Beeson Podcast, Episode 478
Esau McCaulley and Osvaldo Padilla
Jan. 7, 2020

Announcer:          Welcome to the Beeson Podcast coming to you from Beeson Divinity School, on the campus of Samford University. Now your hosts, Doug Sweeney and Kristen Padilla.

Doug Sweeney:       Welcome to the first Beeson Podcast of 2020. Happy New Year. I am your host, Doug Sweeney here with my cohost Kristen Padilla and we have a fantastic conversation in store for you today on the value of minority biblical interpretation. To help us think about this topic, we have two guests on the program, both New Testament scholars, both from minority ethnic groups, and both of whom are working on an exciting project together, which we'll let them tell you about in a few minutes.

Doug Sweeney:       One of today's guests also has a special relationship with my cohost, our beloved cohost, Kristen Padilla, which she will mention when she introduces him. But before we get into all of that, let me remind you one more time that our fall 2020 admission deadline is February 15 and everyone who submits his or her application by January 15 will be entered into a $500 scholarship drawing. So please head on over to Beesondivinity.com/admission process, to begin your application. Beeson is an Interdenominational, Evangelical Divinity School that prepares men and women for a faithful gospel ministry and we would love for you to join us, visit Beeson divinity.com/events to find out ways you can be involved with what's taking place here at Beeson even before you enroll. Now Kristen, would you please introduce today's guests and get our conversation started?

Kristen Padilla:    Hello everyone, and Happy New Year. We're so glad you're with us today for what we believe is an important topic. Our first guest is Esau McCaulley. Dr McCaulley is assistant professor of New Testament at Wheaton College, he is an ordained Anglican priest having served congregations all over the world in Japan, Scotland and Virginia. Dr McCaulley completed his PhD under inti right at St Andrew's University in Scotland, and is the author of Sharing In The Son's Inheritance published by T&T Clark. He also has several other forthcoming works, some which he may mention today on the podcast and most importantly, he is married to Mandy and they have four children. Our second guest is Osvaldo Padilla. Dr. Padilla is professor of New Testament here at Beeson Divinity School, where he is taught since 2008. He is the author of several books including the Speeches Of Outsiders in Acts, published by Cambridge University Press and the Acts of the Apostles: Interpretation, History and Theology, published by IVP.

Kristen Padilla:    He is also almost done with a Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles, and he is married to me. And we have one son, Phillip. So it's a joy to have my husband as one of today's guests. So welcome you both to the Beeson Podcast. Let's begin with a brief introduction, letting us know who you are, where you're from, I've given a professional bio if you will, but let us know a little bit more about you, anything you want to say about your Christian background and perhaps what has led you to want to talk about value of minority biblical interpretation.

Osvaldo Padilla:    Yeah. Well, thank you for the kind introduction, I'm Osvaldo Padilla. Let me tell you a little bit about my faith journey. My family and I, are from the Dominican Republic. Many years ago about over 20 years ago, we emigrated to the United States. None of us were believers in Christ, but then when we came here, my mother was invited to a church and she heard the gospel for the first time and she became a believer, and then my sister heard the gospel too and she became a believer, then I heard the gospel and fought it. But after a while, God's love was too powerful, too beautiful. And I surrendered to Christ when I was 19 years old. And then lastly, my older brother who used to actually be a drug dealer also came to faith in Jesus Christ and is now a pastor. So the Lord has been good to us and in my life, and in my scholarship, I want to let people know about how good God is and the importance of His word.

Esau McCaulley:     Oh, thank you. I'm learning some stuff, hearing about you that I didn't know before. My name is Esau as I said earlier and I was born and raised in Huntsville, Alabama, and I grew up in the Black Baptist tradition, and I'm from a family of clergy. So my grandfather was a pastor, I have uncles who are pastors, my mom was actually ordained after me and she went to seminary after I finished seminary and got my PhD, and so there's always been a significant Christian in my family. That doesn't mean that I didn't have the normal struggles and questions is when you go to college and you encounter higher criticism in the Bible, it goes from being just this Sunday school but to this contested thing. And so part of the reason that I went into biblical studies, is because those classes raised questions that I thought were important for me to answer in order to serve God faithfully.

