Episode 110: Tom, Trevor, and Chad Discussed Changes in Our Ideas
Tom and Trevor are back! In this episode, we welcome back Tom and Trevor to discuss our theme question for guests, what are various ideas we have changed our minds about. I hope you enjoy it!
Timestamps:
7:14- Trevor’s Change of Mind (Reformed Theology)
13:31- Tom’s Change of Mind (Dispensationalism)
25:35- Chad’s Change of Mind (Patristics)
Episode Transcript
Charles Kim 0:01
Hello, and welcome to history of Christian theology, I'm happy to say for the first time and at least over a year, probably since COVID. With me today will be Tom Velasco and Trevor Adams. So if you've been looking for a conversation between the original three conversation partners of this podcast we have returned, this episode will be a somewhat shorter episode than our typical episodes. And that's because I'm basically going to ask each Tom and Trevor, the question that I've been asking our guests, that is, what is one thing that you've changed your mind on in your lifetime, one thing that you once held is true, but now think is false, or vice versa. So I'll explain that a little bit at the beginning of the podcast. But Tom and Trevor wanted to get back on and we also had another longer conversation, which I will release in a few weeks. But I wanted to get this one out there and just let everyone know that they are doing both doing very well. And they were both glad to hear that some of you all have been asking for them to come back on Twitter and on Facebook. So this will be a little bit more like a throwback episode, although we won't be discussing specifically, in this episode, a historical text, which is our was our normal pattern. Yeah, nearly. It's crazy to say nearly two years ago. So I hope you enjoy this conversation between Tom and Trevor and I just a little bit about things that we've changed our mind on over the course of our lives. We will have more author interviews coming up, I will have Jacob Wood, who wrote a book on nature and grace and the desire for God. And I'm also going to be recording a podcast tomorrow with Drew Johnson, who wrote a book called Hebraic philosophy. So you'll want to check that one out. It's coming out with Cambridge University Press. It's really fascinating argument. So I got some questions for him. And I'm looking forward to talking to Dr. Johnson tomorrow. So thanks, again, for listening, please rate us review us on iTunes that helps people find the podcast. And also if you wouldn't, you know, if you'd like to, just like us on Facebook, you know, drop us a line, if there's something you want us to talk about. Or if you if you have, you know, questions or something, we're happy to answer them there or on our Twitter. So it's at theology, x i A N, or we're also at facebook.com/history of Christian theology. So thanks for listening. And we'll be back next week with more calm with more episodes. I am always surprised that anyone
I'm always glad I've always glad to hear from people that do and I should say to both of you, Tom and Trevor, as you have both recently returned from various kinds of sojourns and departures from our conversation. I do regularly get messages on Twitter or Facebook that say, Where are Tom and Trevor? I, there's a woman who was asking me questions about how we understood the Trinity way back when, like Episode 40, or 50. And she was talking about how I've had multiple people talk to me about how it's helped them sort of deepen their faith, and how they, you know, it really helps them, you know, realize that the Trinity and these sorts of things are not just something that people just came up with out of the blue and, you know, and this sort of thing. So, I think our I mean, you know, to what extent we, you know, we do have people listening, it looks like between 2000 to 2500 per episodes, a lot of people I've always very glad that people do listen, and people do come comment, and that for whatever reason, our conversations, and again, like, I'm equally surprised, like they're going way back to the catalog of I don't remember what we said five years ago, but it's it was helpful.
