Speaker 1hey there room for nuance fans it is me your fearless leader Sean DeMars and I want to tell you a quick story many years ago I told a friend that I was about to go watch an MMA fight and he told me you shouldn't do that I asked him why and he said because mixed martial arts is a sin I laughed at him I wrote him off in my heart as a legalist and then I moved on and then I thought about it for another decade and completely changed my mind as Christians we have to apply all of Christ to all of life including sports and entertainment and self-defense therefore I have written a book explaining how theologically practically experientially I changed my mind about the question of MMA it's published through courier publishing and it's called the ethics of the octagon so if you are even a little willing to consider the question of whether professional mixed martial arts is ethically permissible for the Christian I'd encourage you to go to Amazon and buy a copy today well we are back with another episode of once and I'm here with Wayne Grudem hi brother hey would you open us in prayer sure okay
Speaker 2Lord Jesus we give you thanks and praise for your goodness to us in so many ways thank you for these new friends Sean and Luke thank you for their ministry thank you for the opportunity to talk about your word and what it teaches about so many different aspects of life Lord we know that you have said that you are the vine and we are the branches and apart from and who one who abides in you and you in us you we bring forth much fruit we're apart from you said Lord apart from me we can we can do nothing apart from you and so we commit this time into your hands Lord I feel I don't know what Sean's going to talk to me about and don't know if I'll have any information that'll be helpful to him but I pray that you would guide and direct and make the conversation useful and edifying for people who watch or listen to it guide Sean as he thinks about what to ask me and help us to understand each other well guide us in the choice of topics and questions that we talk about help me to recall your word where it is appropriate for the subject we talk about we give this into your hands we confess our own weakness and our need for you help Luke as he records this and pray that the time would even be a means of ministry and blessing to him amen amen well brother thank you so much for
Speaker 1sitting down with us to have this conversation um I think maybe a good place for us to start is I just want to honor you scripture says to give honor to those to whom it is owed and I think your life uh is commendable you have been a blessing to me for uh I got saved when I'm 39 I got saved when I was 19 18 so for a long time I got introduced to you very young uh in the faith uh you're teaching you're you're speaking you have defended and confirmed the gospel in so many different ways you have uh lived a full life and not have and have not disqualified yourself morally you've kept the faith you've run the race and uh I'm just so thankful for your example for your life for your ministry I feel very unworthy to be sitting here having this conversation with you and uh I just want to honor you brother and I think I think in saying that to you I'm reflecting a much larger chorus of people who would also want to pay you the honor uh that by grace I'm going to pay you the honor that by grace I'm going to pay you the honor that by grace I think you rightly deserve well thank the
Speaker 2lord thank you sean
Speaker 1yeah well let's just start where we always start uh tell me about how you came to know the lord the family you grew up in and how you got saved um earlier
Speaker 2in my life I would point back to um when I was 12 years old after a sermon on the second coming on a sunday night in the baptist church in wisconsin eau claire wisconsin I couldn't get to sleep I was troubled and I asked my mother to pray with me to receive christ which she did and then a year later I was 13 and went to a billy graham crusade in minneapolis and went forward there to rededicate my life so those are two things two events I pointed to but now sean as I look back at early childhood I grew up in a small town called jim falls wisconsin 286 people and it was a great place for a boy to grow up yeah um but I can remember praying to god frequently on the playground in the baseball neighborhood baseball game and just in ordinary daily events and I love to sit at the piano and I could play one finger one at a time but I could sound out the melodies to various hymns and I'd love to sit at the piano and sing hymns well somebody and I have read my bible every day and so somebody who's reading the bible daily and singing hymns with joy and praying regularly I think I was born again a long time earlier so I don't know when
Speaker 1wow and so the home that you grew up in both of your parents were christians yes godly
Speaker 2yes what a
Speaker 1blessing yeah yeah assuming you did well in school yes you're a precocious child imagine excuse me you're fine
