 You're listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, go to nakedbiblepodcast.com and click on the support link in the upper right-hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Heiser's approach to the Bible, click on newstarthere at nakedbiblepodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, Episode 163 Other Gods and Other Religions with Gerald McDermott. I'm the layman, Trey Strickland, and he's the scholar, Dr. Michael Heiser. Hey Mike, how you doing this week? Pretty good. Pretty good. It was a busy week as usual and I think fairly productive, actually. Well, that's good. That's good. It's hot here in Texas, so we're getting into the thick of the heat. How's it up there in Washington? Oh, it's pretty mild. We actually had some cold weather and some rain, so it feels kind of normal, but we got sun, so we know we're not in the rainy season. Yeah. Yeah. Well, good deal. Most of the time, anyway. We're speaking of Texas, David Burnett. He's speaking in a church in Austin, is that correct? Yeah, that's true. I blogged this a few days back and we had something on Facebook about it. David is going to be actually talking about the Divine Council at a church in Austin. It's Mosaic Church of Austin, so I would encourage anybody within a few hours of distance to go here, David. Frankly, this is not just for David's sake, although he'd be thrilled, but any church that has anybody in to speak about the Divine Council ought to be encouraged by a good turnout. You can go to my website, drmsh.com, and look for the blog post about David Burnett speaking. You'll find it on Facebook as well. David is pretty active on Facebook. But please, if you're able to go to that, it's June 23rd, which is a Friday. I think the event is scheduled for 6 or 6.30, so June 23rd in Austin, Texas. If you can make that, it would just be encouraging to everybody involved. So if we want more churches to do this kind of thing, you got to show up and thank them for it. And if you're not able to get to Austin, Texas to hear David speak, he will actually be on the Neck and Bible podcast next week. Is that right? Yeah, that's true. And what we're just discussing with him. Yeah, we're going to be talking to David about his work on Paul's Ascent to Heaven in 2 Corinthians. And of course, that involves the messenger, you know, sent to plague Paul. Was that a divine being or not? We've talked about this on the podcast before, but David has spent a good bit of time in the passage. And you know, when he's on, we're going to get into lots of Second Temple Jewish stuff. But again, I think it'll be a great topic. It'll add to and layer on what we've already done there in a past episode. So Paul's Ascent to Heaven with David Burnett. All right, always excited for David Burnett to come on the show. But this week, we've got another special guest. Well, we're really excited to have Dr. Gerald McDermott with us today for the podcast. Dr. McDermott has his PhD from University of Iowa, and he is Anglican Chair of Divinity at Beeson Divinity School in Birmingham, Alabama. Before that, he was the Jordan Trexler Professor of Religion at Roanoke College. He's also an associate pastor at Christ the King Anglican Church and distinguished senior fellow in the history of Christianity at Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion. Now, the reason I am drawn to do this interview, Jerry and I have chatted back and forth by email a few times and way back. I think, Jerry, you can correct me and I think it was 2007 that God's rivals came out. Is that about right? I think that's about right. Yeah. I heard of this book and I don't know if I contacted you first or you contacted me, but the first, we're going to discuss two books today that Jerry has written. One is God's rivals. Why has God allowed different religions? And then we will get to Israel matters. Why Christians must think differently about the people and the land of Israel. The first one, God's rivals, you know, when I came across this, it was one of the few things I'd ever seen that sort of dipped into what we call on this podcast and what, you know, we mentioned this many times. I go through a lot of material that touches on what I call the Deuteronomy 32 worldview, that the biblical writers took the gods of the nation seriously because they viewed their existence as real and their control over the nations as a punishment from Yahweh, the God of Israel, because in reaction to the Babel event. And Jerry, again, you're one of the few people in your field. It's fair to say it's church history or I don't know if that's too broad, but you're one of the few people outside the Semitic world that I've seen sort of give a good amount of space to this idea. So can you tell everybody what the basic thrust or proposition of God's rivals was? What were you trying to accomplish in the book? Sure, Mike, I was trying to introduce what you described so well, you know, Deuteronomy 32 worldview to theology of religions. I've done six or seven books in theology of religions over the years. And, you know, so I'm working much more in theology now than church history. And I wanted to introduce this worldview to our Christian theology of world religions, where this sort of approach has been largely absent, even on the evangelical side, or maybe I should say especially on the evangelical side. Yeah, that'd probably be better. Yeah, especially on the evangelical side because evangelicals, as I'm sure you've experienced, are so wary of talking about any other gods but the God of Israel. And of course, as I'm sure your audience knows, the gods of the Old and New Testaments, and I argue in here that as you do, as I've said, well, as I've seen in your writings that I've read, that they're real, but of course, the only creator and the only redeemer is Yahweh, the God of Israel. So I wanted to introduce this worldview to, at an accessible level, to a crossover book published by University for both scholars and also for interested laymen, so to speak, and pastors. What that might mean for our understanding of the world religions? And particularly the question, why did God allow these other religions if the God of Israel, the God of Jesus Christ, is the only God who is? And he's all powerful. Why would he permit not only the rise of these rival religions, thus the title God's Rivals, but the flourishing of these world religions? Yeah, you know, and again, this, I think we could almost stop the interview right there and you'd have people in my audience wanting to buy the book already. I mean, I get lots of email about this sort of thing. Where does this fit in? Not only to, you know, my faith, you know, what happens in church, how I should look at something like spiritual warfare and not sort of go off the deep end