Beeson Podcast, Episode #740 Dr. Jonathan Linebaugh Date >>Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University. Now your host, Doug Sweeney. >>Doug Sweeney: Welcome to the Beeson Podcast. I'm your host, Doug Sweeney, and I'm joined today by Professor Jonathan Linebaugh who holds the Anglican Chair of Divinity at Beeson and runs our Institute of Anglican Studies as well. He has a new book out entitled, The Well That Washes What It Shows, An Invitation to Holy Scripture. We want you to hear all about it and we want to learn a thing or two about Dr. Linebaugh himself and his work with our students. So, thank you, Jonanthan, for being with us today. >>Linebaugh: It's great to be here. Thanks so much. >>Doug Sweeney: You have been on the podcast before, but just for the benefit of those who didn't hear you last time, can you tell us just a little bit about your background as a follower of Christ, and then how it is that the Lord brought you to Beeson Divinity School. >>Linebaugh: Yeah, I'd love to. So, I've been at Beeson now for three full years. I'm entering my fourth year. I moved here in 2022 with my family. That's my wife, Megan, and our three children, Liam, Callie, and Anna, who are about to be 18, 16, and 14, which is hard to believe. Makes it feel like we've been at Beeson for a little while, if that's their ages. Before here, we were spending almost a decade in the UK. I did some doctoral work there at Durham University, and then I was a professor for seven years at the University of Cambridge. And in many ways, how I came to Beeson is recognizing what I loved about that particular setting and vocation, doing research, studying Scripture, teaching it, but also recognizing some disconnects between my ministerial, my pastoral calling, to want to be able to do theology with and for the Church, to be able to think through the truths of Holy Scripture in a way that actually explored and proclaimed good news, to have worn out weary, hurting human beings. And we got to do a lot of the ideas and the history and the languages at Cambridge, but we didn't get to do a lot of the preaching, pastoral care, training, forming pastors, worshiping together. And Beeson has just been a wonderful opportunity to come and continue doing some of the research, some of the study, but do it in for the church with students preparing for ministry in a way that really brings the pastoral dynamics of theology, which is what I think is fundamental, our worship, our praise, our proclamation, our prayer, and then the academic stuff which I think is in service to that. I think at its best academic theology serves the church by helping our worship of God and our proclamation of the gospel be faithful. >>Doug Sweeney: Wonderful. Well, we sure are grateful to God that he brought you here. You've been a wonderful blessing and addition to Beeson Divinity School and Birmingham, Alabama as well, so thank you. Let's dive in by talking first about your new book, The Well That Washes What It Shows. We only have a little while to talk about it, so maybe we can just start by asking, what is this book about and what are you trying mainly to accomplish in the book? >>Linebaugh: Yeah. So, I think the subtitle of the book, An Invitation to Holy Scripture, really tells you what it is. The book very much is an overview and an introduction to the Bible. And there's three chapters on the Old Testament, the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings. There's three chapters on the New Testament, the Gospels, Letters of Paul, and Hebrews to Revelation. There's a chapter on patterns of reading and patterns of ministering and being ministered to by the Word. So, that's what's in the book. It's, I hope, accessible. It has students and church groups and pastors as its hoped-for audience. And it's about 200 pages, so it's not that long. And it does that. The other thing I'd say about the book, though, is the origins of it were some lectures I gave to people who were training to be chaplains. They were Olympic athletes who were training to be Olympic chaplains. And because of that, it meant that from the beginning, there was a kind of pastoral set of questions and a pastoral goal through the whole thing. And I think, I hope, that tone is present throughout. So, it's accessible in short, it's an overview of the whole Bible and it's pastoral throughout. And I hope in that way it makes some small, distinct contribution. I definitely didn't write it to be something to do instead of reading the Bible. I hope it's very much a way to invite people into a deeper or maybe a fresh or maybe a first-time relationship with the gift that is God's living and active word. >>Doug Sweeney: All right, so I think you just answered the question I was going to ask you by way of follow-up, what was that pastoral goal in sort of beyond just telling people what's in the Bible? >>Linebaugh: Yeah, well, there's two things I'd want to say. One is reflected in the title, and I'll come back to that in a second. The other thing is I've been really encouraged. Some of the groups that were given advanced copies of this and asked to read it and make comments on it have been pastors and different Christian traditions, and I've received some encouraging feedback. They also helped the book be more accessible and clearer and pastoral. So, I received a lot of gifts during that