Esau McCaulley:     And the more I studied it, the more I felt like this is something that I could spend my life doing, which is helping people understand how these texts continue to function in our day and age as sources of hope and inspiration and authority. And so what I would say is, I would hope that the goal of my scholarship is there were people, when they read the stuff that I produce, come away with a deep appreciation of how God has revealed Himself to us in the scripture.

Esau McCaulley:     And I guess the way that it relates to ethnic minority and biblical interpretation, as for me African American Brogan enriches interpretation. The more I began to read and study, the more it became clear to me how much my own experiences influenced the way that I read the text, it influenced the questions that I asked about the text, but I want people to be able to be free to explore those questions and own the way that my tradition has shaped me. It doesn't mean that I don't believe the Bible is true, or authoritative, or the truth is relative, but it's just that all of us are shaped, I think, via social locations, and they influenced how we encountered the text. And so I wanted to be able to write and think about that as a New Testament scholar.

Speaker 3:          Mm-hmm (affirmative). Dr. McCaulley, that's a nice segue to the starter question I wanted to ask of both of you. So you, Dr. McCaulley are African American, Dr. Padilla is Latino, and we're talking today in a general way about minority biblical interpretation and we'll get to talking about a special project that both of you are involved with that has to do with minority biblical interpretation, but I think it might help our listeners if we started just by trying to describe what we're talking about when we talk about minority biblical interpretation. So Dr. McCaulley, what does it mean for you as an African American to interpret the Bible as an African American and how does your approach compare to the more dominant approach in biblical studies today? And then we'll ask the same thing of Dr. Padilla as a Latino.

Esau McCaulley:     Well, I'll say we're actually, the ways in which I think the traditions are united and then ways in which I think they're distinct. I think that everyone who values the authority of scripture, is trying to get their minds around what the scripture is actually saying. Is that means, I think that things like learning your Greek, and Hebrew, and the Basic Principles of Hermeneutics, and how to read in context and knowing what's going on, on a literary level that's in a structure, all of those things are important and I think that there're those things are common across interpretive traditions. But the thing that I would say is that makes African American build on their interpretation unique, is what African Americans bring to the biblical text and the way in which our tradition has shaped the way that we read the text.

Esau McCaulley:     And when I speak about African Americans, I don't want people to get into their mind any spirit, what it means to be black. What I have in mind when I refer to African Americans are, the history, custom songs and experiences that have shaped the African American experience in the United States. And because of those experiences, we bring certain questions and issues and emotions to a Bible reading. So one example that I use is, the African American church is born in opposition to, or it's redefinition of the gospel that we heard from slave masters. And so from the beginning, the African American interpretive edition involves re-interpretation. So African-Americans were told to read the Bible and the Bible said that, "Jews should be submissive to your masters." And we only got certain parts of the Bible.

Esau McCaulley:     We weren't allowed to read The Exodus story, we weren't allowed to read all of these passages. And so when the African American tradition was born, it was born in this context, we had to learn to read the Bible for ourselves. The other thing that happened right at the birth of the African American tradition is the reality of slavery, and slavery at the time the African American tradition was born was the law of the land, it was legal across the South. And so the African American tradition, is actually asking itself, "How did these biblical texts impinge on an American law?" So the African American tradition at that point inescapably political. From the beginning, we're asking, "How does these texts influence the way that we live today?" And so that means that African Americans in general as it relates to the Bible, are asking the question of, "How did these texts impinge upon the lived experience of African Americans?"

Esau McCaulley:     And so for example, the separation of politics on one side and biblical interpretation on the other, this sometimes mark some elements that you've, Adela colorism. It's just absent from the black tradition because we didn't have the space to say, "Well, the gospel is this and our political reality is that." Because we were literally opposing a law, namely slavery. And so those are the examples of how those experiences shapes us.

