What Makes Comeford College Distinct?

Philip Alrighty, welcome to All Are Yours. My name is Philip.

Sean I am Sean.

Philip And this is episode 11. It was supposed to be episode 12, but we had decided to squander all of our time and not record one last month. So here we are, not being busy.

Sean For sure. I mean, this is winning. This is a whole unique time. This is the first time that we’ve ever recorded at this time — which means nothing to the people who are listening.

Philip That is true. We have decided that we should actually care a little bit more about making this happen, and set aside some official time — at least attempting to set aside some official time — to make this a thing, make sure that it is consistently coming out. And so we’ll see. We’ll see how that works.

Sean So, not to trumpet your own horn here for a second, but there’s another podcast that is just you, called Business300, that is out there. Presumably everybody knows about your other podcast, but just in case they don’t — there’s been some recent news about Business300.

Philip Yes. So, Business300, just a little podcast I’m doing about business. And the idea there is to keep it short and to the point, unlike what we’re doing here.

Sean Yeah.

Philip So, yeah, it’s on the Fight Laugh Feast Network with the CrossPolitic guys. So I’ve been working with Gabe Rench, and he’s been very hospitable to bring me on board. So, getting the message out there more about the lordship of Christ being at the center and circumference of economic ownership, business, all those things.

And that maybe even connects a little bit to what we want to talk about here.

Sean Yeah. Which, my thoughts are based off of maybe half a dozen things you have written or spoken about recently, all of things that I enjoy — not just that would be found on Business300, but in particular, as we keep trying to figure out how to communicate what is valuable to us, what we think is accurate and what is valuable, and to some extent even to distinguish what we think we see, and what is a way to be blessed and bless other people, as it relates to work or as it relates to education, higher education in particular.

Not to criticize other groups — groups that we even really like. But we do think that we have a little bit of a unique angle that is the right angle. Who doesn’t think that they’re right? I mean, I get that.

But even part of the point of getting this out is, whether or not we change anybody’s mind, one of the benefits is that it could at least get pushback that helps us clarify our own thinking. So if we’re wrong, then we can change. If we make a good case, then perhaps that helps spread the way to read the world, read the Bible — perhaps that helps spread that to other people.

So, even with Comeford College — we’ve had an episode on higher education, and specifically why Comeford College, before. But even on the board level, we keep talking about what distinguishes us from some of the other options that are out there.

Again, some options — it’s not very many that we would probably recommend, like, we love this, go here. There’s not very many of those. But even the ones that we do know and we would recommend, there are none of them that we could send people to and say, yeah, listen to everything that they have to say.

And maybe that’s proud. It’s not trying to be proud. It’s trying to be right. I mean, it’s trying to see what God has said and then be faithful to that, because that’s the place of blessing.

So, for the most recent board meeting, you had actually taken on a — well, you were voluntold — to give some thoughts related to the Comeford mission. And you actually read some things. I don’t know if you want to read it, or if you want to summarize some of the distinctions between at least how we’re trying to approach it: the Comeford worldview, the academic motivation. All those things are included in there.

So, give some of the distinctions that we were making.

Philip Right. Well, I think that we could talk about it from an education — use education even as an entry point into this bigger topic. Because I think it just manifests itself; it’s applicable into higher education, but it’s also applicable into all the spheres.

Sean Yeah, because I guess one reason for that would be that you’d think our secular universities are not demonstrating this. They’re demonstrating that it’s all about their feelings and vibes.

Philip Right.

Sean But you’d think education would be a place where people are considering reasons, they’re considering their thoughts, they’re trying to be logical, more or less. And so therefore the educational sphere should be a place where we try to actually break down the ideas.

Philip Right. And get to the ingredients.

Sean Yeah.

Philip So that generations to come are able to not just duplicate the good results that we’d like them to, but also to make them better. So, carry and advance.

Right, and so that’s what we’re trying to do. And also, education is to be equipping the next generation for these different spheres. So as we think about the underpinnings of education, it’s also important to consider how those things apply into then our students going out and living out in the world — when they go build and found other institutions, businesses, when they are involved in all the spheres. How can they apply the worldview that we’re trying to teach them at Comeford into those areas, apart from just having them only be able to redirect it into education?

Sean Yeah, we want everybody to be thinking better.

Philip Right.