process. But one of the really encouraging things is pastors have told me they found three groups of people that they felt the book was really helpful for. One was Christians who know and love the Bible and wanted to go deeper into it. And they found themselves saying, this is a book you might consider reading. Then other people were people who were newer to the Bible. Maybe they were newer to the church, maybe they were newer to Christianity. But for whatever reason, they hadn't spent lots of time reading the Word and they found this was a nice introduction to it. But the third group, and this captures something about the pastoral purpose, was people who have a conflicted and complicated relationship with the Bible, for whatever reason, it could be their own church background or their family background or experiences they've had, but there's skepticism about fear in relationship to confusion or even boredom about what's in Holy Scripture. And what I try to show in this book from beginning to end is that what happens when we open Holy Scripture is that the living and loving God speaks. And when this God speaks, he speaks to do two things. And this is what's reflected in the title, The Well That Washes What It Shows. It's a line from a poem by George Herbert, who was a 17th century pastor in England, and he wrote a poem about the Bible called Holy Scripture. And in it, he describes scripture as a well, and then he says, through that well, God does two things; God shows, God reveals, unearths, tells us the truth about our need. God shows us our bondage, our sin, our death. God loves us enough to speak louder than the lies that distract us from our need and to say, you need a Savior. So, God's Word shows, but God's Word finally, fundamentally, is a Word that washes. It shows us our need, but it meets our need by giving us Jesus. It shows us our sin, but ministers forgiveness. It shows us our captivity but sets the captive free. It shows us our death but raises the dead. And it's really that pattern that I both try to trace all throughout the book, and it's that I try to encourage all Christians and ministers to see is what it means to be a minister of the Word, to participate in God's work and God's Word as it both diagnoses and delivers by showing us we need Jesus and giving us Jesus. >>Doug Sweeney: That's great, The Well That Washes What It Shows. We want to say that enough so that title will stick with our listeners. It helps to know it comes from a poem, but we want to say it a lot too, The Well That Washes What It Shows. So is this the first time for you, I mean you're an expert in the New Testament, you're also an expert in the English Reformation, you're especially interested in the letters of Paul in the New Testament. Those are pretty specific aspects of theological studies where you've really dug deep. Is this the first book you've done that's a little bit broader and aimed at a large group of church people? >>Linebaugh: I think that's fair. It's interesting to reflect on it. I definitely think in terms of who this book is accessible for, who I hope will read it. It's a much wider audience than I've ever written for before. Most of my other writing have been part of ongoing conversations that people who have similar jobs to me do. What I did notice writing this though, and I was encouraged by this, so this reflects some of my broader preaching, some of my broader teaching, both in the church and the academy. You always teach more broadly than you research and write. And so, my teaching feels like it's informed this book. My preaching feels like it's informed this book. But the other thing I really did notice is that a lot of what I've done in my more scholarly research on the letters of Paul or the way the Protestant Reformation read and received the letters of Paul, a lot of those same themes that I explored in depth there are the themes that I was attentive to and explored and wanted to emphasize in this book. So, they feel very closely related. I've come to believe I couldn't have written this book, whatever its weaknesses and strengths are, but I couldn't have written this if I hadn't spent those years studying those other things and writing those other things. So, in many ways they're the kind of streams that flow into this as it both zooms out and looks at the whole canon of Holy Scripture and also zooms out and hopes to provide some small gift to the whole church. >>Doug Sweeney: What about the writing of it? Did you find it harder to write this book than to write your more technical New Testament scholarship or easier to write this book? >>Linebaugh: If it's one or the other, then it was probably harder. And I think that's because I've done it less. And to try to find what's my more natural teaching voice, but on the page, was just harder than I thought. What happened was I gave that first set of lectures to these Olympic athletes, but I didn't do it from a manuscript, so I hadn't written anything. I had outlines and notes. So, I sort of knew the shape. I knew the basic content, but I didn't have it at the level of the sentences or the words. But it felt less like having a blank canvas and starting a painting, which is how I've done my other writing. It felt more like I had a pretty rough lump of clay, and I was trying to sculpt it, but not into my scholarly voice, but into the voice I use when I talk