with it. But just as you said, world religions and your book establishes not only, you know, that it has clear roots in an Old Testament supernatural worldview, but that people, namely early church figures, thinkers were aware of this and really gave it some thought. And, you know, the thesis generally, obviously, is since they gave it some thought, maybe we ought to do that too, that that would, that might contribute something, you know, to our understanding not of just what's going on in Scripture, but how we parse it, how we teach it, you know, really what it means, you know, in today's world. Now, your second chapter is entitled, Not Even in Israel Have I Found Such Faith? And the chapter, as I think people can already tell, is sort of about how you get believers. I mean, you actually have believers, people who have a faith in the God of Israel or, you know, something that gravitates toward the truth outside of Israel. So can you tell us what role that had in the book as you were, you know, leading up to this worldview? How does, well, what role did that play? Yes. Yeah, well, I wanted, you know, Christians and I supposed that my readers would be primarily evangelicals since it was published by University Press. I supposed at the time I was writing it, which was at the beginning of this century, which seems like a long time ago now, that most evangelicals then, and it's a little different today, would be surprised to hear or see that the biblical authors, that they acknowledged that non-Jews and non-Christians in the ancient world knew some true things about God, even in many cases without being saved. Now, this is harder for Protestants to take in than for Catholics because Catholics have had a long tradition of believing in natural law that some basic truths about God are accessible to all human beings by reason. Protestants used to believe that up until the beginning of the 20th century, but ever since Bart, Carl Bart, the Swiss theologian in the 20th century, said that all natural theology, all knowledge of God coming through nature is un-Christian and un-biblical. Ever since he made that argument and persuaded millions and millions and millions of Protestants, particularly Protestant theologians who taught their future pastors and seminaries, Protestants have tended to reject that idea that non-Christians could know anything true about God and not particularly because the reformed ED on the end, doctrine of knowledge, which I hold to, that all knowledge of non-Christians is tainted to some degree by sin, all knowledge of God, and therefore they can't have any absolutely true knowledge of God. But that doesn't necessarily conflict with the biblical view, as I argue in this book, that many, many, many outside of Israel in the Old Testament period and even in the New Testament period outside the church had some true knowledge of God, whether or not they had personal knowledge of Jesus Christ. Yeah, it's kind of interesting the timing of this because I don't know, I guess it's three or four weeks ago. I actually gave a sermon, it was my second sermon in 13 years. I don't know if that tells you anything. I actually got Sunday morning at church and what I decided to do was present a sort of, a lot of Christians just, they affirm in their heads the idea of what grace is, the simplicity of the gospel, but then they worry constantly of whether God is accepting them or not on the basis of all sorts of things, peripheral. So I decided to take a look at Naaman in Second Kings, which takes you to the sermon at Jesus' first sermon at Nazareth, where he uses Naaman and the widow of Zarephath as examples of faith to contrast what he was seeing with the people in this hometown, how he rebuked them using those two individuals as an example. Well, it just so happens that they're both pagans. I mean, they're both ones in Phoenician territory, you got Naaman the Syrian, and Naaman has a change of heart for sure. I mean, he only knows one thing. Now I know that the Lord is the real God and give me some dirt so I can go and sacrifice to him. He's never going to go to temple. He's never going to have the copy of the law. He's never going to be part of the Jewish ritual system or calendar. He's not going to get circumcised. He's not going to do anything. What he does is believe. And Elijah is like, hey, you know, you're good. This is the most important thing. This is the greatest commandment. This is why things are said because you can be incomplete and even kind of dopey when it comes to theology. It's a nice piece of it. But if you're believing loyalty is in this one against all others and there is no, you don't down to any other. That's what God wants. And so here we have a situation where you're right. You do find and even Jesus references, in this case, the two of them. If Jesus is good with what's going on in their heart, you know, I'm going to align myself and say, okay. And you know in historical theology that we have all sorts of people who are doctrinally again by, you know, I guess for lack of a better term, what we would call Orthodox conclusions or standards now, but they were still referred to as brethren because they might be apparent in one thing, but they're not trading the way of salvation in for something else. You know, they can be very clear on that and not clear on something else. So this is an important chapter. And I know why you placed it here because it's going to lead you into the thesis then, that despite the other nations being under the dominion of other gods and these systems of worship going on, people can and do discern, you know, some point of truth in all that. Now, of course, I don't take that to the places that liberal Christian theologians of religion do, namely to say that God can save people through non-Christian religions. And I want to make that clear to the audience and it's very clear in the book. I make that point many times in the book. So it's one thing to have personal knowledge of Jesus Christ. I'm convinced that scripture teaches only by personal knowledge of Jesus Christ. He is their final salvation, Romans 10-9. But it's quite another thing to have true knowledge of the true God. So you have, you know, for instance, Paul on Mars Hill in Athens in his talk, we call it a sermon before these Athenian philosophers who've never heard of Jesus Christ. He quotes two pagan poets and he's not claiming that they're saved, but nevertheless he quotes them with affirmation and approbation. Clearly suggesting that what they say about God is true. In him we live and move and have our being was one of the quotes. And he's saying this pagan poet knew something true about God and he's not at all saying this pagan poet was necessarily saved. So you can see, this is the thing that so many Christians