Beeson Podcast, Episode #721 Name Date >>Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your host, Doug Sweeney. >>Doug Sweeney: Welcome to the Beeson Podcast. I am your host, Doug Sweeney. And I am joined today by Beeson professor, Gerald Bray, who has two new book that are hot off the press one is called Athens and Jerusalem, and the other is A History of Christian Theology, a Trinitarian Approach. We’re looking forward to telling you all about them. Dr. Bray is probably our most prolific faculty member here at Beeson. He’s published many books and continues to write avidly. So, we’re eager to learn all about that. Gerald, thank you for being with us on the program today. >>Bray: Thank you for having me. >>Doug Sweeney: So, as we were saying before we began recording, you’ve been on this program a number of times before, but we don’t want to presume that those who are listening to us now have heard these earlier episodes. So, let’s introduce you to our audience just by asking you, how did you get to Beeson Divinity School in the first place? >>Bray: Well, I was invited to come to Beeson for a semester, the spring semester of 1993. And I didn’t know at the time, but they were looking for an Anglican Professor of Divinity because Mr. Beeson had left money to establish five designated denominational chairs, and they couldn’t find anybody to be the Anglican- >>Doug Sweeney: Well, they wanted you. >>Bray: Well yes, but I didn’t know that at the time. And I got here, and I was teaching, I remember it very well because it was my mother’s birthday, the 19th of February. The dean called me into his office and asked me if I would stay, take the tour. And I wasn’t expecting that at all, and I turned him down and I said, “Well I can’t. I mean, I’ve got a job to go back to.” But then in the providence of God, and it really was the providence of God, there is things fell apart, the funding for the job that I was going to didn’t materialize, and you know, things that I had no control over. And I really felt at that point, well, this is God’s leading. So, I said to the dean, I said, “Well, just remember when you fire me, I didn’t ask for this job.” >>Doug Sweeney: Turns out he never fired you. >>Bray: No. No, he didn’t. And I’ve been here ever since. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. And publishing books ever since. >>Bray: Mmhmm, yeah. That’s right. >>Doug Sweeney: Has anybody kept track of how many books you’ve written to date? >>Bray: No, including me. I haven’t. People ask me this from time to time and I’m never quite sure, you know, how to answer that. >>Doug Sweeney: Well, that’s a wonderful number. >>Bray: But it’s a good number, yes. And I do it for the sake of the church, I mean, I actually, most of the books that I write, the royalties go to somebody else, not to me. Some go to me, but most go to some other place, and I feel it’s a mission. It’s something I can do- >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. >>Bray: For the church as a whole. >>Doug Sweeney: Marvelous. Alright, let’s tell people about the two latest books. Athens and Jerusalem, that’s a title that may ring a bell for people. Remind our listeners where that title comes from. >>Bray: Well, the title itself comes from the early Christian writer, Tertullian, who very famously said, “What is Athens got to do with Jerusalem?”, using both cities in a metaphorical sense. He himself hadn’t been to either place, could say that. But Athens was recognized as the heart of Ancient Greek Pagen philosophy and Jerusalem, of course, is well known, you know, as the center of Jewish and then later Christian faith. And so, basically, what he was saying was what has Pagen philosophy got to do with Christian faith or Jewish faith. And the title, I discovered when I proposed it, has in fact been used by several other people so there are several books called Athens and Jerusalem, which are on the market. But it struck me as the right sort of title because it is two fundamentally different world views which come together in a very clear way and it’s very memorable. If you say something like, you know, what has Pagen philosophy got to do with Christian faith, that’s fine. But it doesn’t sort of stay in the memory quite as readily. So, Athens and Jerusalem, you know, is a tag, if you like, which fits very well. >>Doug Sweeney: Great. Yeah. So, as we begin to tell the listeners about that book, we should start simply by asking you, what is this book about? >>Bray: Well, it’s about the development of philosophy from the Ancient Greek world to modern times and it’s interaction with the Bible, in particularly, particularly with Christian faith ever since. And I start by giving a chapter over to the origins of Ancient Greek philosophy, which probably is not very familiar, not a familiar subject to most people. >>Doug Sweeney: Right. >>Bray: Then I carry on with a chapter and the origins of biblical faith, which I think for most of my readers will be more familiar. But of course, I try to link it to the Greek tradition, and you know, sort of cross referencing and so on, so that people can see not just where it comes from, but how it’s either connected or not connected with the other. And then about how the two traditions met in the early Christian periods as Christians evangelized outside the Jewish world, how they had to confront a civilization which was very different in its principles and so on, and what happened as a result of that. That initially, and certainly through