Esau McCaulley:     One more thing I'm allowed to talk about it a little bit more, is that one of the other things that happened at the origins of the African American tradition, it's this habit of canonical reading. And when I think about canonical reading, I mean that because certain biblical texts were quoted just like the Timothy passages on slavery. But we tend to say, "Well, okay, you have this one passage in Timothy, but let's look at what the entire Bible reveals to us about God's character and how that reveals what he thinks about slavery." And so for that reason, we developed what I call the canonical instinct. That these aren't unique to the African American tradition, but they are particular emphasis that mark us because of our experiences. And so when I talk about the African American tradition, I talk about all of those things. The way that our history, our experiences and our culture influences the questions we ask and the responses that we give to the answers the Bible brings back to us.

Osvaldo Padilla:    Yes, thank you for that Esau, that was excellent. And I want to echo what you said. Some of the answers that I will give here are not unique to the Hispanic or Latino interpretation of the Bible, so they share many things. In some ways to provide a definition of the Hispanic biblical interpretation approach, I will have to use the word reactionary, but that word has a negative connotation, so I want to be careful when using that. But in a sense, the Hispanic approach of scripture is reactionary to the dominant, what I would call Western European higher critical dominated approach to the Bible. One of the characteristics of that approach to the Bible, and not everyone, but many in the higher critical method and so on, was this idea of putting yourself and your sense of logic and your sense of reason above the biblical texts.

Osvaldo Padilla:    And the Hispanic approach to the Bible tends to be one that seeks to put itself under the biblical texts. And so like you said Esau, it follows that canonical logic, that canonical feeling or sense. So again, it doesn't mean that everyone who practices Hispanic biblical interpretation, whatever that means, I'm going to get there, but it doesn't mean that everyone who practices that is a devoted believer in the inspiration and authority of the Bible. But that seems to be the tendency that I'm finding in Hispanic biblical interpretation. Hispanic biblical interpretation is birthed in a sense because of the colonial and ethnic realities that in a way gave birth to Latin America. What you have is a people who were colonized by the people of Spain who brought a particular strain of Roman Catholicism to a Latin America, but you also of course have the native people from Latin America, and then we know that hundreds of thousands of African slaves were brought to Latin America, especially to the islands.

Osvaldo Padilla:    So we have this tremendous mix in Latin America, again, especially in the Caribbean of Hispanic and African and native and all mixed together, and that produces a certain way of coming to the Bible. One of the ways that it does is that there seems to be an openness to the supernatural in Hispanic interpretation of the Bible. Now that doesn't necessarily have to be positive, but oftentimes because there's this inherent belief in the supernatural when we come to the biblical texts, I get the sense that we don't come with a wall of doubt against the stories of the Bible, but rather with an openness to it partly because of that.

Osvaldo Padilla:    And so I would say that the Hispanic approach to the Bible is this idea that we interpret the Bible as a community, that's extremely important. Of course, you can interpret the Bible as an individual, that we are individuals, but a great weight is given to interpret the Bible as a church together as a community, that's extremely important to the interpretation of the Bible. Number two, there is a tendency to come to the Bible as under the texts, letting the Bible tell us what we should believe, and there's this almost, inherent is not the right word because we need the help of the Holy spirit to believe the word of God, but there's almost this inherent sense that this book is true, the Bible is true, it's authoritative, and we have to submit to it. And so that's a place to begin with Hispanic biblical interpretation.

Kristen Padilla:    Building off of your answers, I want to ask about how your particular ethnicity and social location affect translation of the Bible. And perhaps you can give some concrete examples from scripture as we think about how your ethnicity and social location affect translation and your interpretation of it.

Esau McCaulley:     Yes, I think that one of the things that translation involves. A translation involves moving something from a host culture, and language in codes culture. So when something is written in Greek or Hebrew, it carries with it the nuances and things that communicate in a certain way to a Greek audience, or Hebrew audience, or an Aramaic audience. Now, if you just simply translate those words from Hebrew, or Greek, or Aramaic into English, what is heard by an English speaker may not be the same thing as intended by a Hebrew or Greek writer of the text. And so every translation they're trying to figure out, what's the best way to communicate what God inspired the authors to write into this new culture. So if you go on a mission field and missionaries often bringing together committees of people from different parts of the community to make sure what the Bible is trying to communicate is understood correctly. But that's one part, is that translation involves getting these things right in the language.

