November 20, 2024 • 54 mins
Reverend Dr. James Voelz joins us for a riveting exploration of reformation within the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod and the broader Christian community. Ever thought about how the gospel remains relevant in today’s fast-paced world? Dr. Voelz shares fascinating insights from his experiences at both Missouri Synod seminaries, underscoring the critical role of engaging laypeople in deep theological conversations. We promise you’ll gain a fresh perspective on why Bible study is not just a church activity but a transformative force that can invigorate both congregations and individual faith journeys.
Uncover the untapped potential of Bible study as we recount an uplifting story of how a couple’s curiosity led to six new members joining a church community. This episode reveals Bible study as more than just learning; it’s a dynamic platform for laypeople to discover their teaching gifts and contribute significantly to spreading the Gospel. Reverend Dr. Voelz advocates for pastors adopting a dialogical approach, where meaningful engagement with congregants on pressing issues strengthens the bond between scripture, pastors, and the community.
We also venture into the intriguing world of seminary education, dissecting the debate over the ending of the Gospel of Mark. Dr. Voelz navigates through the complexities of manuscript evidence and scholarly perspectives, offering a balanced view of traditional and modern theological education. Explore how technological advances impact seminary students' text engagement and the necessity of structured hermeneutics courses. Engage with these thought-provoking discussions about pastoral formation, the implications of the Mark 16:16 passage, and how these debates shape baptismal liturgy and the faith practices of today.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Welcome to the American Reformation Podcast,
tim Allman.
Here I pray.
The joy of the Lord is yourstrength as you buckle up for an
awesome conversation today withone of my favorite professors
on planet Earth, the Reverend DrJim Veltz.
How are you doing today, drVeltz?
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Doing great.
Buckle up I like that.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Okay, we're going to have a good time.
So standard opening questionthis is the American Reformation
podcast.
How is you look?
And you've got quite a breadthexperience, both within the
Lutheran Church Missouri Synodand beyond.
How are you praying forreformation, especially
understanding the LutheranChurch Missouri Synod and beyond
(00:51):
.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
How are you praying for reformation, especially
understanding the times today,dr Veltz?
Well, I'll tell you what Ithink it comesneyed, redoing of
old phraseologies and everythinglike that.
I mean, you know, I meanactually engaging.
(01:23):
What's going on in society?
What's going on in people'sthinking?
You know, every year I go tothe National Society of Biblical
Literature meeting.
I'm going again this year.
It's always in November, theweekend before Thanksgiving.
It's going to be out in SanDiego this year and just to give
you an example of what I'mtalking about, a couple of years
(01:44):
ago I went to a session.
This was unbelievable.
Tim called the Problem ofWhiteness and this was a thing.
There was a white guy leadingit and five black pastors and
they were actually pretty good.
And then we got into all kindsof hermeneutical discussion
(02:07):
because I asked some questionsand people got mad at me and
everything.
But what I'm talking about, tim, is we got to engage.
We got to engage and not bewhat would you say, tim?
Say Tim withdrawing, you know,not becoming a monastery
(02:31):
fortress or something like that,but we got to be out engaging
and then preaching the word ofGod.
I mean I just well, you know,you've had me and you know how
big hermeneutics is?
For me that's, that's so huge,because if we're not engaging
people in their thinking and soon, all of a sudden the gospel
(02:54):
is not making any sense to them.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Well, that, and it has to start.
It has to start inside ourchurch.
Yeah, it has to start with usengaging one another and maybe
challenging or nuancedtheological conversations
regarding the changing contexttoday.
And then it seems like in theearly church, this is go there,
not just to the Missouri Synod,right, but it seems like in the
early church they're kind oftesting things out with one
(03:17):
another.
There's much debate, obviously,acts 15 gets quoted, obviously
the Galatian controversy andcircumcision and like, but
they're staying connected to oneanother, all for the sake of
the mission of engaging a paganculture, I mean you.
So I would love to get yourtake on the old phraseology.
Use old phraseology when you,when you say the gospel and I
(03:40):
think you're you're talkingabout a narrowing of what it
means to proclaim the gospel.
Yeah, and obviously it narrow,it narrows down on Christ, for
sure, Christ crucified.
But when you say oldphraseology, Dr Veltz, what does
that mean and what does thatsound like for us and what are
you concerned about when you usethat phrase old phraseology?
Speaker 2 (03:58):
For example, I heard a sermon recently where the
pastor just comes trotting outwith the phrase sanctification.
Well, do people actually knowwhat that means?
You know, it's not like youcan't use the word, but if
you're going to use the word youbetter be talking about an
(04:18):
explanation of it and then youknow.
Kind of working it into theconversation, tim, I want to
tell you you probably know this,but at St Paul's de Pere in St
Louis, when we went there, Itaught a Bible class for 25
years there and I engaged in thedeepest kind of stuff,
(04:42):
hermeneutically with the peopleI remember.
Let me give you a specificinstance.
You're going to love this InMatthew, when there's the
discussion of the time of theend by Jesus in Matthew 24, and
he says no one knows the time ofthe end.
(05:08):
One knows the time of the end,not the angels in heaven and
then there's a variant readingnor the sun.
Okay, ah, interesting.
So the sun may not know thetime of the end.
I engaged that class for threeweeks in a discussion of the
communication of attributes.
In a discussion of thecommunication of attributes, you
know what?
Does it mean that God becomesincarnate?
Does it limit him?
(05:29):
If it does limit him, in whatway?
Or maybe it's really notlimiting him, and so on.
So one of the things that Iwould say to you in answer to
this question is pastorseverybody listening to this, but
pastors especially, do notunderestimate your lay people in
two respects Number one, howinterested they actually are in
(05:55):
in-depth Bible study.
And number two, how much theyactually can engage, absorb,
deal with and so on.
Tim, let me just say a littlebit more about this because this
is a big thing for me.
I have taught at bothseminaries this year.
(06:16):
Tim, this year is my 50th yearteaching at the two Missouri
Synod seminaries, teaching atthe two Missouri Synod
seminaries.
And I will tell you fromteaching at both seminaries, I
think both seminaries have madethe mistake of underestimating
(06:37):
how important adult Bible studyis.
You know I'm not here.
You know I'm not here tobelittle preaching or anything
like that, but you know I almostget the impression at both
seminaries that preaching isthis big thing and then if
people have time they do Biblestudy.
I would say it's probably interms of engaging people.
It should be the reverse.
(07:06):
For example, I'm talking aboutthat, st Paul's de Pere Bible
study.
A couple dropped in to thechurch, and they happened to
come to the Bible study.
The guy and his wife got soenthralled by this, they started
bringing their friends, and wehad six people join the church
just through that Bible study.
Those people never went to aservice, you know, at the
(07:28):
beginning they only came to theBible study.
Well why?
Because they're actuallyinterested in what the Bible
says it is.
You know, I think we sounderestimate how important this
is.
And then my second point,though, is equally important.
They are willing to engage,sort of the deepest stuff.
(07:49):
I mean, tim, I teach in myBible studies what I teach in
the seminary classes.
It's just not as fast, not asquick, you know.
But you know, can I just putthat out here in our podcast
today that, especially pastors,please take super seriously your
(08:10):
adult Bible study.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Dr Vales, oh my gosh.
Yes, I couldn't agree more andI'm going to take it up one step
because we were talking beforeI hit play that.
This is this.
I'm a leadership systems guy.
Can a pastor have a vision ofsome of the laity not all, but
those who are actively engaged?
Some of them may have the giftof teaching, and could this,
(08:36):
could this bible studyinteraction be a front door
toward opening a theologicalmind to raise up other
communicators of the gospelwithin the body of Christ?
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Oh well, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Sure, sure, obviously .
I mean it's not rocket sciencehere.
This is kind of what Jesus did.
This is kind of what the earlychurch did.
They identified men who wereable to teach 2 Timothy 2, 2,
and raise them up.
It's nothing other thanintentional Bible study that has
a multiplying discipleshipintention, moving forward.
That's all we've been engagedin here at Christ Greenfield.
(09:08):
I don't know that I've everkind of articulated it that way,
but there's power in dialogue,right?
This is why the teaching taskis so huge.
I mean, it's the differencebetween monologue and dialogue.
Monologue one way, dialoguethere's a conversation and.
I don't know, maybe one of theintentions and I don't want to
go too far down a negative holehere but it may be that we've
(09:29):
not been adequately trained tounderstand the nuance of the
theological conversation so thatwe can have the word to say,
and not even the word to say,but even the humble posture to
say, hey, let's do.
I need to learn more.
The scriptures are active andliving and I always have more to
learn.
So I think when we put on thepastor, you have to be like the
(09:51):
Bible answer man right, andyou've got to understand
everything.
I guess the question is this,dr Veltz after they leave the
seminary, are our pastorsgrowing in love of their people
and obviously most especially inlove of the depth of the word
of God?
And if that's the case, game onon this.
But maybe it could be that, ooh, I don't know that I really
(10:11):
want to engage that way, causethere may be some things that
make me uncomfortable that Ihave to encounter in the texts
that are maybe counter to eventhe way I understand church
right now in 2024.
Any any observations there, drVeltz?
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Yeah, two things.
I can't remember which year itwas.
It's either 04 or 07.
You'll remember it when therewas this huge tsunami in
Southeast Asia and you knowhundreds of thousands of people
died.
Well, I was teaching my Bibleclass then and we stopped
teaching Matthew for three weeksand discussed issues of evil.
(10:51):
And you know why do good things, bad things happen to good
people.