Sean Loving God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. That’s one of the things even about image bearers: that we like having reasons for things. So we really ought to have the best reasons.

And again, in our current world, a lot of reasoning is ignored, or something else is preferred over actually having a good reason. But we actually do think better thinking is for everybody. At a college level, a higher education level, clearly they ought to be thinking better. But in general, that should be for everybody.

Philip Right.

Sean So this podcast episode is for everybody.

Philip That’s right. Everybody. All are yours. Yes, all the people.

So, we’ve talked before about how education — at least Christian education, so not talking about ungodly education, but just Christian education — comes out in a few different flavors, a few different variations.

One, you could call compromised Christian education. So it’s Christianized secularism, secularism with some sort of Christian veneer. Whether it’s Christian colleges that have gone woke and have both feet all the way into a worldly worldview, or maybe are toying with ideas that God is irrelevant in these things, and so not making it clear how the lordship of Christ applies to all the things.

A different approach to Christian education is a dualistic one. And so you have a sacred-secular divide. And in maybe a way where it is more necessary, so in Bible colleges or seminaries where there is a specific focus on theology proper, on being a pastor, on learning how to read God’s word. But even there, keeping those things in isolation, apart from how God’s word applies in all the different spheres — or even training up pastors to then equip the saints for the ministry. Well, what does that look like? And so a lot of those colleges have a difficult time understanding that, and even living that out.

Sean Yeah.

Philip And so you have those two different approaches, whether it’s compromised Christian education or dualistic Christian education.

And the third approach is one that is maybe one that we like a lot more, but it’s still not what we want. And so I call it — we call it — a typological Christian education.

And any kind of education from a Christian worldview that we see today that is doing good things, productively good things — they are building, they are spreading a good message, a good worldview that we want to see spread — are still typological in their underpinnings. So whether it’s Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, or Reformed covenantal theologians. And of those three, maybe we would like the first two less. But they all do have a typological theology that is demonstrated in the way they read the word and the world.

So everything is looked at through a symbolic lens. And so symbolism is at that highest echelon of higher education. And so you have this in extremes, and then you have this played out in different ways as well. And so usually the people who don’t like toying with, or maybe don’t like jumping into, symbolism right away aren’t invited to those tables. They are laughed at, or just dismissed altogether.

Sean Yeah. So we could name names for all three categories, I think.

Philip Okay.

Sean Not — again, we’re actually not trying to be any of them, so it’s naming names not to disparage necessarily, but at least to distinguish.

So, you could go as far back as Harvard and Yale, which would be in that first category of compromised Christian education places. Now they don’t even say that they’re Christian. I mean, I suppose another option for that could be apostasy.

Philip Right. Yeah.

Sean So if they compromise so far that they actually give up Christ, like Harvard and Yale. But there are — I think even locally, Seattle Pacific University, that was supposed to be a Christian university or college kind of thing, and to my knowledge they barely have anything Christian remaining.

Philip Right.

Sean In the second category, you definitely have — I would say schools like Liberty University, Cedarville College. I would really include The Master’s University in that as well, where there’s a commitment to spiritual things. They are committed to the sacred-secular divide. And so, still, pastors, missionaries, full-time vocational people, they’re doing — however you want to describe it — a better kind of work. A kind of work that God is more pleased with.

So all those universities. I mean, I went to Liberty University back in the day. And —

Philip You were kicked out, right?

Sean Well, I left quietly.

Philip Okay.

Sean I tried to get in trouble. I mean, I got in a little trouble.

But, you know, Jerry Falwell — he was a Baptist. He was committed to educating champions for Christ in all kinds of vocations. And he didn’t really connect it to Reformation vocation, like Martin Luther and shoemakers or whatever. It definitely was not Calvinistic; that’s part of the reason I got into trouble, was it was an Arminian school. But for whatever reason, he — at least inconsistent with his teaching, his theology — he recognized that there should be Christians doing all kinds of things: politics, accounting, other business things, or even sports.

So Liberty cared about all those things, but still the religion department was the important department.

