Beeson Podcast, Episode #640
Dr. Beckwith, John Kegley
Feb. 7, 2023

>>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 Beeson Podcast. I am your host, Doug Sweeney, here with my co-host, Kristen Padilla. This week on February 9th, to be precise, Beeson Divinity School will celebrate its 35th anniversary. On February 9th, 1988 the Samford Board of Trustees voted to establish the Samford School of Divinity. One year later, the name changed to Beeson Divinity School. In April of 1988, Samford President Tom Courts invited Timothy George to serve as the schools’ founding dean. Anniversaries like this provide an occasion to reflect upon and celebrate the past, and ask God for his grace for the future. We praise God for his faithfulness to Beeson Divinity School. We’ll mark our anniversary in several ways this year, and we look forward to sharing more details with you soon.

Here’s how you can help. On February 9th, share your favorite Beeson memory and/or Beeson photo on your social media account and tag us, @BeesonDivinity. Use #whybeeson and #beesonat35. And if you listen to this episode later in the year you can still join the fun even on social media. We’ll be using these hashtags all year long.

One more announcement before we begin. Our fall admission deadline is coming up soon on March 1st. If you or someone you know has been thinking about seminary, let us know soon. Start your application at BeesonDivinity.com. 

All right, Kristen, will you tell our listeners a little bit more about today’s guests?


>>Kristen Padilla:

Yes, thanks, Doug. Today on the show we have two guests, Dr. Carl Beckwith, who is professor of divinity here at Beeson. He teaches in our history and doctrine sequence. And we also have John Kegley, who is a Beeson graduate, who teaches Greek and Latin at Westminster School at Oak Mountain in Birmingham. We asked these two brothers to come on the show today because I had written an article about John’s work on a theologian in church history and learned in interviewing him that Dr. Beckwith had a special influence on him. So, I thought this would be a great conversation to have on the podcast. So, welcome, and thank you both for joining us today.

John, I wanted to begin our discussion with you. Hopefully our guests know Dr. Beckwith a little bit from previous episodes. Since this is your first time on the show I wonder if you can tell us more about you; where you’re from, how you came to faith in Jesus Christ, and what brought you to Beeson?


>>Kegley:

So, I am from Fayetteville, Georgia – about 45 minutes south of Atlanta. Everything is in relation to Atlanta, if you’re from Georgia. And my grandfather worked for Delta, the airport, so they moved close to the airport in Fayetteville when they moved from North Carolina. So, that’s where I grew up. I grew up in a Christian family. 

So, like a lot of people who grew up in a Christian household I kind of have trouble pinpointing when I became a Christian – kind of how I think of my adolescence in terms of periods of time that I was living Christianly and not Christianly. So, again, it’s kind of hard to pinpoint when I came to faith in Christ. I do know that in high school, after a period of living, we might say “un-Christianly,” I really felt a need for Christ and I was really kind of forced with the question – do I believe the gospel? And do I actually want to follow Jesus Christ for myself and not just for the sake of tradition and the sake of family as well?

So, around my junior year I really began to follow Christ. I studied scripture, theology, and as much as I could become interested in the history of the church. I grew up in the Southern Baptist world. So, love Southern Baptists. I have learned a lot from them. But the church I grew up in was not very connected to the larger history of the church. So, that was kind of something that was lacking honestly growing up in my time within the church. But yeah, shortly after that I went to Samford, which I loved. I fell in love with Samford. I grew up going to public school, so coming to a liberal arts kind of environment was really formative for me. So, after a few years at Samford I heard about Beeson and I knew a lot of people that also had gone here and had studied here. And yeah, I thought that would be a good idea as well. So, I applied and I went to Beeson, and just finished this past December, a year ago, from this past December. 

I should mention my wife, Emma. We got married in 2018. That’s probably the most important thing about my story and we have been married for a little over four years now. Almost coming up on five years. Which is exciting. And the most recent news with us is that in June we found out that Emma was pregnant. So, she’s actually due in about a month, month and a half. Yeah, March 15th. So, that’s a little bit about us.


>>Doug Sweeney:

Very exciting. And Dr. Beckwith, I’m not sure you have any news that’s quite that exciting. A baby coming along ... 

(laughter)


>>Beckwith:

That would be news indeed. 


>>Doug Sweeney:

You’re also known to our listeners, but let’s introduce you a little bit. How long have you been at Beeson and maybe tell our listeners a little bit about the role you played in designing our famous history and doctrine [inaudible 00:06:07]?