Tom Velasco 4:08
Yeah, and I don't remember what books we've read. I had people asking me, I mostly get messages from friends. I guess I could access our Facebook, you check our Facebook? Yeah, well, yeah, that's what I just said. Was that Facebook? Okay, sorry. I knew we're getting Facebook and Twitter. Yeah, Facebook and Twitter. I looked at him sometimes, but generally speaking, I'm I just friends who go to my church who will listen, but or friends like from Ambrose or whatever, they'll start listening early episodes. Call me like, hey, well, so could you tell me more about blah, blah, blah. I'm like, Dude, I have no idea what you're talking about. My memory has gone to pot. I do not even remember the books we've read, let alone what the books actually said so
Charles Kim 4:56
well, so one of the one of the things that I become fascinated with about the ancient world. And a lot of I mean, this is true for Augustine, this is true for a lot of people that we've read, is the idea that people are always in motion. So in the sort of scientific outlook, we tend to think about the sort of neutral observer. This also comes up in philosophy. And, you know, there's sort of this idea that, like, you know, what, when you do a scientific experiment, you want to absent yourself from the experiment, and then you can make a decision about the truth or falsity of something based on your experiment, but you're sort of outside. But the way that the ancients understood the world is everything was in motion. You were in motion, the world was in motion, there isn't there isn't some neutral, deliberative space, you just go. And so like, you know, I think of it like being on a highway and deciding whether or not to take the exit. Well, you're moving towards the exit, are you going to take it? Or are you not, you have a limited amount of time and you are moving one way or another. And if you miss your exit, you just keep going. Because you can, because you are moving. And if you want to turn around, you can do that. But you have to go the other direction, but you're always in moot motion. So one of the question that I asked people on the podcast is, what is one thing that you've changed your mind about? What is one thing where you are going one direction, and you said, I have to turn around and go the other way? So this is I mean, ultimately, the R word conversion, this is literally what it means to convert is literally Latin to turn the other direction. It says, Hey, I've got to make an about face and I gotta go back and another way. And so I don't necessarily mean like, when did you become a Christian? Usually, I asked this about authors when they're writing a book. But we'll we'll start with Trevor. Trevor, what is one thing that you have made an about face? So you are moving in one direction as we all are? And you said, No, I gotta move the other way. I thought this thing was true. Now, I think it's false, or I thought it was false. Now, I think it's true. I gotta go another way,
Tom Velasco 7:14
your decision to become a young Earther, right?
Trevor Adams 7:19
Yeah. Oh, my goodness. There's, there's too many too.
Charles Kim 7:26
Well, yeah, you're a philosopher. You love this question, I guess. But I don't know something that sticks out your mind. Maybe it has an interesting story. You know, I mean, one of the other things I'm interested in is this idea of what makes someone changed their mind. So JK Smith just wrote an interesting little article about how love is what moves us rather than argumentation was what he said. And so Peter Berger used this idea of plausibility structures, and what makes something plausible, is maybe more useful than, you know, arguments. But either way, so why you change it is less important here. I want to know what you change and then maybe you say something about why you changed.
Trevor Adams 8:08
Well, I guess for the to make it probably more interesting to people who are likely to listen to a history of theology podcast. I'll pick a somewhat theology one, I was for a while trending hardcore towards pretty reformed version, like a pretty reformed Christianity that affirmed annihilation annihilationism. To I all of a sudden, just through interacting certain things flipped to where now I consider myself like an Anglo Catholic who is affirms universalism. So there you go, that so I went, it was very weird. I was going hardcore one way, I was like, you know, kind of person that would post the five Solas on like October 31. To now I'm like, I don't even know if the reformation is a very good thing. So there, that's that's one of my so that's, that's
Charles Kim 9:11
hugely abrupt. I mean, there are any innumerable questions we can ask you about such a confession on here? Do you feel like it was an argument that made you change? Or was it I'll be participating in a form of liturgy and worship that was more Anglo Catholic? Or, you know, is it people, people that you've been impressed with, who sort of embody the spirit of Anglo Catholicism that just was like winsome? Or is it Yeah,
Trevor Adams 9:42
yeah. Part of it's your fault. Chad took me to an Episcopal Church, very famously. And
Tom Velasco 9:52
we all we all three go.