Esau McCaulley:     But another thing is that my ethnic identity causing me, which I talked about that, certain questions or certain concerns that I bring to the Bible that other people might not bring. So for example, as an African American who was comes in a context where we're often seen as being absent from the biblical text and that Africans aren't important characters in the Bible. What I might have particular concerns or questions related to that, that doesn't necessarily influence how I translate a Greek verb, if the verb means love, I'm not going to translate the verb to mean hate because I'm black. But it does mean that I paid closer attention to certain passages, and because I might pay attention to certain passages that other scholars might neglect, it might make it more likely for me to give an accurate translation. And what I'm saying is that our social location motivates us to attend to different passages.

Esau McCaulley:     And so sometimes if you have a monocultural translation committee, and they're all asking the same questions, then they might have the same blind spots. And so having someone who's from a different group just allows people to say, "Well, hold on. Are we really sure that we've translated this passages as best as we could?" And that means that not just me, but the entire committee turns their attention to these passages and say, "Well, you know what? Here's a way in which we need to communicate this as clearly." And there are examples in Old and New Testament, it's just how these blind spots might've influenced some of the questions or the ways that we've passed them and translated. I think for example of Song of Songs when it talks about the maiden is saying, "I'm dark but lovely." And so there she's talking about the color of her skin and the way in that was translated and the translation of that conjunction, "Dark and lovely. I'm dark and lovely." It's an important decision which is in some parts settled by the analysis of the Hebrew.

Esau McCaulley:     But I would venture to say that a woman of color is going to be very keen to make sure that this passage gets the way and it's not translated haphazardly. And so those are the examples that I have in mind when I say the diversity on translation matter. The same thing with women, it doesn't mean that women are only concerned with passage that is related to them in the New Testament, but because of history of the way those passages have been used to speak about women in ministry, they might potentially address those things with a lot of care and attention. And so what I think about diversity of translation committees, what I'm speaking about is the spread of the emotional energy across the cannon so that each passage receivers do attention.

Osvaldo Padilla:    Let me start with the ethnic location. So as Hispanics, if you ask us who we are, our identity, one of the ways that we're going to answer that question, maybe the main way that we are going to answer that question is, we're going to tell you a story. Who are you? We will sit you down and we'll tell you probably a too long, but we'll tell you a long story. That's important because in some cultures, the way you get a truth, the way you get at understanding God and yourself may be more by a logic, a metaphysics and more using a propositional statements and so on. I think one of the gifts of the Hispanic, and not just the Hispanics, but since I'm Hispanic, I'm talking about it, but one of the gifts of the Hispanic biblical interpretation is the importance of the narrative of the Bible to talk about who God is and who we are.

Osvaldo Padilla:    You might be shocked at this, I remember as a very young believer studying the Book of Acts in my church, which of course it's mostly narrative, mostly stories. And I remember the pastor telling us that... and he was Hispanic, but he told us, don't use the Book of Acts to draw your doctrine for the Bible because that's your stories. Use the letters of Paul because those are propositional logical A to B to C statements, and the letters of Paul are going to tell you more about who God is and who you are doctrinally. And I believe that for the longest time, of course, until you go to university and to seminary and you learn better. But this is something that we can provide the importance and this has strong repercussions for how you read the New Testament.

Osvaldo Padilla:    Oftentimes we go to Paul for the doctrine of the New Testament, for example, for the doctrine of the significance of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. But many times who don't go to the gospels. In fact, there's one scholar, his name was Martin Kayla, who said that the gospels are extended introductions with a passion narrative. So all that matters is the passion, not the rest of the story of the ministry and the life of Jesus. And as Hispanics, because stories are important for us, we come to the gospels and we're interested to learn about God, the meaning of the life and the death of Christ for us, even from the beginning of the gospel. Gospel is not just the end of the gospels or what the Apostle Paul says. So that is something that is very important. Secondly, about translation, and let me speak here about diversity in the sense of bilingualism.

Osvaldo Padilla:    For many people in the United States, Chinese Americans, Vietnamese Americans, Hispanic Americans, bilingualism is a way of life, it is a way of existence, it has shaped you for many, many years so that you are able to think in two languages and render one thing into the other language and vice versa on the spot. It becomes almost natural for you to do and I think that it is a great loss when believers who are bilingual are not brought into Bible translation committees with the facility. They have to help in the rendering of the Hebrew or Greek or Aramaic back into English. So that's where I think one of the big losses now has happened.