Speaker 2somehow I figured out how to read before going to school oh and I guess my mother must have taught me the alphabet letters and I was sounding out words and so when I was in lower elementary school I was reading science fiction books from the adult section of the library and not letting any of my classmates know because it wouldn't go well
Speaker 1could you be seen as a nerd right yeah yeah
Speaker 2uh did you
Speaker 1achieve any honors in high school for your academic you know I had a 4.0
Speaker 2average okay um I was president of the student council Eau Claire Wisconsin 525 students in my class okay
Speaker 1so you graduate high school yeah still a single man hadn't met your wife yet oh I met Margaret
Speaker 2when I was excuse me you're fine I met Margaret when I was in eighth grade and she was in seventh
Speaker 1okay and did you know she was the one right away or did that take some time well
Speaker 2I'll tell you honestly I felt an affection an attraction to Margaret different from what I felt about anybody else she had a number of boyfriends but I won
Speaker 1hey it's it's not about how you start brother it's how you finish so when did you win in high school or we started dating
Speaker 2maybe when I was in 10th grade and she was in ninth okay um and then we dated off and on in high school but we weren't exclusively with each other but I I just had a sense that I just loved her
Speaker 1yeah and I
Speaker 2still feel that
Speaker 1way right how many
Speaker 2years later so 69 26 and 37 years so much grace yeah and what a joy
Speaker 1it is praise
Speaker 2god yeah I just said to her the night before last Margaret I love going to bed with you the same in
Speaker 1the same bed yes
Speaker 2it's there's a joy to it and I'm gonna be 78 next week
Speaker 1yeah I know the I know the feeling uh I had the same thought about waking up next to my wife yeah a couple of weeks ago yeah uh I'm a I'm a cuddler I like to cuddle I'm a very physically effect that's like my love language hugging and stuff um and I woke up next her and i just thought now this is going to sound really embarrassing and corny but i'm going to tell it to you just because it's you and me here talking to nobody else but i actually i actually while i was laying there was composing a poem in my head about how there's nowhere else in the world i'd rather be than holding my wife in the bed oh now that rhymed do you see what i'm saying i mean i'm i'm a poet by nature so i i but yeah i sympathize with that it's it's a blessing it's such a blessing yeah to have a wife that you love that you've given your life to to get to wake up and go to bed with
Speaker 2her yeah and yesterday i was trying to get i was answering some emails and my gmail program was messing up my sentences and deleting a sentence then so i walked next door to the next apartment and say margaret please pray for me computer's giving me a problem and i'll do that when i'm working on a writing a chapter in a book or article or whatever and
Speaker 1that's a blessing she's your prayer warrior yeah i love that i think uh over the course of my marriage which i think we're at 20 years this year good um i think the lord has answered many more prayers of my wife's probably just because she prays more and prays better okay so you you go off to college now are you got does she go with you are you guys going steady at this time no okay so you go off to college right where do you go harvard harvard i've i'm not heard of that before uh did you realize how big of a deal that was at the time i had a sense of
Speaker 2yes i had a sense of its importance yeah and what
Speaker 1did you go there to study
Speaker 2i didn't know i was thinking that after college i would go to law school and then go into politics okay as a lawyer that was my initial plan i majored in economics because i didn't know quite what to major in um but um as i got let's see i was walking through the freshman it was called the freshman union building at harvard on a sunday evening and i heard people singing hymns in another room and i wandered over there and there was a a joint meeting of campus crusade and intervarsity students christian groups i felt right at home yeah and then um we had something called the harvard radcliffe was the women's college that was next to harvard we had the harvard radcliffe christian fellowship and i became president of that and it was in a way of being a had a pastoral role with respect to other students okay and i was going to park street church in boston which is right in the right across the street from the boston common okay and a long-standing solid evangelical church harold akengay the pastor
Speaker 1yep one of the founders of christianity today that's right
Speaker 2and um so coming to the end of my sophomore year i felt more and more that the lord would have me be a pastor yeah and imitate akengay and his bible teaching yeah so i decided to switch my career goal away from politics to becoming a pastor yeah and teaching the bible he did sunday morning and sunday evening carefully constructed expository sermons on the biblical text without notes without notes yeah it's amazing