to people and when I teach to church groups or undergraduates. And it was a first time trying to write in that form, and you start realizing that some of the things we do as scholars are, they make life easier when you don't have to translate a term, or you can not say exactly what you think because you're going to have three footnotes that say, but don't forget this and don't forget that. But here it's, you know, I want to say what I think, and I want to say it so people can hear it because what I ultimately want is people to hear and to want to hear more what God is saying in Holy Scripture. And so, there was a kind of a clarity of purpose and a clarity of desired communication that made it harder, but also very rich and meaningful. So, I learned a lot writing this book. >>Doug Sweeney: So, I want to ask you a question about how you decide what you want to write about and when you want to write about and when you want to write about it. But let me get there by asking you, is it true that you decided to write this book because you were invited to give these talks to the athletes and that just, they just turned into a book eventually? >>Linebaugh: Yes, and in one sense, I think without that invitation, this book doesn't exist in this form at this time. Would I have come around to writing a book like this? Maybe, but there's definitely something in the mercy and the providence of God that invitations and occasions and things you've already done can naturally lead to something you're willing to do. So, there was something about looking for resources when I was doing those lectures and finding so many helpful things. There are great books written about the Bible, written about the prophets or proverbs or Hebrews or whatever it might be, and I learned so much from them and they informed this book. But I also thought a book that was short, an overview of the Bible, that traces this theme of God working to both show us our need and then wash it away in Jesus that's pastoral, that book doesn't exactly exist. And that's the thing I want to say to this group, so maybe that's the kind of thing that it would be meaningful to say. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah, that's great. So then just generally speaking, as somebody who's a, you know, a wonderful teacher, an avid writer, a minister, are you the kind of guy who has this long-range plan for all the things you'd like to write about someday or, or not? How do you decide what you're going to spend your writing time on? >>Linebaugh: Yeah. I'm not that kind of guy. I can be a bit of a dreamer and think about things I might want to write, and I've got a file with ideas and things that other people have, but I don't have a roadmap. And if I'm entirely honest, I often find what I'm researching, reading about and moving toward writing next, based on what my own honest questions are. I don't first think about audience. I first think about the kind of question that's keeping me up at night. And there's probably a sense in which there would be something more sanctified about thinking about audience at the same time. But I started doing it on this pastoral belief in hunch that if we can be honest about the questions, the pain, the confusion that's prompting our deepest questions, and we go to God's Word and the history of those who have read God's Word with those questions, that the kinds of things we're going to explore, the kinds of things the Bible gives us to say honestly in response finally compassionately and hopefully as answers to them are things that we all need to hear. So, there's something about the solidarity of the human condition and the universality of human need that kind of fuels this thing that if you can come and let your honest questions also be your scholarly questions, that what you’ll then wind up researching and writing about will go out, with some capacity, to be of help and hope for other human beings. >>Doug Sweeney: Wonderful, The Well That Washes What It Shows. All right, now we also want our listeners to learn a little bit about your role as the leader of our Institute of Anglican Studies. Lots of them already know that you are the leader of it. But for those who are new to all of this, maybe potential students listening in and trying to figure out what Dr. Linebaugh is like and that kind of thing, tell us just a little bit about what is the Institute of Anglican Studies at Beeson, and then I'll ask you a question about what's going on these days and what can people pay attention to. >>Linebaugh: Yeah, so at the most zoomed out level, the Institute of Anglican Studies, which takes place at Beeson Divinity School and is very much integrated into our life here, it exists to provide education both for Beeson students and beyond the walls of Beeson in the history, the theology, and the worship of the Anglican Christian tradition. So, we study the history of that tradition, we look at the Reformation, we look at how through the missionary movement and through the expansion of the British Empire, that tradition has spread all over the world. We look at its contemporary form. We're pushing 85 to 90 million people in the Anglican communion, and so that means paying attention to the ways there's commonality and difference, and we study that. And as we're doing it, one of the principal things we do here is students preparing for ministry, and