And I’d say the same thing about The Master’s University. Again, not just seminary. There’s a place to teach people how to study the Bible explicitly and get their theology down. But even as you were saying, teaching pastors how to study the Bible should actually include pastors realizing that the Bible says not everybody else is supposed to be a teacher. So a pastor who really understands his Bible, and knows what’s important about the Bible, should be able to recognize that most of the other people he’s teaching and shepherding should not become Bible teachers. Talking about the Bible at home with their family, that’s one thing — but that’s not what a lot of dualistic, Baptist-y kind of schools are aiming at. They’re aiming to get everybody to be a Bible study leader, if not a pastor. Or to recognize that the pastors are the most spiritual ones.

Philip To kiss that ring.

Sean Yeah. And I love — I really do — John MacArthur, and what God has done in my life through MacArthur’s ministry. But it’s very dualistic, and the spiritual things are the more important things. And even as a school, though they have other departments, the people in them are still kind of either directly or mostly indirectly educated that their work is not as important.

And then that third group, the typological group — all of which are some sort of reading the Bible typologically, happy to see figures and metaphors, and looking for ways to not take things literally. And —

Philip Put on a bulletproof vest now.

Sean Yeah.

Philip You’ve said that word.

Sean Yeah. But they are committed. It’s like a pair of glasses that you must wear to read what they say accurately, where the thing that you read in the verse doesn’t mean what it says. And you’ve got to read it like that, because it’s pointing to something else altogether. Whether it’s something else on earth, or something else still in heaven, they are not as careful, and it’s much more of a poetic reading than it is “it is what it says it is.”

Philip Right, exactly. And so, some examples of that third category, you said?

Sean Yeah. I mean, we really do love — we have a variety of students from our K–12 school, and homeschoolers even, that we would encourage to consider New Saint Andrews in Moscow. And didn’t we have a whole podcast episode on the Doug?

Philip We did.

Sean And our appreciation for what we get from him. So New Saint Andrews would be the closest one to us that is committed to that covenantal, capital C Covenantal, typological sort of reading of the world — and including reading of Scripture.

Philip Right. And I kind of throw in Catholic and Eastern Orthodox groups there just because I do think there’s somewhat — and maybe it’s just new to me — but somewhat of a resurgence with classical education in those groups as well.

And so even some of the work that Jordan Peterson is doing with his maybe co-belligerents in Catholic and Eastern Orthodox groups. And so the higher education that they’re trying to promote has a lot — it’s like thick symbolism.

Sean Rod Dreher in The Benedict Option. And I don’t actually know where he’s at, but I know he’s Eastern Orthodox.

Philip That’s right, yeah.

Sean And he’s way in favor of classical education. Even Anthony Esolen is a Catholic, and he has a lot of really good thoughts —

Philip Right.

Sean — on culture, worldview, sorts of things. But he’s committed Catholic, and is encouraging classical education, but again with a built-in sort of problem.

Philip Right, exactly. And so, as this stuff is getting rebuilt, refound, rediscovered — of those three types, the compromised, dualistic, or the typological, it is the typological, I think, who have much more substance maybe going for them. But that is being unfettered; it’s being released not just from a Reformed Protestant approach, but also with Catholics and Orthodox. All of which is underpinned with that typological approach. And maybe that is also on a spectrum of, you know, brothy soup versus thick stew, of how that is played out.

Sean Yeah, you had an interaction with one of the professors at NSA on Twitter related to typology, where the thing is not sufficient as the thing.

Philip Right.

Sean Was that about the bread and the wine itself?

Philip Yeah, the bread was in there. So, Dr. Joe Rigney. Which, the stuff I’ve read from him, super helpful, super good.

Sean Literally wrote The Things of Earth.

Philip The Things of Earth, yes. His book is called The Things of Earth. And even in person, the little interaction I had with him, like at the Grace Agenda — very pleasant guy. He is likable. I like him.

But he had a Twitter post. He reposted somebody else who was talking about reading things typologically. And this is Joe Rigney’s tweet. He said: “So true, and they do so because the main way the Old Testament authors read history is typologically. Typology is a biblical approach to reality and history before it’s a way of reading texts.”

So that was his tweet. And so he’s saying that typology — he sees Old Testament authors reading history that way, and then New Testament authors reading Old Testament authors typologically also. And so we ought to be reading the Bible, and reality, and history, he says here, typologically.

And so I had then quote tweeted him, and I said: “I’ve learned much from Joe Rigney’s insights in The Things of Earth. He’s helped me build a deeper appreciation of God’s glory in creation and history. It’s precisely those Kuyperian roots that have equipped me to reject a primarily typological reading of Scripture and history.”