Speaker 1wow was that your first time experiencing expository preaching did they do that in the church you grew up in well i grew up in a baptist church
Speaker 2we had the first pastor we had was did good preaching from the bible and the church without knowing what it was doing got a more liberal new orthodox leading pastor and it killed the church right eventually um but we switched to a more bible-believing baptist church okay so and i've wandered down a couple of rabbit trails here sean and i'm not sure what we were
Speaker 1talking about oh it's fun so you're under uh akengay yes and you're you feel compelled towards
Speaker 2the ministry yes and um so junior and senior year i had i had in my freshman sophomore years i had completed most of the requirements for an economics major so i had one or two classes left i took those but then i had a lot of freedom in my schedule and i took um history of music history of western art english composition um american intellectual history two years of hebrew one year greek all of the junior and senior year wow so i was on my way to seminary already then i then i went three years to seminary what was your
Speaker 1final degree in from harvard economics okay yeah okay yeah i don't even know if i'm smart enough to read a degree from harvard so okay and then you went to seminary uh and before we get to that uh are you still keeping in contact with your wife at this time
Speaker 2yes and we got married after my junior year
Speaker 1okay so there's probably a lot of letter writing and yeah there was a lot of
Speaker 2letter writing and phone calls okay
Speaker 1so you you locked you locked it in yeah you got married then you go off to seminary yeah
Speaker 2but really important was margaret was my wife during my senior year in college yeah and so she got to know all my college friends okay which is really important later in life because we kept in contact with a number of them and they were friends of margaret's as well as mine yeah
Speaker 1there's this thing happening right right now where a lot of people feel like they have to finish college before they get married would you say that having margaret there for your senior year was a help or a liability
Speaker 2very much to
Speaker 1help
Speaker 2yeah um i was no longer president of the harvard radcliffe christian fellowship but i was the respected grandfather as a senior in college who had a wife yeah yeah yeah not not the grandfather but sort of that's what i was like but sort of the senior member yeah yeah although verne poythress uh new testament professor at westminster now yeah was there he was a phd student and he was our doctrinal
Speaker 1standard bearer obviously yeah yeah okay where'd you end up going to seminary gordon conwell no no fuller i went
Speaker 2to fuller for one year in pasadena
Speaker 1yes okay why only one year
Speaker 2because they had abandoned their belief in the truthfulness of all of scripture yeah different classes were telling me it says that john the baptist pointed to jesus and said behold the lamb of god who takes away the sin of the world but john the baptist couldn't have known that that early in jesus ministry so it's just read back into the story and uh in the book of acts this rabbi named gamaliel talks about jewish revolutionaries judas and thudas and he he got them mixed up in their order which they appeared but that doesn't matter because the main point is if it is of god you can't stop it the spirit of the gospel i thought why did i come here to be a critic of god's word saying that the different these things are wrong and they don't pay attention to the wrong thing they abandoned inerrancy and i don't know why that's the way it is i don't know why that's the way it is i don't know why that's the way it is i don't know why that's the way it is i don't know why that's the way it is i don't know why that's the way it is i don't know why that's the way it is i don't know why that's the way it is i don't know why that's the way it is i don't know why that's the way it is i don't know why that's the way it is i don't know why that's the way it is i don't know why that's the way it is i don't know why that's the way it is i don't know why that's the way it is i don't know why that's the way it is they went to the pasadena public library and looked up the home addresses of all the board members
Speaker 1and you mailed it to them and mailed it to them are you aware that's incredible that's so gangster
Speaker 2uh well what happened the uh faculty and administration were not happy with me yeah yeah uh did any like did
Speaker 1anybody did any heads roll did anybody care what was well i
Speaker 2transferred to westminster seminary oh okay philadelphia yeah okay um but i got a strongly worded letter from the chairman of the board telling me not to do that well you did
Speaker 1the right thing in the eyes of the
