Carey Griffel: Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot where we raid the ivory tower of biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and today I have a special treat to bring you. I did a conversation with my good friend Mike Chu, and we really didn't have anything in particular that we were gonna talk about except that we knew we wanted to talk about the new edition of The Unseen Realm.
[00:00:34] This is the Expanded Edition with some additional material. The additional material includes things from the website that already existed that was more unseen realm.com. That website had a lot of extra notes and bibliography and things like that, that Dr. Heiser had put together that for whatever reason, didn't make it into the first version of the book. So he made a website that included all of that, and you can still access that as well.
[00:01:03] So the new Expanded Edition includes that information, but it also includes extra material from Dr. Heiser that he wrote before he passed, and also I believe, some edited material from editors who took some of it and edited it and put it into the new version here.
[00:01:23] Now it's going to be easy to tell what the new material is because thankfully they put it into sidebars. So I appreciate that because then you're not left floundering wondering what the new material in the book is, so it's really clear what the new material is. A lot of it I really appreciate because what it does is that it responds to a lot of common objections that people have to Dr. Heiser's work and honestly I will say a lot of common misperceptions.
[00:01:54] So he talks about hermeneutical methods, although he doesn't use that term. He talks about the ha satan from Job and the Satan figure at large. He even brings in what his views are of the creeds. So a lot of these objections that people have, they're actually addressed here in this book. So I really appreciate that. And some of it is very practical as well.
[00:02:22] So if you are interested in Dr. Heiser's material and you're wondering if this book is worth buying, well, first of all, it's a beautiful book. It's really well put together. So if you get a physical hard copy of it, I don't think you'll be disappointed there. And second of all, if you are interested in telling people about The Unseen Realm, if you are interested in teaching any of this material and helping to clarify some of these things for people, this book is going to be very valuable to you. It also has some extra technical things, and like I said, more bibliography as well. So that's kind of what that's all about.
[00:03:03] And Mike Chu and I talk a little bit about that, but we go on and ramble about a whole bunch of other things as well. And I think you'll find it an interesting conversation. I definitely came away with a lot to chew on. So I think that you will too. So let me go ahead and stop rambling here and get to the conversation.
[00:03:26] All right. I am here today with my good friend Mike Chu, and we are gonna talk about random things. Seriously, we have no idea what we're actually gonna talk about today, except that we know that Dr. Heiser's new Expanded Edition, The Unseen Realm Expanded Edition, just came out. So I'm sure we'll talk about that and we'll talk about just random theology things going on in the world and I really wanna dig into what Awakening's doing right now and how it's going and all of that.
[00:03:58] So welcome Mike. How are you doing?
[00:04:00] Mike Chu: I'm well. Thanks for having me back on Carey. It's good to just be able to shoot the breeze and talk divine council stuff.
[00:04:08] Carey Griffel: Yeah. There's gonna be a lot of conversation about the Divine Council this year, what with the new Unseen Realm coming out. And a lot of people have already gotten their copies. A lot of people are still waiting as of our conversation anyway. And it's really interesting because The Unseen Realm came out 10 years ago and that doesn't seem like it was that long ago. It does not seem like 10 years.
[00:04:35] Mike Chu: You're right. That is actually surreal. It's strange it's been a decade. And the Expanded Edition, I noticed in the very first couple of pages, there's a new preface from Dr. Heiser. It was dated 2019 and the location was in Jacksonville, Florida. So this is right, probably, after he had stepped down from his position at Logos and taken on his role to run the Awakening School of Theology, it was like, holy cow.
[00:05:01] So he started writing this material maybe before he ever found out about his diagnosis. And so it was like, goodness gracious. It was just weird reading that and just knowing a little bit of the timeline.
[00:05:12] Carey Griffel: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, it's interesting because I learned about Dr. Heiser in the year, it was about somewhere along the lines of when The Unseen Realm came up. But it wasn't The Unseen Realm that brought me into his work. It was still all of the conversations from Coast to Coast and all of that. That's where we had heard from Dr. Heiser first.
[00:05:34] And then I got into all of his really long lectures on YouTube and I thought, is this guy crazy? And decided, no, I'm pretty sure he is not crazy, but this is really cool stuff. So it's just really interesting, all of that, the timeline of everything and to realize that that was the time that Unseen Realm was coming out.
[00:05:55] And prior to that, a lot of his work had already started to explode. And I think that this is part of the impact that Unseen Realm was able to have at the time because combined with the podcast and everything else, like other people were doing things. And it's really interesting to also look at Dr. Heiser's blog at the time. Because he was sharing all kinds of scholarly material out there from other blogs and other podcasts that people were doing. It was very accessible in that way. And yet still, Dr. Heiser's work was the thing that blew the lid off of everything.
[00:06:35] And I feel like a lot of that had to do with his approach, his personality, the way that he spoke about things, as well as just the general topics.
[00:06:46] Mike Chu: I think one of the interesting, I mean, Mike came at a time when, and you know like when I look back at it now, I think those were the first inklings of what we are now starting to see to use a Gen Z kind of phrase, a vibe shift, right?
[00:07:00] And that there was some inklings of that. Post-modernity was already starting to lose its grasp within the west, a lot of the consequences were starting to be realized and now we've really felt the consequences in the last couple of years. And so I think, you know, the upcoming generations of folks, it's kind of revealed in how people are longing for deeper content or I want to understand the scholarly material.
[00:07:27] I wanna look into the research because I think people are hungry for truth. They want to actually understand how does the world really work? Not this framework of how there's nothing reliable or you can't trust history or there's no such thing as cause and effect in actual lived out reality.
[00:07:46] We know there is something that is out there. What is the research on that? What have people discovered about that? And I think that was one of the things that I really, I think Mike just came at that timing where he was willing to just speak as plainly as possible and also bring up this, this is what academics and scholars have been pointing out and have been writing. It's just that usually it gets ignored by most lay people. And so I think it just came at a very interesting time. And the synergy of it was, I mean, you couldn't plan it. There was no way you could have planned that kind of thing.
[00:08:20] Carey Griffel: Yeah, absolutely. Just everything coming together to a point where things are ready, people are ready, they're interested, and it's just grown from there and it's continuing to grow and it's a beautiful thing.
[00:08:34] And so there's a lot of pushback, of course, with Dr. Heiser's materials and Dr. Heiser's community and things like that. Both of us are admins on the Divine Council Worldview Facebook page, so we see this fairly regularly. We see people who want to warn against the idolization of Dr. Heiser and things like that.
[00:09:01] And for the most part, in my experience, you know, for you and for the people around me, we love Dr. Heiser because he's a good teacher. Because we just loved him as a person. And you should love a good teacher. At least I would hope that you do. That's part of just normal human reaction to each other, right.
[00:09:26] And so I think a lot of that can be conflated by other people because, and it's fair in evangelicalism in particular, sometimes you do have those cults of personality. Mm-hmm. And you do have like the big preachers and things like that. And so there is something to be cautionary about.
[00:09:45] And I would actually really acknowledge that. There is a reason to be concerned, and especially with you and I as admins, I think that we are aware of those things and we want to push back against them to any degree where it becomes a problem. That does not mean it's always a problem, but there are moments and times where we actually do see it as a problem sometimes.
[00:10:13] And I do worry sometimes that those things and those elements and that kind of a culture might grow in some places.
[00:10:21] Mike Chu: I think, a lot of this is also dependent on the kind of church background and even just religious experience that people have had. I was talking about this recently with my lead pastor at my church that sometimes we meet people in our church who are coming from a religious background where it's very maybe legalistic or very fundamentalist. And in some sense they also experience the worst excesses of those kind of particular frames of mind. And so they react against that kind of thing.
[00:10:52] They react against that kind of past or upbringing or culture or memory that they have. I don't want to be a legalist. I don't want to be a fundamentalist. I don't wanna be this, I don't want to be that. But the irony is the learned behavior from those cultures is not unlearned, or maybe if it's not unlearned, they're then acting in the opposite way that they would have normally acted thinking that is the solution that if I was very judgmental, I now need to be completely unabashedly accepting of everything without any sort of discernment that they run to the opposite direction. And the irony is then you're still being governed by what you had experienced and what you had felt abused by, but now you're just doing the opposite. So you're actually, in a really ironic sense, still controlled by that.
[00:11:45] And so it's, it's a very interesting thing 'cause I see folks who love Dr. Heiser and love his material. And there's good reason. I mean, he was one of the first few scholars who were really, like, he really could have just done academic work and research. He could have just focused his time and his energy into writing papers, into digging more into Semetic language research.
[00:12:08] But he didn't, he decided to engage with the normal lay person and to bring this material here. In some sense it almost felt like, you know, here's a guy coming down from the White Tower of the Academia and is bringing this material so it feels very heroic. He seemed very heroic to a lot of us, and in some sense he is a personal hero to many of us.
