After the Message | Grace to You

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To learn more about Celebration Church here in Orlando, you can follow us on social media under the handle at Celebration ORL or visit our website at celebrationorl.org.

What is up, everybody, and welcome to another episode of After the Message.

We uh our Celebration Church Orlando podcast.

If you're stumbling along this welcome, uh, this is a segment on our podcast we like to call After the Message.

And it's simply a conversation from the previous Sunday sermon, and we hope that it encourages you to do the same thing in your circles as well.

We're on a new season of After the Message because we're in a sermon series called Grace to You, where we're looking at the book of Romans.

Um, and today uh we have a special guest on for us.

Uh, it is an honor today to welcome my father, Jeff Capshaw.

Welcome to After the Message, my friend.

Thanks, Nate.

It's a pleasure to be here with you, son.

We have been fighting the uh the internet demons to make this happen.

So uh we're we're super glad to uh to have you on here.

Dad, why don't you um why don't you just give us a brief rundown of kind of your theological background, what what you did, what you've done in in this work and uh ministry and stuff like that for the good people listening.

Okay, well, thanks for that opportunity, Nate.

As you know, you lived with it for most of your life.

I was in school a long time.

Yeah, yeah.

So um I did uh some undergraduate work and then I did uh uh an MA on top of that, and then went went to seminary in uh Memphis, Tennessee at Minn America Baptist Theological Seminary, and then uh decided to pursue uh some more training, and I did a PhD in New Testament and Greek, and always tried to keep my feet anchored in the local church.

Um, it brought, I think, some um help to students in the classroom as well as keeping my keeping kind of my head out of the clouds.

So uh taught in various uh small Bible colleges, Christian liberal arts schools, even did a little stint at the University of Tennessee here in West Tennessee.

So, but I've been out of the game a long time, so I hope the expectations are not that high because I've probably forgotten most of what I've learned.

Yeah, right.

I know how your brain works, brother.

Um what um what when we started the series?

I was kind of talking to you about it and uh just letting you know I was gonna be preaching in one of the weeks, and um, you know, I told you I was gonna be doing Romans 5 and stuff, and you said that you'd you'd done some some extensive work in Romans.

What what what kind of work have you did you do in Romans particularly?

Well, I I remember uh back in school, I believe it was in it was uh during an uh taking an MA and I uh Romans in Greek, which basically meant we translated the book of Romans and talked about it.

So I I guess that was pretty deep involvement.

And then just um, you know, it's kind of the the apex or zenith of New Testament theology, particularly Pauline theology.

So I have um you know done some academic work, written some papers and stuff on Romans, and um I worked through Romans 5 pretty in depth, but that doesn't mean I have my head around it by any stretch of the imagination.

It's a challenging book theologically, but um it is absolutely essential, I think, for every believer to to be familiar with particularly Paul's doctrine of justification by grace through faith.

You know, the for the the lay person or someone that's not pursuing a vocation in theology or ministry, like what what's your encouragement to them when they're reading uh such a robust book like Romans and how much um how much work should they be doing in that?

You know, how how would you encourage someone like that who's not translating the original text?

Well, I think first off, um and I know everyone has their own opinions about Bible translation, and this this actually was uh I guess an area of competency studying um you know how different English versions were made.

I guess you could you could say I actually had a a mentor who that was his vocation was he was a Hebrew scholar and he had been on the committee on Bible translation for a long, long time, like since 1975, and was part of the NIV committee and actually translated the book of Amos for the new international version of the Bible.

Wow.

And so, you know, Dr.

Walker kind of gave me a bug for that, and then I did some um work at the Scriptorium Center for Christian Antiquities, which is actually there in your hometown now, uh in Orlando.

Uh, but it used to be up in Michigan, so I was an invited student guest there, and got acquainted with a lot of uh translational translation philosophy and looked at different translation of the scriptures throughout many languages, ancient languages, modern languages, and of course the English language.

