Today Jamie talks to Dr Rhyne Putman about Theological Method--specifically, what it is, as well as its implications for discipleship.
Jamie: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Towel & Basin with Jamie Dew and normally Joe Fontenot. It's just me today leading at least, but I do have in the studio with me here today, Dr. Rhyne Putman, professor of theology, theological method, theology and culture-
Rhyne: That's not part of my title-
Jamie: Well, I don't know. I don't-
Rhyne: The Method Guy.
Jamie: The method guy, he teaches theology.
Rhyne: The Method Man. Oh, that's a good one.
Jamie: Yeah. I'll let you look up him on our website and figure out what his real title is, but he does those types of things for us and anyway, good to have you here. Thanks for being here.
Rhyne: Hi, I'm glad to be here.
Jamie: Yeah, this is lots of fun-
Rhyne: This level legacy room here at the seminary.
Jamie: It's Epic, isn't it?
Rhyne: I've never been in this room until today.
Jamie: Yeah, there's lots of artifacts in here and I've actually found a whole bunch more up in storage. So, there's a lot more that we could do there, but this is sufficient. So anyway, good to have you in the room and glad you got to see the room. All right. This is what we normally do-
Rhyne: After being home faculty here nine years, I'm glad to walk in the room. Yes.
Jamie: On the podcast, we do a little bit of everything. We do broad theological discussions. We do parenting stuff, we do pastoral stuff. Let me combine two worlds because you've got expertise in theological method, which if you don't know what that is, it's basically how, it's the move that we make. You tell me. Correct me if I'm wrong. It's the move that we make when we go from reading the Bible and what it says to formulating theological ideas and/or theological explanation about who God is and who his people are.
Rhyne: Absolutely.
Jamie: Right. So, that sounds simple, but it's notoriously difficult hence the denominations of the Protestant world and hence the divisions amongst those denominations.
Rhyne: I have a book coming out on that in May. So-
Jamie: Okay. What's the name of the book?
Rhyne: When Doctrine Divides The People Of God.
Jamie: Okay. So, coming out this may.
Rhyne: Coming out this May.
Jamie: May, 2020. You go check out that book and you'll want to pick that up. Let me ask you this. All right, so theological method. Moving from the scriptures basically to understanding, okay? Hermeneutics, which is the study of interpretation is wrapped all up in that. We could nerd out on that and geek out on that all day long. Let me put it much more down to earth. Rubber meets the road for a second. I'm a dad. Here's where we're at in dad life right now. Our kids have all four professed faith, they've all four been baptized. They now all participate in the Lord's supper. They all four have been Bible readers, but with my oldest daughter, Natalie specifically, we're at a place now where we're beginning to, I'm beginning to walk her through systematic reading of scripture more so than has ever been the case.
Jamie: So for example, start on the gospels, read a chapter a night and take notes and ask questions and then the next night before we go to bed, she and I sit down and go through her questions from the previous night and she reads the next one and do the same thing. Repeat. As such as a dad, I have a keen interest right now on sort of translating all of this type of stuff to my 12 year old daughter. So, practically speaking with a 12 year old is just starting to read the Bible systematically or a new believer, what do you recommend for them as they go from hey, I'm just picking up this book with all this stuff in it to reading it and trying to get understanding? How do they do that?
Rhyne: Yeah, that's a complicated question for a number of reasons. I mean, normally when I'm working with a new believer who has no familiarity with the Bible whatsoever, I push people to read the gospel of John and I remember Adrian Rogers used to say when he would tell new believers to read John, he said, "Don't worry about all the stuff you can't understand. You'll be so busy trying to do the things you can understand that it'll keep you occupied," and I thought that was a pretty good word that stuck with me, but when it comes to discipleship, discipleship obviously is more than just transferring knowledge. I think that's a deficiency that we sometimes run into is trying to make it all about knowledge or trying to make it all about-
Jamie: Theology.
Rhyne: Discipline. I mean, even spiritual disciplines, we don't focus on forming the whole person and so, I think about discipleship in four broad categories. Story, which is biblical literacy. Truth, which is doctrine. Practice, which is how we should live our lives and then finally affections, what does it mean for me to have a great devotional life or to have emotional health? And those things all go hand in hand. So, in terms of biblical literacy with the 12 year old or with a 21 year old or a 79 year old, I baptized an 86 year old woman a few months ago. In terms of biblical literacy, I want them to have sort of a 30,000 foot view of what the Bible actually says and teaches and ever since my kids were young and I have a seven year old and a two year old. So, they're both pretty young, but ever since my son was smaller, we found that stories about the Bible were very helpful in getting him sort of grounded in the narrative description of the big picture of scripture and this year at my church, I'm actually preaching a sermon series called The Divine Drama, which is basically a look at the big picture story of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation and trying to, I mean, they're all expository sermons.