[00:12:28] But I think there's still some sense of that kind of behavior that we've brought from our previous upbringing. And we've not actually left it. We are actually just simply transferred that same behavior. But now it's about Dr. Heiser, not about maybe a particular, you know, theological stance. Maybe it's not KJV only, or maybe it's not just justification by faith only, or whatever only you want to use, but now it's Heiser- Only and, and I think that's, that's where we have to be cautious, because Mike always was willing to listen to good arguments, especially if you can show those arguments can be based on biblical texts and material, if it can be based on actual good scholarly, vetted out research, let's have a conversation, let's have a discussion of theology.
[00:13:20] And so I think that's what made Mike very assessable because he was willing to listen. He didn't necessarily agree, but he was willing to listen. And I think that is, I mean, honestly in the last couple of weeks we've been seeing that that kind of attitude of listening is becoming rare and it really shouldn't. 'Cause that's the only way you can have good dialogue and actually learn and grow as a person.
[00:13:47] Carey Griffel: Right. Well, and here's the thing. A lot of people will associate Dr. Heiser's work with the divine council and The Unseen Realm and all of that, as well they obviously should. But if that's what you're taking Dr. Heiser's work in its entirety as, you're missing out on a lot of really good stuff that Dr. Heiser was bringing to us in all of this world.
[00:14:11] It was not just about his ideas. Yes, he promoted his ideas. Yes, he wasn't inventing them. He wasn't even the first to say any of it, but he was able to express it and explain it and give it to people in a way that was really accessible and understandable. So you have that side of things where people are so excited about learning about these things, like the divine council worldview and the Deuteronomy 32 worldview, however you wanna call it.
[00:14:43] And then when people get really excited about something new and they see how this new thing has now explained questions they had before, then they will get really excited. And you end up with that kind of an attitude, which is understandable, but there's no real guideline or there's no boundaries on it sometimes.
[00:15:04] Like they're just so excited that they don't know what to do with themselves. And I get that. I've been there many times in many different fields, many different places in the world, different things that I've been excited about in life. And so there's that.
[00:15:20] But then if you're missing the fact that what Dr. Heiser was doing was listening, and he was trying to understand and bring peer reviewed literature and scholarly material to the world, which means that it's not just one idea, it's you have to listen to everybody. And then those ideas as a whole can help you formulate your theology, help you understand Scripture better.
[00:15:45] It is not just the divine council worldview, it is listening to each other and understanding scholarly material and even church history and context.
[00:15:55] Mike Chu: Mm-hmm. And I think, you know, folks also, like, they need to remind themselves that even Mike pointed out that he was a biblical studies guy. Right. He focused on exegeting the text, breaking it down, breaking the grammar down, the wordage, down the context, the history of it. But at the end of the day, he understood that this was supposed to be material and a resource for other folks who are more keen and gifted in systematizing theology, in putting it into a cohesive whole and narrative that makes sense.
[00:16:32] Like, I remember clips of him talking about how systematic theologians, the early church fathers, it would take 20 modern day theologians, philosophers from today to equal one early church father thinker. And I get what he means by that, I mean, even this past week, this past Sunday, I was preaching a sermon that was essentially, I was talking all about theosis without using the word, and I brought up Athanatius of Alexandria and I pointed out to the congregation that the words that he wrote about On the Incarnation about why God the Son had to become a human being, that he wrote all of this before he was even 18 years old.
[00:17:16] Like, what in the world? You have essentially a teenager still, you know, getting ready for college in, in our own kind of thinking of age-wise, and yet here he is coming up with a theological treatise that you know, like 17, 1800 years later, people are still ruminating and percolating on those words, on that theological retrieval and reflection because it's based on his reflections on the biblical text.
[00:17:47] And so, like, it amazes me that one person like that before the age of 18 could come up with On the Incarnation. I can't comprehend that. And I think that's what Mike was referring to of like, it would take 20 of us to equal one person like that. And so, you know, as much as sometimes folks like to say, oh, we need to toss out the church fathers, or we need to ignore the early church history, that's also completely foolish.
[00:18:15] It's completely foolish on one end to just only take their word and that their word is the only authority and rule that we judge everything by afterwards. But it's also equally foolish to go the opposite way and just toss out our shared family history and heritage and legacy. Because yes, their words are not Scripture. It's not inspired and not canonical, and it doesn't have the same authority as the Holy Spirit, but they also have a lot of lived out practice wisdom that I think people are starting to realize.
[00:18:47] How do we deal with ethnic tensions? Well, the early church fathers had to deal with that. How do we deal with when Christians are no longer the power players in society and are just a minority class, the early church fathers talked about that. And they had insight into how do you live life as a follower of Jesus in a world as hostile to him?
[00:19:12] And so I think you can't go either extreme because then you're becoming very tunnel visioned, or you're gonna lose out and really miss out on a lot of gleanable wisdom that can be drawn from our shared history as a family of God.
[00:19:30] Carey Griffel: Yeah. So a lot of people will think that when Dr. Heiser is reading the Bible in context that he's then ignoring the church fathers or tossing them out. Mm-hmm. Or that he doesn't believe in the creeds or any of these kinds of ideas.
[00:19:46] And you and I have both heard him speak on these things and say that no, they're still good, they're still valuable. I've still read them. It's just that they are a different time period than the Bible. And that's all he was saying. And so something so straightforward as that which should not be controversial is now controversial and oddly misunderstood by many people who read Dr. Heiser, who have listened to him a lot. It's really strange to me how we've seen even some prominent people in the field that were in our circles today. They will read Dr. Heiser, they'll be really invested in his work and still misrepresent or misunderstand him and that's frustrating.
[00:20:34] Mike Chu: I mean, it brings up actually something, one of the added sections in the Expanded Edition is titled What about Creeds?
[00:20:42] And what's interesting about the timing of reading this was that a couple months ago from another YouTuber, um, I won't say his name, I don't wanna embarrass him or whatever else, but it was interesting. He was going to a friend's wedding at this particular church that's actually in my region. It's up in New Hampshire, and it's part of the same denomination as the church that I'm ministering in right now.
[00:21:05] It's an Evangelical Covenant church. I'll just say it. That's what it is. It's that denomination. And he was very curious to understand and learn from the pastor that this denomination of the church that I am currently in, it is not anti credal, meaning it is not against the creeds. But it is technically non credal. Meaning we don't have anything against the creeds. We actually think the creeds are pretty good. They're good statements of faith. This is a good summary of what does it mean to be a Christian, but we don't use the creeds as the authority that we measure life by.
[00:21:44] And so it was like, yes, that's exactly what the ECC is. If you want to recite the Nicene Creed, feel free. You can do it that in the church. If you wanna recite the Apostle's creed, go ahead, have fun. it's a great creed. But in the end of the day, the ECCs kind of basis was, let's go back to the scripture. What does the scripture say? Where is it written? That was like kind of the tagline. And so I'm looking at this from Mike and I'm just like, he essentially was non credal.
[00:22:11] He was not anti credal, right? Because he wouldn't ever say that the Nicene Creed is heresy, but he was non credal in that he wouldn't use the Nicene creed as a measuring rod to interpret Scripture. He wouldn't use it to be a lens to understand the words of the New and Old Testament, because in the end, the creeds themselves were birthed from reflections on the Scripture.
[00:22:38] And they're trying to summarize those reflections into a very memorable short statement that if a person was asked, are you a Christian? Well, what do you mean by that? Do you believe dot, dot, dot? Yes, you could actually say yes to those things, but it isn't meant to be an interpretive tool.
[00:22:57] I don't think it, I'll be cautious of my words, but I would probably guess that the church fathers never intended the creeds to be then reverse engineered into an interpretive tool. It was meant to be a tool that enabled folks to be able to clearly say, this is what it means to be a follower of Jesus.
[00:23:21] Carey Griffel: Right. I really like that section that is added to the Expanded Edition of The Unseen Realm as well, because it clarifies a lot really simply.
[00:23:30] It's not a long section, but really shortly clarifies Dr. Heiser's position according to what he thinks of the creeds, what he uses them for, and he says outright that, guess what? Those creeds were written in a context. And that's been my argument for all of church history myself. Like, yes, you can use theology. You can understand historical ways of doing theology and systematics, but those all came about in a particular time in a particular context, which means that they are limited.
[00:24:09] Mike Chu: Mm-hmm.
[00:24:09] Carey Griffel: That's all that means. And I like how you said that they are not then a measuring rod for Scripture. That doesn't mean that they don't align with Scripture, but that's a different thing to say that they are a measuring rod to read Scripture through, and that is how people use them.
[00:24:27] And I'm with you. I don't see how that was the original intent. Now it was helpful to say, look, here's the boundaries and here's helpful ways that we can see what Scripture is saying as opposed to what other people are saying about Scripture. Right. Some of the heretical ideas out there, there's reasons why we see those heretical, and it's because there's these boundaries.