So that was kind of an interest to me.

So I said all that to say I would encourage people to get a Bible that they can understand.

Uh a simple translation, even a paraphrase.

There's nothing wrong with that.

Whatever one thinks about, you know, uh the living Bible or those kind of things.

I'm not as familiar with more recent, sort of freer, easier translations, because, like I said, I've been out of that game for a while, but that's that's the main thing.

And I guess the second thing for the layperson is maybe a theological dictionary or just a simple dictionary that helps one to understand the terms because Paul does use a lot of theological language in all of his writings, and particularly in Romans.

And so I think that's just a good way to start out, maybe find uh uh an easy devotional commentary, and there are plenty of websites that will provide you some of the best commentaries on any book of the Bible.

I don't have that in front of me, but I think I sent you that that book list.

Yeah.

So those those would be ways that that one could start out.

Again, just an easy translation that you can understand, look up theological terms that you don't understand, reconciliation, justification, and those kinds of things, and just get familiar with them.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's good because there is um I know for me there's been hesitancy at some points in my life to uh look at you know translations that may be quote unquote easier to understand because is it watering down the Bible?

You know, you know, is it missed is it miscommunicating certain things within scripture?

So it's it's good to hear someone that's dedicated a majority of their life to uh linguistics within the Bible to encourage someone to get something that they can understand.

Yes, and so let's assume that you don't think that, for example, the living Bible, which is a paraphrase, a guy actually uh created that Bible, or it wasn't really a translation, he just kind of restated it while he was riding the train, commuting back and forth to downtown Chicago.

Wow, Taylor, I think was his name, if I recall correctly.

Okay, so let's say you don't think that's the most faithful translation, and it doesn't accurately accurately reflect the word of God.

Well then just call it a commentary.

Yeah, no one has a problem reading a commentary.

So if there's something about your conscience that doesn't allow you to say this is a faithful rendering of God's word, then um just read it like a commentary.

Yeah, that's good advice for sure.

Um you you mentioned you mentioned kind of uh Paul's style.

Um, what makes the Apostle Paul's letters different from the other epistles?

What distinguishes him from uh the other letters in the New Testament?

Well, I think it's because he was a well-trained scholar.

I mean, you know, Paul was um, you know, he was he was a teacher, he was familiar with Judaism.

Uh obviously he was uh familiar with the Greco-Roman world.

So he was just an incredible intellect, and I think we see that uh coming across in in his writing and the profundity and depth of his uh uh theological uh acumen, as it were.

So um I I think it that that's part of it is just his his judaisc background, his um you know, being familiar with um I I guess the best of Greco-Roman thought and culture and education.

He was he was a well-cultured and educated man for his day.

Was was there precedence for the style of writing that uh he exhibits in Romans?

You know, because it seems at least for me, and I haven't done super extensive work in in it, but you know, how how well would this have been received by his audience?

Well, for I I think most of New Testament scholarly opinion would suggest that probably under 20% of the first century world was both reading and writing literate.

It was still primarily an oral culture, and so you know, the early church not everyone had a Bible in their hand, right?

And so um while obviously the gospels were written for an oral audience, um and you know, Paul there there were copies of Romans that circulated around the church, but you know, mainly people heard the scriptures read and I mean Paul went into the synagogue and read the scripture and preached, right?

So um I again I think it reflects both the literary style and rhetoric of educated first century folks.

Um people had reading literacy, some people had, believe it or not, writing literacy.

They could they could copy text, but not necessarily know exactly what they were copying, if you can believe that.

But very few very few people had both reading and writing literacy.

Matter of fact, even some scribes had one or the other, very few had both.

Yeah, very very interesting.

Do you think it's reading the scriptures out loud today could help you get a better understanding of it instead of just reading it kind of in your mind?

Absolutely, without a question.

Um I think that's uh a great practice um to get both um you know both senses involved in speaking it and hearing it and hearing yourself speak it, absolutely.