You know that, that, that sortof stuff, and we engage that
because that was on the people'sminds and hearts, and properly
the people's minds and heartsand properly.
So you know.
So the Bible class in thatsense, you know you're always
(11:15):
founded in the text but, like Isaid with my discussion of the
communication of attributes, thestuff leaks out all over the
place.
It's founded in the word ofScripture and then you engage
people where they are.
Now I have one member, dennyBarnett, who is a ex-Baptist.
He grew so much and it was soimportant for him to have this
(11:38):
class because you know he'd comein and say, dr Vells, dr Vells,
a guy at work today was sayingthis.
Then we engage that, see, thenwe engage that, so that my
Matthew class I'm not makingthis up for your listeners my
Matthew class lasted 25 years.
(12:02):
That is that, I'm sorry.
18 years, 18 years.
It lasted 18 years and afterthe 18 years then I embarked in
Mark.
Then I came back to Fort Waynehere, but by that time we had
gotten through five chapters ofMark.
Okay, in another seven years.
Why?
Because it was a fertile seedbed to discuss all kinds of
(12:27):
other things, and often we wouldonly get through one verse or
something like that.
So, but I'm going to go backspecifically to your question.
I think our pastors aren'toriented to be dialogical,
they're oriented to bemonological and that's the
(12:47):
emphasis on preaching.
Now, as you said about fiveminutes ago and I'm going to
repeat what you said, we're nothere to be tearing down
preaching or anything like thatbecause I mean you have the
people and you can preach theword of God to them and
everything like this.
But in the Bible class, you canaddress things in a deep way and
(13:12):
then address the things thatare important to your people,
not just to what you think areimportant.
And this is why, tim, I wasdoing this.
When you were my student, I wasusing the flipped classroom
method.
You know where you read thechapter, you submit to me
(13:33):
reaction papers and then we runthe class on the basis of the
reaction papers.
I run all my classes this waynow.
Why?
Because then we deal withwhat's important to you, not
what I think is important to you.
I mean, obviously there's stuffI want to make sure you get
across, but it is so, socritical to engage people where
(13:57):
they are and then connect themto the Word of God.
I can't tell you how happy I amto hear your attitude toward
this, because this is wheregrowth is going to take place.
This is where it's going totake place is engagement in
in-depth Bible study.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
I have 10 men of various ages, from 17 to gosh, I
don't know, 55 or somethinglike that, that show up every
Sunday, dr Veltz, at 6 AM for aBible study class.
Before our services get going,and when we have, we have a few
wonderful teachers that have anine o'clock morning Bible class
(14:39):
that attracts a lot.
A large amount of people are.
So the struggle is I'm going togo back.
The struggle is like I got fourservices, the larger church
right.
I got four services on a Sunday.
So I have to get creativeduring the week and then during
my, my catalyst time, that 6amtime.
But all of those leaders thatare coming to that 6am Sunday
morning, they're all like in ourleadership development kind of
(15:01):
pathway, the pastoral ministrycould be in their future,
co-vocationally or vocationallyinto the future.
So, yeah, it's very, veryexciting.
Couldn't love more what you'resaying, brother.
This is so, so good.
So let's, we got to get to thearticle.
You got to land it, dr Veltz,before we get off of this.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Let me just talk about, you know, my new book,
which came out last October 31st, so it's about one year
Principles of BiblicalInterpretation for Everyone.
This is the layman'shermeneutics, the lay people's
hermeneutics, those guys who arecoming at 6 am.
(15:43):
This is what they should bestudying right here.
This is put out by ConcordiaSeminary Press in St Louis, and
this is not just a watered-downversion of what does this mean,
my big hermeneutics.
This is completely rewritten.
I mean, it's got obviously thesame ideas, but it's packaged
(16:04):
differently and so forth, and Iwant everybody to be aware of
this.
I'm not getting any money forit, so I'm not really, you know,
promoting it for that kind of areason, but this is the kind of
thing that is going to beeffective for those people at
6am.
And the book is set up in sucha way that you read the front
(16:28):
part and then there are thesenotes that are referenced in the
back, called deeper dives, andyou can go deeper into issues,
but if you don't want to, youdon't have to say, and so there
will be a whole bunch of laypeople who do that.
Other people just read thefront of the book, but please
make people aware of this.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Well, thank people just read the front of the book,
but please make your peopleaware of this.
Well, thank you for making meaware of it.
There's so many books that getwritten by so many amazing
leaders like yourself thatsometimes some slip through the
cracks.
I'm glad you brought that up,brother, thank you, thank you.
So let's look at seminaryeducation here, and then we're
going to get to the article.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
I just had a couple questions.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
I mean you've been in seminary education for quite a
while, at both seminaries.
As you think of pastoralformation, what has changed, not
changed, what needs to stay thesame, what should change in
your mind?
Just take a broad brush view ofseminary education, because I
think a lot of things haveevolved.
I mean I've been out almost now, dr Veltz, 20 years.
(17:24):
Think of the massive, massivechanges that have taken place
culturally, technologically, etcetera, in seminary education
and are we responding to that?
So just would love to get yourtake on that, dr Veltz.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Yeah, I would say a negative, but this is, this is
old fogeyism, but this is oldfogeyism okay.
A negative is, I think peoplehave become too dependent upon
(17:54):
electronic stuff and, as aresult, you know, there's just a
big difference betweenencountering the text like this
and encountering a page with abunch of numbers and other stuff
folded in and so on, like thisthat's code, this is reading,
(18:22):
communication is readingcommunication.
And to me this is a negativethat people have become really
dependent on logos and stufflike that and that you don't,
you don't actually I don't knowwhat would you say, tim sort of
joy in the text itself.
(18:43):
You know the text is just sortof seen as some cipher or
something like that.
So, and as a result, peoplemiss not only the beauty but the
power and the genius of theauthors.
I mean, when I, tim, when Iwrote the commentaries on Mark,
(19:09):
the longer I worked the more Iwas in awe of a huge mind.
You know that I was.
I was in the presence ofgreatness, I was really in the
presence of greatness.
And you just sit back and youlook at this and you say you
(19:32):
know, we are not worthy, wereally aren't.
I think that kind of engagementwith these authoritative writers
we're losing with thiselectronic stuff.
I really do believe that.
(20:04):
I do think, since you asked andyou know I'm not all that
negative about it because it'sgot some real positive aspects
to it, all right, but you've gotto be able to engage it
correctly and so forth I thinkthat there are too many people
in our orbit that are completelynegative about postmodernism,
(20:31):
you know, and it's all a kind ofa recidivist, as if modernism
was the great friend ofChristianity, which it certainly
wasn't.
It gave us the closed universeyou know so well hermeneutics is
.
Fort Wayne doesn't even have ahermeneutics course.
(20:53):
They have no hermeneuticscourse in their curriculum.
They believe you can do allthis kind of catch as catch can
in the various exegeticalcourses and I think this is a
complete disaster.
You know, you know what it'slike in my stuff on hermeneutics
.
You have to actually thinkabout it.
(21:14):
You can't be, you can't be justkind of doing it by the by.
And let me at this point here,tim, if you'll allow me, let me
just reference the two textconference that that Andy Bartel
, paul Robbie, my formercolleagues and I have organized,
(21:36):
where it's going to be ourfourth year and we are putting
on this conference.
It's the second week of June.
We're going to be meeting againin Mundelein, illinois, at
University of St Mary, the LakeRetreat Center, and we are just
considering big issues ofhermeneutics that're going to
(21:57):
have a tremendous speaker comein this year talking about
post-Holocaust.
Just think of what's happeningin our country with
anti-Semitism, post-holocaust,doing exegesis in the light of
(22:20):
anti-Jewish sentiment and so on,like that.
These are challenging issues.
What do you do with Romans andso forth, you know?
In this context, I just thinkpeople don't realize that we are
engaged in interpreting realityagainst the reality that's
(22:41):
given to us in the scriptures.
I'm not sure that the seminarycurricula are really engaged in
that.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Yeah, no, that's good .
If people want to hear moreabout the two-text conference,
Dr Veltz, where could they go tofind out about it?
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Well, just Google reading two texts and we've got
a website.
Or they can send me an emailand I can tell them more.
Or they can send me an emailand I can tell them more.
Veltsj at csledu and I can giveyou.
Or Bartelt A.
Andy Bartelt kind of does thenuts and bolts of communicating
with people.
(23:16):
I think people would beextremely interested in
something like this.
And it's you know, you and Ioperate, we're we both.
We're both holding onto thestick, but we operate on
different ends of it.
You know you operate on theleadership organizational thing.
I operate more on thetheoretical stuff to deal with.
(23:41):
We need each other and well, wecan't retreat into some kind of
monastery-like idea.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
I 100% agree, and people have heard me, dr Velds,
be quite bold about creativeways that leadership development
all the way up to pastoralformation can take place.
Today, what I think often getspresupposed is that I want a
downgrading of hermeneutics anddeep exegesis connected to the
(24:17):
original text, and nothing couldbe further from the truth.
I think we can do.
I think we can do both and, yes, absolutely, pastors have kind
of unique bents.
We get not every path we're notcookie cutters right.
God made us in certain wayswith certain unique passions.
But our ultimate passion is, ifyou're a pastor, our ultimate
passion is the word of God, toabide in the word of God, to get
(24:39):
the word of God into the heartsand ears of people that they
may believe and go and proclaim,because the days are far too
short for us to look at oneanother and and not not cherish
the diversity of gifts that havebeen given.
And specifically for us lifersin the Lutheran church, missouri
synod, there are so manyuniquely gifted people that can
(25:01):
agree on so many things and thencan have nuanced discussions
about.