[00:24:53] Here's our way of describing it, and actually, I'm just putting out an episode this week that talks about a Christocentric view of Scripture versus a Christotelic view of Scripture. That's very different. And it's, it's kind of fits this thing too, because everything points to Christ. That doesn't mean we have to read Christ back into everything.
[00:25:17] And you could say the same thing about the creeds.
[00:25:21] Mike Chu: So I'm curious because like, yeah, I saw that in chapter one and I was laughing because you know, like for folks who may not know, I am in the middle of my doctorate program of doctor of ministry degree in preaching, which seems like an odd choice, but it was really kind of the best synthesis of all the things I love within theology and studies and actually practice too.
[00:25:43] I do like teaching. I love being able to communicate, you Know, the word of God and ideas and theology in a very comprehensible manner. And so this whole entire program I'm in is like, basically from the study to the pulpit. And so that basically gave me an excuse to do more exegesis.
[00:25:59] I get to do more word studies, I get to do more digging into the text, more into context, and then bring that right to the pulpit and sharing and teaching and learning how to do that well. And then it was one of those little criteria that we had to go through in this program is where do you land? And the general program kind of, it's sort of like almost two sides kind of popped up.
[00:26:22] Do you think the, especially regarding the Old Testament, is your view on interpreting the Old Testament "theocentric," meaning God is the center of the interpretation, or are you Christo centric? But even within those two like sides, it breaks down into so many variations of camps. It was just this weird kind of conversation where I think I ended up being more theocentric because I didn't like where some of the Christo centric was going because it almost felt like you're inserting Jesus into the Old Testament a lot versus Theocentric, we all can agree God is in this, like he's in the Old and New, like we can all agree on that.
[00:27:04] But kind of over the years, and I think I've shared this with you Carey, before that I, I've, I've been slowly moving into this kind of thinking that maybe a better terminology to even just avoid the debate is Christotelic, that Jesus is the end goal of both the Old and New Testaments and, you know, 'cause I do hold to a, a more realized eschatology these days.
[00:27:26] I do hold onto a already not yet perspective. Usually when you hear people use that word Christotelic, they're generally talking about the Old Testament is looking towards Christ, is looking forward to the cross. It's looking forward to that event. But I've been wanting to push that term to also go beyond just simply the cross and the resurrection, but all the way towards the eschaton, towards the consummation, the end of all things.
[00:27:52] When everything is said and done and heaven and Earth are united again, when God's family is united again and we get to resume the story that got interrupted after Genesis two, right? Like that's Christotelic to me. The Old Testament is still looking towards, because there's still some things in the Old Testament that are not done yet and we definitely know there's still not things in the New Testament done yet because Jesus hasn't come back yet.
[00:28:15] And, and so like I think a Christotelic is probably more, if not better, a more generous way of interpretation because then I'm not boxed into assuming I have to find the person of Jesus in the Old testament text I'm looking at, at that very moment. If I'm talking and teaching something about the tabernacle, I don't have to somehow find Jesus in there or use his name somehow to keep people's attention. That the descriptions about Eden is enough.
[00:28:48] The descriptions of why the tabernacle was such an important thing for Israel that could be enthralling itself, but we're just not giving ourselves the permission to preach creatively that way.
[00:28:59] Carey Griffel: Oh yeah. I like that. That's really good to push it forward to the eschaton, because that is the center, and that's why people are using the word christocentric. But really it's a goal. It's not the center as in, Jesus is the middle of history, even though he is, you know, his incarnation at least.
[00:29:17] But that's not only what we have with Jesus and what we have with the Godhead and the Trinity. And if you're like, well, this is a Christocentric reading, and then there's another danger there, I think because we have a really unfortunate tendency to not understand the Spirit's role very much. Mm-hmm. And not understand all of the relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.
[00:29:44] And so, yeah. Really good stuff. I was thrilled to pick up my new copy of The Unseen Realm and see that he's talking about the Christocentric view and he's basically talking about what I was just laying out. That just was a fun little thing to see.
[00:30:00] Mike Chu: Yeah. I was laughing when I read that chapter, because a part of me, I was like, well, one, I really wish I could have had a chance to just talk this out with Mike.
[00:30:07] And because like, you know, I probably was still thinking like Christocentric. It's like that, that's generally where the theological discussions are right now. The first person I ever heard of the phrasing of Christotelic was actually from Dr. Bird, Dr. Michael Bird. But apparently that terminology is generally just used about how did you interpret the Old Testament, right?
[00:30:27] And that's generally what Christocentric also is about, is about how do you interpret, you know, here's the problem. How do you interpret the Old Testament? How do you teach it, how do you make it relevant for your congregation? And that's where a lot of the conversations kind of end up in.
[00:30:42] But the funny thing about that is, you know, it's almost assumed, well, of course New Testament's Christocentric, right? Of course. It's, it's all about Jesus, right? All of it. And yes, for the most part, yes, it is absolutely about that, but it is just kind of funny of like, it's so focused on, we have a problem. The Old Testament seems boring or seems irrelevant, or seems like violent, like what do we do with this, this problem.
[00:31:07] And I was like, I'm kind of trying to get past, is this really a problem or is it just simply that we need to come back and just appreciate what this text is meant to do, which is formation of you as a person, right? The formation of your identity. Formation of how you understand the world, your worldview.
[00:31:27] How do you understand creation? How do you understand your place in creation? And that doesn't stop once we get to the New Testament, it's a continuation of what we have from the Old. And so at my church, we have been really pushing down this idea for the last year and a half that the Old and New Testament is one unified family history book. That the reason we read it, it's not so you can prove text and find things to prove a point. The ultimate end goal is that this shapes us into what it means to be part of the family of God, and that it's one huge story, and that that's why we need to pay attention even to those parts in the Old Testament that make us squirm.
[00:32:12] Like, why is it so violent in these certain moments? What do we do with folks like Goliath? Is that something that we have to do today? Do we need to hunt down Nephilim? Like, you know, we have to get into like, no, that was for a particular time, this was for a particular reason. There was a particular issue going on.
[00:32:29] We have to get into that nitty gritty, but we understand why they had to do it, and that shapes our thinking as the descendants of those people. Anyhow. I could go on and on, but I've been more and more on this track of Christotelic and my pastor, lead pastor and I, we've been talking about this as well for a while, of is that a better lens on how to view the Old Testament and the New, that the New Testament isn't just always focused on the cross, but it's talking about the resurrection and it isn't just talking about the resurrection, it's looking towards our future resurrection, like our future life with God.
[00:33:06] And so they're looking back so that you understand what's coming up in the future, to look forward to, what to aim for, but we don't preach enough about that, honestly. We don't teach on that enough, honestly.
[00:33:20] Carey Griffel: I believe also that the Christotelic view can help us fit Christian history and theology and changes in the church into the whole story as well, because we think of the Bible as this past text, and certainly it is, but it's describing something where you're going from the beginning to the very end, which means we fit inside of it somewhere.
[00:33:45] So where do we fit and how does that work? So to me, a Christotelic view is going to help us to examine church history, examine historical theology and say, does this fit within the Christotelic view? Or is it a little bit off? And how is it off? I think that's really helpful.
[00:34:08] Mike Chu: I had this thought many, many years ago that, you know, and this is on the presumption, right, that when you are looking at the book of Revelation, at least at the very end, right? The last chapter, literally the last chapter, it closes with the lines that the church and the Spirit say, yes, amen. Come Lord Jesus, come. I had the thought many, many years ago that, you know, if this is actually, in the eschaton, that's a future that is still coming for the entire church, the entire body of Christ.
[00:34:41] Then in this weird moment, those of us who are currently in the present time, we are hearing our future selves in that voice of the church calling back to us. Persevere. You make it and you are desiring for Jesus to come. We are desiring for Jesus to come. So you in this present moment, say as well with us, come Lord Jesus, come. We need you to come back.
[00:35:07] It was just this weird kind of moment of like, wow, this is the echoing through the ages of the church desiring for Jesus to bring the kingdom fully realized here on Earth, and that whether I get to see it with my current eyes or in the future resurrection, I am somehow participating in the cry of the church with the Spirit.
[00:35:30] Come, Lord Jesus, come. And that blew my mind of like, so somehow I'm trying to encourage myself as part of the greater body, encouraging myself to persevere, encourage myself to keep looking towards the hope and vision of the new heavens and earth with King Jesus. Anyways, I'm sorry if that, maybe that's a little bit of like out there for some folks, but it is something for me, it was like, that is so cool. That is so weird. But it's also really cool.
[00:35:59] Carey Griffel: Well, and you combine that with, at least for me, this is my experience, combining those kinds of ideas with the other things that I learned about biblical context. Even way back in the Old Testament, in the Torah, we have the center of it being about God with us.