especially the Anglican church in North America, the ACNA, do our Anglican certificate program, which means classes in the history, doctrine, and worship, means pastoral internships in a local ACNA church, and often ministry experiences in the summer. It means morning and evening prayer using the 2019 Book of Common Prayer. It means Anglican fellowship lunches once a month. It's that kind of thing. We have these rhythms of life together that are not separate from life of the whole Beeson community but are also this this meaningful fellowship of Anglican students of worship, fellowship, and education. >>Doug Sweeney: That's wonderful. For those who know a little bit more than might be typical among podcast listeners and want to get a feel for, so what's the Anglican community like at Beeson and how is it similar to and different from the Anglican communities at some of the other seminaries out there, you know, how do you want them to understand that? >>Linebaugh: Well, I'd say a couple things. One thing to do is just to give some sense of our rhythms of life together. So, the overall structure of say a given week is the Beeson structure. These students are in the same Greek classes and Hebrew classes and introduction to the New Testament and history and doctrine in the medieval church and the modern church as any other students. They're going on Tuesday to community worship with the whole Beeson community. They're going Tuesday for lunch with the whole Beeson community. But then there's also things that we invite all students to do, but the Anglican students are committed to being part of. So today at 7.15 a.m. in the chapel, the Anglican students gathered for morning prayer. About 25 of them were required to be there, and we had about 35 or so students. So, it's not just the Anglicans who come, but we gather, we worship. Yesterday we had an Anglican lunch. We had a speaker from Apostles Houston, which is an ACNA church in Texas, he's the rector there, come, introduce himself to the students, talk about ministry opportunities, got a chance to ask questions. Tomorrow, students who are doing the Anglican certificate will spend three hours in the afternoon, we're doing the Anglican history and doctrine class this semester, and tomorrow they'll be studying the reign of Henry the 8th. So, they'll be doing that. That's mostly Anglican certificate students, but we've probably got three or four students who just wanted to take it as an elective because they're interested. So, there's always this integrated into the Beeson community and a specific fellowship that's always a little bigger than just the Anglican students. In February, on the 23rd of February, we'll have our annual Reformation Anglicanism lecture. We've done these in the past. This year, the Bishop of North Africa, who's a Thomas Cranmer scholar named Ashley Knoll, will be here to speak on the influence of Augustine in the English Reformation. Over the summer, we went with 12 Beeson students to Cambridge, Oxford, and London and did a history of the English Reformation and Anglicanism after the Reformation. So, we have all these things going on, and what you, I think, see is a real community that's integrated into the whole community, is clear about its Anglican distinctives, is partnering with local ACNA churches, and is getting all the benefits of being at an interdenominational, academically rigorous, life together, in-person, Orthodox evangelical seminary. And it's really that combination of a seminary that's orthodox and reformational, a tradition that's orthodox, rooted in the Reformation and has expanded, happening at the same time, that I think makes Beeson such a special place to do this. I often tell students when they ask about the Anglican certificate, I say, it's great, and I'm going to tell you all about it, but one of the real gifts of doing the Anglican certificate at Beeson is you get to do it at Beeson, and it's what Beeson as a whole offers that makes the Anglican certificate even more special. You get everything you'd need in terms of worship, education formation, and community in a specifically Anglican context, but we get it in the context of all that Beeson has to offer, and I think that's a particular gift. >>Doug Sweeney: Sure is. All right, last question about the Institute. If somebody listening to us now is within driving distance of Beeson, but they're an active lay member of a church in town, but they're intrigued and some of these things might be fun for them to attend, are there some things that are open to the public and what would those things be? What can people come and experience with you? >>Linebaugh: Yeah, quite a few things that we do are open to the public. And if you go to the Beeson Divinity School website, there's a tab that takes you to the Institute of Anglican Studies and the various events we have are listed there, or you can just go straight to the events page at Beeson Divinity School, and the Anglican events will be mixed in with all the others. But you'll see morning prayer every Wednesday morning at 7:15. This is open to the public. We have students who have to be there, but people from the broader Sanford community often come. We have alumni who sometimes try to show up for that. Sometimes people from local Anglican churches show up, so that's wonderful. We do these monthly Anglican lunches. They're