I think a lot of that and I'mnot going to go down the
political LCMS here, but I thinka lot of the discussions are
more on the how rather than the,the what, and if we can just
kind of disagree agreeably andkind of run respective tests in
formation, I think that would behelpful for the next generation
(25:23):
of of leaders being raised upin the LCMS.
But I do agree with you beingwith God's people, being with
leaders, deeply studying thetext, the original is the best.
And so can we raise up moreexegetes within the LCMS?
I really, really think we canwho are bent in the Velsian mold
(25:47):
and there are many who arethere, brother, and so this is
so, so good.
So let's geek out now Last halfof the podcast here.
I loved your article.
I had Dr Lewis on and we dealtwith the first, yeah, last week,
and I don't, yeah, you guyshopefully will be kind of linked
up together.
So Dr Lewis has spent a lot oftime on the first eight verses
of Mark's gospel, chapter 16.
(26:09):
And now your article dealt withthe last 12 verses.
So get us into the article, theorigin of the article and the
evolution of being able tocritique the text in recent
years.
We're going to geek out on Mark16.
This is going to be great, andgo, dr Belts.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Yeah, well, you know this all really revolves around.
You know, when I was doing thecommentary, the two-volume
commentary, on Mark.
You have to decide what are yougoing to do with verses 9 to 20
of chapter 16.
They are in the vast, vastmajority of manuscripts.
(26:49):
Now, the fact of the matter isthat the question of the
genuineness of the last 12verses didn't really come to the
fore until the middle of the19th century, with two related
(27:12):
things the discovery of CodexSinaiticus on the Sinai, st
Catherine's Monastery.
And then what started to happenat the same time is the
(27:34):
publication of some of the otherbig manuscripts, like Vaticanus
, which was known in the 15thcentury already but was seen as
some kind of outlier, and thensuddenly this was published and
manuscript D Beza was morewidely distributed, and so on.
Now it is true the followingstatement is true that in the
(27:55):
Greek manuscripts that we have,the only manuscripts that do not
have the long ending areVaticanus and Sinaiticus.
Okay, all the rest of them do.
Now there is one Latinmanuscript that also omits that
long ending.
(28:15):
Now why should we entertain atall that verses 9 to 20 are not
genuine, given the fact that themanuscript evidence is so
overwhelming?
(28:36):
Well, a couple of things.
Number one, the grammar ismarkedly different and people
say Tim, well, that's subjective.
You know something like thegrammar?
(28:57):
In fact, it's way lesssubjective than you think.
Now, in preparation for ourpodcast, I whipped up this
little paragraph OK, our podcast, I whipped up this little
paragraph, okay, and this is aparagraph that reflects this.
What I have here is notactually what my mother wrote to
me, but she did, about 25 yearsago, write something like this,
(29:23):
so I wrote this up.
My parents had this problemwith the basement of their house
that had a big crack in it,okay, and I got a letter that
said something like this, and Iwant you and all the listeners
to listen to this Jimmy.
She always called me Jimmy,jimmy.
The man came yesterday to talkabout the crack in our basement.
(29:45):
It looks real bad.
We're worried.
He told us that, due to thenatural settling process, cracks
develop quite naturally andmust be dealt with in a timely
manner in order to prevent moreserious issues.
We have to do something.
I hope we have the money, loveMom issues.
(30:09):
We have to do something.
I hope we have the money, lovemom.
Now that sentence that I wrotethere, that kind of complex
thing about the natural setting.
You know my mother did not saythat she is right.
I mean she is channeling theguy, or you know, reading off of
a thing or something like this,now you can say that's
subjective, but it's not,everybody knows.
(30:30):
All of a sudden it's longer,it's more complex, there's
subordinate clauses andeverything like that.
Well, that a couple of salientpoints that even the
(30:54):
pro-long-ending, genuine peopledon't appreciate, and one of
them is the demonstrativepronoun echinus, or in feminine,
echinus, used in the nominativeas a subject.
Okay.
So in the long ending, threetimes at least, this
(31:21):
demonstrative pronoun is usedkind of to mean this woman, she
or these people, they.
Now, you would never know thisfrom reading a translation,
because the translation willjust take this nominative and
translate it she or they.
Okay.
But in the Greek, in thenominative, that demonstrative
(31:45):
pronoun is used as a subjectthree times within the space of
about four verses.
It is never used that way inthe entire Gospel of Mark.
For the rest of Mark, that is akind of what I would call a
kind of a linguistic tick.
You know how some people havephrases that they use.
(32:09):
Now I don't know how.
Uh, how old are your kids?
Speaker 1 (32:16):
all high schoolers uh 17, 16, 15, yep, perfect,
perfect uh, do they use like alot, like I was?
Speaker 2 (32:25):
was talking to my friend Jeannie.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
My girl's more than my son, the girl's more than my
son.
Yeah, yeah, right.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Okay, that's sort of a linguistic trick, tick T-I-C.
A linguistic tick.
So like I was talking to Maryand she was saying like we
should go to this, all right Now, mary, and she was saying like
we should go to this, all rightNow.
Now, if all of a sudden you seea transcription and this like
thing appears like this, thenall of a sudden it disappears
(32:56):
for three pages and then itreappears.
You're going to say there'ssomething odd about that,
because that's the way theperson writes, that's the way
this kind of thing is, this is.
You never hear me use like inthat, in that manner.
If all of a sudden you see atranscription of me saying well,
(33:16):
like I was talking to him andlike we were saying you know,
there's some phony about thatand that's what I'm talking
about here, that's what I'mtalking about here.
I think the grammatically,linguistically, the people who
argue for the genuineness of thelong ending don't appreciate
(33:37):
something like this.
Plus, they don't appreciatelarger syntactical things.
In other words, they think it'sall about words.
But, like my little paragraphabout Jimmy, the man came to
talk to us.
Actually, what's the realrevelation is that it's longer,
more complicated, that sentenceabout the settling.
(33:59):
It's got subordinate clauses.
See that kind of thing.
Nobody looks at that sort ofthing.
They just think it's all aboutvocabulary.
It's not about vocabularyprincipally.
All right.
So this is my first point isthat the long ending
grammatically is not Congress.
(34:20):
Second, and most people don'tunderstand this, the manuscripts
, a bunch of manuscripts,actually discuss the matter of
the ending of Mark in themanuscript in the margin, the
(34:41):
matter of the ending of Mark inthe manuscript in the margin.
Okay, so, for example, there isthis set of manuscripts called
Family One, which is a bunch ofmanuscripts that have like
readings and they say thefollowing after 16, eight, with
the women going and they wereafraid.
(35:01):
And then it says here in someof the copies until here the
evangelist fulfills, fills uphis writing, his writing until
where Eusebius, the follower ofPamphilus, drew the line.
In many others also these arepresented and then they put the
(35:29):
long ending.
So I want the listeners toappreciate this.
That set of words is actuallyin the manuscript.
Tim, when I was at the seminarythey never actually told us
about this, that there's anactual discussion.
It's the only place I know anyplace in the New Testament and
(35:52):
that includes the woman taken inadultery.
You know, in John chapter 8,where the manuscripts have a
marginal discussion of what'sgoing on in the ones that
they're following Now you'llnotice.
This thing that I read to youmentions Eusebius.
(36:13):
Eusebius, now, eusebius, wasthe number one church scholar at
the time of Nicaea, so he wascentered in Caesarea and he was
a personal friend of Constantine.
Constantine gave him the job wehave the records for this
(36:35):
Constantine gave him the job ofcoming up with 50 manuscripts of
the scriptures for the newChristian churches in
Constantinople following Nicaeaand so forth, and so Eusebius
was kind of the number one guy.
Well, he discusses specificallyin a letter to a person called
(37:01):
Marinus the letter in Latin isad marinum, to Marinus.
He discusses specifically theproblem of the ending of Mark.
And here's what he says he saysthat the majority of
manuscripts end with for theywere afraid, and then he adds at
(37:24):
least the accurate ones.
So this guy who is charged withputting together 50 Bibles for
the new churches ofConstantinople says to this
other guy that the majority ofthe ones he knows end at for
they were afraid, and then hedidn't have to add this other
(37:47):
thing and he says, in fact, theaccurate ones.
Well, I actually think that itis.
How should I say this, tim?
It's kind of impossible to getaround Eusebius's testimony, you
know, because the guy is a textcritic himself and is working
(38:12):
with this kind of stuff rightfrom the word go.
So, and he's Constantine'sright-hand man, all right, then
I'm going to add a third thing.
Now there is a huge book by aguy by the name of John Bergen,
b-u-r-g-o-n, and he has this bigstudy and he's trying to do the
(38:40):
genuineness of the long ending.
Okay Now, it's a really greatstudy.
I'll have to tell you I admireit greatly, but he, for example,
does not.
He tries to discount Eusebius.
It doesn't quite work and hedoesn't really understand these
larger syntactical things and soon.
But here's the point I'm goingto make.
(39:03):
One of his attacks and this isyour listeners should know this
anybody who is for the longending will do this they will
mercilessly attack Vaticanus andSinaiticus as inferior
manuscripts, as corruptedmanuscripts.
(39:24):
Okay, bergen does this.
Now here's what they don'trealize.
Bergen, in his attack on what hethinks are the corruptions in
these two manuscripts, bringsforth a number of instances.
Almost none of them actuallyoccur in the Gospel of Mark.
(39:47):
They will occur in Matthew, inJohn, in Luke, and so my thing
is let's say John Bergen, I evenwant to listen to you.