have a hard time comprehending, that a pagan can have true knowledge about the true God. But that doesn't mean that that pagan is on his way to heaven. That whole question about can pagans be saved? I mean, that's a whole nother question for maybe another podcast that I'd be happy to talk about, but I don't want to get into that now unless you want to. No, no, we're fine with that. I mean, there's obviously a relationship between the two things. They don't conflate, you know, knowledge of true knowledge about the true God and then salvation doesn't necessarily, it's not a one-to-one conflation there. I mean, there's a relationship to it because we have Old Testament Israelites who are pre-cross, but yet they respond positively to the revelation God has given them or they can reject it as well. A lot of people, you know, look at Israel's status as the elect in the Old Testament. They forget, well, most of the nation apostasized. So what did that election mean? You know, you get into this whole thing about assuming that election means salvation. So I'm saved because of my ethnicity. Well, no, not so much. But, you know, then the other side of that coin is you have a pagan that responds the way God wants his own people to respond. You know, and he's outside the camp in another sense. So there's some relationship between the two, you know, and you're right. That's a bit peripheral. What I really want to get into is now, again, we've already touched on, you know, your recognition is going to sound really odd, but your recognition of what the Old Testament actually shows us, that, you know, how the Israelites looked at the gods and they are lesser, they're real but lesser. There is an unlike way and they qualify that in a number of ways in scriptures. And that's going to be real familiar for our audience, so we don't need to go over all that. But take us into, you have four successive chapters after you talk about Deuteronomy 32. One, Justin Martyr, one on Irenaeus, one on Clement of Alexandria and then Origen. So now you skip the chapter though on Paul. Oh, yeah, yeah, the one on, you're talking about the chapter four. Yeah, yeah. If you want to, you want to start with that we can, but where I'm ultimately going is you have four chapters because you have these four major figures didn't all say the same thing or think the same thing. We want to get into what, how they thought about this. We want to give each a little bit of time to each one, but go ahead. You jump in where you want. Well, very briefly, after my chapter on the Old Testament, I say that Paul picks up this line of thinking and develops it. And the argument of the book is that this line of thinking that there are these other gods out there that are none of which, all of which were created as angels who apostatized. They were fallen angels and then they masqueraded as the true God. And this is the origin of the false religions around the world. This basic germ idea is developed by Paul into his doctrine of principalities and powers. And then it's picked up by Justin Martyrs developed further. It's picked up then later by Irenaeus. It's developed even further. Then it's picked up by Clement of Alexandria. It's developed even further. And then, and then origin. He goes even further with it. So my, what I'm trying to say is that the early church Greek theologians took what they found and believed was very clear in the Bible. You know, they didn't have the blinders on their eyes that we do from the enlightenment. We read it and see things much more clearly than we do. So they picked up this presentation in the New Testament and they developed it and they applied it to the world religions of their day with, I think, tremendous insight that can help us in dealing with the world religions of our day. So where was Justin Martyr at? What are some of the things? Yeah, Justin Martyr keys on John one night, the true light that was coming into the world that enlightens every man. And of course this is Jesus, the Logos, the word. And he says, it's no wonder that it's Jesus, the second person of the Trinity who enlightens every man because after all Jesus is the light of the world. And Jesus said that no one knows the father unless the son reveals the father to that person. So he says every human being, every historian, every philosopher in the ancient world who had any part of truth, who said anything true, said it because he had parts of the Logos. Christ was and is the Logos who is in every man he wrote. And so whatever things, I'm just quoting Justin here. Sure. We're rightly said among all men are the property of us Christians. So he drew upon Jesus's parable of the sower, you know, the sower in the seed. And he said the Stoics, the poets and the historians all quote spoke well in proportion to the share they had of the seminal and you know that word comes from same in seed, parable of the sower in the seed, the seminal divine Logos. And now these philosophers in the ancient world didn't have the complete truth. They often contradicted themselves because they didn't have the whole Logos. They only had part of the Logos. So, so they did not possess Christian grace, but in so far as they spoke truth and people like Socrates and he called Socrates a Christian because of all the truth he had. No, and they didn't really know Aristotle, I don't believe, but Socrates and Plato, he believed spoke their truth in part because of the Logos that gave them a part of the truth. But did he look at that as some as a as an impartation of insight or was it something more than that when he says they had something of the Logos? Well, I think well impartation of insight by and from the Logos. So he viewed this as an act of an act of God, an act of Christ to enlighten them to some extent. Exactly. Exactly. Yes. Now he also believed that some truth in the world religions came by the Priscatea logia. This was a long tradition that in fact has continued even to the 20th century has been going on for 2000 years that most Christians are completely unaware of Priscatea logia is Latin for ancient theology. And this is the idea that the truth of the Christian faith were passed down by tradition from generation to generation. They were often corrupted by sin. And so God had to reinvigorate the truth by fresh revelations that they particularly were passed down by the sons of Noah, who were the founders of the nations in Genesis 10 and 11, well primarily Genesis 10. And that's why you have so much truth in the world religions because of the initial deposit that was given to Adam and Eve in the garden and of truth about a coming Messiah and justification by faith and of a trinity and was passed down generation after generation. And that's why Plato had truth. So not only by impartation of enlightenment by the logos, but also because he picked up on truth from his contact with Jews in Egypt. And there was a long story in the ancient world about Plato going to Egypt and meeting rabbis and also because of this Priscatea logia that had been passed down. Now, for the sake of our audience, that is both that idea is both more nuanced and also more particular than something like Joseph Campbell, where you have these major archetypes that are passed down. Correct. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Joseph Campbell rejects the scandal of particularity and I'm glad you use that word particular. So the scandal of particularity for your audience, are they familiar with that? Probably not. That's the basic idea that the true God must reveal himself in the same way to all human beings in all times and places. And so any God like the God of the Bible reveals himself only to particular nations, i.e. Israel at particular times and in particular ways and then passes on that revelation only to the world and not all the world at the same time cannot be the true God. So that's the scandal of particularity. I wanted to bring that out because again, this audience will have been exposed to archetypal thinking and whenever you do that, you run into Campbell. So I wanted them to know that we're not talking about the same thing that Campbell's talking about with that and either with the Church Fathers. No, not at all. How did Irenaeus or Irenaeus, whichever one is correct, good time to correct me here. Irenaeus is correct. How does he build on Justin Martyr? What does he add? Well, Irenaeus is the first philosopher of Christian history and he takes up what Justin Martyr says, that the ministry of truth by the Logos to every human being, but then he talks about whole societies and the course of human history, which Justin was not particularly interested in. And what Irenaeus teaches is that God has always been at work in all the religions working by the Logos. So just as God revealed himself in this plan only in stages to the Jews, you know, as you work through the Old Testament, so too God has progressively trained the peoples of the world through history in a developmental way to help prepare them to receive the fullness of the Gospel. Irenaeus also has some intriguing things to say about why some people received the Gospel and others did not, but he did not believe that God saved through other religions, contrary to what a lot of contemporary theologians or religions teach. And what's fascinating about Irenaeus is he believed everyone in his day had already heard the Gospel. Now he was wrong about that, but that's what he believed. And he believed that all the righteous pagans who had died before the coming of Christ and the Gospel could be saved by being resurrected in the millennium where they'd have a chance to hear the Gospel or maybe on Holy Saturday in Hades since they were living in that upper realm of Hades and Jesus, by his interpretation, most of the Father's interpretation of those classic, mysterious texts in Peter, Christ preached the Gospel in Hades to the righteous pagans, they could be saved that way. Yeah, he and I would disagree on that one, but you're right, that's very common. So he and all the Fathers believed that there's no such thing as non-christians going to heaven. Anyone going to heaven is going to say yes to the Gospel of Jesus Christ by Romans 10-9. He's really interesting. Go ahead and finish your thought. Well, I'll just finish the thought, but they had creative ways of understanding how that was going to happen. Yeah, I was going to say, Irenaeus is interesting in this respect, too, because he does spend a good bit of time talking about the Watchers, which is the Second Temple Jewish term for the Sons of God, Genesis 6 and all that. And he was really fixated on the sense that they contributed to human depravity, specifically driving people to idolatry. And so there you have a supernatural resistance, again, to the truth that would have been ceded to use Justin's term, the truth that would have been ceded to the other nations amid all of this pagan worship. So here you have, again, this perspective of spiritual warfare that includes this Deuteronomy 32 worldview that actually draws even the Watchers into the picture for this opposition. We mentioned Irenaeus a lot on the podcast. I find he's really interesting. I don't know if you've read Schultz's article or dissertation about his view of the Watchers and depravity, but it's really interesting what Irenaeus says there, and it really fits nice with what you're describing. So what about Clement? Well, Clement, and just a little preface, you can say all the fathers believed that non-Jewish, non-Christian religions are ultimately demonic because they believe that they are infiltrated and empowered by and enlightened by these fallen angels. But that's also why they have a lot of truth. But Clement, he agreed with Irenaeus that God is in charge of all of history and that religions are part of God's plan to sum up all things in Christ. But what he added was the idea that God gave some of the religions as covenants to the Gentiles, just as God gave the covenants of the law to the Jews. But his picture was pretty big. That is, he said that all these covenants, the Gentile covenants as he called them and the Jewish covenants, were meant to lead people eventually to Christ, who of course is the fulfillment of all the promises of the covenants. And he even was bold enough to say that some of the Gentile religious teachers were prophets, so he called Socrates a prophet that was given by God, he said. But he also, in the same breath, so to speak, would make clear that what Socrates was teaching was ultimately different and defective, but that God allowed these pagan prophets and allowed these Gentile covenants to keep the peoples of the worlds from their utter destruction. So they were secondary waystations on the path that would lead civilizations ultimately to fullness of faith in Christ. That is pretty bold. We'll give him points for that. I said, we'll give him points for that, to cast it in those terms. That's pretty bold. Origin usually gets cast as the one who's either the most bold or the most out there. And I'll admit, I have a fondness for Origin because he's really outside the box and enjoy learning things about him. So where was he at on all this? Yeah, he's surprising because most of us know, those of us who studied Jewish history and history of theology, that Origin probably, we don't know this for sure, but it's 95% for sure, taught not only reincarnation, but also universalism, that everyone will be saved eventually, including the devil. And so, most Christians don't want to pay any attention to Origin, but he was a giant of a