Doug Sweeney:       Yeah, that's very helpful. One of the reasons we have the two of you in particular on the podcast today is that Kristen and I just happened to know that you are both now working on a project called the New Testament in color. That has a lot to do with the themes we're discussing. Can you tell us a little bit about the New Testament in color? Where does it come from? Who's involved in it and what's it going to be?

Esau McCaulley:     Yeah, it started off with a slight frustration that I had in class is I was teaching introduction to the New Testament, which is standard in seminaries and colleges. And so I'm trying to find students from diverse perspectives, but a lot of times I found myself trying to either have one that was really long because you're trying to find Asian American, African American, Latino American, that was just a bunch of different books. And one of the things that I found also when I was doing that is that a lot of it is oriented towards getting white students to pay attention to African-American concerns, or African Americans in particular speaking to other African Americans about their concern. Those are two of the ways in which some of that literature was written. And when I realized that there's not actually a lot of conversation across ethnic groups and so having African Americans and Asian Americans in the same book is relatively rare.

Esau McCaulley:     And so one of the things I said, "When we have this thing called the New Testament in color, we can bring together African Americans, Latino American, Asian American, first nations and men and women together." And by the very nature of the project testifies itself to what we think the body of Christ is. And that we think that we need all of each other to read the Bible correctly. And obviously there is so much ethnic diversity in the United States and in the world that it'd be impossible to include every single group on every single topic. But what we tried to do, was we tried to gather together, Black, White, Asian and Latino and first nation scholars to work on this project together. And what we did is that we have a commentary on each book of the Bible and they're headed by different ethnic minorities. So if someone's doing John, someone is doing Matthew.

Esau McCaulley:     And we also have articles that we think that are a particular concern to, different ethnic groups. So we have an article in the commentary on Asian-American biblical interpretation, we have an article on African-American biblical interpretation, we have an article on immigration and the Kingdom of God, we have an article on environmental ethics. And so what we're trying to do is within the commentary itself or within the articles, foster conversation across ethnic groups within the United States in which people are owning both their ethnic identity and the great tradition. Because one of the other things we were talking about is that, we think that despite our diversity, our ethnic diversity what unites us, is our common love for Christ. And so we're saying that we're united by this belief in what we call it, the great tradition, which is most [colliderate 00:27:02] effect in texts like the Apostle's creed or the Nicene creed and this idea that the Bible is for us, this final guide in what we do, think and say.

Esau McCaulley:     And so with that being the theological center of what we doing. We're giving people the space to embrace who they are in Christ and to bring all of who they are into the interpretive process. Because to be honest, there's these two tensions that are sometimes felt within. At least for me, with writing as an African American Christian, there are certain people who are really excited about what I can do with the Greek and the Hebrew and my interpretation with the passage, but when I bring my ethnic identity into the passage in saying, "How does this speak to my context? In my culture?" People can sometimes be hesitant. And on the other side, there's some people who are very excited for me to talk about my experiences as an African American, but as an African American Christian, these texts to me still form in the way that I see the world, and I want to treat these texts as authoritative. And so sometimes that belief in the authority of scripture also creates extension. And so what we want it to say is that, "Although we all come from different backgrounds, we would articulate this differently." This commitment to bring those two things together is something I think, marks this process.

Osvaldo Padilla:    I'm really thrilled about this project that is really the dream of Esau, and how he was kind to invite me to help with it. Just want to continue to emphasize that even though we all come from different backgrounds and so on who are composing the commentary, there is a strong commitment to the scriptures, to the inspiration of the Bible, to the authority of the Bible, and we're working under the scriptures, under one gospel together. In a sense, the New Testament in color is a traditional introduction to the New Testament because for every book that will be written about, you're going to have your standard introduction. So for example, who wrote this letter? And where was it written? And what was the purpose? And so on and so on. And then there is going to be commentary of course on the content of the particular book we are talking about and some of that. We'll dip into the Greek sometimes, but also we're going to be bringing in our location as a Hispanics and Africans and Asians into the project.