You're not bringing me examplesof the inferiorities of
manuscripts in the Gospel ofMark, and that's what we're
discussing.
We're discussing the Gospel ofMark.
(40:08):
We're not discussing the whatshall I call it, the general
reliability in other Gospels.
We're talking about Mark, andwhen you're talking about Mark,
you can't come up with more thanabout two examples of what you
think are inferior readings.
See, so there's a three-leggedstool here.
(40:33):
The three-legged stool, againstseeing the long ending as
genuine, is the grammaticalstuff, and I could be a lot more
complicated than this, but noton the podcast.
The grammatical stuff, thetestimony of, well, the
(40:54):
testimony of Eusebius I guess Iwould say it's a four-legged
stool the testimony of themanuscripts that they know that
there's this discussion.
And then the Bergen assessmentthat's kind of wrongly aimed at
being Aleph.
You know that he's trying todiscredit him, but he can't
(41:18):
discredit him in the gospel ofMark, can't discredit him in the
gospel of Mark.
Now, through the history it'sbeen recognized as you go down
through the centuries, go downthrough the centuries, that
(41:47):
ending mark at 16.8 has beenaround.
But the farther away it goes,the less you see testimony to it
.
Okay, now, interestingly enough, some of the reformers knew
about it.
There is a guy what's his firstname?
It's something like AlexanderZygobinus or something from the
12th century and he recognizesit.
(42:07):
But he says I don't see anymanuscripts.
But I know that it's around andso forth forth, but now David
Lewis, perhaps on your podcast,talked about the appropriateness
of ending at 16.8 for the wholestory.
(42:28):
See, but this is another matter.
I decided not to talk about theliterary features.
But literarily it spoils thestory to put 9 to 20 on there.
Literally it doesn't reallywork.
But for most people they're notinterested in that, they're
interested in more concretesorts of things.
(42:49):
Now let me say one more thing.
The huge study that's been doneon the long ending was done by
James Kelhoffer, who actually atthe time was a scholar at St
(43:24):
Louis University, at SLU.
He's now over in in Sweden andhis big book on this is really
terrific.
I mean, he lays this stuff outabout Eusebius and he talks
about, you know, the history ofthe church and so on.
Now he shows that essentiallythe long ending is not seen in
any manuscripts until about 150.
And well, I didn't say thatcorrectly.
(43:44):
Erase that, take it back thatwe don't have testimony to it
until 150, because we don't havea bunch of manuscripts from 150
.
That's not the right thing tosay.
But we don't have a bunch ofmanuscripts from 150.
That's not the right thing tosay.
But we don't have testimony.
For example, we have testimonyby Irenaeus, but now you're
talking about 180 or somethinglike that.
(44:06):
And Kelhoffer has a veryinteresting theory on this.
His theory is that it was puttogether by someone who thought
that the ending was missing, buthe didn't want to just make
stuff up, so he actually drewfrom Matthew and Luke and John
(44:31):
and Acts, and you can see this.
So the various things that arein the long ending have these
parallels in the other Gospelsand in Acts, like the snake
handling, and then Paul in Acts28, and so on, like that.
It's very interesting the wayKelhoffer works this out.
And so now for your listeners,this next point of his is really
(44:54):
quite important.
He says so it's probably donearound 150, and that's about the
time that we see the appearanceof the other pseudepigraphical
gospels the gospel of Thomas,the gospel of Peter, gospel of
truth, gospel of Mary, and so on, like that.
(45:16):
So these what you might callcompetitors to the canonical
gospels arise around 150, andthis is kind of in that same
time period.
Now I'm going to say one morething, and that is there is this
fellow who has a bunch of stuffon the internet James Snap Jr,
(45:42):
s-n-a-p-p.
James Snap Jr.
Now I've got some realadmiration for this guy.
He is pro long ending, okay asmarket.
But he has an extremelysophisticated position and I've
never heard anybody contend thisbefore.
He contends that it's Markan butit's not the original ending of
(46:09):
the gospel.
So he contends that Mark wroteit.
But Mark wrote it for adifferent context, like as part
of a sermon or something inAlexandria, and then later on
followers of his attached it tothe gospel as an ending to the
(46:30):
gospel.
Now I've said to a number ofpeople and I presented a paper
on this to the National SPL lastyear and I said if you just got
to have the long ending, youknow I would go with the same
James Snap Jr Explanation is nowI think he's wrong.
Ok, I think he's wrong becausethe testimony of Eusebius and
(46:52):
also because the James Snap JrSolution doesn't solve the
grammar syntax problem, see, Imean that's, I don't think that
Mark did that.
It doesn't look Markan to me atall, you know, but it's an
interesting theory because hedoes recognize that the
(47:13):
transition between verse eightand verse nine is way too
awkward and improper and so it'sprobably not like the original
composition of Mark.
Well, I'm going on.
Speaker 1 (47:27):
This is good.
No, hey, this is.
We're at time.
We're at time, but I have toask one other question, dr Veldt
.
So I'm a believer since I was inDr Lewis's class and obviously
in yours in the verse eightending, the suspended ending,
with the hopeful outcome beingyou place yourself in the shoes
(47:48):
of the women and you're leavinghaving heard, not seen, but just
having heard the testimony.
And now we're carrying out thismessage in anticipation of our
faith being sight on the lastday when Jesus returns.
And so we would.
We know, we know the end of thestory, we know that Jesus
bodily rose, jesus bodilyascended and Jesus will bodily
(48:09):
return to make all things new.
And so now we stand with Mark,having not seen, but we're
carrying out that message.
I'm a believer in the suspendedending.
At the same time, the strugglepoint is verse 16, mark 16,
verse 16, he who believes and isbaptized shall be saved.
I mean, can we still keep thisin our baptismal liturgy and
other places where that verse inparticular has had quite a sway
(48:33):
in terms of our baptismaltheology?
How do you answer that question, dr Biltz?
Speaker 2 (48:36):
Well, in Excursus 19, volume 2 of my commentary, I
talk particularly I think it'spoint D or something like this
about the use in the confessionsof not only that verse but also
(48:56):
verse 20.
There are a couple of otherones, and you know, I mean, the
fact of the matter is that theconfessions actually you know
what I decided to do, tim?
I decided to look and I lookedin the index of the confessions
of every place that Mark isreferenced, okay.
(49:18):
Well, then you find out thatit's actually referencing also
other things that we would nolonger do in terms of text
criticism, like, for example, inchapter 9, when the guy comes
with the demonized boy and Jesussays well, this type of thing
(49:40):
departs only with prayer.
And then some manuscripts addand fasting okay, now, we don't
follow those.
Aleph and Bea and a whole bunchof others don't add and fasting
.
Well, the confessions do addand fasting, and then they go
(50:00):
and start to develop a theory offasting on the basis of that.
See, I mean, I just don't think, you know, once you start down
this, you can't be sayingsomething like this Well, the
confessions are our baseline oftext criticism.
That's simply not right,because they have access to what
(50:21):
they have access to.
Now let me come back to yourspecific question.
I wouldn't use it.
I wouldn't use it because Ijust don't think it's genuine.
But it's not.
I mean, you have Baptism.
Now Saves Us.
You have the Great Commission.
(50:42):
You have plenty of other stuffand in fact in Excursus 19,.
I talk about that, about allthe alternatives to what they
have.
And you know, here's why thereare alternatives Because if
James Kelhoffer is right, theguy who composed that took from
(51:04):
elsewhere in the scriptures andbrought that together into the
long ending.
That's why you don't have sortof unique stuff.
So you know, he who's notbelieved is condemned.
Well, you got that in John 3,verse 17.
So I personally would not useit.
Speaker 1 (51:26):
I would not use it.
I love it.
Hey, Dr Veltz, this has beenamazing.
We'll have you back on.
There's so much more to talkabout on so many other topics.
Reading Two Texts.
Shout out just Google, readingTwo Texts, you'll find their
website and I got to get there.
You know the struggle is, drVeltz.
I get invited to so manydifferent gatherings and I'm a
(51:48):
dad of three high schoolersright now, with kids and
activities, and I can't missthis season.
But hey, when there's anotherseason I'm going to be all in,
because the exegetes, theleaders and everybody in between
, man, we got to rally aroundgetting the gospel into as wide
of a base possible, because Ithink there is to double down on
(52:09):
the postmodern context today,or the pre-modern, and we don't
have time to get into this.
We have a lot of work to do bythe Spirit's power to get the
gospel into the hearts and earsof people, and it's such a
compelling time right now to bealive in world history, to speak
into the gods of this day andage that people are believing in
(52:31):
and point them to the Creator,the Redeemer, the Sanctifier.
I'm using all these words yousay I need to define, and so
anyway, sorry we don't have timeto do that.
But what an honor, what an honorto have you.
Dr Veltz, if people want toconnect with you though you
mentioned your email Just giveit one more time.
If people want to connect.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
Yeah, V-O-E-L-Z-J at CSL Concordia, St Louis, CSLedu.
I love it.
Speaker 1 (52:58):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (53:01):
I'd be happy to talk with people and you know, please
, again, let me just promotethis book here.
Principles of BiblicalInterpretation for Everyone.
Tim, this is my fifth book andthis is going to be the most
important one that I've written,even more important than the
(53:22):
Greek grammar and so on.
Why?
Because it gets in-depth studyof the word into people's hands,
that's it.
Speaker 1 (53:31):
That is it.
Well, he is the one and onlyReverend.