theologian and he always said that if the church ever declares definitively on any subject that disagrees with me, I will yield because the church is guided by the Holy Spirit. And at that time, when he was alive, the church had not declared definitively on the question of universalism. But the reason why I say Origin was surprising is because despite what later became clearly heretical teaching of universalism, he was the most conservative of all these early Greek theologians. That is, he warned his readers and his hearers not to mess with the other religions. He said, don't even dabble, it's too dangerous. He said, what you need to do is dive head first with complete commitment into Jesus and into the church and completely immerse yourself in the church and its sacraments. And only when you have become extremely mature in Christ, are you ready and only if God calls you to start learning about other religions? Well, yeah, Origin was also one of the few. If you know the answer to this, this just popped into my head. If you know the answer to this question, boy, I'd love to hear it, but I've only ever found reference to maybe three or four early church fathers who could work in Hebrew and he was one of them. And I think that contributed to how he argued certain things. That he, granted, he still centuries removed from an Old Testament, Semitic worldview and these other languages that we have access to. We're not deciphered yet and all that, but the fact that he can read Hebrew I think really helped him in a number of respects. Yeah, that's true. And you're right, there weren't very many of the famous fathers who knew Hebrew, but actually Origin, if you want to translation to the next book, did incredible damage to the church despite his knowledge of Hebrew. Yeah, you can see it cut in both ways. That's true. I think I know where you're going with this, but let me ask you one question before we hit the next book. Sure. Where's Augustine or Augustine? I don't know how you pronounce it, but where is he in all this? He's like the elephant in the room here. On the world religions, he is on the Deuteronomy 32. He takes in all of that. He believes it. And in his great masterpiece that was written answering the question if Christianity was responsible for the fall of the Roman Empire, the city of God, he has read Justin and he's read Irenaeus and he's read Origen on the religions and he completely accepts this view that the world religions are primarily inspired by demons, which means fallen angels. So he takes that in completely, but he also recognizes that there are truths there and that there are many even religious truths that non-Christians possess. So he's the one who made famous in the first phrase. And I believe he made it famous in the city of God, stealing from the Egyptians. Now that first word is wrong. Not stealing from Egyptians. You know, it's a phrase out of Genesis. Oh, and I'm blanking on the first word. But that we are to use the truth, the many, many truths that God has sprinkled abroad about in the world and that have been found by non-Christians and use them in the church. It's just interesting because he had a reaction to some other things again that he and Irenaeus would not have agreed on. You know, were related to the Watchers and Enoch and Genesis 6 and all that stuff. So I think it's important to bring out the fact that he wasn't a killjoy with all of these sorts of things. You know, that again, he participated in the wider community here and didn't react against it really unnecessarily. That he's part of the stream here. Well, let's go into your other book. Again, this is a subject that we've talked a little bit about on the podcast. We've had a couple episodes on Paul's Israel talk and sometimes it's clear, sometimes it's not. Who is Israel? It might depend on what page you're on. You know, that sort of thing. But when it comes to this book, Israel Matters, Why Christians Must Think Differently About the People and the Land. First question I have for you and of course, you know, in the context of our audience, are you talking about a theological construct or concept in this book or, you know, when you use the term Israel Matters. Is that a theological construct or are you referring to the national political entity or both? Primarily the former. The book is theology. Now, this is a popular book that's addressed to people in the pews and pastors coming out of an academic book that I edited and wrote four chapters to call the new Christian Zionism. And so the question is, what does Israel mean? What's the theological meaning of Israel? And the principle argument is against what's called Supercessionism which has been the majority view of the church since origin. And origin played a large role in teaching and perpetuating it. And then Augustine did too. And Supercessionism is the idea that the church has totally superseded Israel. That's an important word. There's an important word in there. Totally. Yeah, totally. And another synonym for it is replacement theology. The church has entirely replaced Israel. So that, and there are two important parts. The first part is the people of Israel that the church, which is 99.9% Gentile or at least that's the way it's usually characterized. God mattered. It is all that God is concerned with now. He's not concerned with ethnic Israel at all. And so in 33 AD if that's the year that you accept as the date of the crucifixion and resurrection God transferred the covenant that he made with ethnic Israel to the church. So the covenant that he made in the Old Testament with ethnic Israel ended in 33 AD and was transferred to those who believed explicitly in Jesus of Nazareth. And the second part of supersessionism is that the land of Israel is a zero theological importance anymore after 33 AD. I mean it was the land that of course was part of the covenant promise to Abraham and Genesis 12 but after Jesus comes, the land has become a world. So it's replaced by the world. So those are the two parts of supersessionism that the people of Israel are no longer theologically important to God or of any interest to God whatsoever any more than the people of Uganda or Thailand are. And the land of Israel is of zero theological importance, no more important theologically than Wisconsin or Crimea. I thought you could have said Madison and Leningrad they would have fit together. Yeah, that's good. I can say that having spent nine years in Madison. Oh, whoa. That's right. That's right. Red Square, the Midwest. There we go. I like that. I like that. So in the book then, well, I shouldn't be so categorical here. You probably, I think it's fair to say you spend less time giving readers options as far as viewpoints than you do trying to rebut this total replacement idea. Is that fair