through Latin American Theology”). In this episode we discuss more about how cultural identity is crucial to the task of theology. In our conversation we note the importance and inevitability of contextualization, the communal dynamics of Hispanic culture relative to the institutional nature of the church, epistemologies of the South, and the holistic nature of Hispanic theology and spirituality. Team members on the episode from The Two Cities includes Dr. John Anthony Dunne and Rev. Daniel Parham. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Continuing our series on Cultural Identity we are joined by Dr. Octavio Esqueda for a discussion on Latin American Theology. Dr. Esqueda is Professor of Christian Higher Education and the Director of the EdD and PhD programs at Biola University. As an expert in higher education and the Spanish Reformation, Dr. Esqueda provides a helpful overview of the history of Latin American Theology as well as some of the key tenets of Hispanic Evangelical Theology, which includes the importance of communal theology, a holistic sense of mission, an inclination towards hope, and an intentional positioning as a theology from the margins. As part of this discussion, Dr. Esqueda helpfully explains that justice is always social, and that Spanish Bible readers are more inclined to recognize this than English readers of the Bible because the key Greek and Hebrew terms translated sometimes as “justice” and sometimes as “righteousness” in English are all translated with cognates related to justice in Spanish. Along the way Dr. Esqueda provides a nice mix of the anecdotal to go along with the historical, incorporating stories about his own personal faith journey growing up in Mexico and also some of the insights he gained while doing his doctoral work on theological education in Cuba. Team members on the episode from The Two Cities include: Dr. John Anthony Dunne and Grace Sangalang Ng. Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.