Speaker 2lord brother you know um interesting thing about that time in the school year the board meeting was coming up and they asked oh four or five students i don't know how many to prepare a one-minute talk about your experience at fuller this year and they asked me for one of them so i really worked on that one-minute
Speaker 1talk yeah i would like
Speaker 2to read it to you if i could go get it oh please do brother you still have it this is incredible yes please do so one minute speech to the faculty and trustees of fuller seminary march 25th 1971 so that would have made me 23. okay 55 years ago while i was still an undergraduate at while i was still an undergraduate at while i was still an undergraduate at harvard i had heard warnings that fuller harvard i had heard warnings that fuller harvard i had heard warnings that fuller seminary was seriously compromising the truth of God's word. Even though those warnings came from such respected sources as Francis Schaeffer, John Montgomery, and Christianity Today, I didn't believe them. Now I do. Not one of my courses here has strengthened my confidence in the Bible. Even more distressing is an intellectual narrow-mindedness. I have not had one professor who teaches biblical inerrancy as a possible option. Students that I talk to are completely unacquainted with the great defenses of inerrancy made recently by men like E.J. Young, Ned Stonehouse, and Cornelius Van Til. I don't have any proposed solutions. The cards are all stacked in the direction of further concessions and compromise. Faculty members seem to think they are holding the only possible position. Those who thought otherwise have left the school. But as for myself, I want a seminary to make me a minister of God's word, not its critic. I have no choice but
Speaker 1to leave. And you delivered that, first of all, brother, thank you for your boldness.
Speaker 2It was videotaped. And it was played to the faculty and board.
Speaker 1Do you think they actually played it?
Speaker 2Oh yeah, I heard. I heard from board members.
Speaker 1Wow. Well, thank you for standing up and defending the word of God, brother.
Speaker 2I think the word of God's direction was in the events that were happening because later I wrote in defense of inerrancy, but I had been as a student in the middle of people denying inerrancy and arguing the case against them. And so I think I was able to represent their position more fairly and accurately.
Speaker 1Yeah. Wow. Okay, so you transferred from there to Westminster? Right. West? Or was there a Westminster West then? No, there was not. Okay. It was in
Speaker 2Philadelphia and the Westminster faculty had left. They were the conservative members of the Princeton Seminary faculty in 1929 who had left and formed Westminster in Philadelphia. So I went there and it was just an amazingly good education. Wonderful. I can remember it myself, half running to get to class because I was learning so much.
Speaker 1Especially coming out of Fuller, the contrast. Must have been like coming out of a brutal winter into a beautiful spring.
Speaker 2It was spiritually, academically, it was just a great blessing.
Speaker 1Yeah. Were you at Westminster during the same time as Piper or did you, were you there before? He was at Fuller. He wasn't at Westminster. I'm sorry. Yes, Fuller. That's what I meant. Were you there around the same time as him?
Speaker 2He was two years ahead of me and I still have his handwriting on one of my Greek quizzes. He was the teaching assistant. Oh, really? Of course he was.
Speaker 1Yeah. Why do you think he decided? Why did he decide to stay and deal with all that?
Speaker 2I think that John, there was still a lot of good to be learned at Fuller. Okay. And his own confidence in the truth, you'd have to ask him. I'm not sure. Sure, sure, sure. Okay. He was two years ahead of me, so I didn't really know him well at that time. But then after I finished my PhD, I came back and taught at Bethel College in St. Paul, Minnesota. Where he was. Bethel, and John was there, and we were in the same department. That's right. So we got to know each other and became friends. We argued a lot about different things.
Speaker 1I want to come back and talk more about that. So any highlights from your time at Westminster that you want to share with us?
Speaker 2Oh, boy. Just the classes with John Frame in theology, Edmund Clowney in biblical theology and practical theology.
Speaker 1They were teaching these classes?
Speaker 2Yes. Edmund Clowney. Edmund Clowney was the president, and he was just saturated. His brain was just saturated with scripture. It would just come out in all his conversation. Yeah. And his classes were amazing. Palmer Robertson, Richard Gaffin, and Vern Poitras, my friend from Harvard, came to Westminster at the same time. But he had done a PhD in math at Harvard, went to Fresno. Back where his parents lived and taught at the college there for a year, taught mathematics. And now he was coming to Westminster at the same time as I was. So I learned from him as well.