Osvaldo Padilla:    And just a real quick example, one of our colleagues was writing about the fatherhood of God in her piece and her particular culture has forced her to view parenthood in a way that wasn't necessarily healthy. And then when she comes and reads the gospel texts where Jesus talks about what it means to be a father and his relationship to the heavenly father, it totally transform her understanding of God. Because her understanding of God had been shaped by her culture through her experience of fatherhood and Parenthood, and that wasn't necessarily a positive thing. We usually talk about positive things that come from the minority biblical scholarship, but there are also negative things that come from that and the Bible corrects those things sometimes. So I was really touched by reading her piece and I suspect that experience of her coming to the texts through her ethnicity will also help other people who read the New Testament in color.

Esau McCaulley:     Yeah. So when we talk about positives and negatives, and this is the language that I try to use. That the gospel brings unique challenges to each culture. And the gospel doesn't transform every culture in exactly the same way. Because every person, every culture was created by image bearers. So that culture then reflects something of God within it, but it's also going to reflect something of the fall because every culture is made up of sinful people. And so when the gospel comes to the culture, there are things in the culture they're going to have to change, but there also things in that culture that are going to shine light on neglected aspects of the Christian tradition the other cultures might reach. Though we talk about the negatives of minority biblical interpretation, we're not saying that there's anything bad about being ethnic minority.

Esau McCaulley:     We're talking about in the particular ways what the gospel challenges us. One of the examples I use in an African American context about the different ways of the gospel challenges our community, beams by forgiveness. And so there's a huge emphasis on forgiveness in the New Testament. And obviously everyone struggles to forgive, but in the African American context, when they used a huge reality of slavery and the Jim Crow laws and lynching and the past and ongoing oppression of people of color, this Christian theme of forgiveness strikes us as a particularly difficult thing. Then someone else who might come from a family who did participate in slavery or ancestors, they're receiving the forgiveness. And so that's one particular way in which African Americans wrestling with what it means to forgive is one way in which our culture is pressed or pushed by the gospel.

Esau McCaulley:     So I'd like to talk about is a dialogical method of interpretation. Which means that the Bible and cultures enter in the dialogue. Where the culture asked questions of the Bible, but the Bible also gets to speak back. And it gets to speak back and not only tell us the things we want to hear, but shaped the way that our culture lives and functions in the world. And I think that every culture, Black culture, White culture, Asian culture, and I know these things aren't monolithic, but each one of those cultures in their own ways are challenged by different aspects of the gospel. And any preacher will tell you that a sermon in one congregation is heard one way, and the sermon in a different congregation, you have to preach a different service. And because we're all different, basically we all sometimes need to hear different sermons even arousing from the same text.

Esau McCaulley:     But what I think is important about our project is there's sometimes listening in on the ways in which other people struggle with these texts allows us to understand our brothers and sisters more, then it also opens us up to things we had never considered. And so I think that's probably one of the benefits from what we're doing is we're providing people a window into other cultures. So I just know that there's tons of, for example, part of the origin of the process was by me working nizing on my own self. How much energy I had spent begging people to listen to the African American tradition, while hypocritically ignoring the Asian American tradition, or the Latino tradition. I said, "Well, I can't ask people to listen to me if I'm not willing to listen to other people." And one of the other thing is I probably want to say about this project is that we were intentional about focusing largely on North American ethnic minorities, because it's as important as that global voices are that it's very easy for the project to become too diffused to have a coherent voice.

Esau McCaulley:     And one of the things that unites us despite our ethnic diversity is we all struggling with the idea of what does it mean to be a Christian here in these United States.

Kristen Padilla:    As we think about this conversation in light of a seminary context or undergrad theology program and you're training future ministers of the gospel, how important is this conversation with those who will be ministers in churches? What does this conversation look like and how does your ethnicity play out in the classroom and the way that you teach?