enough? Oh, sure. Yes. Because we've all been thoroughly educated in Supercessionism. Both evangelicals and Catholics and mainline Protestants. I mean, that's what we've been taught in our seminaries and in our churches, with the exception of dispensationalists. And one thing I make clear in this book a little bit, but I make it abundantly clear in the much larger academic book, The New Christian Zionism is this has nothing to do with dispensationalism. I'm not a dispensationalist. I don't agree with dispensationalism and unfortunately when you use those two words Christian Zionism, people immediately think, ah, that's dispensationalism. But crazy views. You know, the rapture and left behind and two parallel tracks that don't intersect. You know, the Israel tract and these craziest catalogical scenarios with the Antichrist and Israel and the Ten Nation conspiracy, that's a bunch of craziness. And so how can anybody believe in Christian Zionism? Well, our my proposal, our proposal in this book I wrote with 10 other scholars has nothing to do with dispensationalism. Do you have dispensationalists contribute to it? So I'm not familiar with the list. Well, yes. Progressive dispensationalism. Progressive. My own tradition was dispensationalism but then I moved over to the progressive side and I wouldn't even I would be somewhere still in the middle. I would be like a small S, super sessionist. Not a total. People on the podcast know this that on one hand I file this under the some obvious things but let's not extrapolate to the unnecessary. I mean, it's very clear in some passages that there is some sort of replacement going on. But does that have to be a totality? Is it correct to say that God as you just laid out, I think really nicely that God just has no interest at all, zero in the land and the people? I think that goes too far. So I've actually participated when I was in grad school that I reformed irrigation. So I've basically run on this in terms of church position or tradition and I see merits to both. I think it is a mistake to go all the way in one direction or the other but that's typically what happens just like you said. I'm not sure if you're saying this but let me say this and tell me if it's part of what you mean by what you just said. In a loft way, in a certain way all Christians have to be a kind of supercessionist and a kind of dispensationalist that is if Christ is the fulfillment of the law and the prophets that is a kind of supercessionist Christ is superseding the law and the prophets as they were previously understood and if we all Christians believe that as you look through biblical history, God did deal with peoples and people in different ways through history not all the same way contrary to those who are scandalized by particularity and so in that sense all Christians who understand anything about biblical theology have to be a kind of dispensationalist. I think I wouldn't use that word because it's loaded with all the reasons that you said. I would say that I think it's painfully obvious that Paul and others, it's not just Paul but that the concept of what Israel is changed or altered in the New Testament so that the Gentiles are included but then the question becomes does that mean ethic Israel is excluded and I don't think that is a necessary conclusion but that's an easy place to go. Well, yeah now that's where we disagree Paul uses the word Israel 80 times in the New Testament and I would argue and I have argued that every one of the 80 times refers to either the people of Israel, Jews or it refers to larger Israel that is primarily Jewish and has people who were previously not Jews become Jews or it's got these righteous Gentiles who have attached themselves to Israel because they recognize these are the well they recognize the God of Israel is a true God these are the in Acts these are the God-fearers they're coming to synagogue every Sunday morning and Philo tells us thousands and thousands all over the Roman Empire are coming to synagogue every Saturday morning now this is before Jesus at the time of Jesus actually but they haven't heard about Jesus but these Gentiles come to synagogue every Saturday morning because they recognize that this God of Israel is infinitely superior to anything in their Greco-Roman religious now they don't want to become Jews and their allies tell them you don't have to become a Jew in order to have a share in the will to come all you have to become is a righteous Gentile which means you come here and you worship the God of Israel with us you listen to Moses with us you participate in our Jewish worship but you don't have to get circumcised but you'll have a share in the world to come you will be a righteous Gentile so every time I argue that each one of those 80 times the New Testament where you see the word Israel that's what it's referring to or it's referring to actually the geographical territory of Israel for me the issue is wider than the term Israel it's really wrapped up for me in the way the New Testament repurposes the old the way you get for instance in Romans 9 where Paul quotes Hosea the low Ami passage those who are not my people I will call my people and he applies that very clearly to Gentiles so there's some sort of redefinition going on there but again I don't think it has to exclude the other side whereas the true Supercessionist would say well that's a done deal you know it's pushing one out to bring the other in and I don't think that says too much then there's the temple language attributed to the Gentiles and to individual Gentile believers so to me it's a lot bigger than the term Israel it's the way Old Testament material and a lot of it comes from the Torah and a lot of it's covenantal gets repurposed in the New Testament but again I don't know if it's what I found this is just a general statement just a theology in general but it just seems to me that with so many things it's not I don't know why Christians get so polarized I don't know why people get so married to systems and on one hand I guess okay you know systems are in place and traditions are there we get raised up as either children or young believers you know if we come to the Lord later and we get involved in some tradition and this is how the truth of the scripture is mediated to us I get that but it just seems to be such an easy intellectual propensity to want to put things in boxes and stake out these positions that are often quite polarizing as opposed to what I see in scripture is a lot of you know I'll use the other buzzword already but not yet okay there's something going on here but there's going to be some consummation of it I think that plays itself out in a whole bunch of areas and I think this is one of them and so when I see these ideas held in tension