And so then it was a long thread that I had said there, about all that, that he ended up responding to. We went back and forth. And I had asked some more questions, and he ended it. I don’t know — to me the whole thing was a big circular argument. But that might be —

Sean Actually, it’s just typological.

Philip Yeah.

Sean I’m joking.

Philip So after all my questions and answers, he said: “Scripture is like the grammar textbook for reading God’s world. Biblical authors read the world typologically and wrote their text typologically; we read them and learn how to read both the Scriptures and the world.”

And so he basically ended with the same thing that he started with — which is kind of what typology does for you.

Sean Yeah, where type is not the end. A type means that you look at this thing and you’re supposed to think about something else, somewhere else, or at a future time.

Hence why things in the Old Testament — you read history typologically, meaning that they’re pointing to another thing, and another thing in the New Testament. And claiming that the New Testament writers were reading it that way as well means that the things of earth are pointing somewhere else.

It’s kind of Platonic, like the Platonic forms, where your wife is only kind of a fuzzy picture of the perfect wife, the form of the perfect wife somewhere else. And your wife is kind of a part, or a partial reflection, of that. So I guess you can appreciate your imperfect, little-in-substance thing, but there’s a way in which you’d always be disappointed.

Philip Right.

Sean Because it’s not the perfect form, that is always somewhere else.

Philip Right.

Sean And the typological reading has a similar part in it. Which — I have really tried to figure out, then, when do we get to have the end of something? Because isn’t it just endless? Why is the next thing not just another type —

Philip Right.

Sean — of another type? It’s turtles and types all the way down.

And why does eternal life — why is that not a type? Why is my justification before God not a type of something else? If Israel and land — and these are just two nitty-gritty readings of the Old Testament into the New Testament — if God’s promise to Abraham of a certain part of land does not mean that land, then why does anywhere mean anything now? Why isn’t that just a type of something else? And you never then actually get to bite down on something.

Philip Right.

Sean It’s always just my mouth open, waiting for the next thing to come. And wine never gets to be enjoyed as wine.

Philip Right.

Sean Bread never gets to be enjoyed as bread. It’s always got to be for something else.

Philip Right, exactly. And so, reading reality and Scripture through that typological lens — I do think, in a big sense, insults God’s both creative and redemptive work. The way God creates, the way God redeems, is for that thing itself. And it seems like even that is Rigney’s big point in The Things of Earth.

Sean Yeah. That’s what I thought it was.

Philip God cares about the things of earth, and we ought to as well.

Sean Now, post Things of Earth, he did switch camps from Baptist to Presbyterian.

Philip Right, correct.

Sean So he has embraced a covenantal — I don’t know if he wants a covenantal hermeneutic — a new way of reading, to be able to see more that’s there.

Philip Right. Well, I think he was always covenantal Baptist.

Sean Okay. Like —

Philip Reformed Baptist. He wasn’t dispensational, at least.

Sean Not everybody’s perfect.

Philip That’s right.

And so I tell him there, in that tweet, that if Rigney’s correct about God’s interest in the creative world — which I believe he is — then a proper reading of Scripture and history is one that is weighty, earthy, thick, and full of flavor. A tapestry connecting the past and future of Christ’s redemptive plan on earth. A primarily typological account of Scripture and history gives way to dualism, where when we spiritualize earthly realities as primarily typology, we make them irrelevant.

And so, like what you’re saying regarding my wife or anything else: if I’m always looking at the thing of earth as a type, then I have to always see through it to the antitype — which then makes this thing irrelevant, for when the thing itself arrives, the shadow is not needed anymore.

Sean So, unlike the Mosaic covenant, which explicitly said this is a shadow, these are types, that are fulfilled in Christ. Okay, well, we don’t actually need those sacrifices anymore.

Philip That’s why they’re gone.

Sean Well, yeah. The better temple is here. The better sacrifice, the final sacrifice, is here.

So it’s not denying that there are any types. Because there are clearly things that are identified as types, and then shown, when the antitype comes, the fulfillment comes, the substance instead of the shadow — for sure, then you don’t need the type any longer.

But it’s right on the edge of seeming like it’s making everything a type.

Philip Right.

Sean And nothing is the end.