[00:36:17] Mm-hmm. God dwelling with us and yet, you know, then I look into church history and I'm not, you know, trying to say anything against this, but we get so concerned about doctrinal issues and all of these little systematic questions and
[00:36:34] Mike Chu: mm-hmm.
[00:36:35] Carey Griffel: Again, I'm not saying they're not important or they don't matter or that we shouldn't do that because surely they do.
[00:36:42] But the whole point of it things is for God to be with us and sometimes I think we get a little bit distracted. I think we focus a little bit on ourselves more than on God and that's part of what I'm thinking about right now about purification and holiness. I'm thinking about baptism, I'm thinking about a lot of doctrinal things right now.
[00:37:05] But the thing about all of that is that the modern, at least the evangelical church, has often dropped the ball about understanding God's holiness and what that means, because the whole center is God with us.
[00:37:22] Mike Chu: I think we evangelicals are sort of bringing in as well within our modern culture, really in some sense a sacrilegious or just a cynical perspective towards anything of the holy right.
[00:37:34] You know, we unknowingly bring that in because we are just, you know, we are swimming within our culture. That's generally the world that we live in. We don't generally think, oh, I'm stepping onto holy ground right now. Right. Unless you're a Highlander fan, you're generally not even thinking of the world in those terms.
[00:37:50] You're not even used to hearing the phrase holy ground. It's just something that's so foreign to our modern ears. When I used to teach Sunday school for high schoolers back in my old church, I tried to simplify that. The concept of holy is simply other. It is other. God is not human. He's nothing like us. He's not like anything in creation. In fact, all creation derives from him. So he is the ultimate other.
[00:38:21] That was how I tried to break down the concept of holy, that it is in the end other. And that's why there is almost this kind of risk of being in the presence of the other, because he is other and unfortunately, if you are in his presence and you're not prepared for it, you won't survive because he is other.
[00:38:42] I think that's at least to try to break it down like what is holy? Is it just because you wash yourself, you purify yourself? Is it because it's shiny or is you made of gold? It's all about trying to describe a concept that ancient people had when it came down to setting something apart that it, it can only be used for this, or it has to be seen in this particular way, or treated this particular way because it should not be treated as common. It needs to be treated specially. But why and what does it do for us when we do that?
[00:39:15] Carey Griffel: Yes, absolutely. That's a really good explanation. Just, you know, trying to dig into the ancient frames of things. And I was so tickled when I looked at Dr. Heiser's first addition to the Expanded Edition, and he's talking about frame semantics.
[00:39:34] I'm like, yes. He does this because he knows all of the pushback of people who are talking about hermeneutics and why are you reading the text like this and all of these things. And he's just like, well, look, you have to understand the frame of reference for the ancient person. And I was tickled by that.
[00:39:55] Mike Chu: Yeah, I noticed that as well. It was funny because I've been learning also of the frame of reference that kind of scholarly idea. One of the folks that has definitely talked about it all the time was Kevin Vanhooser in one of his more recent books on mere hermeneutics.
[00:40:09] He constantly used that phrase like, what is the frame of reference? Is the second temple your frame of reference? Is the ancient Near East your frame of reference? What's your frame of reference? Is it all of the church history? And so really, depending on what you think is the valid lens, that's going to be what affects your interpretation and your understanding of the biblical texts at times.
[00:40:34] It's good scholarly discussion. It's good discussion, not even scholarly discussion. It's just good discussion. Because if a person's coming from a training where they received about just general all of church history, this is like canonically the church. This is how the church understood this particular, you know, passage or this particular theological point.
[00:40:54] Okay. That's your frame of reference. If I'm meeting another scholar who's been trained just in the Torah and just about, you know, assuming certain things like about Egypt and Mesopotamia, then that's the frame of reference and that's where the interpretation will be coming from too. And they may not or may coincide or conflict with one another, but understanding those frames will also help ease out how the conversations go.
[00:41:20] And even possibly, hey, I can learn something from you because you'll probably notice something I did not see because it's coming from a different frame of reference.
[00:41:28] Carey Griffel: Well, and here's the thing I've been thinking about this week regarding Genesis six. This is something I don't think a lot of people understand. So Dr. Heiser was what he called a supplementarian regarding the Torah, right? He took a Mosaic core to the Torah, meaning that yes, Moses wrote a good portion of it, whatever that means. We can't really know exactly what all of that portion is, but some of it came from Moses.
[00:41:58] Not all of it did, and his position was that Genesis one through 11 came from around the time of the exile, and there's pretty good reasons for him to think that.
[00:42:08] That's kind of my position as well because it is so situated in Mesopotamian context. Now, I personally think that there is some echoes and some material from Egypt that is in Genesis one through 11, but primarily it is a text that is very situated in the exilic context. That's where the people were.
[00:42:32] And so even when we're talking about the frame of reference, it is not just the Old Testament frame of reference, New Testament frame of reference, biblical frame of reference, church history frame of reference. It is far more nuanced than that.
[00:42:45] And I don't wanna go down and try and find all of the source criticism paths. And try and figure out where this different text was sourced at and that one, because that's a futile effort there. But historically, we know the people were in different contexts. That's just indisputable. They were in Egypt, they were traveling, they were in the promised land, they were in exile.
[00:43:12] Those are all different contexts, and we should kind of acknowledge that first and foremost. Mm-hmm. So again, back to the whole Genesis six thing. If Genesis one through 11 is primarily exilic, then all of the material from Mesopotamia is going to impact how we can read that.
[00:43:35] This is what we do. We look at the text in its context. We can bring in contemporary literature and say, this is how it's impacting people, because this is what was in their head at the time. This is what was in the air. This was what was in their cultural river. If, however, you take Genesis six as being a Mosaic text, then you have to presume that the context is from the time of the Exodus.
[00:44:04] Mike Chu: Mm-hmm.
[00:44:05] Carey Griffel: It's a different frame of reference, and so Dr. Heiser was working from an exilic context when it came to Genesis six.
[00:44:14] Mike Chu: Yep.
[00:44:14] Carey Griffel: That is the strongest argument you can make for his position comes in that time period. Now, that does not mean that you cannot make the same arguments from a Mosaic time period, but someone has to do that exegetically, and I haven't seen anybody do that personally.
[00:44:33] I don't think there's massive literature out there finding a context for Genesis six, specifically similar to Dr. Heiser work within a Mosaic Egyptian context. Again, that doesn't mean it can't be there because we know also that the Mesopotamian literature is older than the time of the exile. We have fragmented texts and earlier texts that are part of Atrahasis, part of the Gilgamesh Epic that are much older, but we don't have a complete picture of that, and we can't say with preciseness how that would have colored the view of Moses, for instance, if we're taking a whole Mosaic authorship of the Torah.
[00:45:17] And so this is fascinating to me. Something I kind of want to bring out for people, because it's not an obvious thing when you're reading Dr. Heiser's material that he's doing this kind of interpretation and setting it in. Well, it is obvious because it's not like he didn't say it outright, but he didn't show a distinction between the Mosaic context and the exilic context. He didn't make an effort to bring that out.
[00:45:44] Mike Chu: Yeah, I mean, in the first edition of The Unseen Realm, he mentioned it and it was kind of nestled into this one, two paragraph little blurb about, you know, that Genesis chapters one through 11 specifically, probably most scholars usually yes more critical scholarship generally hold Genesis one through 11 as a special segment within the book of Genesis as being from the time of the exile of the Jews in Babylon or maybe a little bit after Babylon, and that it was polemic in nature. It was a response to the prevailing culture of being exposed to Babylonian empire power. Right.
[00:46:23] And so there is that little bit of where he put that in there and then he continued on. Right, because like in some sense that itself could just become a book. Like, could you explain that to us? Like what's, where's the evidence, where's the proof, where's the papers? Like what's the research has gone into? Why do you think this way? Why do you agree with the generally seen as a critical scholarship stance and yet you're still a confessing Christian.
[00:46:48] That could have been a whole book in itself. I just wish he did that. But unfortunately, of course he can't now. I think that was just kind of one of those little, you know, that frame of reference is what influenced his hermeneutic, of just coming from that.
[00:47:02] But if a person of a different, you know, scholarly, lineage in some sense is looking at, well, it's all Mosaic authorship. Then your assumption of Genesis one through 11 is that Moses is the one who's speaking, he's the one who wrote this. And so he's thinking in the context probably of Egyptian power, Mesopotamian power maybe of the Canaanite tribes they might have encountered during their wanderings for 40 years.
[00:47:29] But it's hard, like, it's hard to prove either way, because again, the documentation is harder to come by at that age and that time span. It's just under unfortunate nature of papyrus and of anything that's organic, it just breaks down. So unless he was carrying around like huge slabs of stone and writing down the, the record, which I doubt he would, considering that like, you know, how many donkeys and horses would it take to carry all that? Um, if it's like made out of a stone, probably not practical and probably a lot of those records unfortunately, have been lost to time.