Rhyne: They're all text-driven sermons, but the way that I'm moving through the Bible is again, trying to promote biblical literacy in a broad sense, I think. I think giving people that 30,000 foot view is very helpful. I always liked it. I mean, we do this whenever we read fiction or we watch a movie, we like to know what the general stories about, even if we don't have all the details or all the-
Jamie: The story arc.
Rhyne: Yeah, the story arc. Where's this going? And I mean, it's simple. It's creation. It's fall, it's redemption and it's new creation. I mean, that's a very simple arc-
Jamie: For the whole bible.
Rhyne: For the whole Bible, right and all of the Bible fits into one of those categories.
Jamie: And sometimes more than them.
Rhyne: Yeah.
Jamie: You might have fall and then also promise.
Rhyne: Sure and so, one of the things I'm walking through with the church is understanding the function that Israel had in the world, that God used this small and little people to be the way through which he would reveal his name, the way through which he would reveal his law, the way through which he would reveal his covenants and ultimately the way in which he would reveal his son as Messiah and the way that God uses the church as both Jewish and Gentile makeup of all people from every tribe, every tongue, every language to be the agents of his mission in the world, to see people come into this relationship with Christ ultimately with the hope of new creation that we see God set this world right again and when it comes to dealing with a seven year old, a 12 year old or a new Christian, I want them to see the big picture first and there's so many good resources now. I mean, I could just go through a litany of different resources in terms of age specific resources that are available. LifeWay has produced the big picture storybook Bible for toddlers and of course there's the Jesus story book Bible that Sally Lloyd Jones did, which is just-
Jamie: Fantastic.
Rhyne: So great. I love it, which introduces even small children who would call a Christocentric view of rating how every story in the Bible fits and points ultimately to Jesus and then there's other sources, there's a big picture Bible for kids that LifeWay also produces that basically takes those big picture themes and sits them side by side with the biblical text. What I would tell with any group of hermeneutic students is you've got three levels of any narrative. You've got the immediate story, which is how God is working in the life of an individual. You got sort of that secondary level, which is how God was working in Israel or how God was working in the church and then that big tier level, which is God's redemptive plan through history, get people familiar with the storm.
Jamie: Yeah. So, big picture for a parent or for somebody discipling a new believer, big picture what you're saying is you want to start people by helping them see the biggest story first, the schema, if you will of the whole Bible. This is what God is up to through the whole thing and asking those questions, what was he doing in this particular event? What was he doing in Israel? And then what's he doing big picture across the board? Okay, so then from there we build on that and into doctrine. Truth? So, talk about that one, how you go about that.
Rhyne: Yeah. I mean, these are ultimately questions that everybody has to deal with on one level or another. Who am I? What does it mean to be a human being? Where's my meaning? Where's my sense of purpose come from? And I want my son, I want my children, my daughter, I want them to understand that they are made by God. They're loved by God. They're valued by God and as much as their dad loves him, as much as their mom loves them, they're never going to be as loved by us as they are by God and in terms of what other things they have to deal with, what's wrong with the world? Why do I suffer? Why do I hurt? Why do we deal with pain? And of course the Christian worldview is sin is what's shaping our world. We're a broken and fallen human race and ultimately what we're driving to is what's the solution to our problems?
Rhyne: And for us it's the gospel. So, we always point back to the gospel. We always point back to this is how Jesus went about trying to make things right for us. Now Jesus made a way for us to be forgiven by God. How Jesus made a way through the Holy Spirit for us to be conformed to his likeness and so, we deal with those sort of big picture questions and I don't sit down and do a systematic theology textbook with my child, but I think there's room for that to be developed by the way.
Jamie: Sure. The churches use catechism.
Rhyne: Right. We use catechisms, we do question and answer sort of thing and that's a way that we instilled truth.
Jamie: And we do have in the Southern Baptist world, Baptist faith and message 2000 that could be sort of a big scale rubric for even children to walk them through that look, you wouldn't have to have a systematic text, but you could just use that simple little document and start going through-
Rhyne: That's right. Our confessions serve the same purposes.
Jamie: Sure. All right. What was the third? So, first level we want them to understand the big storyline of scripture. Second level, we want to begin nurturing and developing them doctrinally so they understand the basic affirmations of the faith. Third level, what do we do there again?