Speaker 1Did they get close at all to convincing you of Presbyterianism?
Speaker 2No. Okay. The issue is baptism. Yeah, that's right. And I got a book by John Murray. He's a former professor from Westminster on baptism and worked through it carefully. And he didn't convince me. So I thought it was the best argument in favor of infant baptism that I could find. And I thought if I could answer that, I thought it might persuade me, but it didn't.
Speaker 1Yeah. So you finished your seminary degree, and then you did a PhD there or elsewhere? Cambridge, England. Cambridge. And how did you get connected with that? Forgive me. I've not trafficked in the circles of academia, so I don't really know how the mechanics of this stuff works.
Speaker 2Yeah. A friend from Harvard who was two years or three years ahead of me, Jim Hurley, went to Westminster Seminary and then was in a PhD program in New Testament at Cambridge. He came back to visit, back to the United States to visit, and he came to Westminster Seminary for a day. And I saw him, and he said, Wayne, you would really like this PhD program. So I applied. Okay. And was accepted and requested as my doctoral supervisor, C.F.D. Moule, M-O-U-L-E, Moule. And he was widely known worldwide as an outstanding New Testament scholar. Okay. But also had a reputation. He had a reputation of being a great supervisor for students, PhD students. So he accepted me, and I was able to work under his supervision on my PhD.
Speaker 1Now, after your experience at Fuller, were you at all concerned with going into an environment where you may have to learn from people who weren't necessarily evangelicals?
Speaker 2That's a great question, Sean. I went to Cambridge with the same attitude I went to Harvard. I went to Harvard with, and that was, this is a more liberal institution that I can learn from, but I have to be careful that I not abandon my belief in the Word of God and its truthfulness. I've been reading it since I was six or five or whatever, and I knew it was God's Word. Yeah. And around 2006, 2007, a friend sent me a clipping from the Times of London newspaper, an article, as they do every year, ranking the great universities of the world, and Harvard was first and Cambridge was second. Yeah. And I thought, thank you, Lord, because he allowed me to go to both of those places and in both of them, my overall result was it strengthened my belief in the complete reliability of the Bible. At Cambridge, I did a dissertation, you have to go there and write a PhD dissertation. I did it on the gift of prophecy in 1 Corinthians. It's up there somewhere. Yeah. Right there. Yeah, I see it. And in order to do that, I had to do a chapter on the nature of prophecy in the Old Testament. Mm-hmm. And I did the work and wrote up a paper to bring to Professor Moll, and so I found all these verses talking about how the words that the prophets spoke were the very words of God, and the people who didn't obey those words were disobeying God. Mm-hmm. And I wrote it up, and my supervisor looked at it and read the paper, and he said, "Well, that's what it says." So I was strengthened in my understanding of the claims of the Old Testament writings to be the very words of God. Yeah. Not just the words spoken by the prophets, but the words that were written down, and the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, written by Moses. Yeah. And as the canon grew, as more prophets came along, and their words were recorded, and the Old Testament collection of books that were thought to be Scripture, held to be Scripture by the Jewish people, grew and lengthened into our present Old Testament. Mm-hmm. So I did a lot of work on the history of the development of the canon, the list of books that belong in the Bible, and came to be convinced that we have the right books in the Bible, in the Old Testament. And then, subsequently, for the New Testament. I ended up arguing that the gift of prophecy in 1 Corinthians talked about something that was not like Old Testament prophets. Not the very words of God, but Paul says, do not despise prophecies, but test everything. Hold fast to what is good, end of 1 Thessalonians. And I thought, this is not the way the words of God are treated. Don't test the words, you don't test Isaiah and hold fast to what is good and leave the rest. It's all God's word, but it looks like what was going on in the New Testament was God was showing people things which they could report to their friends or their church members, but they weren't to be treated with the same respect as Scripture. They'd be tested. Anyway, I came away from both Harvard and Cambridge great universities with a deepened trust and confidence in the total truthfulness and authority and inerrancy. of the Bible. Amen. And you know, Sean, I've spent, now, let's see, what is this, 1926? 