[00:48:05] Carey Griffel: Yeah. it's just an interesting thing. Again, people want to be really sure and they want to have only one option, but the fact is we have multiple options. And I think part of Dr. Heiser's genius was he was able to land on positions because he had studied and he came to those conclusions.
[00:48:27] He was encouraging other people to do that same work. To come to their own conclusions that that was really his whole thing. And I think some of that is missed in the fact that he often spoke so much about the divine council worldview, that they're like, oh, well he's so certain about this and he's never giving any credence to other ideas.
[00:48:48] That is not the case. I see a lot of his work, especially in his blog posts, because I've been going through all of those where he will talk about and bring up other scholarly work, and he's engaging with it in a really fair even way, acknowledging that they have points or that this isn't really necessarily clear.
[00:49:10] And if you take this position, then you're gonna come up to that conclusion. If you take this other position, you'll come up to this other conclusion, which it just means overall there is way more that you have to take into account in order to come up with a really solid position, which is why it takes all of the work it does, why it takes study.
[00:49:32] Mike Chu: Yeah. and the study is not easy. I mean, to be honest, right. Mike was an expert within Semitic languages and even to the day he died, he was, you know, when he was still able, he was still practicing his Hebrew verb morphology. If people have no idea what I just said, that's what I'm talking about. Like, there were, pictures posted from his own account and even from his widow Drenna of like, well, what was he reading? He's reading the Journal of Evangelical Theological Society. He was reading the latest articles.
[00:50:03] You have maybe three months left of life and you're still reading scholarly peer review articles being submitted because he was hungry for the information and knowledge and data to process and think through things. He was still practicing his Hebrew, which I'm really terrible at right now if I'm honest.
[00:50:21] Like I should have been doing that. I should have been doing my Greek too, so I could maintain fluent speaking ability. But I can't. I can use Logos. I know when I see certain words, but I'm not where Mike was before he died. He was still practicing. 'Cause you have to keep practicing and, and you know, it would've been just fun if he just did Hebrew and Greek. But no, he knew Akkadian, he knew Ugaritic, he knew Aramaic.
[00:50:46] I was like, what in the world? it's not easy because when you are making these kind of arguments that are based on the languages, you often are the one that is beholden to actually go to the source text and translation. More than likely, no one else has done it. You actually have to do the translation, submit the translation, get it vetted by another expert with the same language to make sure you're not fudging something. And then when it's all agreed, we'll publish it. So then it's a resource for everyone.
[00:51:15] But until then, no one's spending the time to do the translation of a text that's in Akkadian unless you take it upon yourself to learn the language and then do the translation. That's why it's hard to be a scholar at a, PhD level. It's a lot of work. Unfortunately, thankless work.
[00:51:34] Carey Griffel: And misunderstood. Part of the problem with it though too, I think, and part of why Dr. Heiser was so special was you can do language studies, you can dig into all of that. And you can still come away with only the language learning without understanding cultural mentality of the people and the cultural ideas of the language.
[00:51:57] Because if you study one language and then you go study another language, if you're doing it within the context of the people who actually use that language, you will quickly understand they don't think like you do.
[00:52:10] Mike Chu: Mm-hmm.
[00:52:11] Carey Griffel: They have a different worldview than you do, and part of that is just geography and culture and time and whatever else. But there's a big difference between thinking in Hebrew and thinking in Greek. Not that I really can do either one myself, all that well, but Dr. Heiser was bringing all of that out and this is why he was trying to get the ancient Israelite into our heads, because you can understand the words, but you can still miss the point of the text because you don't have that culture and that context in the frame of reference in your own mind.
[00:52:49] Mike Chu: And I think, you know, that's the kind of the problem. It's like there's that little bit of that false sense of security. If you have the lexicon or you know, the academic dictionary, then oh, that's all you need.
[00:53:02] It's not really, no, not really. 'Cause you actually then, if you're doing a proper exegesis on a passage like I've had to do for my papers, you have to translate. And then you have to keep going back and trying to find, is this the particular nuance of the grammar here? Is it in the genetive accusative? Is it in this kind of sense?
[00:53:24] For example, recently Dr. Carmen Imes, you know, Being God's image. Our church is going through an image of God series. We didn't call it that way 'cause we didn't wanna be too obvious it's called Undiminished and Why Your Life Matters.
[00:53:38] But we're basically going through Dr. Imes' Being God's Image and then Bearing God's Name and we will eventually go into Becoming God's Family. So we're kind of doing that arc to show why all this connects and why all matters.
[00:53:53] And there is that nuance of you have to geek out on one preposition, on why it's better rendered in English of that humanity was made as God's image, not in, even though bet can mean in. But in this particular usage and the way that's being talked about, it seems to be better now from recent, more scholarships, especially since the 1950s.
[00:54:20] I had to find this out of a particular scholar who proposed this idea and is eventually, has now caught on to the point that a lot of the scholars are getting around this idea that even more recent translations like the CSB and even the, I wanna say the Lexham English Bible, they have a footnote on the "in" in Genesis 1 26 where they say, or as that it could be made as God's image because it's now trickling finally towards the top after decades of being vetted.
[00:54:52] Is this valid? Is, this actually possible? And yes, it is possible that it's not that we were made in God's image, we are made as God's image and you know. That's the idea we proposed to our church. And so far that has, that has really rocked some people's world of, I'm actually representing God, like as his image.
[00:55:16] It's like, yes, that, the way I put it this past Sunday is that instead of statues or images made of stone or gold, God's images are made of flesh and bone. There's something about like, wow, this God is very different. He wanted flesh and bone, not gold or stone.
[00:55:36] Why is this God so different? And, you know, to get people into that mindset of like, so I really do have value. It's not just a tagline, it's not just something you say in church land. It's like, no, we really do believe that there is intrinsic value in you because you are his image. And we can go to the text to show that.
[00:55:55] So anyhow, I think that's part of also why it matters to me, that when you learn this and this text can be brought out in a way that's very life-giving for folks to hear the pastoral, the ability to minister to folks who need to hear a message that is biblically grounded, but also very moving and also just formative. The possibilities are endless with that. Healing for that.
[00:56:22] Carey Griffel: Understanding the image of God as a vocation and something that we can do, something we can live out, something that's active and genuinely impactful in the world, that realization absolutely changed my life and my theology. It's just these little things and what's frustrating sometimes is that you can say these things, you can try to bring them out for people, and sometimes people still won't get it.
[00:56:49] Sometimes it will just fly over their head. They'll be like, well, in and as, I don't see a difference there. I'm just gonna ignore that and move on, right? Mm-hmm. It's unfortunate, but...
[00:57:01] Mike Chu: Yeah, I give credit to my lead pastor. He thought of a way of, I mean, my wife is a doctor and some of our friends in the church are also doctors or in the medical industry. And so he did a comparison of, the way I use in is very different when I say Mike's wife is in medicine. Or I could just simply say, Mike's wife is a doctor. Right. but you understand them to be the same thing. But I'm using the word in very differently here in this context, right? It's like, you know, like Mike is in technology, Mike is in the car like, the word in can mean very different things based on the context.
[00:57:38] And so, you know, that's why there's a argument about, let's use a different word, because it can get very confusing. And I think also sometimes the theology went into weird places. Like, because if the image is in the body, then oh, does that mean the image is broken? Does that mean that something went wrong with it? It's like, no, you are made as his image.
[00:57:58] Carey Griffel: Or you know, does God have a body himself? And we go down crazy talk there, right?
[00:58:05] Mike Chu: Yeah. So like we get into something about that, though that does remind me. There was a section where in the expanded material in Mike's book, he talked about how he's uneasy sometimes with the word supernatural itself, but it's the least confusing of options.
[00:58:20] That's kind of how I took what he, in there. But it was really funny like if you really went down this rabbit hole about supernatural, then even divine beings, are they really supernatural because they are part of creation. So they're technically part of nature, but they're not physical, it's like, okay, Mike, I get what you're saying.
[00:58:37] it's just funny though. if you really take it to the extreme, you could totally talk yourself out of, yes, the word supernatural is not a good word, but it's probably the best equivalent that we could use so that people can understand the idea. The goal is to communicate something understandable.
[00:58:55] Carey Griffel: I think sometimes we get a little bit too involved and invested into the words we use. Like we dig down and we're like, oh, we have to use this word. We have to use that word. Whereas really, let's get across the meaning, and if we have to explain it a different way, then let's do that.
[00:59:12] I think that's partly why we need things like preaching and really good Sunday school classes and things, because people can read these things on their own or they can hear them, but understanding it might be a little bit dicey sometimes because what they're reading and what they're hearing may not actually correspond to what's being said and what's being meant.