in the text I've come to just come to the position where I'm okay with that you know that somehow both of these things are like computer programs running in the background here they're both going on we have enough RAM for both and somehow they are going to both emerge and both be validated at some point yeah I know what you're saying I think Mike I guess I would ask that you read this book now maybe you've looked at it I don't know but I would ask that you read this book and tell me what you think for instance I've got a whole chapter that asks is the church the new Israel and I argue that it's not and to think that it is and of course we've all been taught that it is and you know NT Wright who's probably I think the most influential biblical theologian in the world today Protestant or Catholic or Orthodox argues strenuously and it's a major part of his whole project that the church is the new Israel I would change the definite article to an indefinite article the church is a new Israel because I don't see the identity of Israel being wiped off the map both in terms of theology or eschatology or you know just generally I see alteration but not replacement you know in other words we don't have to push one out to bring the other one in that kind of thing well that's been a typical Supercessionist view though that Israel has been expanded to include Gentiles and that's what I think is wrong and I don't think that's Paul's view Paul of course is all about Gentiles yes I mean that's the great mystery that the Gentiles are included now maybe we need a new nomenclature because there are Supercessionist ideas I just think are really unwarranted you know we might we might need a new nomenclature you know for what to describe what's going on like I found this is going to sound this isn't going to be at all topically related but just analogous to this when I was doing my work on Elohim this whole thing about divine plurality what about monotheism you just reached the point where look the terms we're using just don't work they work in part and then they fail so rather than trying to use words like monotheism polytheism, monotheism all these words that we've sort of grown up with that people are used to I just came to the point where I'm going to abandon them and I'm going to try to describe what I see more than stick a label on it I can't really come up with a new label like you know mono-ya-wism well that's helpful you know like who's going to walk around using terms like that so you know at some point the terminology gets in the way I think of and it becomes less serviceable to try to convey a set of ideas and that's just where I'm at you know that I don't I see validity on both ends of this and I'm not willing to to reject valid thinking on either side alright we should get back to the actual content of the book because I have at least one question here that'll you know we're not going to change topics here but helps us orient a little bit how far apart do you think just within let's narrow this to the evangelical community how far apart do you think Christians are within the evangelical world on their attitude toward you know we'll use the word Zion or Zionism you know the land I mean it can you put a percentage on it and if you can if you can sketch out how far apart you think the different views are what um what has that led to in other words I'm asking this is sort of the strife question how much of a hot potato is this within the church I cannot give you percentages I don't know I mean that's a sociological question but I can tell you there's and I don't think you disagree with me on this that there's huge division in the evangelical world younger evangelicals tend to be anti-Zionist and tend to reject anything that smells of Zionism older evangelicals well particularly dispensationalists of course have been pro-Zionist you know and how has it played out I think that's the second part of your question I think it's played out in two ways theologically and politically theologically I think there's a huge growing tendency toward new Marcianism you know Marcian was the early church heretic who said the Old Testament was really about an evil God did you happen to see this last week Christian today picked up from Twitter something somebody in our building did he presented a graph of how many times the Old Testament is cited in sermons oh yes did you see that? yes I did and it's not surprising to me there's a lot of ideologies and that's even more disturbing so I think you've got a growing acceptance even among evangelicals because evangelicals don't read the Bible anymore you know growing acceptance of this old canard that the Old Testament God has got a wrath and New Testament God is a God of love and how many sermons do you hear on the Old Testament anymore very very few and that's really nice so I think theologically that is one result politically the other result is that the more and more young evangelicals and particularly those who have been educated even as some of the evangelical colleges like Wheaton College because of the influence of some professors are very very anti-Israel very very anti-Zionism they perpetuate the Palestinian narrative which says that all the Palestinian problems are caused by the Israeli government the Israeli government is ruthlessly oppressing Palestinians is preventing them from having their own state that is violating international law and the Jews stole the land from the Palestinians now all of those things are part of the Palestinian narrative and young evangelicals who grew up under their parents pro-Zionism think I don't want to be like their parents and they accept these new very very anti-Zionist anti-Israel anti-Israel messages I was going to ask you which do you think you brought up theological narrative and political narrative which do you think is driving the bus we've interjected the third one we just don't want to be like our parents but I'll ask the same question what do you think is driving the bus is politics or youth driving theology or is it the other way around you know I'm not sure Mike I think both are going on I think there's been an increasing Marcianite tendencies in pulpits and in seminaries that has made this a perfect storm along with the young evangelical passion for social justice and they associate the pro-Palestinian cause with everything good and social justice and therefore something they should support they're tired of being known as evangelicals who are just against abortion and who are trying all about the Christian America kind of thing and just about atonement and they want to be known for being socially just which of course the culture promotes but with its own narrow definition of social justice I would agree with that and I would be on the side