Like, on the creative side, in Genesis 1, when God says it’s good six times — no, none of those times does it say, “and God saw what he had made, and it was good for something else.”

Philip Right.

Sean The sentence ends with “it was good,” period. That thing he made, he saw, it was good. Boom. Receive it as good. That’s what you need.

Philip Right.

Sean So on the creative side, we’re basically saying, no, it’s not good — or it’s only a partial good, unless you get the perfect one, or the completed one, or whatever it might be. If all those things are merely typological.

And again, with the salvation part. Like I said, well, how do I know that Christ’s resurrection and his new glorified body isn’t a type of something else that’s still to come?

Philip Right.

Sean If nothing gets to be what it is, then we’re always waiting. And so, I know that those guys don’t say that. But what I haven’t yet heard is them giving the key to know how they got to decide, oh no, now we know that this one is done.

Philip Right. Where are the brakes?

Sean Yeah.

Philip Well, and there are people in those camps who do drive the car off the cliff. So you do have the Lesbyterians, right? Who come out of a covenantal approach to reading the Bible, where they’re able to see symbolism where it’s not there, to the extreme, and make certain passages of Scripture irrelevant, or interpreted in a way that is convenient for what they’re trying to push.

Or then you do have even kind of full preterists. Even some of the stuff that Gary DeMar has been talking about — and even people within his own camp are drawing strict lines on heresy for him, asking straight questions to find out if he’s on the other side of orthodoxy.

Sean Yeah. Jesus doesn’t have to come back again, because he already came back.

Philip Right, exactly.

Sean But he came back not physically.

Philip Right. I had to see it symbolically in order to understand it that way.

Sean Right.

Yeah, there are definitely Baptist-y, dispensational-y people who have walked away from their profession of faith. But very rarely do dispensationalists, in the name of dispensationalism, become liberals.

Philip Right.

Sean Because it’s more concrete, I guess. So they might deny it. They might switch from one concrete to another. But they don’t then turn it all into mushy liberal symbol.

Philip Right. So this kind of — and I think Rigney called it a typology-first approach, where the first thing you see is typology. So this typological hermeneutic, it hazes the things of earth away. It makes them fuzzy, irrelevant. It makes them less concrete, less real. It’s all allegory, it’s all typology, it’s all pointing to something else. It’s this kind of spiritual reality.

Sean Yeah, ironically, especially with a Rigney or NSA, they do have a really fruitful — if inconsistent — worldview or lifestyle, because they are enjoying the things of earth, and they are studying the great books, or whatever subject it is. They are actually having fruitful families, and fruitful worship, recovery of liturgy and worship, and those things are good. But it still smacks of inconsistency with that seed of “it’s all a type.”

Philip Right, exactly right. And so yeah, it’s that kind of pleasant inconsistency for us. We like what we’re seeing.

And so, being able to enjoy that glass of wine, that bread, that cheese — and still thinking that it’s not real, meaning that it’s not the end, it’s a type of something else.

It’s kind of like — I don’t know if you’ve seen The Matrix?

Sean Yeah.

Philip Yeah, so the Matrix character — I forget his name — who knew that they were in this computer-synthesized world, and then saw the real world and was in despair, and decided that he would rather live in this fake world and enjoy this steak even though he knows it’s fake.

Right. So it ends up being that kind of approach, where you can enjoy the steak, but you do know that it’s fake. It’s not real, it’s not substantive.

Sean Is this the first sign that our podcast is going woke, now that we were, like, exegeting The Matrix?

Philip That’s right.

Sean That’s how you know.

Philip I’m saying this is an example.

Sean I think it’s a good example. I agree.

Philip And so, what we really want — we do not want to be skeptics, and we are not intending to sneer, or to condemn from the outside somebody who’s in the battle, who’s doing the work, right? They’re doing good work. And we like the results of the work. And what we want is for those results to be maximized, and to outlive the generation that is currently doing it.

And so, to be able to see that enjoyment, a life of faith, throughout generations requires more consistency. It requires consistency at a fundamental level, a worldview that aligns those things, that you can actually teach to the next generations, that can then carry it further, where they don’t need to try to see how these things apply inconsistently. They’re able to be unfettered to enjoy the things of earth — because the fundamentals make sense, because the fundamentals align.