>>Beckwith:

I’ve been at Beeson 16 years. And when I arrived we had church history courses and systematic theology courses. I think we called them Christian Theology back then. So, two tracks, one sort of church history, the other more classical systematic theology approach. And we decided we would like to bring them together. So, we have this name history and doctrine, which aims to be a sequence, of course, as that will take students through the history of the church. But I often like to say it’s with intention. And the intention of the sequence are in fact the core doctrines that we confess together. So, our faith in the Trinity, our faith in the gospel, the salvation we have in Christ, the authority of scripture. Those things that bring us all together. They sit at the heart of our sequence. And we travel then throughout the history of the church listening to the voices who have gone before us. The great resources that God has preserved for us. And our of gratitude we delight in reading and studying them, learning from them, and how we can then today proclaim the gospel in our own context. 

And that’s what the sequence aims to do. It’s based on primary texts. You get to learn about people like Cyril of Alexandria, probably a good baby name if you ask me ... (laughter) ... And in a strange way they become our distant relatives in a sense within the Christian faith. And we get to learn about them, the struggles they may have had, but also how they can help us proclaim the gospel today.


>>Kristen Padilla:

John, at Samford you had majors in history, classics and religion. So, you were I would imagine very well prepared coming into Beeson with a background in languages, as well as of course history. Tell us about this history and doctrines sequence from the perspective of a student? How did you continue to grow in knowledge and the combining I guess of the history with the language? And then the second part to that question is what was it like studying under Dr. Beckwith? What was he like as a teacher?


>>Doug Sweeney;

Tell the truth now, John. 

(laughter)


>>Kegley:

Yeah, I would be happy to answer those questions. So, history and doctrine is interesting. So, I took a lot of courses as an undergraduate in history and Christian theology and Christian history as well. But I had never taken courses quite like the history and doctrine courses that really did pair theology and history together. And so what was unique to me about the whole history and doctrine sequence was really reading primary texts and not just reading the summative kind of statements that we believe, whether the Nicene Creed or the Creed of Castleton or so on and so forth, but actually getting into the minds of the people who were thinking about these things and actually reflecting on these doctrines. And not just getting into their minds, but seeing how they use scripture to actually get to these systematic conclusions. And so that was a very unique experience for me within history and doctrine. Again, not just learning the historical dates and facts, and not just learning the creeds, but also learning how we got those things. And where they came from. Because there’s a lot of ... they didn’t just drop out of the sky. There’s a long process of development that happens before we get to those points. 

And so, yeah, it was my first semester at Beeson. I don’t think I had heard about Dr. Beckwith. I think I just chose history and doctrine. You had to choose one or the other. And so I landed upon Dr. Beckwith. In the classroom, I would say a lot of students find him maybe a little intimidating in some ways. Most people know his pedigree and that at his is very much what he is interested in. But the most ... and this has affected me even as a teacher now ... all of our classes are very dialogical. He’s not lecturing most of the time, he’s really wanting us to engage with the text ourselves. And so he’ll ask good questions and we’ll give him feedback. And we’ll kind of go back and forth about the texts and about the main ideas that we’re supposed to be getting out of those texts. 

Even today, I struggle to not teach in that way. I mean, just getting up and lecturing seems like a difficult thing to me. And so that was very influential upon me as well in that history and doctrine course. 


>>Doug Sweeney:

Well, John, who is this man, Cyril of Alexandria, after whom I hear you’re naming your child? What was his life like? What was his work like? What is this text that you’re working on in this translation project?


>>Kegley:

Yeah, absolutely. I think I would probably have to ask Emma about the baby name. It might pass as a cat name. That might be as far as we could go with Cyril. But no, that’s a great question. Most people are at least familiar within the church, or at least familiar with Cyril of Alexandria and his name. He was born around I think 378, so late 370s. Athanasius dies in 373, so he obviously never met Athanasius. He was born in Egypt, lower Egypt. And as a young adult he made his way up to Alexandria where his uncle, Theopholus, was serving as the bishop at that time. 

And so from an early age Cyril was very much within the Alexandrian church, very much within the Alexandrian tradition of theology. And so again from a very young age he was probably working with his uncle, probably ... perhaps even studying with Didymus the Blind who was still around at that time. And eventually we hear about him accompanying his uncle to synod, which ended up disposing John Chrysostom and eventually Cyril kind of rises through the ranks. His uncle dies. He’s no longer the archbishop there in Alexandria. And after some kind of back and forth, Cyril becomes the archbishop of Alexandria, and he’s roughly in his early 30’s at this point in time.