Yeah, I I know a lot of times for me, especially if I'm preparing uh a message or even a devotional or something, I listen to it on the Bible app over and over and over again because I can hear you can hear the different shifts in tone and all that stuff.

So it's it's definitely something that is special to us in the 21st century of just having it in our pockets and being able to listen to it wherever we go, right?

Right.

Well, I think also it depends on one's learning style.

Some people learn better by reading, other people learn better by listening, but certainly incorporating both is a I think a good practice.

Yeah.

Um, so so what language is the apostle Paul writing in here?

And then what is it translated into after that?

Well, I think he wrote in the um was called the lingua franca of the day.

So that that was like the universal sort of trade language, it's called Koine Greek.

Koine is simply the Greek term for common, so it was uh uh I I used to tell New Testament students it was street Greek, so it wasn't a high Falutan classical Greek style, although I'm sure Paul could navigate in that style.

But Alexander the Great, when he conquered that part of the world and most of the known world at the time, he spread this Poine Greek, which dates from about 300 BC to 300 AD.

So it was tantamount to what English is today.

English is the the language of trade and business, and it's the lingua franca, it's the common language throughout throughout the world today.

And so while it wasn't a high classical style like say Plato or Aristotle or other other Greek writers, you know, from the second, third century BC, or maybe even seventh and eighth century, you know, a long time ago, classical, the classical Greeks, um it it was uh a dialect of the common person.

This was the language that was spoken and used, and that's why the New Testament is written in it, because it was the lingua franca of the day.

Yeah.

Does that answer the question?

Yeah, absolutely.

And I think it's I think it was cool to kind of parallel that with English because sometimes we can look at our language is not as romantic as some as some of the other ones, right?

So uh I'm but it's practical.

Um You mentioned you mentioned the New Testament being written in this, but but how does a letter like Romans become a part of the Bible?

You know, what what's that process like and and why this one and maybe not some because I'm sure he wrote other letters, right?

And I'm sure they didn't quote unquote make the cut.

So what what's that process like and how does it how do we have it thousands of years later and we call it scripture?

That's it that's interesting because um I had a friend yesterday uh ask me that here in my office.

So let me that's uh it's a it's a complex question.

Um the process.

The process, so if you think about it at several in several different buckets or categories.

So if you think about inspiration, that's the divine enablement of biblical writers to to to write scripture.

Um, there's you know different theological views about that, you know, whether or not the writer was the inspired part of the words, and I think most Protestant conservative evangelicals would say that inspiration plays to the to the words of scripture, and then you have what's called preservation of scripture, which is the Bible as it's been copied and handed down and translated into various languages.

Um we all have to work with the same text, whether one accepts the scripture as authoritative or just a piece of ancient literature, we all have the same text with which we work and read.

And then the process which plays to your question is called canonization.

How did these books make the cut and others didn't?

And there would be a lot of different opinions on this, but I think the the simplest way to look at it, first off, we just need to be honest and say, you know, there really isn't any evidence like two plus two is four, or I'm looking at this yellow marker here, so I'm being appeared to by something yellow, or if I have a tummy ache, I you know, you're not gonna convince me otherwise.

I know that I know that I know I have a stomachache or a headache.

There, there isn't any evidence like that for inspiration, preservation, or canonization.

Those are, and I'm gonna throw out a big term, it's okay.

Um presuppositions.

They are faith presuppositions that that are Christian starting points.

Uh, and everybody starts from somewhere.

Everyone has pre-understandings, everyone has presuppositions about every area of life.

And so I think the most consistent way for believers is to just presuppose that this is something that God did.

I mean, you stop and think about it, either he had something to do with it or he didn't.

Right.

And so when it comes to canonization, and canon canonization comes from the Greek word canon or canon, which just means uh a measuring stick, basically.

It was, you know, what were the criteria for the church, the early church, accepting this book and not accepting the others.