Charles Kim 9:54
I think so the funny thing is I do not attend an Episcopal Church by any means. Different Great. Yeah,
Trevor Adams 10:02
now. Yeah, now you go to a Baptist church and I'm on like my church's best tree now. So it's, we've totally no I, I, yeah, part of it was that but well, we all went my memories, we all went to a Good Friday service together. That's right. But the first time chatting with you was Sunday service where I actually took Eucharist, I mean, cheese, I don't know, I don't like to use this term lightly. But I had from from, in one way of defining it, I had a sort of mystical experience, I had a very ineffable experience. So I'll just put it that way. I felt a sense of when when I first like had to kneel down in this very, like, humbling way and like, accept this thing. And they told, you know, like Chad had to explain, he's put your hands out. And I'm like, Okay. To me, that was I had Yeah, just a very like awestruck experience, it kind of reminds the only the closest analogy to it is like the first time I saw Crater Lake, which is like one of these natural wonders of the world, how you just stare at and you're like, what, how is this real like that? I had this very similar feeling the first time I took you, Chris. So it was very powerful. And that was sort of the start of it. I can say that the universalism bit as its name, it's something I'm like, my soteriology now is sort of less, I almost LIS kind of don't care in a way. I don't know. I don't know what the truth is. I'm just more like, well, if we're all just spitballing theories, here's one. And
Charles Kim 11:45
that's, that's what most theologian
Trevor Adams 11:51
I had a I had a talk with Tom about that. That's more. Well, what you said about origin earlier actually restrict me, because that came more out of this thought that God will have to like, actually defeat evil and redeem the world. So it's not that there's no Hell, I didn't go to full blown no hill view, but I kind of came to have more of a temporal Hill view. And that I that one, I actually kind of came kicking and screaming in a way because I, I find it hard to think that there won't be like, I want there to be this justice. I have this sense of like, like, know, what's going to happen to like this person, like, needs to be justice for this person. That's my emotional side. But then intellectually, I have this whole thing about like, can you really say you've defeated death and evil if you have this eternal? thing? I don't know. So that that was the sort of tension that brought that up. But yeah, all right. So now it's Tom Stern.
Charles Kim 12:48
Well, Tom, Tom gets to ask a question if he wants to. Tom was gonna respond there. I thought you were gonna respond to Trevor Noah. Yeah, so we can we can move to Tom if we want to. Yeah, I appreciate it. Trevor. I know that Yeah. That's a it's. So it's also it can be an intensely personal question. So your description of the Eucharist and whatnot, I understand that this, you know, maybe this is the only kind of a question that you could ask in America, I feel like, you know, in Europe, people are much more squeamish when you ask them about their sort of religious convictions.
Trevor Adams 13:24
Right. Now happy to answer your barrier. So now.
Tom Velasco 13:31
Oh, my gosh, I mean, there are a million I mean, like, I mean, like you said, Chad, I think a moment ago that it is the task of the philosopher to constantly what's the word, put his beliefs to the test, which it's tough man, I mean, being a Christian and a philosopher, and I don't, I'm not a professional philosopher, obviously. But what I mean by that is having the disposition of a philosopher which means I am always wanting to know if what I believe is right, and wanting to subject it to as as much scrutiny as I possibly can, and wanting to take the rational course in general, if possible, that just does fly in the face of holding to dogmatic religious views. I mean, there's just no getting around it. And so, I've always struggled walking that tightrope of dogma and philosophy, it's just a tough rope to walk. And I, I, you know, there's some of us that I will, I try to subject everything to critical kind of thinking. But I of course, do that to to in a much more guarded way about some of my more cherished beliefs. And then there are ones that I'm probably that are very near and dear that I do challenge and some of them I might even question and some I might even have changed when I'm a little more reticent to kind of divulge those, you know, like, it's because it's like when you walk the line of document philosophy, it's not just your own feet. years of being wrong on the dogma side, but it's also of course, you know, you're in a community and you don't want that community to think that you're a heretic. I mean, it's like, like heart. I heard David Bentley Hart recently talking and he said he used to care about such things. And now he does, which seems evident. I mean, he's, I don't say that to castigate him, but he's, he's clearly walking lines that just generally speaking, you wouldn't want to walk if you're afraid of such kinds of things, I think. But one that I can point back to this as old as happened