Beeson podcast, Episode 412 Dr. David Dockery and Dr. Trevin Wax October 2, 2018 Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham Alabama. Now, your host Timothy George. Timothy George: Welcome to today's Beeson podcast. Today we have we a three-way conversation. Two very good friends are here with me in the studio, and we're going to talk about a brand new publication, hot off the press that they have been involved in bringing together. It's called the worldview Study Bible. Timothy George: Now, my two guests are Dr. David Dockery, the president of Trinity International University, and Trevin Wax, who has a very important job at Life Way. Tell us what you do Trevin. Trevin Wax: I am a director for bible and reference. So, I oversee all the bibles and commentaries and reference books that we publish at Life Way. Timothy George: You're in the publishing world, and David, you're in the academic education ... David Dockery: I have been in the academic education world for 35 years now, Timothy, and first as a faculty member, then dean and provost, and I've been a president at two institutions for the past 23 years. Timothy George: Now, we're recording this conversation on our convocation day, and David preached or spoke, you gave us a wonderful convocation address. Without recapitulating everything you said, we don't have that much time. Tell us the gist of what you were trying to say. David Dockery: It was a call to the church to focus on creating opportunities for people to find significance in community, to find a sense of belonging. That in our fragmented culture, there is a sense of individuality that has led to purposelessness and meaninglessness. David Dockery: The church can address that particular issue by thinking wisely, carefully, biblically, strategically about the importance of our community. I think it has much to say to our fragmented and polarized culture. Timothy George: Yeah, it was a wonderful, very substantive address, and you may hear it in the future on the Beeson Podcast, on maybe our lecture series, I'm not sure. It was a great talk. Now, we want to talk about something else. The two of you have been intimately involved in bringing about the worldview Study Bible. How did this new study bible come about? Why in the world do we need another study bible? I mean, there's so many out there. David Dockery: Well, that was my first response as well, when I was approached almost six years ago. BNH came to see me while I was still the president at Union University in Jackson Tennessee. Recognizing that we had had significant opportunity at Union to help students learn to think Christianly about all aspects of life. They came to me asking me if I wanted to serve as editor for a new study bible project. David Dockery: My first response was, why another study bible? I have more on my shelf than we can use. But they said, "This one would be distinctive." They wanted it to be a study bible for high school and college students to learn how to think Christianly. We talked about that. The more we talked about it, the more we realized that what was guiding the entire direction of the conversation was a desire to help people think in worldview categories. David Dockery: You and I both had wonderful privilege of being close to Chuck Colson and Mr. Colson had influenced our thinking related to a worldview thinking. I proposed back to them, let's not have an age specific study bible, but let's build it around a theme around worldview issues. He took it back to the committee and talked about it, and came back and said, "Yes, that's exactly what we want to do. Would you help us find the right authors, contributors?" David Dockery: We shaped and designed the entire project, that wound up with about 130 contributors. It took us almost five years to bring the project together. It was in pretty good shape moving forward. But about two years ago, Trevin joined the project, and not only did he put icing on the cake, he gave it shape and helped us put some pieces together that were missing. David Dockery: The final result is a result of his very capable editorial hand. It's been six years in the making, but the last two years have been the really intense part, once all the articles had been submitted and I think we began to shape the bible and word it. Timothy George: Wonderful. Now, you all can't see us, you can only hear us now in the Beeson podcast, but if you were looking at us, you would see that Dr. Dockery and I have a little bit of mileage on us. We're in our 60s. Trevin Wax on the other hand, looks like he's 13. He actually has a 13 and 14 year old. Trevin Wax: I do, and people confuse us. Timothy George: A very useful presence, and certainly, a different generation than Dr. Dockery and me. Trevin, what's your perspective on this bible? While you're at it tell us what a worldview is. That's an interesting word. Trevin Wax: Well, I came on board as the bible publisher a couple of years ago, like Dr. Dockery said and I was really excited to hear that this project was already in the works, because I too, have been influenced by Chuck Colson, How Now Shall We Live, that book that he wrote with Nancy Pearcey, was really formative