Osvaldo Padilla:    Well, one of the encouragements I have to, especial need to seminary deans and I have one here sitting across the table from me, precedents and so on, is to do your best to look, not at the extent of other competent candidates, but do your best to seek out scholars, systematic theologians, misseologys, biblical scholars who may be minorities to come to your seminary because the best way to teach the students how to approach the Bible in this way is when they see it in the flesh in the professor. Professors have a profound impact on seminarians and so that would be an encouragement for me to tell those in authority to try to hire minorities into their institutions. As far as the classroom, the more I thought about this question, it's difficult to define because your ethnicity is who you are and there are some things that can hardly be communicated.

Osvaldo Padilla:    It's just the way I use my hands, the way I move my body. I don't know, the intonation of my voice, all of those things are so bound to my ethnicity that it's hard to pinpoint something that I would use that marks me out as a Hispanic that will help them during the classroom instruction but one thing I will say, and again this is not exclusive to the Hispanic way of teaching, it would be that there is a more dialogical stress in the way that I teach in the classroom. We believe in questions and answers, not in the sense that I give you a long 45 minutes lecture and then I give you two minutes for answers.

Osvaldo Padilla:    But through out the process of teaching the course, there is more of a give and take where the student is not put down, is not being an expert or anything like that, but it's really a dialogue between the two and are trying to land the plane as it were by means of this dialogical approach. So that would be very important for me as the particular ethnic minority that I am in the classroom, and also telling stories. Again, we may be teaching a class on... I teach a class on 1 Timothy, so I may take a concept that I'm trying to explain in 1 Timothy and then just tell a story that will help them understand that concept that may be abstract. So that's one of the ways that my ethnicity plays a part in the classroom.

Esau McCaulley:     I've actually thought a lot about this and I'd like to speak of narrative worlds. And what I'm saying is that when you have a white professor and maybe a largely white classroom and a few ethnic minorities, then the narrative world of the classroom comes from the dominant culture. So the stories, the analogies, the movie references all comes from one place. And to give a very simple example, it's like me and my friends that grew up watching friends in Seinfeld. And so those narratives kind of has a way of normalizing a particular culture, and so one of the ways that makes my class different is that when you come in the narrative world within which the class is structured, is from an African American context. And so that means when I think about how to explain something, I'll try to explain it from my own experiences. And so when it's actually a part of me bringing myself to the text.

Esau McCaulley:     And I remember I used to try to do the other thing, which is to translate all of these things into the dominant cultures so that the students might understand, but one of the things that happens is when you have sometimes an ethnic minority student who never gets the joke, would that make any sense? And they're excluded in the class itself oftentimes can be alienated by the nature of the conversation. And so the disorientation that my wife's students feel in class, is somewhat intentional because now they getting an experience of what it's like to be taught when their culture isn't the dominant worldview from within which the teaching happens. And so what I say is, I teach an intentionally African American context.

Esau McCaulley:     Even though the students may say, "Well, I don't understand why he used this story? Why he used this analogy or why he addressed this particular issue." But that very disorientation that some of them are majority cordial culture student experience, allows them to understand what their classmates may experience in other classes. And I've had minority students come up to me after class and just say, "Thank you. Because that felt like someone from my culture was actually leading the discussion." One of the other things that happened is, and this is true, it's sometimes possible for majority culture students to go through their entire educational experience and even their entire work experience and never actually have someone, a person of color in charge. And then you ask yourself, and maybe anyone who listens to this podcast, "I am a white listener, how many times have I had a black boss, a black pastor or black professor?"

Esau McCaulley:     So if 95% of your experience is with the dominant culture in charge, it's very easy to get this idea that we're in charge because we're more competent. And you may say, "I don't think that." But then it's hard not to have that experience. And it also means that when you go out into a church, how comfortable are you with other people being in charge? And so having me as a leader too in a classroom, is important pedagogically for students because they get used to experiencing different leadership styles in different cultures at the front. And it changes the nature of the conversation. And the ways that people ask questions to me is different than they may ask questions to other people. And so I do think that there's a ministry of presence by the very fact of having a ethnic minority leading them.

Esau McCaulley:     I was telling them this joke on Twitter the other day. If I had a student and part of my assignment is they had to cite actually one person of color in a project they were doing and one of my students sited something that I said in the lecture and at first I was like, "Whoa, hold on. That's what I had in mind." But then I was like, "Oh." I am the first ethnic minority scholar that they know and they beat the system. Right? But I do think and also speaks to them, it's they're recognizing that what I do is in some sense unique and it takes a little while for students to get adjusted to it, but eventually they all come around and they realize that I'm not a completely crazy person.