that would say that the politics is driving the bus because we do have a dearth of Old Testament teaching and theological teaching and so when politics drives the bus then kids are naturally going to gravitate towards the thing that reinforces where they're already at politically but having said that I think on the theological side I'll add one element here and there will be some in my audience who might be troubled by this but again this is nothing new coming from me but I think I've never given you my Christian Middle Earth or Christian Middle Earth is basically where a lot of Christians who aren't being taught in church go for their information and that's the internet which is completely unvetted and you find wonderful things and awful things so the mass of Christians in that realm that realm I include like the prophecy movement and that this is an outgrowth of the dispensational thing but sort of dispensationalism on steroids with a lot of it that isn't the theological well I think the wackiness of the prophetic movement has really turned a lot of people off it's become cartoonish enough so that young people when they're asked to identify with something theologically if they see this element a very high view of Israel as being part of this cartoon over here in Middle Earth they don't want anything to do with it they're going to run the other way and it's a real shame it really is and I think what you're doing Mike and what I'm trying to do and what I think we need to do to remedy some of this is good old fashioned biblical theology you know getting back to your opening remarks on this book let's get away from polarities and labels and I say yes as long as we get to the biblical terms and try to figure out what did Isaiah mean what did Jesus mean what did Matthew, Mark and Luke and John mean by in this case Israel what did Paul mean by Israel let's really do some let's do some deep digging in the text we put on the shelf for a while what our tradition has taught about Israel what is really going on in the text and that's what I'm trying to do and that's just healthy I mean that's the nice word for it I would say it's essential as well I think it's you know can we just take a look at the text and context and then talk describe what we see and it infuriates a lot of people because there's comfort in labels there's comfort in being able to put someone in this box this system or this label this tradition I understand that and I benefited from that personally at certain points in my Christian life I get that I'm not anti any of that I like to say I'm more or less apathetic to it that it takes on a secondary importance to me but I'm not going to wipe it all off the table I like having church historical theological questions because these guys weren't dumb okay they lived a long time ago and they're not modern but they weren't dumb they had a lot of time to think about a lot of things and they have a lot to contribute but at the end of the day we can't be careful we don't swap them in for exegesis in an ancient context in my audience I hope doesn't get tired of hearing it but my goal is always I want the Israelite living in your head I want the first century Jew living in your head and what you see might scare you but that's what they were thinking if you can think their thoughts after them at least try to read the text the way they because they wrote for their audience they wrote to a particular audience to benefit from what they wrote and it's for us but not to us but the closer we can get to that enterprise and then describe what we see I think at least I can only speak for myself here and maybe a little bit for people who email me and follow the podcast but it gives you an appreciation for the text and also we can be charitable to people that would make a different exegetical decision at some point and then they go down a different direction because of that but to know why it is and to not have our politics drive our theology or this indebted pursuit of relevance you know whatever that means be driving the bus here oh yeah relevance drives too many buses these days in the church and you know Mike that's what we really are trying to do in the academic book called the new christian and now in this popular book Israel matters is we're trying to get into the text what is it really saying and let's try to leave on the shelf temporarily what we've been taught about Israel and let's try to see if we can figure out what the New Testament authors meant by Israel yeah we will post a link to that book as well we don't want to have that excluded because there will be a lot of people in this audience who will get the academic one they'll just gravitate toward that sort of thing well you know we need to wrap up but this was a really good discussion I'm really grateful that you could take the time to do this we like on this podcast to expose the audience to scholars who actually care about doing stuff for the non-specialist that is the sweet spot here trying to take scholarship and mediate it to just the people who are interested you know who aren't going to go out with degrees or whatever they're just interested and I see real value in that so we're grateful that you could come on and talk with us about what you're doing well I appreciate the work you're doing and I'm grateful that you invited me yeah thank you again well keep up your good work Mike yeah well we'll try you know like I said yeah this is what we're trying to do we need more people like you and some of the other ones we've had on they want to try to do something put a dent in the ignorance in the pew just try to get them back into the tax yeah thanks a lot thank you wow what a great conversation Mike I completely agree that the young Christians need some good solid theology and just another great conversation so that was a good one yeah it's nice to know I'm not the only person really thinking that our culture, our political climate is driving the theological bus so something needs to happen there to sort of switch that around yeah and I'll definitely post the links to Gerald's books so please go visit those links my library is growing every day Mike I've got so much reading to do that I need two lifetimes to achieve it so I'm getting in trouble here yeah well that's what it feels like to be a grad student so that's familiar alright well good deal that was a great conversation and then don't forget to look forward to David Burnett's interview next week and with that Mike I just want to thank everybody for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast God Bless thanks for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast to support this podcast visit www.nakedbibleblog.com to learn more about Dr. Heizer's other websites and blogs go to www.brmsh.com