for me as a teenager and college student. Trevin Wax: When I had found out that this was going to take place. This was one of those ones, you know, when you're a bible publisher, you're publishing lots of different kinds of bibles. But there are a few that are close to your heart, because they're close to your passion of what could this particular resource do for the church. This one was one of them. Trevin Wax: To answer the worldview question, I'd say the simplest way that people talk about what a worldview is, is it's the lens there which you see the world, through which you interpret reality. It's not simply an intellectual thing. It leads to a way life. It's a vision of life that's intended to then lead to a particular way of life. Trevin Wax: We act in accordance with the interpretation that we have, the way that we see things. People will talk about worldview lens, or you have glasses, you're not looking at the glasses, you're looking through the glasses. I think, a well-rounded understanding of worldview, will have that cognitive intellectual interpretation. Trevin Wax: But it will also have something there about the affections and the emotions, are involved. Also, moral judgments and evaluation is part of a worldview. It's important for Christians, I think, to see the world through a biblical lens, and to have the grand narrative of scripture climaxing, of course, with the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Trevin Wax: If we believe that's a climatic point of history, and that that is what's most important, then that should shape the way that we think about our world, and then the way we live and act as well. Timothy George: Yeah. What would you say to a person, Trevin, who says, "I don't have a worldview. Uh, why do you want to put one on me?" Trevin Wax: Everybody has a worldview, whether they think they do or not. It's kind of like the ... You hear similar things with people in different church traditions when they hear the world liturgy. A lot of people think, we don't have a liturgy, we just have a worship service that is suspiciously very similar week after week. worldview is similar. Trevin Wax: It's something that everyone has, everyone is making decisions and seeing their world and themselves in the world in a certain way, without knowing. A lot of people don't know necessarily what is leading to the way that they think or act in the world. Timothy George: Yeah. Trevin Wax: We all have a worldview. Timothy George: You're not talking about, are you a Baptist or Methodist or Presbyterian? You're not talking about are you a Calvinist, an Armenian? You're talking about something that in a way precedes all of these different ways of being a Christian in the world. How you see the world itself, how you see culture, how you see life. Trevin Wax: That's right. Timothy George: This informs then as you're saying, your actions, your behavior, your moral temperature. Trevin Wax: That's right. Timothy George: Now, is the worldview only the rock on the bible. We have the bible, why do we need a worldview study bible? We got the bible. David Dockery: Well, first and foremost, it is grounded in scripture, in the gospel itself. Then it's a way of taking the teachings of the bible and providing a coherent way of helping people think about life. It does connect intellectual formation with character development, bringing head, heart, hands together, into a wholistic way of seeing life and living life. David Dockery: Worldview thinking is connected to worldview living. We believe that it is shaped not only by gospel, not only by scripture, but also by the rest of the Christian intellectual tradition. Timothy George: Now, we're involved in a multi-volume project. It was really your idea to bring this about from Crossway Publishers, I think. David Dockery: Right. Timothy George: The Christian intellectual tradition. David Dockery: Reclaiming the Christian intellectual traditions, 15 volumes. They're all finally completed and it's been well done, but it shows the Christian intellectual tradition speaks to Christian thinking, to worldview formation, to all the academic disciplines and to doing biblical theology, systematic theology, and work of church as aspects of life. David Dockery: The Christian intellectual tradition is rich, it's deep. There are great thinkers throughout history. Some who themselves were very fine worldview thinkers. Justin Martyr, Augustine, Clement of Alexandria. Clement of Alexandria I think is very significant. He's often put out there on the side, as if he's one the Alexandrians on the fringe. David Dockery: He was really one of the first people to think about, how does the Christian faith affect music, politics, life ... Timothy George: Art. David Dockery: ... in the public square. He had this very holistic, coherent full way of thinking about life. What was also important about Clement of Alexandria, is that he was not a bishop. He was a lay person. Timothy George: Yeah. David Dockery: It's not just for ministers to think this way, it's for lay leaders. One of the goals of this bible is to put something in the hands of some of these school teachers and lay leaders in the churches, to