And so, what we’re trying to do even at Comeford. And again, we don’t actually see this being done anywhere else.

Sean Yeah.

Philip I have not come across a Christian higher education institution that is taking God’s word for what it says, and receiving God’s world for what it is. When God says this is good, period — and to be able to receive that from God for the purpose which God intended it for. And each thing has a different purpose, all culminating in the glory of Christ, all culminating in the glory of God. But as that plays out in different spheres with different ends, it doesn’t all have to keep looking to the antitype every time for us to then be able to say that this thing is good.

Sean Yeah. So, one sphere where this applies, out of the education sphere, goes into the work sphere, and what a man’s vocation is. Well, what is it that makes a man’s work valuable? When does it become valuable?

And lots of Christians in our group have been told that what makes their work valuable is when it accomplishes something else in addition to the actual work. Whether their work is making a product or their work is offering a service, the value comes when then they tell somebody the gospel. When they’ve done their work in such a way that earns them a platform to evangelize.

But your work is not really valuable in and of itself until there’s the more, until there’s the spiritual part brought in; until there is the “I made enough money so I can support a missionary”; until I can do the actual personal evangelism to the customer, or to the boss, or to whoever else.

As opposed to: the core of the work is a thing that God says is good. You’re an image bearer. So, be fruitful, take dominion, subdue the earth, bless other people with whatever you’re making or whatever you’re doing — and that is good.

And that is both, I would think, liberating, in terms of, okay, finally I don’t have to be a pastor to be fully pleasing to God — number one, should be liberating — and it should also then increase my thankfulness for what everybody else is doing, and all the value that they’re bringing, without, again, at all needing to have some spiritual assignment for it to be any good.

Philip Right. And it’s liberating, and it’s also harnessing — like, it puts you in the harness to get to work. Like, well, God actually cares about this thing that you’re doing. You don’t get to approach the work haphazardly, not caring. God is here, God is watching, God is caring, and so you ought to care as well. So it liberates you to care, and it also binds you to care, in the way that, well, this thing is actually important.

Sean Yeah. It turns out — whereas I thought, however long ago, when I finally started to come through this door, I thought it would be exciting to everybody. And using the word harness — it has actually been, enough smart people recognized it as a burden, and they’re like, well, actually, I prefer for God to care about my Bible reading time and not about my work time. Let that either be neutral, or let that be mine. God cares about how I’m spending my other time, so let me feel mildly guilty that my quiet time wasn’t long enough — not guilty that my eight-hour shift wasn’t all done for him, like he’s going to be pleased with that.

Philip Right.

Sean And it is a liberating harness. Are we allowed to have that paradox?

Philip Is it consistent?

Sean As long as it’s not a type.

Philip That’s right.

Well, and so that is, I think, another level to the dualism — or whatever word you want to call it; some people don’t like that word — but where you are elevating these spiritual works above the material, the physical works, in order to mask your laziness, or in order to mask even your sin.

Sean Yeah.

Philip “I don’t really want to care for these things, and so I’m going to say that they don’t matter.” I think a lot of pastor dads approach being a dad that way, being a husband that way. Like, my work in studying the Bible and preparing for church is more important than my work as a father or a husband, and therefore I’m going to be practically negligent. I’m going to be absent, or dismiss myself from being bothered.

Sean In the name of doing the important thing.

Philip And so that is not just an issue of paradigm-shifting dualism, but an issue of repentance. Not just repentance that needs to change your mind, but repentance that brings you to work, to care about the place that God has you in, to love the thing that God has put in front of you. Which is much more difficult than just being persuaded rationally about the issue.

Sean Yeah. So, your three: reading the Bible, reading history, and reading reality. So we’re still working on an adjective that you like for that.

Philip We are, yes. And yeah, dispensationalism — I’m fine with the word, I think it doesn’t cover enough ground. I think it’s only talking about one part of what we’re trying to talk about. Apart from any kind of — I mean, I’m not too concerned, I guess, about baggage, in the sense that I think if the word is correct, the baggage has to just fall off.

But the root here is some sort of contextual hermeneutic, right? The way you read the word and the world is fitted. It’s in the contextual purpose that God has assigned to this thing. When God says it is good, it is good for this reason.

Like, what is pie good for? Pie is good for man to enjoy it. That is the contextual purpose of pie. And so I am glorifying God by enjoying this slice of pie. And that’s the end of it, right?