Rhyne: It's practice and practice is a pretty broad category, but it's ways in which the Bible shapes what we do and we're learning how to react in certain situations that's guided by scripture. So, in the old Testament it was the law and in the new Testament, what we have is we have some principles from the law that are re-instated for the new covenant community, but we have the Holy Spirit who's teaching us wisdom. He's teaching us how to be wise in different situations. The thing about small children and you've seen this as your children have gotten older, as you move from the more concrete to the more abstract and with my toddler right now, it's real simple things like don't stick your finger in a socket, don't touch the hot stove. That's a real black and white concrete sort of instruction, in it sometimes it sort of backfires.
Rhyne: Of course in our house, we're Baptist. We're abstentionists. We don't drink alcohol, but one of the things that I was sort of teaching my son at a young age is that's a nasty drink. We don't drink nasty drinks in our house and we were in a checkout line at Target and fortunately this man did not speak English, but my son blurted out and he was three, he said, "That's a man drinking nasty drinks," right there in the checkout line. That's that concrete sort of instruction, but God gave his people concrete instructions, but in the new Testament it's really sort of moved beyond that and that is spirit guided wisdom for life and that applies in a number of areas. How we deal with our finances, how we deal with relationships with our children, how we deal with marriage, sexuality. I mean, that's a big spectrum of things, but I want my children to think like the Bible or to try to think like the Bible on cultural issues or on life issues, decision issues.
Jamie: Yeah. Important to note though, the order in which you presented that though. So, let me say this. It seems to me that oftentimes as parents, Christian parents, when we do think about bringing our children up in the training and admonition of the Lord, there's our command that we jumped to, for all practical purposes, what you've identified as sort of step three first. So, to bring them up in the training and the admonition of the Lord is just to make sure that they're behaving the right way, that they're doing the things of Christianity and oftentimes that's-
Rhyne: Realistic.
Jamie: That's right because it does not have the biblical story arc foundation and then the doctrinal foundation, it becomes nothing more and it's not an unintended. I mean, so I'm certainly not meaning to lob Obama on parents here, but it's unintended, but what it becomes is just a moralistic teaching and then they get later in life because they don't have that theological foundation, that biblical foundation. That crumbles quickly to get off to college. So, really I mean, it seems to me the wisdom in what you're saying, start with that story arc. Start then or go next to the doctrinal and now when we do think about for all practical purposes, application, we're doing it against the backdrop of what we understand. So, okay, helpful. Last part, you said affections.
Rhyne: Right. Affections and this is where Jamie Smith has been really helpful in shaping my thinking that worldviews are not merely just cognitive lens as to which we see the world, but we're people, we're hearts and our hearts are directed towards the world and our heart shapes the way we understand and perceive things and so, what we ultimately want more than anything else to tell us of where all this is going is that we love God and love people and theological formation, discipleship, it ends there and in the way that we practice this in our church, again, we have our people in our church go through all four levels of curriculum and we make them shuffle in and out of the different classes, story, truth, practice and affections and because we know that people are going to try to gravitate towards one or the other and not try to need to be holistic and do everything else.
Rhyne: So, for me what this means is I need to focus on things that aren't natural to me, focus on things that are about my emotional health or about my devotional wellbeing, but the spiritual discipline works that we focus on really gravitate towards this category, stirring our hearts and stirring our affections toward God and there are so many different ways that we can do this, but I think one way that we do this for our children is we demonstrate that we value God, that we love God, that our affections that they see us in worship, they see us in prayer, they see us in Bible reading and they see that this is something that gives us genuine joy in our life and teach them to have joy in those things like they have in other things.
Jamie: Yeah, sure. So, the four steps then story, doctrine.
Rhyne: Truth, yeah.
Jamie: Truth, discipleship. What was the word there?
Rhyne: The practice.
Jamie: Practice and then affection.
Rhyne: And then affections, yeah.
Jamie: Sounds like a book. Sounds like something, work to be done-
Rhyne: Yeah, in the works. May, 2021.
Jamie: All right. Good stuff man. Good stuff. Well hey, I appreciate it and this is super helpful not just for parents, but I think for anybody, discipling folks. Appreciate you being here.
Rhyne: Great. Excellent. Thank you.
Jamie: Hey everybody, this is Jamie and Joe again. If you like this podcast, would you leave us a rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts? That helps other people find it and if you have any questions, we'd love to hear about them. Just go to JamieDew.com/questions and send them in that way and we'll take a look at the most frequently asked questions and give them a shot.