Dr James Vells, I'm just TimAllman, just a parish pastor
trying to have wonderful, kind,collegial conversations, and we
have so much to learn and Ithank you for enlightening us
today, dr.
Speaker 2 (53:44):
Vells hey, don't forget, you're a great point
guard.
Remember our great trip down to.
Speaker 1 (53:48):
South Park.
Speaker 2 (53:49):
Hey well we're going to talk basketball we didn't
have, we had.
Speaker 1 (53:52):
that was an awesome trip.
By the way, I got hurt on thattrip.
We're going to talk basketballand kind of seminary culture and
a lot of those stories.
Next time I have you on.
But this has been so much fun,dr Veltz, and this is the
American Reformation podcast.
We'll be back next week withanother fresh episode.
God bless you, dr Veltz.
Welcome to the American Reformation Podcast,
tim Allman.
Here I pray.
The joy of the Lord is yourstrength as you buckle up for an
awesome conversation today withone of my favorite professors
on planet Earth, the Reverend DrJim Veltz.
How are you doing today, drVeltz?
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Doing great.
Buckle up I like that.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
Okay, we're going to have a good time.
So standard opening questionthis is the American Reformation
podcast.
How is you look?
And you've got quite a breadthexperience, both within the
Lutheran Church Missouri Synodand beyond.
How are you praying forreformation, especially
understanding the LutheranChurch Missouri Synod and beyond
(00:51):
.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
How are you praying for reformation, especially
understanding the times today,dr Veltz?
Well, I'll tell you what Ithink it comesneyed, redoing of
old phraseologies and everythinglike that.
I mean, you know, I meanactually engaging.
(01:23):
What's going on in society?
What's going on in people'sthinking?
You know, every year I go tothe National Society of Biblical
Literature meeting.
I'm going again this year.
It's always in November, theweekend before Thanksgiving.
It's going to be out in SanDiego this year and just to give
you an example of what I'mtalking about, a couple of years
(01:44):
ago I went to a session.
This was unbelievable.
Tim called the Problem ofWhiteness and this was a thing.
There was a white guy leadingit and five black pastors and
they were actually pretty good.
And then we got into all kindsof hermeneutical discussion
(02:07):
because I asked some questionsand people got mad at me and
everything.
But what I'm talking about, tim, is we got to engage.
We got to engage and not bewhat would you say, tim?
Say Tim withdrawing, you know,not becoming a monastery
(02:31):
fortress or something like that,but we got to be out engaging
and then preaching the word ofGod.
I mean I just well, you know,you've had me and you know how
big hermeneutics is?
For me that's, that's so huge,because if we're not engaging
people in their thinking and soon, all of a sudden the gospel
(02:54):
is not making any sense to them.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Well, that, and it has to start.
It has to start inside ourchurch.
Yeah, it has to start with usengaging one another and maybe
challenging or nuancedtheological conversations
regarding the changing contexttoday.
And then it seems like in theearly church, this is go there,
not just to the Missouri Synod,right, but it seems like in the
early church they're kind oftesting things out with one
(03:17):
another.
There's much debate, obviously,acts 15 gets quoted, obviously
the Galatian controversy andcircumcision and like, but
they're staying connected to oneanother, all for the sake of
the mission of engaging a paganculture, I mean you.
So I would love to get yourtake on the old phraseology.
Use old phraseology when you,when you say the gospel and I
(03:40):
think you're you're talkingabout a narrowing of what it
means to proclaim the gospel.
Yeah, and obviously it narrow,it narrows down on Christ, for
sure, Christ crucified.
But when you say oldphraseology, Dr Veltz, what does
that mean and what does thatsound like for us and what are
you concerned about when you usethat phrase old phraseology?
Speaker 2 (03:58):
For example, I heard a sermon recently where the
pastor just comes trotting outwith the phrase sanctification.
Well, do people actually knowwhat that means?
You know, it's not like youcan't use the word, but if
you're going to use the word youbetter be talking about an
(04:18):
explanation of it and then youknow.
Kind of working it into theconversation, tim, I want to
tell you you probably know this,but at St Paul's de Pere in St
Louis, when we went there, Itaught a Bible class for 25
years there and I engaged in thedeepest kind of stuff,
(04:42):
hermeneutically with the peopleI remember.
Let me give you a specificinstance.
You're going to love this InMatthew, when there's the
discussion of the time of theend by Jesus in Matthew 24, and
he says no one knows the time ofthe end.
(05:08):
One knows the time of the end,not the angels in heaven and
then there's a variant readingnor the sun.
Okay, ah, interesting.
So the sun may not know thetime of the end.
I engaged that class for threeweeks in a discussion of the
communication of attributes.
In a discussion of thecommunication of attributes, you
know what?
Does it mean that God becomesincarnate?
Does it limit him?
(05:29):
If it does limit him, in whatway?
Or maybe it's really notlimiting him, and so on.
So one of the things that Iwould say to you in answer to
this question is pastorseverybody listening to this, but
pastors especially, do notunderestimate your lay people in
two respects Number one, howinterested they actually are in
(05:55):
in-depth Bible study.
And number two, how much theyactually can engage, absorb,
deal with and so on.
Tim, let me just say a littlebit more about this because this
is a big thing for me.
I have taught at bothseminaries this year.
(06:16):
Tim, this year is my 50th yearteaching at the two Missouri
Synod seminaries, teaching atthe two Missouri Synod
seminaries.
And I will tell you fromteaching at both seminaries, I
think both seminaries have madethe mistake of underestimating
(06:37):
how important adult Bible studyis.
You know I'm not here.
You know I'm not here tobelittle preaching or anything
like that, but you know I almostget the impression at both
seminaries that preaching isthis big thing and then if
people have time they do Biblestudy.
I would say it's probably interms of engaging people.
It should be the reverse.
(07:06):
For example, I'm talking aboutthat, st Paul's de Pere Bible
study.
A couple dropped in to thechurch, and they happened to
come to the Bible study.
The guy and his wife got soenthralled by this, they started
bringing their friends, and wehad six people join the church
just through that Bible study.
Those people never went to aservice, you know, at the
(07:28):
beginning they only came to theBible study.
Well why?
Because they're actuallyinterested in what the Bible
says it is.
You know, I think we sounderestimate how important this
is.
And then my second point,though, is equally important.
They are willing to engage,sort of the deepest stuff.
(07:49):
I mean, tim, I teach in myBible studies what I teach in
the seminary classes.
It's just not as fast, not asquick, you know.
But you know, can I just putthat out here in our podcast
today that, especially pastors,please take super seriously your
(08:10):
adult Bible study.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Dr Vales, oh my gosh.
Yes, I couldn't agree more andI'm going to take it up one step
because we were talking beforeI hit play that.
This is this.
I'm a leadership systems guy.
Can a pastor have a vision ofsome of the laity not all, but
those who are actively engaged?
Some of them may have the giftof teaching, and could this,
(08:36):
could this bible studyinteraction be a front door
toward opening a theologicalmind to raise up other
communicators of the gospelwithin the body of Christ?
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Oh well, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Sure, sure, obviously .
I mean it's not rocket sciencehere.
This is kind of what Jesus did.
This is kind of what the earlychurch did.
They identified men who wereable to teach 2 Timothy 2, 2,
and raise them up.
It's nothing other thanintentional Bible study that has
a multiplying discipleshipintention, moving forward.
That's all we've been engagedin here at Christ Greenfield.
(09:08):
I don't know that I've everkind of articulated it that way,
but there's power in dialogue,right?
This is why the teaching taskis so huge.
I mean, it's the differencebetween monologue and dialogue.
Monologue one way, dialoguethere's a conversation and.
I don't know, maybe one of theintentions and I don't want to
go too far down a negative holehere but it may be that we've
(09:29):
not been adequately trained tounderstand the nuance of the
theological conversation so thatwe can have the word to say,
and not even the word to say,but even the humble posture to
say, hey, let's do.
I need to learn more.
The scriptures are active andliving and I always have more to
learn.
So I think when we put on thepastor, you have to be like the
(09:51):
Bible answer man right, andyou've got to understand
everything.
I guess the question is this,dr Veltz after they leave the
seminary, are our pastorsgrowing in love of their people
and obviously most especially inlove of the depth of the word
of God?
And if that's the case, game onon this.
But maybe it could be that, ooh, I don't know that I really
(10:11):
want to engage that way, causethere may be some things that
make me uncomfortable that Ihave to encounter in the texts
that are maybe counter to eventhe way I understand church
right now in 2024.
Any any observations there, drVeltz?
Speaker 2 (10:27):
Yeah, two things.
I can't remember which year itwas.
It's either 04 or 07.
You'll remember it when therewas this huge tsunami in
Southeast Asia and you knowhundreds of thousands of people
died.
Well, I was teaching my Bibleclass then and we stopped
teaching Matthew for three weeksand discussed issues of evil.
(10:51):
And you know why do good things, bad things happen to good
people.
You know that, that, that sortof stuff, and we engage that
because that was on the people'sminds and hearts, and properly
the people's minds and heartsand properly.
So you know.
So the Bible class in thatsense, you know you're always
(11:15):
founded in the text but, like Isaid with my discussion of the
communication of attributes, thestuff leaks out all over the
place.
It's founded in the word ofScripture and then you engage
people where they are.
Now I have one member, dennyBarnett, who is a ex-Baptist.
He grew so much and it was soimportant for him to have this
(11:38):
class because you know he'd comein and say, dr Vells, dr Vells,
a guy at work today was sayingthis.
Then we engage that, see, thenwe engage that, so that my
Matthew class I'm not makingthis up for your listeners my
Matthew class lasted 25 years.