a long time ago. So it feels like I'm almost cheating because it happened so long ago, you know, but it's kind of fun for me, because I'm so I'm so firmly convinced. Not that I have the right view, but that my old view was wrong. And that is a view on eschatology. I attend to Calvary Chapel. I've attended Calvary Chapels since I was in high school. So probably since like 1996. And anybody who knows anything about Calvary Chapels, knows that they have a very dogmatic view of End Times theology. And when I was 18, or 1717, or 18, I held their view very, very strictly. So it's, without getting into it too much. It's, I was a pre millennial, I was a dispensationalist, pre millennial PreTribulational Rapture guy. It wasn't long before I stopped believing that I mean, I was 18 when I stopped, but 18 or 19, mostly because I read a little bit of the Bible, because I don't know how you can. I mean, okay, I need to be careful. I have to be honest, I just don't know how if you read scriptures about eschatology, you could continue to hold that view long. I know a lot of people hold it. I just don't I mean, there's some of that just flatly contradicted. So the first contradiction I remember coming across was in Second Thessalonians chapter, I think two or three, where it talks about how Christ can not return until the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, which challenges that notion of a pre tribulation rapture, because the old view was you like, or that that view is, is that the church is raptured to heaven, before the man of sin, the Antichrist is revealed. And so I read that I'm like, Well, this clearly just contradicts that. So my first shift was to become a mid tribulation story, what people call a pre wrath guy. Well, once that happened, the doors swung open. And I just realized the whole system was, what's the word I'm looking for? Bankrupt? You know, and it all it took was for me to I remember, I walked into a bookstore here in town, Cornerstone bookstore. And I was curious about an eschatological question. And the guy who owned the bookstore said, Well, how you answer that's gonna depend on your eschatology. And at the time, I was still holding to that, that Calvary view, and I said, Oh, I'm a pre tribulation. And he goes, No, no, I mean, an actually interesting question about eschatology. And I said, like, what? And he goes, Well, are you in on millennialist, a pre millennialist, or post millennialist. And I was like, I didn't realize this was that kind of place. And I backed out, I thought, I can't talk to that guy anymore. He's a heretic.
And then I came to read up on that stuff. And basically, I just came to the conclusion that passages concerning the end of time, are eschatological passages in both the Old and New Testament are horribly misinterpreted by dispensationalist. And so I've come to believe that whole system is wrong. I'm kind of agnostic on what I actually think about end times. I think, many passages, like I don't know that I would call myself a preterist. In the proper sense. You know, somebody who believes that eschatological passages were mostly pointing to the destruction of the Druze the temple in Jerusalem. I don't know that that's true. I know. Some are like, I certainly think Luke 20, one's version of the Olivet Discourse. And at least half of Matthew 20 fours is about that. What the book of Revelation is about I'm not really sure. But I confident that the Bible doesn't teach the eschatology that Calvary Chapel embraced and for me, that's, I try not to even think about it much. So I'm just not that interested in the subject. But it's like, I just see it as kind of an important point because so many people I know are so caught up in what I take to be really bad, practical application of a really bad theology, because they're so obsessed with those passages and whether or not the rapture is going to happen soon and whether or not the end of time is coming and what that means in terms of how we should deal with vaccines and men. asks and all that kind of stuff, it just drives me nuts, honestly. And so, so it's like, that kind of stuff is it ends up coming rearing its ugly head and being actually a really practical thing you have to consider a lot. And it's tough because people just assume that I believe that because I'm a Calvary elder and was a Calvary pastor and you know you, in theory, you're supposed to believe that stuff and becomes difficult to even talk about it. But yeah, that's kind of one change. And one, I don't mind talking about one that I think was it happened a long time ago, but it did take time. It was like a slow process.
Charles Kim 20:40
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Tom Velasco 21:53
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Charles Kim 21:58
Also, I should say that if anybody has problems, questions about universalism, or dispensationalism, I typically man the Facebook page and the Twitter handle, but I will defer all questions about dispensationalism to Tom, and all questions about universal salvation to Trevor.
Trevor Adams 22:21
I'd be happy to talk about them.
Tom Velasco 22:24
In the in the chat room, are you You got one you can share with us really quickly?