the time that we think of as the Middle Ages, it was the Christian tradition, Jerusalem, which basically took over and the Ancient Greek world disappeared. But of course, the writings and tradition did survive in different ways and at the time of the renaissance, 15th and 16th century, of course all that was rediscovered, and the challenge was presented anew. And that’s one of the factors which led, of course, to the Protestant affirmation, not the only one, but it’s certainly one of them, and the interaction ever since. And I pointed out that until relatively recently, the intellectual mainstream, you might say, in western society has leaned more towards the philosophical tradition and less towards the Christian one, has moved away in varying degrees from that. But I pointed out that in the 20th century and late 20th century and early 21st, the signs are that that’s reversing, that in fact, I wouldn’t say that the philosophical traditions have run its course. You can never say that. But the Christian tradition has revived and interacted more positively with the Greek tradition. When I say positively, I don’t mean by accepting it, but by confronting it and showing its weaknesses. And it’s been particularly interesting to see how in different spheres, you have scientists, politicians, common takers of various kinds who in their different ways are coming to the conclusion that western secular society is missing something. And well of course, not everybody agrees about what it’s missing, but a number will say, well you know, the Christina tradition on which western society was built has been devalued or ignored and this is not right. And even from a purely scientific point of view, you know, one of the things that comes across, the big bang theory, how did the world begin? It began with a big bang and lots of people accept that idea. But what caused the big bang? And of course, nobody answers that question. That’s kind of left. And they’d say well, scientists can tell you how it happened, but they can’t tell you why it happened. And this is where the Chrisitan tradition supplies answers. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. >>Bray: And you know, many things like this have come up and increasingly now, we’re finding people writing about the conversion of secular people. I wouldn’t necessarily say atheists. Some are atheists, but secular people coming back into the church one way or another, and that’s a very interesting phenomenon. We don’t know yet what the result of that will be longer term. But the fact that it’s happening at all, and increasingly now you hear more about it, you know, this is very encouraging. >>Doug Sweeney: It’s a great set up for the next question I wanted to ask you about this book. On the one hand, this book is a marvelous primer in the history of their relationship between philosophy and faith, philosophy and theology. You’re a very learned man. You write very clearly. We’re in good hands. It’s a book that anybody can pick up who enjoys reading and learn a lot from and a lot about the relationship between philosophy in particular and Christianity through the centuries. But on the other hand, as you’ve already indicated, this relationship has been fraud from the very beginning. It’s a controversial relationship. Tertullian’s question indicates this and it’s a relationship whose complications are still very much with us. I remember many years ago, I was a high school senior, and I was about to go to university, and there were some well-meaning Christians in my family network who warned me as I was heading off to university about the study of secular philosophy because they thought it might well lead me astray, lead me away from biblical Christianity. And on the one hand you could say well, they weren’t intellectual people, maybe their fears were misplaced. On the other hand, there are plenty of people who’ve gone on to university and walked away from the Lord and lost their faith. >>Bray: Yes. >>Doug Sweeney: So, how do you want us to think about this? As you kind of march us through the centuries and show us the relationship and all its complications between what we might call secular philosophy and Christian faith, are there lessons to be learned for believing Christians who want to do their best to learn wat they ought to learn about the way the world works and what intellectuals are saying these days, and they way they ought to practice their faith day to day? >>Bray: Oh yes, thank you. Well clearly, there’s a great deal we can learn from this. I think the first thing we have to l earn is that we mustn’t take anything for granted. I think this has been a problem in the past that the churches did not confront modern philosophical developments when they were occurring, either because they didn’t take them seriously or because they felt that it’s nothing to do with us. You know, we’re completely different. And they couldn’t, it’s very hard to understand how an idea developed by some very unlikely person can take over the world, or maybe not the whole world but you know, a large part of the world. I mean, I think the obvious example of Karl Marx, for instance. I mean, how did someone like him become as influential, long after his death of course, as he did and in some places is still influential today? It’s very hard to understand that because you go back and look at the person himself and you think, well, what did he do? He just wrote books. He never ran anything or invented anything or anything like that. He