[00:59:35] Mike Chu: Yeah, I think part of the role as. a teacher in some sort of teaching capacity is to help people process. Right. Because you know, in Western society we generally are very literate society, which is a very strange phenomenon in human history. For the most part, we are probably the most literate, like this time span that we've been in.
[00:59:57] People are super literate compared to thousands of years ago. And so everyone can read, but not everyone necessarily understands what they're reading. And so I find that, you know, doing teaching within our church in small group or in this capacity now as a teaching pastor, it's about helping people connect dots in their processing of like, why does this matter?
[01:00:22] Well, let me take you on this journey essentially of how to process this information. Why is the Enuma Elish important? Well, let's see. What does the Enuma Elish talk about? And compare that now to the story of Noah. What are the differences? I would go through step one, step two, step three, and then figuratively, there's like light bulbs appearing over their heads in my mind because it's like, holy cow, this is different.
[01:00:47] Wow. Yahweh or the creator does not need the food. He appreciated that Noah took two of, I don't know what animal he was like, that species is gone. And, I'm joking, but it is kind of funny to me. It's like, well, the whole point of the ark was to save as many of the living creatures, but I'm sorry. We're never gonna have the Snicker doodles anymore. I, I wanna offer a sacrifice to the Lord. And, uh, I, joking aside, I just do imagine it's like, you know, I, I was trying to save those Snicker Doodles, but, okay, well I appreciate the gesture. I understand why you did it. 'Cause you know, sacrifice is part of worship, but there were only two left.
[01:01:31] Versus, you know, the other ancient Near Eastern materials is that the gods needed human beings because they needed slaves to feed them. Which is kind of really weird if you're a god but you need human beings to feed you because you apparently can't feed yourself. What kind of god are you if you can't even feed yourself?
[01:01:52] But I remember when I taught that moment, people's eyes got really wide open of like, wait, what? It's like yeah, the other gods needed human beings to feed them because the humans were slaves. Our God does not need the food. In fact, he actually feeds us. That's the difference. But you wouldn't appreciate that difference if you didn't know about the story from the Enuma Elish.
[01:02:15] You take it for granted. This is why the God of Israel is so different. Anyways, that's part of my own personal approach to preaching and teaching is to kind of find those moments that, that you realize why our God is amazing and to comprehend that why he's amazing.
[01:02:33] Carey Griffel: Well, and the kind of brings up this whole point of why we need teachers and why we need scholars, because most people do not have enough time to devote themselves to really digging into all of the material, all of the information, or at least a good portion of it. So if we don't have people who are doing that and we don't listen to them and give them space to give us their ideas and things like that, then we're just cutting ourselves off from vast realms of knowledge because we don't have time to do that.
[01:03:09] I don't have time to get into Greek. I don't have time to get into all of the things in church history. I would like to. I do what I can, but everybody has to find something that they're doing and just deal with their life as they are. Which means that we should be really intentionally grateful to the people who do get into all of these things and listen to them because they have dug into the material. They are able to give us more information than we could have.
[01:03:40] And then you have the realm of scholarship and the point of higher education. It's not just knowledge, it's the ability to think through the things. So you have kind of a double whammy here where you have somebody who has got all or a lot more of the information than you have, and hopefully if they've gone to any good scholarly institution at all, they've learned how to think better than they used to.
[01:04:06] This is just, you know, part of progression and discipleship and learning. You combine those two things, then you get somebody who should be listened to on whatever level you think that that is about. That doesn't mean you have to just give up your own thinking and accept what they're saying, but that's why it's valuable. That's why we have to have it. That's why it's necessary.
[01:04:31] Mike Chu: As you know, you and I have grown up essentially in the West. I mean, I grew up in Boston pretty much all my life. Hopefully I never leave. I really hope that that doesn't come back to bite me. But, but like, it is, I think part of the consequence of, you know, we love freedom of expression, especially freedom of speech.
[01:04:51] Everyone gets to talk. And I think part of the problem though is that everyone has the right to talk. Not everything though that comes out of everyone's mouth is actually very good or helpful or useful or informative. And unfortunately, you know, in some sense, in that entire environment of noise, this cacophony of voices.
[01:05:12] And like over time it did become a necessity in some sense of how do we vet out the ones who actually know what they're talking about. And there is actually reputable research and study versus the person that is just completely making it up on the fly.
[01:05:28] And I think, you know, yes, we can lament about that, that like, oh, why is it that I need to, if I need to actually have some sort of validity in our culture, if we're still, at least to some degree, I have to go to some sort of higher education thing. Why do I need to go to a seminary, for example? Aren't those all cemeteries anyways? And you know, that's the kind of thing I sometimes encounter. And the reality is, is like, well, God can still use you. That's fine.
[01:05:55] Can you be at a place then if you don't feel called to go to seminary? If you don't think that is something that's viable for you, are you willing to accept. And still be gracious too, that there will be people who will push back and say, you don't know what you're talking about because you don't have something after your name. And if you can do that with as much gratitude and much graciousness extended to that person, because in some sense, yes, they're speaking out of ignorance, they're speaking out of some sort of, uh, prestige training that they learned.
[01:06:26] But can you do it without any bitterness? Can you do it without any, uh, resentment towards those who say that type of stuff? And I, you know, that's, that's fine. We have seen some people who literally have died because, just because they didn't have certain letters after their name, but they were really clear, good thinkers and they were okay about that, right? Like, that's fine.
[01:06:52] For me, going to seminary was not about getting the MDIV after my name or you know, one day I hope A-D-M-I-N. You know, no one knows what those things are, but in the end, I went ultimately to Gordon-Conwell because I had discerned from myself, from my wife, from many mentors and friends who have known me for years.
[01:07:15] Apparently I have some giftings or some gleaning of something I might have from God that I could use. And the best thing I could ever do is to get as much training as I can. 'Cause I want to use it in a life-giving way and not in a way that actually hurts people. Especially with the tongue. James did say the tongue is essentially full of hell fire if you don't use it with wisdom. The tongue is a dangerous tool in the hands of very immature people.
[01:07:46] And so, you know, that was one of the things I knew about myself, of like, okay, I wanna get trained. I wanna learn, I want to cultivate these giftings if they are real giftings. And so, I mean, that's probably maybe part of the reason why I had an awesome time at Gordon. Why I love my professors, why I love my classmates. I was learning from people who actually were doing ministry for over 20 years, and yet they're getting the M div, same thing like I was, and yet they're giving me their own ministerial experience and sharing that in our classes.
[01:08:17] I loved it. That was like an amazing environment to be in and an amazing group of people to encounter. So I don't quite get why that whole entire tagline of seminaries are cemeteries, because I certainly didn't find that at Gordon. I still would encourage people if you can, even if you don't ever think you'll get an MDiv or a Master's, just audit some classes.
[01:08:39] Go to some of them. You can even go to some of these classes for free. If you ask the professor, can I just show up? They're more than happy because that means someone else is actually learning something that could be useful for the body of Christ. So why not? But you know, it's like you just have to be willing to just step out into that little bit of an adventure.
[01:08:58] You did it, Carey. It's been a blessing to just see how you've used the training and giftings that you've been honing for the last couple of years because of that.
[01:09:08] Carey Griffel: Well, and I like another one of your points. It's not just about the training and the teaching, it's about the other students. Mm-hmm. It's about what everybody is bringing to the table with all of this.
[01:09:21] Mike Chu: The last three years for me and my cohort, for my residency, our overseeing professor said our cohort was probably the most globally diverse cohort he's ever had in all his years at Gordon. Like, we had one guy who's from Nepal and another guy who's originally from China, Beijing, who's in San Francisco now, and another guy who's from Bangladesh, and then, you know, three of us who are locals, me here and Quincy and another person. It was like what in the world we're from everywhere and yet we're sharing about our preaching experiences.
[01:09:51] How did this kind of sermon get played out? What did we learn? And I remember one of the last nights with them, the pastor from Indonesia. mentioned about how there's this big church there. It's basically their equivalent of mega church, and they tried to hire him and give him a big salary. And, you know, he has kids and a family. He's in a small Indonesian church. And me and another, cohort guy, we asked him like, were you ever tempted?
[01:10:19] We knew he said he turned down the position. It was like, but how long did it take you to think through it? Like, did you say no immediately or did you give yourself a couple of days? And he's like, no. I immediately said no. I was like, what, what do you mean you didn't even really think it was like, no, I said no, because I was thinking about my son and, we were just kind of speechless at the moment when he said that.
[01:10:38] And he pointed out, because I know that my son is always watching me and he's watching what his father values and actually cares about, and that I need to show my son what integrity looks like.
[01:10:50] I was so humbled and like, that's the kind of thing I've been learning, not just the head stuff, but I want that kind of character. I want to grow into that kind of man, that kind of teacher, that kind of preacher. You get that from interacting with others in the body of Christ. Yeah. it still rocks me. And it was just only a couple months ago, but it is still like, wow. It was just so floored. So floored when he said that.