(12:02):
That is that, I'm sorry.
18 years, 18 years.
It lasted 18 years and afterthe 18 years then I embarked in
Mark.
Then I came back to Fort Waynehere, but by that time we had
gotten through five chapters ofMark.
Okay, in another seven years.
Why?
Because it was a fertile seedbed to discuss all kinds of
(12:27):
other things, and often we wouldonly get through one verse or
something like that.
So, but I'm going to go backspecifically to your question.
I think our pastors aren'toriented to be dialogical,
they're oriented to bemonological and that's the
(12:47):
emphasis on preaching.
Now, as you said about fiveminutes ago and I'm going to
repeat what you said, we're nothere to be tearing down
preaching or anything like thatbecause I mean you have the
people and you can preach theword of God to them and
everything like this.
But in the Bible class, you canaddress things in a deep way and
(13:12):
then address the things thatare important to your people,
not just to what you think areimportant.
And this is why, tim, I wasdoing this.
When you were my student, I wasusing the flipped classroom
method.
You know where you read thechapter, you submit to me
(13:33):
reaction papers and then we runthe class on the basis of the
reaction papers.
I run all my classes this waynow.
Why?
Because then we deal withwhat's important to you, not
what I think is important to you.
I mean, obviously there's stuffI want to make sure you get
across, but it is so, socritical to engage people where
(13:57):
they are and then connect themto the Word of God.
I can't tell you how happy I amto hear your attitude toward
this, because this is wheregrowth is going to take place.
This is where it's going totake place is engagement in
in-depth Bible study.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
I have 10 men of various ages, from 17 to gosh, I
don't know, 55 or somethinglike that, that show up every
Sunday, dr Veltz, at 6 AM for aBible study class.
Before our services get going,and when we have, we have a few
wonderful teachers that have anine o'clock morning Bible class
(14:39):
that attracts a lot.
A large amount of people are.
So the struggle is I'm going togo back.
The struggle is like I got fourservices, the larger church
right.
I got four services on a Sunday.
So I have to get creativeduring the week and then during
my, my catalyst time, that 6amtime.
But all of those leaders thatare coming to that 6am Sunday
morning, they're all like in ourleadership development kind of
(15:01):
pathway, the pastoral ministrycould be in their future,
co-vocationally or vocationallyinto the future.
So, yeah, it's very, veryexciting.
Couldn't love more what you'resaying, brother.
This is so, so good.
So let's, we got to get to thearticle.
You got to land it, dr Veltz,before we get off of this.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Let me just talk about, you know, my new book,
which came out last October 31st, so it's about one year
Principles of BiblicalInterpretation for Everyone.
This is the layman'shermeneutics, the lay people's
hermeneutics, those guys who arecoming at 6 am.
(15:43):
This is what they should bestudying right here.
This is put out by ConcordiaSeminary Press in St Louis, and
this is not just a watered-downversion of what does this mean,
my big hermeneutics.
This is completely rewritten.
I mean, it's got obviously thesame ideas, but it's packaged
(16:04):
differently and so forth, and Iwant everybody to be aware of
this.
I'm not getting any money forit, so I'm not really, you know,
promoting it for that kind of areason, but this is the kind of
thing that is going to beeffective for those people at
6am.
And the book is set up in sucha way that you read the front
(16:28):
part and then there are thesenotes that are referenced in the
back, called deeper dives, andyou can go deeper into issues,
but if you don't want to, youdon't have to say, and so there
will be a whole bunch of laypeople who do that.
Other people just read thefront of the book, but please
make people aware of this.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Well, thank people just read the front of the book,
but please make your peopleaware of this.
Well, thank you for making meaware of it.
There's so many books that getwritten by so many amazing
leaders like yourself thatsometimes some slip through the
cracks.
I'm glad you brought that up,brother, thank you, thank you.
So let's look at seminaryeducation here, and then we're
going to get to the article.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
I just had a couple questions.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
I mean you've been in seminary education for quite a
while, at both seminaries.
As you think of pastoralformation, what has changed, not
changed, what needs to stay thesame, what should change in
your mind?
Just take a broad brush view ofseminary education, because I
think a lot of things haveevolved.
I mean I've been out almost now, dr Veltz, 20 years.
(17:24):
Think of the massive, massivechanges that have taken place
culturally, technologically, etcetera, in seminary education
and are we responding to that?
So just would love to get yourtake on that, dr Veltz.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Yeah, I would say a negative, but this is, this is
old fogeyism, but this is oldfogeyism okay.
A negative is, I think peoplehave become too dependent upon
(17:54):
electronic stuff and, as aresult, you know, there's just a
big difference betweenencountering the text like this
and encountering a page with abunch of numbers and other stuff
folded in and so on, like thisthat's code, this is reading,
(18:22):
communication is readingcommunication.
And to me this is a negativethat people have become really
dependent on logos and stufflike that and that you don't,
you don't actually I don't knowwhat would you say, tim sort of
joy in the text itself.
(18:43):
You know the text is just sortof seen as some cipher or
something like that.
So, and as a result, peoplemiss not only the beauty but the
power and the genius of theauthors.
I mean, when I, tim, when Iwrote the commentaries on Mark,
(19:09):
the longer I worked the more Iwas in awe of a huge mind.
You know that I was.
I was in the presence ofgreatness, I was really in the
presence of greatness.
And you just sit back and youlook at this and you say you
(19:32):
know, we are not worthy, wereally aren't.
I think that kind of engagementwith these authoritative writers
we're losing with thiselectronic stuff.
I really do believe that.
(20:04):
I do think, since you asked andyou know I'm not all that
negative about it because it'sgot some real positive aspects
to it, all right, but you've gotto be able to engage it
correctly and so forth I thinkthat there are too many people
in our orbit that are completelynegative about postmodernism,
(20:31):
you know, and it's all a kind ofa recidivist, as if modernism
was the great friend ofChristianity, which it certainly
wasn't.
It gave us the closed universeyou know so well hermeneutics is
.
Fort Wayne doesn't even have ahermeneutics course.
(20:53):
They have no hermeneuticscourse in their curriculum.
They believe you can do allthis kind of catch as catch can
in the various exegeticalcourses and I think this is a
complete disaster.
You know, you know what it'slike in my stuff on hermeneutics
.
You have to actually thinkabout it.
(21:14):
You can't be, you can't be justkind of doing it by the by.
And let me at this point here,tim, if you'll allow me, let me
just reference the two textconference that that Andy Bartel
, paul Robbie, my formercolleagues and I have organized,
(21:36):
where it's going to be ourfourth year and we are putting
on this conference.
It's the second week of June.
We're going to be meeting againin Mundelein, illinois, at
University of St Mary, the LakeRetreat Center, and we are just
considering big issues ofhermeneutics that're going to
(21:57):
have a tremendous speaker comein this year talking about
post-Holocaust.
Just think of what's happeningin our country with
anti-Semitism, post-holocaust,doing exegesis in the light of
(22:20):
anti-Jewish sentiment and so on,like that.
These are challenging issues.
What do you do with Romans andso forth, you know?
In this context, I just thinkpeople don't realize that we are
engaged in interpreting realityagainst the reality that's
(22:41):
given to us in the scriptures.
I'm not sure that the seminarycurricula are really engaged in
that.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
Yeah, no, that's good .
If people want to hear moreabout the two-text conference,
Dr Veltz, where could they go tofind out about it?
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Well, just Google reading two texts and we've got
a website.
Or they can send me an emailand I can tell them more.
Or they can send me an emailand I can tell them more.
Veltsj at csledu and I can giveyou.
Or Bartelt A.
Andy Bartelt kind of does thenuts and bolts of communicating
with people.
(23:16):
I think people would beextremely interested in
something like this.
And it's you know, you and Ioperate, we're we both.
We're both holding onto thestick, but we operate on
different ends of it.
You know you operate on theleadership organizational thing.
I operate more on thetheoretical stuff to deal with.
(23:41):
We need each other and well, wecan't retreat into some kind of
monastery-like idea.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
I 100% agree, and people have heard me, dr Velds,
be quite bold about creativeways that leadership development
all the way up to pastoralformation can take place.
Today, what I think often getspresupposed is that I want a
downgrading of hermeneutics anddeep exegesis connected to the
(24:17):
original text, and nothing couldbe further from the truth.
I think we can do.
I think we can do both and, yes, absolutely, pastors have kind
of unique bents.
We get not every path we're notcookie cutters right.
God made us in certain wayswith certain unique passions.
But our ultimate passion is, ifyou're a pastor, our ultimate
passion is the word of God, toabide in the word of God, to get
(24:39):
the word of God into the heartsand ears of people that they
may believe and go and proclaim,because the days are far too
short for us to look at oneanother and and not not cherish
the diversity of gifts that havebeen given.
And specifically for us lifersin the Lutheran church, missouri
synod, there are so manyuniquely gifted people that can
(25:01):
agree on so many things and thencan have nuanced discussions
about.
I think a lot of that and I'mnot going to go down the
political LCMS here, but I thinka lot of the discussions are
more on the how rather than the,the what, and if we can just
kind of disagree agreeably andkind of run respective tests in
formation, I think that would behelpful for the next generation
(25:23):
of of leaders being raised upin the LCMS.
But I do agree with you beingwith God's people, being with
leaders, deeply studying thetext, the original is the best.
And so can we raise up moreexegetes within the LCMS?
I really, really think we canwho are bent in the Velsian mold
(25:47):
and there are many who arethere, brother, and so this is
so, so good.
So let's geek out now Last halfof the podcast here.