So you mentioned Paul's most scholars believe that he probably wrote four epistles to the Corinthians, but only two of them made made it into our 27 books of the New Testament.

And I think the best way to think about this is consensus, universal consensus of these 27 books versus you know having 29 or 30.

And then different traditions have different canon, but for the most conservative Protestants, you know, it's the 27 books that we can hold in our hand today, is what, and there's a Latin phrase for this, uh, what the early Orthodox Church always everywhere believed.

And I mean, there are other criteria, you know, for example, um bore marks of the Holy Spirit, right?

So that's pretty subjective.

Um, no contradiction with other scriptures and you know, think things like that.

But but really at the end of the day, it's it's a belief that God, by his providence, allowed the church to collect and put together, codify, canonize these 27 books and not 29 or 30.

That's the simplest way I can put it.

And it's and again, I think that the key here is um just honesty with you know, we presuppose that by faith, that that these are um the inspired books that God wanted his church to have.

And the same would hold true for the old testament, but just a different different process.

Yeah.

Is there has there been any other letters discovered?

Like, do we know do we know what those say?

Yes, I mean there are extra canonical books.

Um, we have books from the intertestamental period between say when the you know Malachi and Matthew, so there's you know, like uh roughly 400.

years uh there are other people that that wrote um you know gospels or epistles uh and and those those are helpful and that i actually came up in a discussion yesterday i mean there's a whole new scholarly uh endeavor i guess you might call it that has cropped up for for new testament studies it's called uh second temple judaism which a lot of those books i mean um say for example the community at cumran would would be considered part of that um part of that uh culture or group or um identify as second temple jews so there's a there's a whole literature that provides uh sociological um cultural and religious background to the new testament and some some would argue i mean you know nt right would be a scholar who has expertise in that area and be interesting to listen to him talk about second temple judaism and the text involved with that so so they're extraordinarily helpful in illuminating the historical cultural and religious background socioeconomics uh just about any category that's part of culture um to illuminate our understanding of that first century world and the setting and life um for the new testament so yeah and and you know uh the Roman Catholic Church has some extra books that they consider canonical um but the Protestant church doesn't there were there were groups that were in you know early first century or during the first century that would call themselves Christians like we have groups today that call themselves Christians that have additional books other than the New Testament and yet we probably as Protestants would not recognize them as orthodox Christians.

They wouldn't hold to such things as the exclusive authority of these 27 books of the New Testament and the 39 books of the Old Testament they they might have extra biblical books that they would consider on the same plane authoritatively as scripture well you had the same thing in the first century it it's not wrong to read them but that they again our our theological predilections are towards they might be valuable and helpful in illuminating canonical scripture but they didn't make the cut as you say is that does that make sense yeah it does for sure I I just think um to be able to not treat these as the boogeyman you know like they're they can be they can be great resources and helpful right so that's so yeah I I just think I've always had the idea that and that's this thought is obviously evolving but the idea that man I I probably should stay away from these uh because you know they're not the inspired word and and I need to be careful around this stuff.

So I I that's kind of what I was trying to get at there.

Yeah I mean so obviously so-called critical scholars people that view the New Testament as just another piece of literature from antiquity um that had that really carries no more authority than you know say Josephus from antiquity um you know you've got like secret gospel of mark the apocryphan of john uh you've got preaching of peter you know there there are all kinds of of books that you you can you know search that on the internet like non-canonical gospels or non-canonical Christian books there's all kinds of information and you know people like say uh Bart Ehrman who has you know he's one of the I had to argue one of the most outstanding New Testament scholars of the 20 and 21st century who used to be a believer and has since rejected Christianity and he's kind of an agnostic now I guess full blown agnostic.

So you know they they use these to argue to say well look look at these there there really isn't a whole lot of difference in them in the New Testament book you know they're miracles talked about and both and you know the language is similar and whatnot.

So you know that they would argue there just isn't any difference.

And it's because as I said they're starting from a different worldview starting place.