Sean Yeah, without me feeling bad that I am not saying to the person at the table next to me, “You know that if you eat that pie but you don’t believe in Jesus, you’re going to hell.”

Philip Right, exactly right. Yes. So, the waiter gives you the pie, you say thank you, and God is honored in that moment.

And so in Scripture, it looks like a literal, grammatical, historical hermeneutic — which again is usually dismissed in these higher education rooms.

Sean Yeah.

Philip Dismissed in different ways: either scoffed at, because, oh, you think you’re the literal ones; or dismissed in the sense that you’re just wrong.

Sean Yeah.

Philip So, in Scripture, reading the Bible, reading the word for what it says. And so that looks like understanding Israel as Israel, right? That looks like understanding the church as the church. That looks like reading the verses and taking them for what they are. That looks like observation, interpretation, and application, in that order — not observation, and then putting in a typological application, and then having that drive your interpretation. Those things ought to be in that order for you then to be able to read the Bible for what God has intended it to be.

And we do see the New Testament authors — I think this is part of what Rigney was getting at — New Testament authors applying Old Testament verses to a different context or situation. But they’re not reinterpreting it. They are taking whatever that verse was, they’re leaving the interpretation for what it is, and then applying it to this situation. And a lot of the time we read these New Testament authors and we think that they are reinterpreting the verse. And that’s an important distinction to make, in order then for us to read the Bible for what it says.

I mean, God says over and over again, my promises to Israel — the sun and the moon will pass away before my word fails, right?

Sean The sun doesn’t mean the sun. That’s right. It’s all typological.

Philip Well, and then — yeah, you’ve had this point, that the answer in Romans 8 about what is our confidence regarding God finishing the work he’s doing in us leads into Romans 9 through 11, about God’s work still not being done with Israel.

Sean Yeah.

Philip And so it has direct application to us remaining steadfast in believing God’s promises for us as well.

Sean Yeah. Why would I believe that nothing can separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, if then Israel can be separated from the covenant promises that God gave them?

Philip Right.

Sean So — and, yeah, okay, well, each and every individual Israelite who has ever lived has actually not been promised that. So not all Israel is Israel. But that doesn’t mean that then the rest of Israel are Gentiles.

Philip Right. But some Israel is Israel.

Sean Yeah. Just because not all Israel is Israel doesn’t mean some are not. Or that they’ve turned into, again, Gentiles.

Philip Right, exactly.

And so, that’s in Scripture. Then, an approach to history is an appreciation and study of God’s unfolding plan for his glory in history.

And I think this is an important distinction, because even a covenantal approach reads history with the redemptive arc always there. And so they are unable to separate the reading of history fully or completely, without every point then driving to God’s redemptive plan in history — where we believe that God’s glory is manifest in history. Ultimately, yes, as it unfolds in God’s redemptive plan, but there are also a lot more things happening and going on that God is getting the glory for in those historical contexts. And we’re able to read and appreciate those things for the end of God’s glory.

And so that overarching story, the plot that we’re seeing in history, is God’s glory as that is manifest. And ultimately we see that in God being a covenant-keeping God, God fulfilling his promises and how that is worked out in history. But again, we’re wanting to read and understand and appreciate God’s sovereignty over history as it relates to his glory — as opposed to everything having to point directly to Jesus.

Sean Yeah, like most of our postmil brothers, they like to emphasize in the Great Commission to go out into all the world and make disciples of all the nations. But they are actually the ones who say nations don’t matter, because what actually is important is the church.

Philip Right.

Sean But okay, well, actually both of them matter. The church matters and the nations matter. But when you kind of flatten it all down into one, it is inconsistent to say that God’s whole point is the church, but we’re discipling all the nations. One of them has to be figurative in the covenantal framework.

Philip Right.

Sean And we actually say, well, actually, it’s both. Because both are talked about.

Philip Right.

Sean And we think both.

Philip Right. And there are characters in God’s story that arise and fall and play a specific role for that moment, for that context, and then God continues to write that story. And so we want to read and appreciate how God raises those people up, how he tears them down, how he moves the story forward. And there is much more happening, again, than just that redemptive arc that we’re wanting to appreciate and study.