I loved your article.
I had Dr Lewis on and we dealtwith the first, yeah, last week,
and I don't, yeah, you guyshopefully will be kind of linked
up together.
So Dr Lewis has spent a lot oftime on the first eight verses
of Mark's gospel, chapter 16.
(26:09):
And now your article dealt withthe last 12 verses.
So get us into the article, theorigin of the article and the
evolution of being able tocritique the text in recent
years.
We're going to geek out on Mark16.
This is going to be great, andgo, dr Belts.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Yeah, well, you know this all really revolves around.
You know, when I was doing thecommentary, the two-volume
commentary, on Mark.
You have to decide what are yougoing to do with verses 9 to 20
of chapter 16.
They are in the vast, vastmajority of manuscripts.
(26:49):
Now, the fact of the matter isthat the question of the
genuineness of the last 12verses didn't really come to the
fore until the middle of the19th century, with two related
(27:12):
things the discovery of CodexSinaiticus on the Sinai, st
Catherine's Monastery.
And then what started to happenat the same time is the
(27:34):
publication of some of the otherbig manuscripts, like Vaticanus
, which was known in the 15thcentury already but was seen as
some kind of outlier, and thensuddenly this was published and
manuscript D Beza was morewidely distributed, and so on.
Now it is true the followingstatement is true that in the
(27:55):
Greek manuscripts that we have,the only manuscripts that do not
have the long ending areVaticanus and Sinaiticus.
Okay, all the rest of them do.
Now there is one Latinmanuscript that also omits that
long ending.
(28:15):
Now why should we entertain atall that verses 9 to 20 are not
genuine, given the fact that themanuscript evidence is so
overwhelming?
(28:36):
Well, a couple of things.
Number one, the grammar ismarkedly different and people
say Tim, well, that's subjective.
You know something like thegrammar?
(28:57):
In fact, it's way lesssubjective than you think.
Now, in preparation for ourpodcast, I whipped up this
little paragraph OK, our podcast, I whipped up this little
paragraph, okay, and this is aparagraph that reflects this.
What I have here is notactually what my mother wrote to
me, but she did, about 25 yearsago, write something like this,
(29:23):
so I wrote this up.
My parents had this problemwith the basement of their house
that had a big crack in it,okay, and I got a letter that
said something like this, and Iwant you and all the listeners
to listen to this Jimmy.
She always called me Jimmy,jimmy.
The man came yesterday to talkabout the crack in our basement.
(29:45):
It looks real bad.
We're worried.
He told us that, due to thenatural settling process, cracks
develop quite naturally andmust be dealt with in a timely
manner in order to prevent moreserious issues.
We have to do something.
I hope we have the money, loveMom issues.
(30:09):
We have to do something.
I hope we have the money, lovemom.
Now that sentence that I wrotethere, that kind of complex
thing about the natural setting.
You know my mother did not saythat she is right.
I mean she is channeling theguy, or you know, reading off of
a thing or something like this,now you can say that's
subjective, but it's not,everybody knows.
(30:30):
All of a sudden it's longer,it's more complex, there's
subordinate clauses andeverything like that.
Well, that a couple of salientpoints that even the
(30:54):
pro-long-ending, genuine peopledon't appreciate, and one of
them is the demonstrativepronoun echinus, or in feminine,
echinus, used in the nominativeas a subject.
Okay.
So in the long ending, threetimes at least, this
(31:21):
demonstrative pronoun is usedkind of to mean this woman, she
or these people, they.
Now, you would never know thisfrom reading a translation,
because the translation willjust take this nominative and
translate it she or they.
Okay.
But in the Greek, in thenominative, that demonstrative
(31:45):
pronoun is used as a subjectthree times within the space of
about four verses.
It is never used that way inthe entire Gospel of Mark.
For the rest of Mark, that is akind of what I would call a
kind of a linguistic tick.
You know how some people havephrases that they use.
(32:09):
Now I don't know how.
Uh, how old are your kids?
Speaker 1 (32:16):
all high schoolers uh 17, 16, 15, yep, perfect,
perfect uh, do they use like alot, like I was?
Speaker 2 (32:25):
was talking to my friend Jeannie.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
My girl's more than my son, the girl's more than my
son.
Yeah, yeah, right.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Okay, that's sort of a linguistic trick, tick T-I-C.
A linguistic tick.
So like I was talking to Maryand she was saying like we
should go to this, all right Now, mary, and she was saying like
we should go to this, all rightNow.
Now, if all of a sudden you seea transcription and this like
thing appears like this, thenall of a sudden it disappears
(32:56):
for three pages and then itreappears.
You're going to say there'ssomething odd about that,
because that's the way theperson writes, that's the way
this kind of thing is, this is.
You never hear me use like inthat, in that manner.
If all of a sudden you see atranscription of me saying well,
(33:16):
like I was talking to him andlike we were saying you know,
there's some phony about thatand that's what I'm talking
about here, that's what I'mtalking about here.
I think the grammatically,linguistically, the people who
argue for the genuineness of thelong ending don't appreciate
(33:37):
something like this.
Plus, they don't appreciatelarger syntactical things.
In other words, they think it'sall about words.
But, like my little paragraphabout Jimmy, the man came to
talk to us.
Actually, what's the realrevelation is that it's longer,
more complicated, that sentenceabout the settling.
(33:59):
It's got subordinate clauses.
See that kind of thing.
Nobody looks at that sort ofthing.
They just think it's all aboutvocabulary.
It's not about vocabularyprincipally.
All right.
So this is my first point isthat the long ending
grammatically is not Congress.
(34:20):
Second, and most people don'tunderstand this, the manuscripts
, a bunch of manuscripts,actually discuss the matter of
the ending of Mark in themanuscript in the margin, the
(34:41):
matter of the ending of Mark inthe manuscript in the margin.
Okay, so, for example, there isthis set of manuscripts called
Family One, which is a bunch ofmanuscripts that have like
readings and they say thefollowing after 16, eight, with
the women going and they wereafraid.
(35:01):
And then it says here in someof the copies until here the
evangelist fulfills, fills uphis writing, his writing until
where Eusebius, the follower ofPamphilus, drew the line.
In many others also these arepresented and then they put the
(35:29):
long ending.
So I want the listeners toappreciate this.
That set of words is actuallyin the manuscript.
Tim, when I was at the seminarythey never actually told us
about this, that there's anactual discussion.
It's the only place I know anyplace in the New Testament and
(35:52):
that includes the woman taken inadultery.
You know, in John chapter 8,where the manuscripts have a
marginal discussion of what'sgoing on in the ones that
they're following Now you'llnotice.
This thing that I read to youmentions Eusebius.
(36:13):
Eusebius, now, eusebius, wasthe number one church scholar at
the time of Nicaea, so he wascentered in Caesarea and he was
a personal friend of Constantine.
Constantine gave him the job wehave the records for this
(36:35):
Constantine gave him the job ofcoming up with 50 manuscripts of
the scriptures for the newChristian churches in
Constantinople following Nicaeaand so forth, and so Eusebius
was kind of the number one guy.
Well, he discusses specificallyin a letter to a person called
(37:01):
Marinus the letter in Latin isad marinum, to Marinus.
He discusses specifically theproblem of the ending of Mark.
And here's what he says he saysthat the majority of
manuscripts end with for theywere afraid, and then he adds at
(37:24):
least the accurate ones.
So this guy who is charged withputting together 50 Bibles for
the new churches ofConstantinople says to this
other guy that the majority ofthe ones he knows end at for
they were afraid, and then hedidn't have to add this other
(37:47):
thing and he says, in fact, theaccurate ones.
Well, I actually think that itis.
How should I say this, tim?
It's kind of impossible to getaround Eusebius's testimony, you
know, because the guy is a textcritic himself and is working
(38:12):
with this kind of stuff rightfrom the word go.
So, and he's Constantine'sright-hand man, all right, then
I'm going to add a third thing.
Now there is a huge book by aguy by the name of John Bergen,
b-u-r-g-o-n, and he has this bigstudy and he's trying to do the
(38:40):
genuineness of the long ending.
Okay Now, it's a really greatstudy.
I'll have to tell you I admireit greatly, but he, for example,
does not.
He tries to discount Eusebius.
It doesn't quite work and hedoesn't really understand these
larger syntactical things and soon.
But here's the point I'm goingto make.
(39:03):
One of his attacks and this isyour listeners should know this
anybody who is for the longending will do this they will
mercilessly attack Vaticanus andSinaiticus as inferior
manuscripts, as corruptedmanuscripts.
(39:24):
Okay, bergen does this.
Now here's what they don'trealize.
Bergen, in his attack on what hethinks are the corruptions in
these two manuscripts, bringsforth a number of instances.
Almost none of them actuallyoccur in the Gospel of Mark.
(39:47):
They will occur in Matthew, inJohn, in Luke, and so my thing
is let's say John Bergen, I evenwant to listen to you.
You're not bringing me examplesof the inferiorities of
manuscripts in the Gospel ofMark, and that's what we're
discussing.
We're discussing the Gospel ofMark.
(40:08):
We're not discussing the whatshall I call it, the general
reliability in other Gospels.
We're talking about Mark, andwhen you're talking about Mark,
you can't come up with more thanabout two examples of what you
think are inferior readings.
See, so there's a three-leggedstool here.
(40:33):
The three-legged stool, againstseeing the long ending as
genuine, is the grammaticalstuff, and I could be a lot more
complicated than this, but noton the podcast.