They're starting with the assumption that there is no God or if there is it it certainly isn't the one the New Testament talks about whereas Protestant Orthodox believers in Christ are starting from a different place.

And so that's going to in fact affect all of reality how how one sees you know how the world got here and what's the nature of man and those kinds of things well obviously they're they're going to look at pieces of literature uh differently depending on their starting point and the whole supernatural question.

Yeah you you mentioned a couple names for you know you mentioned NT Wright earlier if if someone if someone does want to some extra biblical or some additional resources to help them through the book of Romans who who or what would be some other suggestions for you oh man you're gonna put me on the spot now I used to I usually could could reel those off if I I was looking here to see if I could find that link but I've got so many bookmarks okay if you could find that bookmark okay best commentary here hold on a second let me see if I can find that uh john stott comes to mind um let's see New Testament I just can't recall them off the top of my head that's okay I see them and I'm actually cheating a little bit looking on the internet okay so Doug Moo uh in the N I C N T commentary Douglas J Moo spelled M O O uh Tom Scribner or Scribner rather Thomas Scribner it that would be um kind of a college level textbook um I'm sorry not okay it's Tom Schreiner Schreiner is his name S-C H R E I N E R so you can go to bestcommentaries.com bestcommentaries.com and so commentaries tend to come in you know different flavors that there are commentaries on the Greek of Romans there are critical commentaries that would focus on the background information and the setting in life and the audience and those kinds of things and they're going to be you know different levels of difficulty um and so say for example somebody like Martin Lloyd Jones has has has done work in Romans well he was a a British pastor and so that would be a good one of course N.T.

Wright as you mentioned um another probably accessible couple more accessible for lay people would be R Kent Hughes H-U-G-H-E-S and then I'm sure a lot of your audience would be familiar with Pastor John MacArthur and then uh just a couple more for the lay person would be Stuart Briscoe B-R-I-S-C-O-E and then uh Warren Wearsby uh he wrote a bunch of commentaries called the B B E series and in this particular case he names his commentary B Right R-I-G-H-T and obviously there's a play on the emphasis on um righteousness moments so that should be enough to get folks started I think so uh what what what do people need to keep in mind when they're when they're reading a commentary well it's it's I guess even translations are affected by one's pre-understanding and predilections about the nature of scripture so if I were to sit down and translate four or five verses of Romans I am actually you know I'm I'm trying to put it in my own words in a sense and and so that's impossible to divorce oneself from his or her understanding of those words and his or her own writing style so even you know solid solid biblical translations are in some sense a commentary they're just not as you know fully explained you're trying to be faithful to you know a small stretch of text or whatnot so it's just keeping in mind that you know everyone has their own starting points their own pre-understandings of what the book of Romans is about um what's important and what's not important.

I mean can't say everything about it so commentary writing is like history writing it is by definition selective and so just keep in mind that it is another person's opinion and there there are going to be people with more or less competency when it comes to linguistics and theological understanding and understanding the historical background of the New Testament and so forth and so on everything that goes into I mean this is a difficult practice right reading scripture understanding scripture interpreting scripture writing about scripture talking about scripture is an incredibly difficult process because we are so far removed culturally and linguistically and historically and and sort of bridging that gap and not only trying to understand how the first century audience might have understood it but also trying to make it relevant to uh the modern in this in our particular case English reader so just just remember I guess that the scripture is the ultimate authority and the commentary is not yeah that's good I if you could ask the apostle Paul now that we're talking a little bit about history if you could ask him anything what do you think you'd ask him man that that's a good question.