just had ideas. And yet these ideas, you know, made an impact much more than they should have done. But by the time, you know, that that had happened, the churches were already on the defensive. They didn’t realize and they didn’t really quite know what to do, you know, when that took over. And so, we do have to be very well aware of, you know, what people are thinking, what the elite people are thinking because their ideas may well take over. And we see this, of course, in modern technological developments. I mean, right now, you know, where does artificial intelligence come from? What are its potential? You know, what is its potential? What are the dangers accompanying it and so on? And we really need to be thinking about these things. I think, in fairness, in recent times that has been done much more than it was. We’re much more aware of this. You know, our evangelism for example, I mean, until recently, to be a missionary meant something like going off to New Guinea and, you know, preaching to headhunters or something like this and that was the picture that you had, whereas now, increasingly, that sort of thing, while it still exists of course and it’s important, but it's no longer as central as it once was, partly because a lot of it has already been done to a large extent. More important now is getting to grips with these intellectual developments, technological developments and getting people to address them. And I mean, there are people who are doing this, of course, but you know, that needs to be much more the focus of concentration. I think of the historian Mark Knoll who, did he not write a book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind? >>Doug Sweeney: Yes. >>Bray: And this is a wake-up, should be a wake-up call to everyone that this is where the battle is now more than anywhere else, where it will be in the future because what I say or what you say here and now, in a matter of hours could be on the far side of the world. I mean, this is a new thing. And you know, we’re in a global conversation in a global world and who knows where, you know, the next sort of challenge will come from, so we have to be very aware of that and earn from that. But also, we have to remember that we have been given a revelation from God that won’t go away, that won’t change in its substance at all. These other theories, of course, do. I mean you know, they’re new. And theories of say evolution for instance, I mean, are themselves forever evolving. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. >>Bray: Well, you have to keep up with it, otherwise you don’t know. And I mean, that’s fair enough because that’s what they are. I mean, they’re human ideas, human constructions of things that we only know in part, whereas the divine revelation is something that it is permanent because the revealer is permanent. The God who created the world is the same God now as He was when He created it and will always be the same. So, we have a foundation there that will not change, and we have to realize that, you know, this is what we are committed to, this is who we are committed to. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. Amen. >>Bray: And that He will reveal to us, through His revelation, through His word, how to approach these things. I mean, if I can give an example here, all the recent controversy over same sex things, transgenderism and all that. Obviously, a lot of people have strong feelings about this, and rightly so, and want to oppose it. But one of the things that has kind of puzzled me about this is how relatively few people seem to go back to the scriptures and say what we’re talking about here is creation. It’s the doctrine of creation, how God made the world and what He intended it to be. And when we discuss these other things, this is where we need to focus. You know, there is a world which is made in a particular way and whether we like it or not, we’re not free to alter this, you see. The great deception is that we’re the Tower of Bable, you know, the idea that you can build a human construction that will reach up to heaven is false. And however much I might want to do it, for whatever reason, I cannot. I have to accept the boundaries which have been set, and the Bible talks about this, you know, that God made the limits of the sea and the land and, you know, what they are and where they are to be, and this will not change the foundations of the earth. And we’ll wake up and discover this eventually. I mean, you know, I have lived in my lifetime through things that I would never have expected to see. You know, when I was young, everybody used asbestos. Today you don’t. That’s sort of taken away. And I mean, a generation or two ago, people would have been surprised by this. When I was growing up, people had heard of fat, I suppose, but cholesterol would not have been known to the average person. >>Doug Sweeney: Right. >>Bray: And now, you know, you can’t go in the supermarket without seeing it on every label everywhere. Things like this. So, we’ve seen changes in this way, things that were taken for granted, you know, a generation or two ago are now repudiated. And we need to bear that in mind that as Christians, our gospel message is the same. That has not changed and will not change. But we can expect that the idols of this world will come crashing down. We don’t know when, but they will. >>Doug Sweeney: This gets us very close to the last question I want to ask you in relations to the Athen and Jerusalem book. So, Dr