The grammatical stuff, thetestimony of, well, the
(40:54):
testimony of Eusebius I guess Iwould say it's a four-legged
stool the testimony of themanuscripts that they know that
there's this discussion.
And then the Bergen assessmentthat's kind of wrongly aimed at
being Aleph.
You know that he's trying todiscredit him, but he can't
(41:18):
discredit him in the gospel ofMark, can't discredit him in the
gospel of Mark.
Now, through the history it'sbeen recognized as you go down
through the centuries, go downthrough the centuries, that
(41:47):
ending mark at 16.8 has beenaround.
But the farther away it goes,the less you see testimony to it
.
Okay, now, interestingly enough, some of the reformers knew
about it.
There is a guy what's his firstname?
It's something like AlexanderZygobinus or something from the
12th century and he recognizesit.
(42:07):
But he says I don't see anymanuscripts.
But I know that it's around andso forth forth, but now David
Lewis, perhaps on your podcast,talked about the appropriateness
of ending at 16.8 for the wholestory.
(42:28):
See, but this is another matter.
I decided not to talk about theliterary features.
But literarily it spoils thestory to put 9 to 20 on there.
Literally it doesn't reallywork.
But for most people they're notinterested in that, they're
interested in more concretesorts of things.
(42:49):
Now let me say one more thing.
The huge study that's been doneon the long ending was done by
James Kelhoffer, who actually atthe time was a scholar at St
(43:24):
Louis University, at SLU.
He's now over in in Sweden andhis big book on this is really
terrific.
I mean, he lays this stuff outabout Eusebius and he talks
about, you know, the history ofthe church and so on.
Now he shows that essentiallythe long ending is not seen in
any manuscripts until about 150.
And well, I didn't say thatcorrectly.
(43:44):
Erase that, take it back thatwe don't have testimony to it
until 150, because we don't havea bunch of manuscripts from 150
.
That's not the right thing tosay.
But we don't have a bunch ofmanuscripts from 150.
That's not the right thing tosay.
But we don't have testimony.
For example, we have testimonyby Irenaeus, but now you're
talking about 180 or somethinglike that.
(44:06):
And Kelhoffer has a veryinteresting theory on this.
His theory is that it was puttogether by someone who thought
that the ending was missing, buthe didn't want to just make
stuff up, so he actually drewfrom Matthew and Luke and John
(44:31):
and Acts, and you can see this.
So the various things that arein the long ending have these
parallels in the other Gospelsand in Acts, like the snake
handling, and then Paul in Acts28, and so on, like that.
It's very interesting the wayKelhoffer works this out.
And so now for your listeners,this next point of his is really
(44:54):
quite important.
He says so it's probably donearound 150, and that's about the
time that we see the appearanceof the other pseudepigraphical
gospels the gospel of Thomas,the gospel of Peter, gospel of
truth, gospel of Mary, and so on, like that.
(45:16):
So these what you might callcompetitors to the canonical
gospels arise around 150, andthis is kind of in that same
time period.
Now I'm going to say one morething, and that is there is this
fellow who has a bunch of stuffon the internet James Snap Jr,
(45:42):
s-n-a-p-p.
James Snap Jr.
Now I've got some realadmiration for this guy.
He is pro long ending, okay asmarket.
But he has an extremelysophisticated position and I've
never heard anybody contend thisbefore.
He contends that it's Markan butit's not the original ending of
(46:09):
the gospel.
So he contends that Mark wroteit.
But Mark wrote it for adifferent context, like as part
of a sermon or something inAlexandria, and then later on
followers of his attached it tothe gospel as an ending to the
(46:30):
gospel.
Now I've said to a number ofpeople and I presented a paper
on this to the National SPL lastyear and I said if you just got
to have the long ending, youknow I would go with the same
James Snap Jr Explanation is nowI think he's wrong.
Ok, I think he's wrong becausethe testimony of Eusebius and
(46:52):
also because the James Snap JrSolution doesn't solve the
grammar syntax problem, see, Imean that's, I don't think that
Mark did that.
It doesn't look Markan to me atall, you know, but it's an
interesting theory because hedoes recognize that the
(47:13):
transition between verse eightand verse nine is way too
awkward and improper and so it'sprobably not like the original
composition of Mark.
Well, I'm going on.
Speaker 1 (47:27):
This is good.
No, hey, this is.
We're at time.
We're at time, but I have toask one other question, dr Veldt
.
So I'm a believer since I was inDr Lewis's class and obviously
in yours in the verse eightending, the suspended ending,
with the hopeful outcome beingyou place yourself in the shoes
(47:48):
of the women and you're leavinghaving heard, not seen, but just
having heard the testimony.
And now we're carrying out thismessage in anticipation of our
faith being sight on the lastday when Jesus returns.
And so we would.
We know, we know the end of thestory, we know that Jesus
bodily rose, jesus bodilyascended and Jesus will bodily
(48:09):
return to make all things new.
And so now we stand with Mark,having not seen, but we're
carrying out that message.
I'm a believer in the suspendedending.
At the same time, the strugglepoint is verse 16, mark 16,
verse 16, he who believes and isbaptized shall be saved.
I mean, can we still keep thisin our baptismal liturgy and
other places where that verse inparticular has had quite a sway
(48:33):
in terms of our baptismaltheology?
How do you answer that question, dr Biltz?
Speaker 2 (48:36):
Well, in Excursus 19, volume 2 of my commentary, I
talk particularly I think it'spoint D or something like this
about the use in the confessionsof not only that verse but also
(48:56):
verse 20.
There are a couple of otherones, and you know, I mean, the
fact of the matter is that theconfessions actually you know
what I decided to do, tim?
I decided to look and I lookedin the index of the confessions
of every place that Mark isreferenced, okay.
(49:18):
Well, then you find out thatit's actually referencing also
other things that we would nolonger do in terms of text
criticism, like, for example, inchapter 9, when the guy comes
with the demonized boy and Jesussays well, this type of thing
(49:40):
departs only with prayer.
And then some manuscripts addand fasting okay, now, we don't
follow those.
Aleph and Bea and a whole bunchof others don't add and fasting
.
Well, the confessions do addand fasting, and then they go
(50:00):
and start to develop a theory offasting on the basis of that.
See, I mean, I just don't think, you know, once you start down
this, you can't be sayingsomething like this Well, the
confessions are our baseline oftext criticism.
That's simply not right,because they have access to what
(50:21):
they have access to.
Now let me come back to yourspecific question.
I wouldn't use it.
I wouldn't use it because Ijust don't think it's genuine.
But it's not.
I mean, you have Baptism.
Now Saves Us.
You have the Great Commission.
(50:42):
You have plenty of other stuffand in fact in Excursus 19,.
I talk about that, about allthe alternatives to what they
have.
And you know, here's why thereare alternatives Because if
James Kelhoffer is right, theguy who composed that took from
(51:04):
elsewhere in the scriptures andbrought that together into the
long ending.
That's why you don't have sortof unique stuff.
So you know, he who's notbelieved is condemned.
Well, you got that in John 3,verse 17.
So I personally would not useit.
Speaker 1 (51:26):
I would not use it.
I love it.
Hey, Dr Veltz, this has beenamazing.
We'll have you back on.
There's so much more to talkabout on so many other topics.
Reading Two Texts.
Shout out just Google, readingTwo Texts, you'll find their
website and I got to get there.
You know the struggle is, drVeltz.
I get invited to so manydifferent gatherings and I'm a
(51:48):
dad of three high schoolersright now, with kids and
activities, and I can't missthis season.
But hey, when there's anotherseason I'm going to be all in,
because the exegetes, theleaders and everybody in between
, man, we got to rally aroundgetting the gospel into as wide
of a base possible, because Ithink there is to double down on
(52:09):
the postmodern context today,or the pre-modern, and we don't
have time to get into this.
We have a lot of work to do bythe Spirit's power to get the
gospel into the hearts and earsof people, and it's such a
compelling time right now to bealive in world history, to speak
into the gods of this day andage that people are believing in
(52:31):
and point them to the Creator,the Redeemer, the Sanctifier.
I'm using all these words yousay I need to define, and so
anyway, sorry we don't have timeto do that.
But what an honor, what an honorto have you.
Dr Veltz, if people want toconnect with you though you
mentioned your email Just giveit one more time.
If people want to connect.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
Yeah, V-O-E-L-Z-J at CSL Concordia, St Louis, CSLedu.
I love it.
Speaker 1 (52:58):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (53:01):
I'd be happy to talk with people and you know, please
, again, let me just promotethis book here.
Principles of BiblicalInterpretation for Everyone.
Tim, this is my fifth book andthis is going to be the most
important one that I've written,even more important than the
(53:22):
Greek grammar and so on.
Why?
Because it gets in-depth studyof the word into people's hands,
that's it.
Speaker 1 (53:31):
That is it.
Well, he is the one and onlyReverend.
Dr James Vells, I'm just TimAllman, just a parish pastor
trying to have wonderful, kind,collegial conversations, and we
have so much to learn and Ithank you for enlightening us
today, dr.
Speaker 2 (53:44):
Vells hey, don't forget, you're a great point
guard.
Remember our great trip down to.
Speaker 1 (53:48):
South Park.
Speaker 2 (53:49):
Hey well we're going to talk basketball we didn't
have, we had.
Speaker 1 (53:52):
that was an awesome trip.
By the way, I got hurt on thattrip.
We're going to talk basketballand kind of seminary culture and
a lot of those stories.
Next time I have you on.
But this has been so much fun,dr Veltz, and this is the
American Reformation podcast.
We'll be back next week withanother fresh episode.
God bless you, dr Veltz.
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