And then the third is in the realm of reality. So, what is real? We want to promote a delightful and intimate study of, and participation in, the works of reality.

So when we’re looking at God’s world, what he has created and how we ought to interact with that world — whether that’s in science, whether that is in art, whether that is in industry and enterprise, whatever our involvement is there — we want that study and participation to be delightful. We are enjoying the things of earth. And in a way that is intimate, that is not removed from these things, but that is intimately involved; we are close, we care for that actual thing.

And so I do think that our finite nature makes that much more difficult for us, because we want to care for a lot of things at once, and we end up having to limit ourselves to focus on what we’re able to — where God can infinitely care for everything intimately, right? His care for the thing is intimate.

And so even in the Psalms — I think it’s Psalm 8 — when the psalmist says that God created the heavens, the stars and the moon, with his fingers. It is an image of this intimate care. The psalmist could have said “with his hands.” But he pointed to this kind of finger work that is much more meticulous, detailed, intimate in that way.

And so our approach to working in God’s world and delighting in reality ought to be that level of intimacy. When a mom makes a sandwich for her kids, she ought to be loving that moment, as opposed to, she can’t wait until this moment is past her.

Sean When she can do the Bible lesson with the kids.

Philip Right, yes.

When a business owner is having to dissect his systemic problems for why the product isn’t flowing correctly, we want him to be able to focus on and hone in on that work, those details that he needs to be able to uncover, unravel, and straighten out — as opposed to begrudging that moment and not being able to wait to get out of it.

Same with the kind of people we want to raise up in the fields of science, in the field of art. All of that work takes a certain sense of focus, a certain kind of slowing down, in order to care for the thing itself. To study, to learn, to create takes that kind of intimate care.

Sean Well, that’s one reason why — I forget what number it was, when we were talking about the books that we really liked — but Robert Capon, and The Supper of the Lamb in particular. Whether it’s about the onion, or his quote about: who was the guy who first looked at cat guts long enough to know that they could make strings for some sort of stringed instrument?

Philip Right.

Sean Capon actually, at least in that book, does a fantastic job of saying, just look at what’s there.

Philip Right.

Sean Look at all of the glories and the beauties, and even to some extent the absurdity, of what God made and God likes. Because he keeps on making it happen. And we are too quick to make it into something else.

Philip Right. And I mean, anybody who has done any work preparing something to serve to other people sees the disproportionate amount of time and attention it takes to prepare that thing versus to consume it.

So, a preacher doing the work to study and prepare for his sermon that people sleep through. Or even if they don’t sleep through it, they listen to it for forty, fifty minutes, or even less, and then they move on to the next thing — where he has invested so much more care, a disproportionate amount of care, into creating it.

Somebody preparing a dinner to serve to other people invests a lot more time into the preparation, into the work, than it takes for the people to eat it. Especially if it’s kids, who then hurry off to the next activity.

And so, to know that God cares for the thing, again, liberates us to care for that thing as well. It’s not about me receiving a proportionate amount of gratitude or attention from this audience of mine, or from these people that I’m trying to serve. It’s knowing that I walk before God. God cares about my work, God cares about this real world, and I’m able to invest and delight in this intimate time that I spend doing the work, knowing that God is glorified in my work there.

Sean Yeah. So, this is a principle of reading — a principle, like you said, of Scripture, history, and reality — that we are trying to emphasize as a church, is one that in particular we think requires practice. It requires equipping and training to actually get the simple idea and then live it out.

Philip Right.

Sean Which is a reason for something like Comeford College. Because there aren’t any others that we know about. There aren’t these other training places that are helping Christians get down to the nitty-gritty of what is good in all the places around them — in all the broad spheres, but then into all of the corners, and onto all of the dinner plates and dinner tables and things like that.

We are really trying to figure out how to best equip young people, and older people who are wanting it as well. Try to figure out how to help them have this sort of receiving-the-blessings-and-being-blessed-by-that mindset.

Philip Right. That’s right. To care for the thing.

So there you have it. That’s what we’re trying to build.

Sean Now, we’re almost at a year.

Philip We are — well, yes. I think we are at a year.

Sean November.

Philip Yeah, November would have been the first one.

Sean Okay.

Philip Yeah.

Sean We made it.

Philip We did. So we cared enough to make it a year.

Sean Yeah.

Philip So, on to the next year. There you go.