help them take their kind of smorgasbord worldview, that they've collected here, there and everywhere. David Dockery: From television, media, something they've read, something they've heard, something they picked up at church, something they picked up at work. I kind of put it all together, stirred and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. This is something that gives some definite coherent way of thinking about life. The study notes are distinctive, in that it's not just exposition of scripture, but it shows worldview applications. David Dockery: Then we have a 125 or so articles interspersed throughout the entire bible. Including the one that talks about worldview and Christian intellectual tradition. How it has shaped what some theologians like to talk about ,which you think they like to often talk about. The pattern of Christian truth. It's a way I've seen all life come together in this coherent way. Timothy George: Yeah. Now, I'm holding this with my hand now, the Worldview Study bible. It's a beautiful production. It's very attractive. It's easy to read and understand. It's, I would say user friendly. Now, how did you all come to put this particular volume together? There's a lot of work in this. A lot of moving parts. David Dockery: It's a lot of moving parts. Timothy George: I'm looking right now, for example, at an article in film and Christian worldview. You have a biblical view of crime and punishment. You're touching many areas of our common life together. But how did you come to do this book? David Dockery: Well, we spent a lot of time at first, almost a year, initially, thinking about what are the kinds of issues that we want to address, what are some key issues in life, in the church, in culture, in the public square, that Christians need help thinking about, trying to understand, trying what the challenges night be, David Dockery: When we recognized that many Christians were very interested in these things, but did have the time, the interest, maybe not the resources to sit down and read a 150 page book on a particular matter. If we could summarize for them in 1500 words or so. Then, if they want to go further, we can point them to other resources. David Dockery: We try to be very succinct and address these key issues across the board. Because see, a Christian worldview is not just driven out of soteriology, not just a doctrine of salvation, but from cosmology and the doctrine of creation. You recognize that God is the source of all it is, and the source of all the truth. David Dockery: So there's nothing really to which the Christian faith does not speak. We try to address these kind of issues across the board. Timothy George: You were even kind enough to ask be to contribute something to this volume. David Dockery: Article on the holy Trinity. Timothy George: Article on the Holy Trinity. How to talk about the Trinity in a page and a half, I don't know. But I made an effort at it. I think that's an important part of Christian worldview thinking, to understand how these issues relate to what we used to call the body of divinity, or the historic Christian faith, which is a part of that pattern of Christian truth that we endorse. Timothy George: You've done a wonderful job, I think, in giving us a volume that's attractive readable, interesting. You know who I think would be really interested in this Bible? They ought to be in the hands of every high school student, every college student, every young person who is kind of moving out from, we hope a shelter of love and encouragement and church and family, into that world. Or different breezes are blowing. To have something like this as a resource would be a great gift to them, I believe. David Dockery: Yeah, that was our dream. Originally, as you go back to your first question, that's how the Bible was originally thought about, as something that would address that age group. We tried to make it more broad than that so that it affects light leaders and business leaders and people in the academy, and people in the world of the arts and music as well. David Dockery: You're right, if we could get these in the hands of high school and college students. We think it makes a great gift for people going away to college. Great gift for people who are graduating from high school or graduating from college. We have designed it with the hope that that's how it will be used. Trevin Wax: Yeah. Timothy George: Now, it is a bible. It's a Worldview Study Bible, but it is a bible. It has the text of holy scripture from Genesis through Revelation in it. A particular translation, the Holman Christian Standard Bible translation. Trevin, tell us about that translation. Trevin Wax: This it's actually in the CSP not the HCSP. The HCSP is really the originating translation. It was commissioned in the 1990s. Timothy George: So the Christian Standard Bible. Trevin Wax: The Christian Standard Bible. Holman is the publisher who is still publishing it. Timothy George: Yeah, yeah. Trevin Wax: But it's been through a significant revision the last few years, and saw something of a relaunch in 2017. The beautiful thing about the HCSB now the CSB is the translation philosophy. They call