[01:11:18] Carey Griffel: Wow. Well, it's interesting, this connection between humility and learning and speaking versus listening. In our realm today, we're so inundated by free speech this, and you have to listen to me that, and I have to tell you my position and so little of the listening aspect.
[01:11:40] So little of, gee, I wonder why somebody who's doing this or who has this position or who shared this social media post, well that is a give them some label that you wanna give them, right? That means that they're doing this or they're thinking this. Are you stepping into that person's shoes and asking really why?
[01:12:04] Who are you? What do you think? Why does this impact you? Are you doing that first or are you so interested in defending your position and defending your idea? There's places for that, there's times for that, but is that your goal or are you interested in giving something a little bit more positive and a little bit more humble? Listening together and learning from each other because everybody around you has something to teach you.
[01:12:36] Mike Chu: I think sometimes, you know, like, and I'm pretty sure this goes back all the way to like the New Testament times. I mean, Paul was encountering something of it when he talked about how we're all members of Christ's body. It's like how terrible it would be if everyone was just an eye.
[01:12:50] Or everyone was an ear, like where would the sense of smell be from? Right. Like where he was talking about that. And maybe that just goes to show like, it is such a brokenness within humanity that we tend to try to be like we group together in our particular, whatever we deem as the marker that makes us different from everyone else.
[01:13:12] And I need to find everyone who's just like me because we're different, but we're all the same, too. It's kind of funny. I think that is one of the things that we have forgotten, that the church is a whole collection of different languages, different ethnicities, different lived experiences, and yet we are all blood relatives because of the blood of Christ.
[01:13:37] And that at the end of the eschaton, the vision is yes, of a multi-ethnic, multilingual humanity, but there is one humanity. A humanity that is enthralled and in service to the true King and Creator of all living things. Right? And, yet, somehow we have the unity, but we also have the immense celebration of the diversity there. We hold those two together.
[01:14:05] Carey Griffel: Right. And I think within that thinking there is then nothing wrong with finding your people, like to use the term finding your tribe or mm-hmm. You know, finding your community. You have to do that because not everyone can actually empathize with you. Yeah.
[01:14:23] They're not going to. They're not gonna care. They're not even if they want to, or they could try, they can't. I have situations in my life that certain people will never understand. Yeah. And vice versa. So in order to be supported in those things, it is absolutely crucial to find those people who can support you because they understand you.
[01:14:50] That is the beauty of having the diversity within the body of Christ though, is you can do that. You are, I think, encouraged to, because even though we are meant to and can empathize with each other and listen to each other and be humble, that can really only go so far sometimes, because sometimes you have to have somebody who knows you, who understands that situation fully. You have to lament with them sometimes.
[01:15:22] Mike Chu: On that idea, I think one of the things that we have to, and this is the constant message we've been trying to hone at my church. We are the sons and daughters of God. We are the family of God. That's the story that God had wanted, right? Of why he created human beings in the first place was to be his royal priests in this temple that we call creation. Right.
[01:15:47] Like that was another thing I brought up of just like, Hey, by the way, if you're ever wondering why Genesis one and two just sounds weird, like what's going on? They were looking at everything through the lens of temple, which sounds crazy to us because we think of those places as tourist attractions.
[01:16:02] But the reality is temple was the most important place of a community in those old days. It was where food was stored, where fresh water was available, where you can meet others in community and connect with other people. It was possibly where you could encounter the gods and even be healed because you were in the presence of the gods like temple was so important.
[01:16:24] And here we have in Genesis one and two, a depiction of Cosmic Temple, that God wasn't just making a planet, he was making a temple. And he wasn't just making statues, he was making kings and priests. He was making something that was beautiful and well beyond what we ever thought this story was talking about, right?
[01:16:45] And can we be that place where we can hold in tention, the pain of the brokenness and the depravity of this world and knowing that all things are going to be, and in process right now of being renewed and that we live in that uncomfortable liminal space of, yes, I will see my sister who passed away almost three years ago.
[01:17:11] My last memory of her was the result of the embalming fluid interacting with what the cancer had done to her body. And it's not a pretty picture. That's not how I wanted to remember my sister. But I also hold onto the hope that I will see her with her own eyes, with my own new eyes, and she will be restored to the way that she was meant to be. We need to have that kind of vision of hope within the body of Christ and something that we often need to remind our people.
[01:17:47] My overseeing professor, Dr. Arthurs, one of his core teachings to us is his strong personal conviction is that preaching, one of the tasks of being a preacher is to essentially be a reminder.
[01:18:01] I am tasked with being the reminder of the people to remind people about God's promises of reminding people of Christ, reminding them of the body and the blood, reminding them of what is the vision that God had wanted since the beginning of Eden. Remind, remind, remind. Because we often forget and when we forget, it's easy to lose ourselves.
[01:18:26] It's easy to lose our identity. It's easy to get enthralled with some other little pretty sparkly thing if we don't remind ourselves of who created all things and who has everything in his hands. Like again, this is what being trained like this is. I can never, like, this is not, I could have come up with this.
[01:18:48] This is lived experience from a preacher himself who has seen how this has blessed others in the body of Christ and even non-Christians, even if they never fully buy into it, yet, they hear a message of you are telling me there is someone who cares about me. I don't know if I fully believe it, but it's nice to know that you at least believe that.
[01:19:07] 'Cause that also means you're gonna treat me in light of that kind of conviction. And I like that better than you being a, an enemy of me. Right. There's something about it. I don't know why it works, at least practically. I've been coming to that realization is, yeah, a lot of what we do as preachers and pastors is reminding people.
[01:19:27] And in some sense that's what Dr. Heiser was doing. Like he was reminding us of like, look at the biblical text and look at it. Isn't this weird? Wonder why it's weird? Let's try to remind ourselves of what people remembered back then or what they knew back then. Like how did the ancient Israelites think? That's also what he was doing. He was reminding people of what the ancient world thought about the world.
[01:19:50] Carey Griffel: Well, and shared attention. We are so inundated by images, inundated by things on social media that that kind of gets hijacked a lot of times. Yeah, we get hijacked into thinking this or that, or having our attention directed, but we ought to be doing this intentionally. We ought to be sharing our attention with each other and focusing together on something together.
[01:20:17] That's what Bible study is. Prayer is. That's kind of what we're trying to do here. You know, all of these things. If we all focus on the same thing and we're all thinking about the same thing, then we can interact in the same way we can talk about it. If we're all thinking and, and learning about a hundred different topics, it's harder to do.
[01:20:39] And if our attention is being captured in manipulative ways, sometimes we also are giving up that to some degree.
[01:20:49] Mike Chu: Yeah, it's really strange. I mean, you and I, Carey, have essentially lived through different decades of different phases of how people understood the world. It's strange, right? Like I know we've gone from modernity into full-blown post-modernity. Here for me in the Boston region, it's also post-Christian.
[01:21:10] And now we're at the tail end of post-modernity and we have no clue what's the next thing that is coming on the horizon? Is it gonna be post postmodernity, which is just more nihilism that like, dear Lord, no. Or will we go to something some thinkers are calling meta modern and coming back to like, can we just get back to some of the hopefulness, some semblance of understanding there is a common universal truth and we need a better story.
[01:21:44] We need a better narrative. We need a better understanding of what does it mean to be human instead of, unfortunately this post-modernity, you know, kind of vibe that we had been in where everyone was just out for each other, against each other, and out only for themselves. To such a degree that we as the church here in the West, we didn't even realize that we had done the same thing. We have been caught up in that same kind of cultural thinking.
[01:22:13] I mean, it breaks my heart to see sometimes. I get emails as the Awakening Director, where just even simple economical dialogue is shunned as though somehow we're being unfaithful to the gospel. That just because we entertain or we have dialogue with folks from different theological camps or traditions, they're all orthodox, they all would affirm, even if they're non credal, they would all affirm the Nicene Creed or the Apostles Creed. They would all affirm that Jesus is the one and only Son of God who came to save the world through his death and resurrection.
[01:22:49] They all affirm that, but because they're from that particular camp, I don't know if they're going to heaven. What do you guys think at Awakening? And I've had to respond to some of that of like, of where is this coming from? For one part, as I'm thinking through it, was like, how do I respond to that?
[01:23:06] Because at the end of the day, I am pretty sure my particularities as a American born Chinese evangelical who grew up in a Chinese heritage church and now an Evangelical Covenant church that's multi-ethnic and pretty diverse, it's not gonna be the same for everyone. And yet I don't think somehow my lived experience is the criteria of whether one enters through the gates where Peter is welcoming you or not.
[01:23:32] Like it's like if that offends some people, just 'cause I even brought out the idea, I'm sort of sorry, not sorry, but you know what I mean? It seems really silly to use something that is very temporal as the criteria of what will ultimately be eternal.