Bray, you wouldn’t have written this book if you didn’t think we Christians should be paying attention to secular philosophy. >>Bray: Right. >>Doug Sweeney: You wouldn’t have devoted your entire life to higher education if you didn’t think more people, particularly more Christian people, ought to be learning about wheat non-Christian people think, about what secular philosophers and scientist are doing. But as we’ve been talking about a little bit so far, there are also some dangers that are involved in investing oneself deeply in secular learning. The kinds of people who warned me about going to university when I was a boy were not just foolish people. These were mature Christian people who were really concerned about me. So, I guess the last question about this book I want to ask you has to do with practical Christian advice about how best to study secular philosophy, things that aren’t inculcated in our childhoods as we grow up in Jerusalem, let’s say, rather than in Athens. Are there practices, Christian practices, devotional practices? Are there ways of dealing with the kind of learning that we talk about in universities that are better foe Christians and that you would want to commend as your encouraging us to earn more about the ways in which non-Christians think about life and about the world and about what it means to live a good life? How can we be, to put it simply again and make it an easier question to begin addressing here, how can we be kind of in the world without being of the world as we’re trying to grow intellectually? >>Bray: Thank you, yes. Well, of course there’s no sort of easy answer to that. But I think the fundamental thing is that before we tackle anything that is different from our own beliefs and traditions, we need to be very firmly anchored in those things. I mean, I’m eternally grateful for the fact that I had a very solid Christian education through my church, you know, in learning the scriptures, learning the basic principles of Christian faith, being, perhaps not surrounded, but nevertheless, in touch with a number of mentors who were aware of these things and who encouraged me in these things, and learning from a very early time that the world around us, however attractive it is, and of course it was made by God so in that sense, it’s right that it should be attractive, you know, we should possess as children of God, nevertheless, is in rebellion against Him. And there is no point hiding that or, you know, belittling that or anything or restricting it to certain things. I mean, some people way, well, you know, the whole area of sex, that’s an area to avoid because, you know, it’s ungodly. Or politics, or business, or whatever it is. You know, people also take different things. And you say to yourself, no, there are of course dangers in all those things but the evil in the world is not confined to one particular aspect of it. It’s a rebellion against the creator, a rebellion which is bigger than humanity because it’s the rebellion of Satan, who has tempted us and who has trapped us in his conscience, as it were. And that whatever we are, wherever we are, and whatever circumstance, we are engaged in spiritual warfare. I mean, Ephesians, chapter six, I think, is one of the most important chapters in the Bible, “put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wilds of the world, the flesh, and the devil.” You know, very important. And to be primed to look for that, not to be condemning, but to be aware. If you’re in the army, I mean, the first thing you have to do before you go out to fight is measure your enemy, know your enemy. Who exactly are you fighting? And this is what we need to do. And I think too often in Christian circles, it’s all sort of happy clappy, you know, we’re fine. And there’s nothing wrong with that but there isn’t enough of look, we’re in a battle here and this battle goes right through all of this. You know, it’s not to be confined to one particular thing or two particular things, but it’s everywhere. And remember also that we have the victory in Christ, that there is a battle, yes, and we may be wounded in that battle. Be prepared to face that. And we need to have back up. You need to have a good church. When I go to a different place, the first thing that I look for is a church, a good church, and I stay there, and I contribute, you know. I make it my family and my home because without that, you know, when the attacks come, you won’t know. I can just tell a little story about this, something that comes into my mind. I did my doctoral work in Paris. And of course, Paris has been through everything you can imagine over the centuries. But one of the things I noticed was that the church in the center of Paris was dedicated, well it was originally dedicated to Saint Genavieve, who was the patrol saint of Paris at one time. And it was secularized during the French Revolution and is now the Pantheon where the great heroes of the secular French Republic are buried or commemorated in one way or another. So, it has a church which has been deconsecrated and secularized. But although many people don’t realize this, what you notice if you look carefully as you walk up, because it’s on top of a hill, the dome at the top, it’s very much like Beeson Divinity School in a way, it has a dome structure. But on the top is the cross of Christ. No one’s ever climbed up there to take it down. And to me, this is very prophetic because the cross of Christ is on top. Whatever goes on underneath, how ever much it’s changed, how ever little people pay attention to it, you know, God is in control. His word will not return void. He will have the final say. And however it comes out, whenever it comes out, we need to remember that because it is a battle that we face, and we mustn’t ever minimize that. And people will suffer. We will suffer in different ways. But in the end, we have the victory. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. Amen. Alright, let’s spend a few minutes telling the readers about the second book that I mentioned at the top of the show, A History of Christian Theology, a Trinitarian Approach. I won’t begin by asking you what the book is about. The title is a pretty good indication of what the book is about. It’s about the history of Christian theology. But maybe a word about the subtitle, the Trinitarian Approach. What’s significant about taking a trinitarian approach to the history of Christian Theology? >>Bray: Well, yes, that’s a very good question. Actually, that book came out of the history and doctrine sequence at Beeson Divinity School because when I was teaching that initially, I thought we need a textbook, you know. some way to sort of get into this and so, I wrote that book. It’s never been used for that purpose, I should say. >>Doug Sweeney: You haven’t assigned it in your classes? >>Bray: Well, I have given the copies to my class, yes. And I do, I mean, I teach- >>Doug Sweeney: You’re too nice to our students. >>Bray: Yeah, that’s right. Well, I teach on that basis. But this is the context in which it was designed, to combine history and doctrine. And we have always, as Christians had a trinitarian faith. You know, Jesus said to his disciples, “go into all the world baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” So, right from the beginning, this has been there. But of course, there has been a development of this. You see, one step leads to another. And what I’ve discovered in reading the history of Christian theology is it goes in stages. You start with Jesus and his ministry. And what is the key thing there? And if you read the gospels, you find that the key thing is that Jesus told his disciples to call God their father. He got into trouble for doing this himself. Abba is one of the very few words that he actually used in his own mother tongue, Aramaic, which has been kept in the gospels, which are otherwise a translation for the most part. So, it’s very central to his perception of who he is, and his ministry, God, the person of the Father. But the next thing that comes from this is the relationship of the person of the Father to the work of the Father. What does the Father do? And of course, in the early church, they were challenged on this because people said, well, if God created a perfect world in the creation, how did it go wrong? And why was a savior needed? And of course, one of the answers given was, well the creator was not the father of Jesus Christ. It was an inferior deity. And so, Jesus Christ comes along as the sone of a higher God, a Redeemer God who is different from the Creator God. And this was a challenge to the early church because it’s not what the Bible teaches at all, that the Creator and the Redeemer are the same, that the world was not created defective in this way, that sin is not in matter in things, but it’s a spiritual rebellion and has to be addressed in that way. So, the work of the Father comes next, you see. The Creator and Redeemer are the same. Then you move on to who is Jesus Christ, the person of Christ? And this is the great creedal period when the creeds of the early church were worked out. They’re basically definitions of Christ, fully God and fully man, and that’s who he is. But then of course, once that’s established, the next question you have to ask is, well what does he do? Why did God become man? You know, the great Anselmian thing and the work of atonement. You know, what the Son of God was doing in human flesh and why that matters. And then of course, the person of the Holy Spirit. Who is the Holy Spirit? Because Jesus says, “When I go away, I will send you another comforter who will lead you into all truth.” Who is he? How do we see this? And so that question, the person of the Holy Spirit which has never been fully resolved in the Christian world because, as you know, the western church, Catholic and Protestant, view this slightly differently from the Easter Orthodox Church over, you know, where the Holy Spirit comes from, if you like. Does he proceed from the Father alone or from the Father and the Son? So, this is a question that is still being debated in some way today. But then, finally, the work of the Holy Spirit because why did the Holy Spirit come into the world? What is he doing? And I point out to my students today that the fundamental difference between say Roman Catholics on the one hand and Protestants on the other is this, how does the Holy Sprit work? Does he work through things, through institutions, through rituals so that if I lay hands on you, you receive the Holy Spirit? You know, can I make you a Chrisitan by some kind of ritual or something like this? Or does the Holy Spirit work primarily in the heart? Not denying the rituals, but by themselves, they’re not enough because we are spirits, you know. Romans says, “Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirit, that we are children of God” and that this is fundamental to us. And so, the work of the Holy Spirit is an issue which we’re still discussing today