it optimal equivalence, which is a fancy way of saying it's trying to hit the sweet spot in between a more word for word translation, and a more thought for thought translation. Trevin Wax: In the translation theories, you've got the more formal, and then you have, which are more word for word, more literal. Then you have the dynamic, which are thought for thought. The CSB translation team and the original translators back in the 1990s, and then the translation committee that had given oversight to this significant revision. Trevin Wax: All of them agreed that we shouldn't have to make a choice in between those kinds of philosophies. It is possible to have a text of scripture that is both accurate and readable, that is word for word and yet clear and accessible and contemporary English. That is a good primary text for churches to use. Trevin Wax: That it's literal, so that a pastor can preach from it, do serious bible study in it, and at the same time, it is accessible and readable so that children in the congregation are going to understand the text of scripture as they read. That's the text that is the basis for this study bible. Timothy George: I think I told you before we did this podcast that, I've been reading this in my own devotions and bible reading lately, and I like it. Timothy George: I've endorsed almost every translation, I have to confess my sins here. I have hardly found a translation I don't like somewhat. But this really does what you said. It gives a good fidelity to the meaning of the original language, and that way, it's a formal translation, more word for word. But not at the sacrifice of a fluidity and a spirit thought and an ethos, that anybody can take this up and immediately, you're engaged by. Trevin Wax: Right. Timothy George: It's a great translation. Now, Trevin, some thinkers like Jamie Smith, for example, who's been here on our campus and we read his works have argued that what we love, the habits that we practice are formative for Christians. By the way, he didn't admit that idea, it goes way back to St. Augustine's [crosstalk 00:18:29] but it gives it a good herring in his writings, you are what you love. Timothy George: Talk a little bit about how intellectually focused and shaping heart, mind, soul, this worldview bible thinking reading is. Trevin Wax: Well, I've listened and read a lot of Jamie Smith's critique of worldview. I think overall, it's a helpful caveat, a helpful critique. Discipleship is more than a worldview. I think he's right that some element, some versions of worldview thinking are just that. They're thinking, they're very focused on intellectual thought, and they're leaving aside what I mentioned earlier, some of those more effective, or those moral dimensions of worldview. Trevin Wax: Smith would call it a, would use the terminology of a social imaginary. Because he's thinking about how our affections and morals are sustained and they are reinforced through habits that are a part of how we imagine ourselves in the world. He's using that imagination aspect of that. Trevin Wax: I listened to that critique, and I think that's a helpful critique. But I choose to incorporate that into just a broader, I think more well-rounded understanding of what we mean when we say worldview, without necessarily ditching that term altogether. I think that beliefs and practices, they work in a dialectic manner. Trevin Wax: It may be simplistic, kind of, some of the old worldview ways of thinking, would think almost of beliefs and practices as you have this foundation of knowledge. It's like a river, and it's running into practices. You've got to fix the source in the head, and then everything else with flow. That's a simplistic approach of thinking about worldview. Trevin Wax: It's kind of the trickle down way. If you can just know all the right things, then you'll be on the right path. I think we know the human heart is more complicated and more complex than that. Timothy George: Yeah, the bible teaches us that the mind is fallen as well as the will and the affections. Trevin Wax: That's right. Timothy George: We need redemption to be at work in us in every aspect. You're using worldview in a broader, I think a more biblical sense. Trevin Wax: Yes, I think our practices and our habits do shape our thinking, and do shape the way that we interpret the world. The way I'd like to, if I can use an analogy, they way that I've liked to have mentioned it is that it's not like a river flowing, it's more like ocean waves. The ocean puts water on the shore, that's kind of our practices. Then the water that returns in taken up into the sea, you could say that's beliefs. Trevin Wax: Then the next part of the wave is knowledge, but it's encompassing both beliefs and practices. These things are working together, and the cognitive element remains very important. I do think Smith's critique though is right. It's not cognitive at the expense of habits and practices and understanding how those shape and form us. Timothy George: You might call a wholistic approach. Trevin Wax: Yes. Timothy George: It encompasses the entire person. Now, worldview is often used with reference to kind of hot button issues that we