Cyril has a very kind of tumultuous start, you might say, to his career as an archbishop. His uncle, Theopholus, was really hard on paganism, just stamping out paganism within Alexandria. And he was known for that and the relationship between Christians and Jews and Christians and Pagans during this time was very tense in Alexandria. Christians have kind of been on the rise for a while since the late 380s within society. And so Cyril is really in a tough spot because he’s not only having to navigate these ecclesial issues but also the relationships with the Jews and the Pagans within Alexandria.

So, early on in his career, there’s a couple of different incidents where on the one hand Jews are being expelled from Alexandria and whether or not Cyril is directly involved in these things is debated, but also the murder of [inaudible 00:13:15] a famous neo Platonic philosopher, happens while Cyril begins his career, a few years after he begins. So, he has a struggle. He’s young. He’s still figuring out what he’s doing. So, we need to show him some sympathy and some grace. But he’s by no means the perfect Christian, which is something I think is important to remember.

But after those two things kind of subside and things get a little bit better with the relations between Christians and Jews and Christians and the Neo Platonists in Alexandria, he begins to write a little bit more. And so one of the works that I really am focused on is his dialogues on the Trinity, which he writes sometime between probably 416 and 428. And I mention this work because quite frankly a lot of people when they think of Cyril think about him as a Christological thinker and for good reason. In 428 there’s the affair with Nestorius breaks out. Cyril is very much engaged with that. He produces a lot of work and a lot of writings related to the Nestorian controversy, which becomes kind of the bedrock for Castleton, what we believe about Christology. 

So, because of that most people, most scholars have really focused on that period of his life, from 428 onwards. But not many have focused on his earlier works, such as the dialogues on the Trinity. And so this work attracted me. It hasn’t been translated. So, that was an appeal to me. I have a pretty strong Greek background. And so I really just enjoy Greek. So, that was an appeal to me. And also I really wanted to see how Cyril, who again is within this kind of Athanasian tradition, but also more broadly just this tradition of reflection on the Trinity, which is for Nicaea or pro Nicaean. And how Cyril on the one hand is not only pro Nicaean as a Trinitarian thinker but how that theology, his Trinitarian theology really informs what he thinks about the person of Christ and Christology.

So, I think as modern people it’s really easy to approach Cyril and really just the fathers in general and want to think about, okay, what did they think about this X Christology or what did they think about the Trinity, or what did they think about whatever it is ... the sacraments ... when for them it’s all an integrated whole. When Cyril was writing on Trinity his main topic may have been Trinity but he’s never doing Trinitarian theology, just Trinitarian theology, he’s always thinking about these other things as well. So, that’s something that really attracts me about him, is that all of his theology, just like most of the fathers, is really integrated and it’s all one vision of what it means to be a Christian. 


>>Kristen Padilla:

I asked John what he thought about you as a professor. So, now I’m going to ask you, Dr. Beckwith, about what it was like to teach John? I remember you shared some words about John when you announced that he was the history and doctrine award winner in chapel. I think it was your last semester. And I also hear from John that you really encouraged him in this route to purse more work on Cyril and help translate some of this work. So, can you tell us from your vantage point what it was like to teach him? And then to be part of this journey with him?


>>Dr. Beckwith:

I remember ... if I have this right ... correct me, John. But I remember that first semester of history and doctrine. And it was John and another student, Dallas Knight, right here in the front row. So, where I’m standing lecturing there they are. And I don’t think they ever left those spots, right? I think I probably had you for the first two courses in history and doctrine. And then I also had John in a lot of classes. We had City of God, Augustine, Capadocians, we did a reading course together, mentor group. So, I mean, I’ve seen enough of John to be honest. 

(laughter)

It’s probably time for John to move on a little bit. But John is, I mean, he’s the student you want, right? I knew about his background. His training at Samford is outstanding. It’s actually a little bit similar to my own background in history and classics, and he brought that into the classroom. I absolutely love John in the seminar setting, where you really ... and it’s not just John, it’s the other students, where we have a little bit more time to kind of relax and just start thinking about some big topics that arise. 