and trying to work out. So, I see it this way, that you know, that kind of layers is built, one on top of the other, and they fit together in this trinitarian pattern, and that’s what I’ve worked out in the book. And it’s led to some very interesting discoveries. One of the things, I think one of the great things that I’ve discovered was how much Martin Luther was a theologian of the Holy Spirit because 19th century German Lutheranism tried to ignore that. And a man called Rudolph Otto, a German theologian, basically said Luther had no doctrine of the Holy Spriit at all. And a Danish theologian by the name of Regin Prenter was so disturbed by this that he made it part of his life work to prove the opposite. And Prenter is unfortunately not as well-known as he should be, but basically, he has demonstrated, incontrovertibly in my opinion, that Martin Luther was deeply a man of the spirit. >>Doug Sweeney: Yes. >>Bray: And I brought that out in my book, you see. This is something we need to recover over against the liberal theology of the 19th and early 20th centuries, which tried to sort of push that aside, and the other things like that. See, once you start thinking in this way, these things come out. >>Doug Sweeney: Way to go. And I’m imagining now some of the people listening to the recording of this, many of them will be lay people, and some of them might be thinking that at this point in the conversation, my goodness, some of those questions and issues Dr Bray was just describing are pretty difficult. And there are professional theologians who devote careers to debating these things. I’m saying that as set up to this question, do we all really need to know about the history of Christian theology? And if you were going to commend either the book we’re talking about now, your own history of Christian theology, or even more generally, just simply the practice of learning as much as we can about the history of Christian doctrine, the history of Christian theology, would you want to say everybody should try to learn about these things? >>Bray: Well, that’s- >>Doug Sweeney: Obviously, we can’t all learn about them like you have learned about them. >>Bray: No, no, no. And I don’t think, you know, you don’t have to have a PhD to get into heaven, thank goodness. You know, not this. But I’ve tried to set things out in the way that I have so that it can be easily memorized, learned by people. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. >>Bray: So that although you don’t know all the details, I mean I wouldn’t expect most people to know much about say, the controversies over the divinity of Christ and the early church, very complicated subject. But to have in the mind that there was such a controversy that the creeds are there, you know, to answer this sort of thing. And that if the occasion arises, you kind of know where to go, you know, what file to pick out of the drawer- >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. I’m thinking too about, I mean I have their faces in my mind right now, people I have taught in adult Sunday school classes over the years about issues about Christian teaching, issue of Christian doctrine, who feel like, say with respect to the doctrine of the trinity, which is the one we began discussing, well any good orthodox Christian is going to affirm the doctrine of trinity so I want to affirm the doctrine of the trinity, and I want some teachers to help me understand what I’m affirming so that maybe I can get to the point where I can teach my children or my grandchildren what I’m affirming. Of course, as we get really deeply into these doctrines, things can get pretty difficult and pretty complicated. So, I guess I was just looking for Dr. Bray’s wisdom on how best to kind of think about balancing these things within one’s Christins life. You know, we don’t want to patronize lay people by suggesting well, this is too much for you, it’s probably over your head. But neither do we want to suggest if you don’t go to seminary, you should feel bad about yourself or unless you have a PhD, you can’t really know, you know, what you’re confessing. >>Bray: Right. >>Doug Sweeney: What is the best way for an ordinary layperson to think about how to grow in the faith without becoming a PhD student? >>Bray: Well, of course the best way is to learn from the Bible and what the Bible says. The Bible puts very complicated things in very simple language. And I think if you look at the trinity as a good example, Father and Son, and we can all understand that, you know, how Father and Son are different but also the same. I mean, you know, I am my father’s son. I am what I am because my father, and my mother of course too, you know, what they were. And I am, at the same time, equal to them. I’m not an inferior being, but I also defer to them. So, you know, when Jesus says, “My father’s greater than I am”, he doesn’t mean that, you know, he’s a human being and I’m an animal. It’s not something like that. It’s we are the same in our nature and our being, but there’s an order of relationship and precedence so that I defer to my father and not the other way around. The father doesn’t defer to the son in the same way. And I think we can all see this, you know, and see that this is the way it should be. Now in human terms of course, you might say well, it doesn’t always work out that way. That’s true. But we sense that when it doesn’t work out that way that something has gone wrong, you know, however, it may have happened and whoever’s