Charles Kim 22:31
Yeah, I got a few minutes. I so I was thinking about this. As you all were talking a little bit. And one one that's sort of trivial, but sort of funny. I hated baseball. Between basically, yeah. Basically, my high school years, most of my late middle school, early high school years, I hated baseball. I sort of I don't know if this is ironic, but sort of fun. Sort of strangely, that was actually mostly during the home run race with everybody in St. Louis loved talking about Mark McGwire. I did get a one good, everybody and
Trevor Adams 23:10
yeah, I was a kid in Idaho and I had a Mark McGwire poster. So
Charles Kim 23:15
I went to basically one game I want to say between about 96 and 2000. And it was of game where Mark McGwire did hit a home run, but we had family visiting from Oklahoma who were all big baseball fans, and I had to go I, I do refer to them as my dark years, Albert pools is actually our pools, our pools and leaving St. Louis for college, the combination, like I began to watch baseball at the end of my high school career, and then moving actually solidified like I realized that I identify the Cardinals with home, and our pools was the most amazing thing to watch. So I had a reason to turn on every time and just wait for Albert pools to bat. So that was that's my return to baseball. Which is a big one for me.
Tom Velasco 24:12
Guys, those of you listening at home. I mean, Chad's obsession with St. Louis Cardinals baseball, I mean, the guy watches almost every game. And I remember there was a period of time when Chad was staying with me for a little bit. I don't know, I don't remember how long a few days, maybe a couple weeks. And he had to watch those baseball games. And I remember one night, watch the game and I said, Dude, can we watch a movie afterwards? Because I'm a movie buff. As you guys know, Chad is not a movie buff. And the game went into extra innings. And this was just a regular season game and I was like, Chad that we really need to watch the whole game. And he was like, I'd really like to and it went 16 innings long. I don't remember if we tried to watch a movie after that, or if it was like the next night but I remember for later, I said, Okay, let's watch a movie. Chad was like dutifully like, Okay, we turned it on and about five minutes. I can't handle this. Can we just go to bed? Oh, I'm just like, okay, dude. So I turned off the TV. And
Trevor Adams 25:19
I remember a chat that you once described a baseball game as having like a liturgy, and it being a near religious sort of experience. And you should write a book about that, I still think.
Charles Kim 25:35
Well, so what what the more serious one that is harder to put in terms of like a really obvious change in like a doctrinal stance. But I got to go to Israel in 2010, while I was at seminary, and I was learning Hebrew I was doing, I did a class on Jewish biblical interpretation. And I went to Israel. And I got to go to shul and got to see like the praying of the Western Wall. And I like, also, it's kind of a running joke that people think that I look Jewish. And I've just assumed that I was, and I don't like, I don't know if I could exactly say I wanted to become Jewish. I mean, part of me wanted to become Jewish. But what I realized was that they had this whole apparatus for understanding what was going on in the Torah, and then in the broader Old Testament. And I said, Well, why don't Christians have an apparatus? Why don't Christians have a thing that helps them know how to read I mean, like, we have commentaries, but never nobody can agree on which commentaries I remember being told, read these, not those. This is in the these were out of date. And they didn't really like they just sort of said, here's some context. And so like, but they didn't have any staying power. You know, Matthew, like when I got to seminary, Matthew Henry's commentary was useless. But that was maybe the first one that I knew. And so like, so my study of Patristics is essentially, saying, there is a long and storied sort of tradition around how Christians understand and read the Bible. And as a Baptist, it's, you know, we say no creed, but the Bible and like it, there's a lot about the individual conscience. But what I came to realize is that every pastor who preached in the Bible, whether they acknowledged it or not, we're standing on a long history. And what Calvin's up to what Bart, what are these are reformed people, but you know what, other theologians, Protestant theologians, it's not that they don't have a tradition. They all are very steeped in that tradition. It's sort of a modern Baptist phenomena where we pretend it's just me and Jesus in the Bible, and that's it. And so, you know, so I love Patristics. I did my PhD and doctorate, you know, because I wanted to say, Well, what do Christians say? It's not that I, you know, just assumed it wholesale or took them all in wholesale but, but that's my that's my big change. Good, so I love reading Patristics. All right, well, we could call this good. Thanks for listening to this week's episode, and we will talk to you soon
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