Tell me about your Damascus road experience and what was that like wow that's a great question I'd like to know that as well um what personally for you dad uh what has scripture done for you you know and obviously there's uh you have the the educational side of it and all that but but personally what what has your interaction with what the scriptures been like for for your personal walk with the Lord yeah well you know I I guess I just need to get get honest here that that probably isn't as warm in this uh current phase of my life as it ought to be and you know I I think we're on here to be transparent uh I've I've always been the kind of person that kind of was either in all in in one lane or the other and it's hard for me to to sort of uh give everything I have to both lanes simultaneously I guess that's another way of saying I'm not a very good multitasker and and so for the last you know especially the last year year and a half you know I I have I think you know what's going on in my personal life and professionally and sort of uh deep in the weeds and technology on on a couple of fronts and so I I guess one of the things one of the ways I would answer that is I think I've always been struggled um and I called it the academic curse uh so you you know you you start out in Bible college or whatever and you start you know reading the scriptures for assignments and and you've got you know intensive laborious work to do and you know and and then in graduate school you're doing you know critical work not not being critical in the sense of you know condemning but critical in the sense of reading analytically and thinking critically about it and you sort of fall into a trap of not allowing God's word to speak to you we might say devotionally and so I always struggled a quite a bit with that and you know kind of justify it and say well obviously the apostle Paul was a man of the you know his intellect was one way he served and worshiped God and I think maybe that could be kind of a little bit of a cop out from just reading the scripture devotionally so I've always really struggled with that.

And then there's you know kind of in more pietistic um Protestant circles you know that you know would embrace more of a I guess I would call it mysticism of or you know a devotional reading of the Bible you know you hear people talk about well I had my devotions this morning and God spoke to me out of this text or this chapter or this particular verse or this phrase or those kinds of things and and I really don't see anything necessarily wrong with that but it was always difficult for me in my mind to say well it can't mean something today that it didn't mean in the past and and these words can't have polysimous or you know many meanings that it it has one meaning and my job as a a student of scripture is is to find out what that meaning is and so I think um that's kind of a long-winded way of trying to be honest with you at the same time I think it's kind of come in fits and spurts for me that there have been periods in my life where that devotional sense of reading scripture you know was was meaningful and you almost get a physical existential um experience out of it.

You know it's it's like um you know your heart may skip a beat or something some some kind of experience like that or it's like it you know we we use the phrase it's it's really hard to put in words because it's very subjective and personal you know those texts just it was like it it it was leaping off the page or it leapt off the page.

Right.

And so for me personally those experiences have not been as frequent as I would have wanted them to be um and so I think I think maybe I'm in a period where um I I would welcome more more of that kind of reading in scripture.

So your uncle and I were kind of talking about this the other night when I was out in Portland visit visiting with him um you know we we there there are there are scholars who who say that scripture is not necessarily the word of God every word of it but it becomes the word of God there's a branch of theology called neoorthodoxy that that would say those kind of things and a lot of a lot of evangelicals kind of embrace that sort of a notion without really knowing it.

So I'm not terribly comfortable with that sort of understanding at the same time uh you know we we know that you know there there have been extra words that have crept into translations or the transmission of the text um that may not have been put there by the original author.

So I think there has to be some some sense in which the spirit of God has the liberty both in the community primarily in the community as well as personally to use the Bible for God to mediate himself to us to speak to us today and I just wish that were more of a discipline and a habit and something that I would allow myself allow my mind in particular to just accept yeah well I definitely appreciate the the transparency and authenticity something that that we definitely value uh particularly at Celebration Orlando and the good news is uh there's still time for that so um we we really appreciate you dad I really appreciate you coming on here and um sharing some time with us it's been it's been fun it's been an honor and and thank you so much.

Well you're welcome Nate and it was uh it was an honor to be here with you and I just want to say again how proud I am of you as a dad and how proud I am is of how you're maturing as a pastor and a preacher and I just think you absolutely knocked Romans 5 out of the park.

Great job.

Thanks Dad I appreciate it uh folks make sure you uh make sure you guys uh tune in next week as we continue on in our series grace to you dad I love you and uh I'll talk to you soon I love you too buddy take care of yourself thank you for joining us for after the message to learn more about celebration church here in Orlando you can follow us on social media under the handle at celebrationorl or visit our website at celebrationorl.org