And I think it really was especially in that context where I began to notice John is bringing a lot to the table here. It’s not just these abilities with history and his Greek has always been so impressive. He was outstanding in history and doctrine, but beginning to see John in a seminar context ... our directed reading where it’s just one on one in my office. That was outstanding. And of course in the mentor group. 

I’ll say this about John, but I’ll also say this is what makes for our best students at Beeson. John loves the history of the church. In part because he loves the Lord, but he loves the scriptures. And you heard him in what he was saying here. What interests him about Cyril is his reception of scripture. And I always put it that way. That why are we interested in church history or the church fathers? Because they were interested in scripture and we’re interested in scripture. So, we want to know. How are they clarifying and defending the scriptures and how can we grow from that? That’s John. That’s what he’s doing.

And the fact that he’s working on Cyril’s dialogue. For starters, it really is impressive that he’s working on a text that’s not been translated into English. I suppose maybe French, maybe a few languages, but there’s no English translation of this. And working on Cyril as a Trinitarian theologian. And as he said, right, we begin to divide things ... Oh, there’s Christology, there’s Trinitarian thought, there’s exegesis ... history and doctrine tries to overcome that. And the way that he was describing his project really is what we’re aiming to do in the sequence where he sees ... I mean, at the heart of this is who God is and what He’s done for us. And that is what ties all of these things together. 

So, for me, I mean, John is just a great person to have in class. I’m excited for what John has ahead of him. I’m excited ... I told him I can’t wait to assign this translation in the classroom. It really is a delight what he’s been doing. 


>>Doug Sweeney:

John, in this article that Kristen wrote about you, you made a reference to the importance of the church. You think about the church. You think about serving the church, even when you’re doing technical scholarship like a translation project. How does that all come together in your thinking? I mean, I love it. I want you to persuade our listeners A) that the church people need to grow in their discipleship, which means growing in their knowledge of the Lord and the scriptures and church history and so on, but of course, B) I want our seminary people always to be doing everything we do in the service of the church.

And it seems like you’re a great guy to tee up to make this case for us. What do you have in your mind when you translate someone like one of the church fathers, Cyril, with respect to the church?


>>Kegley:

Yeah, that’s a great question. I think a lot of it is personal coming from a tradition that really doesn’t spend too much time thinking about these things on a deep level, and I don’t want to speak for all churches, but for me I can’t see theology as existing apart from the church. Again, that comes from the church fathers themselves. Theology was always an ecclesial context. And so when Cyril was writing the dialogues on the Trinity, part of the people he has in mind are Christians. And as he preaches week after week, he understands scripture and he exegetes scripture, the doctrine of the Trinity, if you want to say that, it really is a result of his daily interpretation of scripture and his interaction with scripture.

And so honestly, yeah, to read Cyril, to translate Cyril for the church is honestly for most people, yeah, it’s not something that I see as an academic project, honestly. I don’t see it as ... it is considered probably a scholarly project but I think all Christians should be interested in understanding how our faith is confessed and how we have confessed our faith throughout the history of the church and how the people who have been responsible for really giving clarity to our faith have themselves articulated and defended the faith, especially in a world where there are lots of different faith options and even within Christian circles our historic understanding of the faith has not always been well received. And a lot of times is under scrutiny as well. 

So, yeah, there’s a lot to it. But Cyril ... do I expect that all normal people will read my translation of Cyril? No, but I do think that the more that we can allow just lay people to think about the Trinity and to see that it is important for not just academic theologians but for their everyday life, for how they pray, for how we baptize people, for how they experience their own liturgies. The more we can allow people to see the importance of the Trinity, and those things I think is what’s important to me. Whether or not, again, people will read this translation who are just normal lay people is another question, but my real kind of burden is to show people that the doctrine of the Trinity isn’t just something that sits on the bookshelf that we can just take off when we need to show that we’re orthodox, but something that really effects all of our lives as practical of things as prayer and what it means to be in church and what it means to experience church. Hopefully that gives some clarity. 


>>Kristen Padilla:

I wonder, Dr. Beckwith, if you want to add anything to that? I know that you are a pastor. You’ve been serving as a pastor while you’ve also been a professor. As a Lutheran. So, as you are teaching history and doctrine and then serving a local congregation, how do those two come together?