[01:23:48] I think at the end of the day, we may find out that we had more brothers and sisters in Christ than we've ever realized, than we've comprehended. And I would rather celebrate the commonalities and the unity that we can find together because of our shared allegiance to Jesus. I think that's just a better way, honestly.
[01:24:07] Carey Griffel: I couldn't agree more. Well, let's go ahead and wrap up the conversation. Is there anything you wanna talk about or suggest to people to keep an eye out for in Dr. Heiser's new edition of his book or anything like that?
[01:24:22] Mike Chu: As I've been reading through the additional expanded material, it really did seem that Mike was trying to answer a lot of the common confusions and objections that people had with the original edition.
[01:24:35] it is kind of hilarious to me that as I was reading even the first chapter, because you know, Dr. Heiser has passed away, there is no chance for this editorial process of I'll send you what I have the first draft and here's what the proofreaders and editors suggest. You know, maybe you can change your tone, maybe you can use this wordage or take out this sentence. It's confusing.
[01:24:54] None of that apparently is there because I can almost hear what I would characterize as Dr. Heiser snark. Which is not a bad thing, but it is kind of interesting to hear in some sense his voice, his more raw voice because of the limited amount of time he had left.
[01:25:15] And he was really trying to address questions and even points of confusion that we know, just you and I Carey, for the last two years, even, some folks on their own, particular platforms tried to make a really big deal about, and yet here he is, he's just presenting, here's the data.
[01:25:33] Is the phrase, let us make humanity. Why the us, what is to us? And that he even addressed that in the expanded edition and I was not surprised that he went completely geeking out on the Hebrew, was the reason why I realized he was right in the end, because I had done the same study. It was like, oh, that's why it's an us.
[01:25:54] So anyways, I would definitely say, you know, take time to read through the material. That's my suggestion. And you'll probably be surprised to hear definitely Dr. Heiser, trying to clear up the fog.
[01:26:08] And I appreciate the fact that with the limited amount of time he had left, he actually spent time trying to get to this ' cause he wouldn't have a chance again after. I'm just thankful, I'm thankful that like someone went through the process of, in some sense a very painful process of adding in this material and trying to figure how do we add this material in a way that both keeps the original and honors the original, but helps clarify things that was confusing for many folks who read the original edition. So yeah, I'm just thankful I have it. I'm so glad that he made this. It will be a constant resource that I'll be using even in my teaching and preaching. So that's a given. It's gonna be there.
[01:26:50] Carey Griffel: Well, here's an interesting thing. I could see people being a little bit disappointed that he didn't just dig into Unseen Realm Two content versus doing this, but I am grateful that he did it because we've seen time and time again all of these people who just, they can't get their minds around what Dr. Heiser is saying.
[01:27:12] So they mischaracterize it or they misunderstand it and these are fairly short, but they're very to the point. They're very, look, here's what this actually is. You have this objection about my hermeneutics. You have the objection about the ha satan. You have the objection about Genesis one and the Trinity.
[01:27:33] You have all of these common things that people push against. Well, here's a little bit more, and here's what I'm saying. A little bit more clarity to it. And I'm going to be using a lot of that because it's really to the point. It's really targeted, really good stuff. So for anybody who is interested in helping other people understand The Unseen Realm, helping other people understand Dr. Heiser content, this is going to be an indispensable book for people like that.
[01:28:02] Mike Chu: And I think, you know, like one of the last words that Mike had shared before his passing was simply he knew he wouldn't be able to carry on this kind of work and research. And so it's up to those who have been inspired and learned from him and got exposed to this.
[01:28:20] I didn't understand what biblical studies was before I started learning from Dr. Heiser. I didn't even realize biblical studies or biblical theology was even different from systematic theology, but it was just like one of those things I got exposed to this world and I really love it. It's really helpful.
[01:28:37] And if anything, I appreciate the fact that he has invited all of us after his passing, pick up the torch and carry on. That's what I'm trying to do in my little small ways, in my own little congregation and with the people I interact with at the Awakening School and through the podcasts that I work on.
[01:28:57] That's just part of the process, part of the work. So are you, you're doing the same, Carey.
[01:29:02] Carey Griffel: So let's end on talking a little bit about Awakening and what it's doing currently.
[01:29:08] Mike Chu: So we got a bunch of things coming up. In November, we are actually looking forward to finishing the Pastoral Initiative. It also was known by another, like, you know, kind of simpler understanding.
[01:29:20] It was the Seminary on a Thumb Drive. It was originally 12 courses that. Dr. Heiser had written out, kind of planned out in his head of what he would've loved to see developed at the school and to make as an available resource, especially for pastors who are in certain locations, that they can't get to a bible college or a seminary to get proper training. And so create courses where we go through some higher level theological concepts. Like what is the doctrine of the Holy Spirit? What is the doctrine of justification?
[01:29:53] That kind of stuff going into that material so that a pastor, a minister, could learn this, especially if he or she can't get outside of, what they're doing. And so that's actually coming to a completion. We filmed one course with Dr. Dru Johnson, and he's gonna be speaking on the Christian's relationship to the Old Testament law. So looking forward to that. That has been a great topic of interest for me as well.
[01:30:22] And so, yeah, that's coming down the line. And we recently had released the seminar that we did on one Enoch Book of the Watchers with Dr. Matt Halstead. And that was a great seminar. That was like part of my highlight during the summer of just being able to geek out a little bit in Jacksonville, you know, like I got to sit with students.
[01:30:42] And there was even a moment where the students that were sitting next to me, one of them looked at me and said, you look familiar. I don't know why, but you look familiar. Do you work for the school? And I was like, yeah, I work for the school. Yeah, I do some stuff around here. It was only like it was right at the beginning before the seminar started.
[01:31:02] And Then Karla comes up, our school president, and she wants to introduce me and other people from the board. And, you know, it was just kind of funny. It was like, yeah, a little sheepish. Like, I'm, I just wanna be here too. I just wanted to be a student. I wanna learn from Dr. Halstead. So like, it's not a big deal.
[01:31:17] I'm just sitting here with you guys too. But it was, it was awesome. That was a highlight for me during July. It was so good. So yeah, that, that got released this past month, um, just a few weeks ago. And so yeah. Hopefully folks will sign up, check it out.
[01:31:32] And we're also starting finally on the New Testament with our reading plans. So we're gonna be going through, the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John, if you notice that I skipped one gospels, because we're saving that for the next month because we're gonna be doing Luke and Acts together since, you know, it's better to kind of just stay with the one author who generally wrote those two books together.
[01:31:55] So yeah, so we got a lot going on at Awakening and it's pretty cool. I'm pretty happy and just glad to be part of the ministry there.
[01:32:04] Carey Griffel: That is awesome. Well, I appreciate you coming on and having a conversation and rambling through some things with me. I really enjoyed it.
[01:32:13] Mike Chu: I love it too, Carey. Hopefully, you know, folks in the audience we're not completely lost as we just went through our mind map of just shooting the breeze theologically, so.
[01:32:25] Carey Griffel: I think that there are some gems in there for people to ponder on and consider. At least I hope so. I certainly got some out of it, so thanks, Mike.
[01:32:35] Mike Chu: Always a pleasure. Thanks, Carey.
[01:32:38] Carey Griffel: All right, well that is it for this episode this week. Really appreciate Mike coming on, and for those who don't know, he is the academic director for the Awakening School of Theology. I will be putting the link to that in my show notes. You can go there, you can find classes for free, and they are scholarly level classes, really high level material for you to dig into there, so I highly recommend you check that out.
[01:33:07] Awakening School of Theology also works on a donation based model, so if it is on your heart to help their ministry out and help them produce even more classes that are going to be free for everyone, then do consider donating to them as well. The Awakening School of Theology is a separate initiative, a separate business from the Michael S Heiser Foundation, where you can also go there and donate to the foundation that is part of Dr. Heiser's legacy.
[01:33:40] So those are some things you can do there. And as always, I appreciate all of you who are helping to support my work as well. You can either donate here from Patreon or PayPal, or you can join my biblical theology community, which is On This Rock. You can find
[email protected], but you have to put hyphens in between all of those words.
[01:34:06] The link to that will also be in the show notes. On my community I will be working on producing my own classes. A lot of that is going to be very in line with the things that I talk about in my podcast here. It's just gonna be really condensed versions and there will be materials and questions and things.
[01:34:26] And in the future I would really like to do cohort based courses for people. So that means you are actually getting together with other students to go through the course. I feel very strongly about that because when you do that, just like Mike and I just talked about, you're not only learning the material, but you're learning from people around you.
[01:34:48] And I think that is absolutely essential in Christian living and Christian learning and Christian discipleship. So I hope you're looking forward to some of that. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. Thank you guys for sharing the episode and doing the different kinds of support that you do for God's Kingdom. But at any rate, I wish you all a blessed week and we will see you later.