always on Tuesdays after chapel once a month, and those are open to the public. They're free of charge. The Reformation Anglican Lecture, which again is February 23rd from five to seven, is very much a for the Birmingham and beyond community. We invite Sanford and Beeson people to come, but that's very much a doors wide open, it's in the evening, it tries to be after work. That's an event we'd love to have people come to. So, all of these things are public, open to everyone events. Our classes, things like that, you have to either be a degree seeking student or a registered visitor, but I think as is always the case at Beeson, you're warmly invited to explore those opportunities too. But the worship, the morning prayer, the community lunches, and then the evening lecture would be really good places to start. >>Doug Sweeney: That's great. All right. So, the end of the interview is drawing nigh. I want to end by asking you how our listeners can be praying for you and the work of the Institute. But let me get there by asking, since we started talking about your new book, do you have another new book in your mind? What kind of writing project might be next for Dr. Linebaugh? >>Linebaugh: I appreciate that. In some ways, this book interrupted and sort of jumped the queue, the book that I was working on, supposed to be writing. And that's a book that's really on Galatians chapter 2 and Paul's strange phrase that “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live.” And I'm working on a book that looks at how wonderful, but how kind of weird that expression is, and then looks at different people in the history of church who have read it, people like Thomas Aquinas, who I think is helpful, but I think there's some limitations to his reading. And then Martin Luther's reading of it, which I think is, frankly, more helpful and helps us to hear the gospel Paul's announcing more clearly. And then I kind of come back around to Paul's confession, having listened to it with the history of interpretation and try to hear the gospel clearly. So that's the kind of big project that I'm actively working on that should have been done by now, but this book got in the way. >>Doug Sweeney: Yeah. Whoever is going to be your editor for that project is going to hear you say on the air, it should be done soon. So, our listeners want to be praying for you about that. But how else can they be praying, A, for Dr. Linebaugh, and B, for the Ministries of the Institute of Anglican Studies at Beeson Divinity School. >>Linebaugh: Let me start with the second one. I think we have, Beeson Divinity School has a large incoming class, and we've got some wonderful new Anglican students and I'm praying for them that they'll get integrated. Quite a few of them had moved to the area and getting integrated into the Birmingham area, finding local churches and getting plugged in is so important. And then we have students who are about to graduate. We've got multiple Anglican certificate students graduating in December. And I'm very much praying for them, finding ministry positions. Some are wondering, do they want to do further education. Some are in ordination processes. Some have been hired as youth pastors at a local church and they're not leaving Birmingham, and that's wonderful. So, I'm especially thinking about our new students and our about-to-graduate students and the different challenges that they have. When it comes to our family, we're also at a moment of transition. Our children are about to be 18, 16, and 14. That means our youngest son is in the process of applying for university, we're doing applications, and there's the very concrete prayers about that, that goes well and how that transition will go. But we also would genuinely appreciate prayers that for this last, less than a year, that we have all five of us under the same roof, that it would just be a special and rich time. This is what my wife and I, Megan, find ourselves sort of often the last thing we pray in the evening is just that this would be a special last year when we're all together and that it won't feel in any way like the end of something, but a kind of a special time for the family moving forward too. But we're realizing how fleeting and how special this particular year is in our life, so we'd welcome prayers for that. >>Doug Sweeney: It sure is. As an empty nester, I'm here to say it sure is special. I hope it's wonderful for you. Listeners, this has been Dr. Jonathan Linebaugh. He is the Anglican Professor of Divinity here at Beeson. He also directs our Institute of Anglican Studies. He has a wonderful new book out entitled, The Well That Washes What It Shows. Please read it as you can. Please be in prayer for him, for his family as they're getting ready to send their oldest off to college. Please be in prayer as well for the Institute and its varied ministries. Thank you for tuning in. We love you. We are praying for you and we say goodbye for now. >>Mark Gignilliat: You’ve been listening to the Beeson podcast; coming to you from the campus of Samford University. Our theme music is by Advent Birmingham. Our announcer is Mark Gignilliat. Our engineer is Rob Willis. Our Producer is Neal Embry. And our show host is Doug Sweeney. For more episodes and to subscribe, visit www.BeesonDivinity.com/podcast. You can also find the Beeson Podcast on iTunes, YouTube, and Spotify.