fault it may be. Nevertheless, you know, we think that. And so, I would start there and just be very simple. And then when it comes to the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit brings both the Father and the Son to us that you can’t understand the Father without the Son because, I mean, the Father wouldn’t be Father if there was no Son. And of course, the Son wouldn’t be the Son if there was no Father. And having said all that, you know, for the benefit of those who think in sexist terms, of course that’s wrong. I mean, God is not male. In that way, it’s presented to us in masculine terms but when this question comes up, I always so the reason for that is that we are the female. You know, we are the bride of Christ and Christ has come into the world in search of his bride. And so, we provide that dimension, you know, within the relationship with God. And really, that is to make room for us. There’s a place for us to fill in the picture. And I just keep it simple. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. That’s one of the things I’ve long admired about you, Dr. Bray. On the one hand, you’re one of the most learned Christians I have known. On the other hand, you seem to have no interest whatsoever in just showing off intellectually. You think because you’ve devoted your life to being a teacher of the church that you need to be clear with people. There are some theologians who seem to need to prance around and show off and its as though they treat theology as some kind of an academic game that only people with PhDs, you know, get to play. But that’s a horrible model when it comes to the life of discipleship and the context of the church. So, thank you for devoting your own learning to people, to helping people grow up into maturity in Christ. I think if more of us taught and lived like you, there’d be lots more lay people who feel like, hey, I can grow in some of these ways myself. >>Bray: Oh yes. And I would just close by saying that the more you learn, the more you realize how little you know. And all the really great thinkers and scientists and everything else have always said the same thing. You know, I mean, your Einsteins of this world would say, well I really don’t know anything. Of course, they did. They knew a lot. >>Doug Sweeney: You know a lot more than I know. >>Bray: Well, yes. But in knowing that, they realized just what an ocean of knowledge there is out there. And while we may have a few drops and study them in intense detail, when we put them into the ocean, we see that really, it’s nothing. And we just have to, it’s being humble, yes, but also to be fresh and interested in things because when you realize that there’s so much more out there to learn, you want to go and learn it, you know. I mean, nothing worse than getting old and boring. >>Doug Sweeney: Alright, last question Dr. Bray. Lots of our listeners pray for us, pray for Beeson Divinity School and its people. If they’re going to be praying for Dr. Bray in the next couple of days, how should they be praying for you? >>Bray: Well, pray for me that I might learn how to express what needs to be said, you know, in what I’m writing and speaking and so on, in the right way, in a way that will not mislead because I think one of the things that you just brought out now is there are obviously people who will come to me and think that I’m some kind of oracle, you know, that they want the answer to something or other and that I’m going to be able to solve their problem. And of course, I want to help them as much as I can, especially if they’re my students. I do want to do that. But I want to do it in a way that won’t mislead them. And it’s very easy for me to skip over things or say things that I understand because, you know, I’ve connected the dots in my own mind, but the person I’m speaking to hasn’t done that and they may jump from, you know, let’s say A to W say, maybe not quite to the end of the alphabet, but they’re getting there without having gone through the b, c, d, e, f in the meantime and therefore distort what they’ve heard. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. >>Bray: And really, I’m responsible because I haven’t taken the time or shown the patience necessarily needed to develop it in the right way. So, to pray for me for this, that for wisdom, for patience, for discernment in what I do because I’m getting near the end of my earthly race and I don’t want to fail at the last hurdle, shall we say. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. Alright listeners, after all these years, Dr. Bray is still trying to be a better teacher, so please pray for him as he tries to serve the Lord in this way. Of course, you’ve been listening to Dr. Gerald Bray. He serves as a distinguished professor here of divinity here at Beeson Divinity School. He’s been here for many years. It’s a huge blessing to all of us who know him and study with him. Thank you, Dr. Bray, for being with us. Thank you, listeners, for tuning in. We love you. We’re praying for you. And we say goodbye for now. >>Announcer: You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast; coming to you from the campus of Samford University. Our theme music is by Advent Birmingham. Our announcer is Mark Gignilliat. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our producer is Neal Embry. And our show host is Doug Sweeney. For more episodes and to subscribe, visit BeesonDivinity.com/podcast. You can also find the Beeson Podcast on iTunes, YouTube, and Spotify.