Doug Sweeney:       This has been so helpful and I've got one more practical question that I'd love to ask each of you to address briefly if you would. Most of our listeners are pastors or lay leaders in churches. Most of our listeners are not academics, they're church folks and they're leaders of congregations. If you could give them just a little bit of counsel about how to apply the realities and the insights we've been discussing here today in the context of the local church, what would you want to say?

Osvaldo Padilla:    That may be challenging for them? Because it may mean that they might have to go out and meet somebody who doesn't look like them. So there's nothing like meeting someone who is different from you, who is a strong believer on building a friendship. Maybe inviting them to your church to teach or to preach. That would be something I would encourage them to do. To the extent that there are people who like to read, I think I would point them for example to many of the books written by a Church Historian who stook on solace has written some really good work and he wrote a work on St Augustine that argues that Augustine's African background, African ethnicity really shape his theology. So I would suggest try to go out and meet somebody who may be Hispanic or African or what have you, whatever North American minority, but also read books written by solid Christians who do not belong to the majority culture and bring their ethnicity into play when they're interpreting a theology or the Bible and so on.

Esau McCaulley:     Yes, I would say that the first thing is that our pastors and lay leaders have to actually begin to see the Bible's actual vision for ethnic groups. One of the examples that I've talked about in a book that I'm writing is when the people of Israel went out of Egypt and that when the people of Israel left slavery in Egypt, there's this passage that says the mixed multitude went up with them. And the question of why does the author of Genesis say that a mixed multitude, why does he make that claim? Why does he highlight that? That's because the promise that God made to Abraham was that, "In Abraham, all the nations of the world would be blessed." And so the mixed multitude that went out of Egypt, who left slavery, we're not simply Hebrews, where there were also Egyptians and probably other Africans, and the Bible is making a point that when God acted to liberate Israel within that liberation, there was also liberation of other ethnic groups and those ethnic groups had then been included in the people of God.

Esau McCaulley:     The purpose of that story then is to point to the fact that the gospel was for everyone and that the church is almost only... And this is the form of the time when this is in New Testament. The church is only itself when it has the people whom God has called to it, and God's called to it from every tribe, tongue and nation. And so what we consider ethnic diversity is not some political fad, it is a manifestation of being universal, saving of power, the gospel. And so until we're committed to that as a theological truth, then we're not going to be willing to do the hard work and suffering required to make it a reality because it's one thing to say that, "I want to do something, but what then? What if it gets hard?" If it's not saying, "This is what I believe God wants, then we're going to give up." And when I would challenge someone to do is to actually read the Bible and ask yourself this question, "As I read the Old Testament, as I read the prophet, as I read the Psalms, because I read the law, what does this say about the place of all people within God's kingdom?" And then open the New Testament and look at places like in the Book of Romans, in the Book of Galatians, where the heart of this thing is Paul saying, "No, no, no. Jew or Gentile, we have to be together because this is the way that God wanted it to be." But once you get that theological commitment, it's going to create a crisis and that crisis is going to be how do we make this vision for the people of God fleshed in our community? That's going to take them on the journey, and I can't point out all of the steps along their journey, but when people get that conviction, it hits them in the direction of where they want to go. And if I've accomplished that during these 30 minutes, then I have succeeded.

Doug Sweeney:       A good concluding word. You have been listening to Dr. Esau McCaulley of Wheaton College and Dr. Osvaldo Padilla of Beeson Divinity School talking about the importance of minority biblical interpretation, we thank them both for their experience and their insights and for helping our audience today. We thank our audience members for tuning in and we wish you a wonderful 2020. Happy New Year. Goodbye for now.

Kristen Padilla:    You've been listening to the Beeson Podcast. Our theme music is written and performed by Advent Birmingham of the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama. Our engineer is Rob Willis, our announcer is Mike Pasquerilla. Our cohost are Doug Sweeney and myself, Kristen Padilla. Please subscribe to the Beeson Podcast @beesondivinity.com/podcast or on iTunes.