face in the culture today. We hear a lot about controversial issues. Say a little bit about that David, what are some of the issues addressed in the study bible that concern us today, that we want Christians to be engaged in from this point of that Trevin has just described. David Dockery: Well, we've tried to address a host of issues based on trends that we see. Sociologists tell us that there are major trends that are shaping who we are, and shaping our culture. Things like privatization, pluralization, secularization, all of these things coming together. We tried to ask, what are implications of these trends, and how do we address them? David Dockery: We first of all took up a bigger step back picture before we picked out particular topics. We think we have tried to address the big culture shaping issues in that way. It does include everything from the arts and film, and beauty and music, to things like the environment and animal rights, to huge issues of pluralization today. David Dockery: We have issues about world religions, Islam, Hinduism, the big shaping, the challenge of world religions, and in our world. We've addressed those kind of matters. Then hot button issues as well, abortion, same sex marriage, how do we deal with these things? How does the government address matters where you know there's a distinction between government, family, church and scripture. David Dockery: Government operates in a different category, even though it's ordained by God. We try to talk about governments, structures of government, the influence authority, how that comes about, church state kind of issues, crime and punishment. It's very broad in the way that we attempted to deal with it. We went through it, not just a catalog of issues at first, but trying to step back and say, what are the big cultural trends, and how do we get at those. Timothy George: You mentioned Chuck Colson a few minutes ago, who had a great influence on us and many, many other people. I remember Chuck saying many times that culture is always upstream to politics and law. David Dockery: Exactly. Timothy George: If we really want to deal with some of these issues in a way that's transformative, that's where we have to begin, and not neglecting the other. It's important that there be just laws, but that we don't start or necessarily put all of our weight in that basket, but we start upstream, dealing with the things that people believe, and how they live their lives, and shape their views. I think we live in a very polarized world, don't we? David Dockery: Right. Timothy George: Politically, religiously, it's a very difficult time to be a Christian, maybe to be a human being in our culture. Coming at these issues with a fresh input from the holy scriptures, reading the bible in a way that speaks across the centuries into our own lives and the issues we face, can be a very redeeming kind of thing, I believe. For that reason, I think what you've given us is something that is of great merit. Timothy George: I trust and pray will be widely used by our listeners and by others. You want to say a final word about the bible, we're almost out of time, but we've given a good herring to this worldview study bible. Using the Christian standard bible text from Holman publishers. Tell us one final world about it. David Dockery: Well, we're giving a couple of copies to give away to podcast listeners. I don't know the best way for them to be able to do that. Timothy George: Oh, my, Kristen is here. Come over Kristen and tell us what to do if you want to get a free bible. This is Kristen Padilla, the producer of the podcast. Trevin Wax: What kind of hoops do you want people to jump through, Kristen, that's the question. Kristen Padilla: We just want you to listen to this podcast and let us know that you listen, and then you'll be entered to win one of these two bibles. Timothy George: How do they let you know? Kristen Padilla: On our social media channels, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at Beeson Divinity. David Dockery: We even have an article on social media and technology. Timothy George: That's right, that's right. Timothy George: Look at that. Excellent. You can actually win one of these. Not gambling anything of significance for it, but just by giving your name as Kristen said, and David, what about you, a final word. David Dockery: Well, we're just grateful to God that he's given us the privilege to work on this project. We pray that it will be used to serve the church and to enable women and men to think and live more faithfully. To serve the Lord with a kingdom mindset and to develop ways to think about the Christian faith in ways that give them courage to live with conviction each and every day. Timothy George: My guests today on the Beeson podcast have been two good friends, Dr. David Dockery, Dr. Trevin Wax. They are the co-editors of the Worldview Study Bible from Holman publishers. I recommend it highly. Thank you both for this conversation. Trevin Wax: Thank you. David Dockery: Thank you for the privilege, Timothy. Announcer: You've been listening to the Beeson podcast with host Timothy George. 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