>>Dr. Beckwith:

Yeah. I think really if I could sort of, I think I can say this ... I honestly think the Beeson curriculum aims to do this in all of our courses. So, what I’m going to say is going to be history and doctrine, but I don’t think this is just history and doctrine. One of the beautiful things about Beeson is that we typically do not have courses on Monday. One of the reasons for that is so that we can all be active in our congregations on Sunday. So, the faculty especially can be teaching and preaching and serving in the Church. 

All that I do in the church has such a significant and profound impact on what I’m doing in the classroom. And one way of illustrating that, for example, today ... and I think this makes John’s point, but today in class we were reading Gregory the Great. His book on What It Means To Be A Pastor, the Book of Pastoral Rule. And so we were interested in what Gregory had to say. We were interested in the struggles that he faced. But we kept saying how can this help us today? 

We kept thinking then about how we are serving and the struggles with doing that, the difficulties we would face, but how we could learn so much from what Gregory was sharing with us. And it’s not just then, as John was saying, it wasn’t just an academic exercise of reading Gregory the Great. It was reading Gregory almost selfishly to say how can we make this a part of what we’re doing and learn from it?

And I wholeheartedly agree with everything that John just said. If it ever gets to the point where we think the doctrine of the Trinity as an example is just an article of faith that we have to study and master, get the words right and everything, and then be done with it to go onto something practical, something has gone wrong. The history of the church helps us I think not succumb to that way of thinking. But it does require hard work and it requires a lot of effort to travel through these great witnesses that again I insist this is a gift from God. It’s His history. He’s preserved it for us. And in gratitude we want to read as much of it as we can to see how we can better serve in the church today.


>>Doug Sweeney:

All right, guys. It’s about time to wrap this up. But John, inquiring minds want to know, where are you on this project? When can we go to the store and buy a copy? How are you doing?


>>Kegley:

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. So, Cyril, the modern critical edition, is in three volumes. There’s seven dialogues. The third volume ... they’re divided, II, II & III. So, the third volume of the modern critical edition has the fifth, sixth, and seventh volume in it. Seventh dialogue being relatively short. I am still in the first edition of the three. So, I’m in dialogue two out of seven right now. So, I’m making headway. Cyril’s Greek is very difficult. He’s intentionally trying to write in an old attic form. And he often mushes words together and he often makes up words just for fun. So, he tries to show off. I am still a little ways away, but I try and do a little bit ... as much as I can every day. And make progress in that way. So, yeah, to be determined. But we still have a little ways to go. 


>>Kristen Padilla:

Well, we always like to close out our shows by asking what the Lord has been teaching you or doing in your lives that would serve as a word of encouragement for our listeners. So, I wonder if you can share with us something that has been meaningful to you lately? And so Dr. Beckwith, how about you go first? 


>>Dr. Beckwith:

To be honest, something like this. This conversation is so encouraging for all professors, to hear what students have gotten out of all the effort you’ve put into your course preparation and your lecturing. And I’m just absolutely delighted and encouraged to listen to John and it makes me excited to go right back into the classroom tomorrow morning and I’ll look at a room full of people like John there, eager to learn, and I love it. I’m so thankful for it.


>>Kegley:

Absolutely. Yeah, this past year was not an easy for both me and my wife, Emma. We had thought we would be moving for PhD programs at the end of last spring. Things did not pan out in a great way for us and so we quickly had to kind of reconfigure what life was going to look like here. Thankfully, I got a great job now at Westminster, which is a super big blessing. But shortly after we kind of knew that we’d be settled here for a little bit longer, we found out that we were, or Emma was having a baby. So, even just this whole process has really shown me that the Lord is a giver of good gifts and that might not always be what we expect or what we’re hoping for, but He is at work and He has good purposes for His people, even though sometimes that might take some time to work itself out.

So, yeah, we are very much thankful and excited that we were able to stay here for this season as Emma is pregnant and we can have our community around us and our friends around us. And yeah, a soon to be life with us. That’s what I’m very thankful for and what the Lord has been doing with us.


>>Doug Sweeney:

Thank you, friends. This has been a wonderful conversation. Listeners, you have been listening to Dr. Carl Beckwith, Professor of Divinity here at Beeson. And John’s professor. And John Kegley, we’re proud to say he is now one of our alumni. He is also a teacher of Greek and Latin at Westminster School at Oak Mountain, here in Birmingham. Thanks to both of you for being with us today. And thank you, listeners, for tuning in. 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 Pasquarello. Our co-hosts are Doug Sweeney and, myself, Kristen Padilla. Please subscribe to the Beeson podcast at www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast or on iTunes.