1926. I went to college in 66, 60 years ago. At Harvard, I spent some time trying to answer objections where people said there's a contradiction in the Bible. And with the little resources that I had, I could give some answers. But then all through, seminary, that was, Westminster was solid, but all through PhD work, and then for 40-some years, I've looked at challenges that people have brought up saying, here's a mistake in this verse or here's a mistake in that verse. There is not one verse that I've found that there's no answer to. There's somewhere we have to say, well, it could be this or it could be that, but there are reasonable explanations. So, and when I edited the ESV Study Bible, as a general editor, everything had to come through me before I went to the publisher. And I was especially eager to put into the text notes of the ESV Study Bible, an explanation for why this is not a contradiction between Matthew and Mark or between Mark and Luke. - Yeah. - And various places where people have said there's a contradiction. And, and those passages all have explanatory notes in the ESV Study Bible. So far as I was aware of what passages were challenged. - Yeah. - But I think it's solid. I don't know that we have the definitive answer to every problem. Some things we're not sure what they mean yet, like the word Selah in the Psalms. - Yeah, right, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Nobody's sure what it means. - Right. - But I trust it with my life. I believe every word of it to be true. - Amen, brother. - Yeah. - Same here. - And God's word. -
Speaker 1To where else will we go? You alone have the words of life. - Amen. - What Peter tells Jesus. - Yeah. - Yeah. Even though sometimes some of the stuff I see, I don't necessarily understand. I mean, imagine the disciples sitting there like what? Eat my flesh, drink my blood. - Yeah. - I may not get it right now, but I know you got the words of life. -
Speaker 2There's a good note on that in the ESV Study Bible. - Is there? - Yeah. -
Speaker 1Okay. I'll go and look at it. -
Speaker 2It says it's using earthly physical objects to teach spiritual truth. -
Speaker 1Yeah, that's right. Okay, so you finished your PhD in Cambridge, the one in England, by the way. - Yes. - Not the one in. - Not the one in Massachusetts. - Isn't that where Harvard is? - Yes. - Isn't it in Cambridge? So you've got two elite institutions, both in Cambridge. And I made that joke, by the way, in a debate. I was debating wokeness in the church for the Gospel Coalition. I said it was bad. That was my argument. - Yeah. - And my interlocutor, had studied at Cambridge. I saw that. And so I thought I'd throw in a little joke. You know, I said, you know, she studied at Cambridge. The one in England, nobody laughed. It did not go over. Just like it's not going over now. You're not laughing. Okay. Okay, so you finish your PhD. You come back over and you take a job. Where? - Bethel College in St. Paul. Paul. - Uh-huh. -
Speaker 2Go ahead. - Well, there's a, there's an evangelical research library in Cambridge, England called Tyndall House. - Pete Williams is there. - Yes, he's the head of it right now. - What an absolute stud. - He's amazing. - He's incredible. - Yeah. He's one of the few people in England whose knowledge of Greek and Hebrew is so good that he has been able to teach Hebrew at Cambridge and Greek at- - Oxford? - Not Oxford, but another, St. Andrews or Aberdeen, another British university. - Yeah. - Very few people are knowledgeable enough in the scholarly work, scholarly literature in both. - Yeah. - Testaments of people teach both, but he does it and he's just got a joyful, happy, trust in the Bible as the word of God. - Yeah. - Well, anyway, I was, where was I? - The research library. - Okay, so I worked there. For the three years we went there, but we were talking about something else. - You ended up going to Bethel. - Yes, okay, how I got to Bethel. There was a professor from Bethel College in St. Paul, Minnesota. A professor in England studying on his sabbatical named Walter Wessel, he was a New Testament professor. And somehow, I think we had lunch with him. And after lunch, we were sitting in the lounge at Tindall House. And Walt Wessel said, "You know, we have an opening for a theology teacher in Bethel College. Are you interested?" And I said, I can't believe I said this, but I did. I said, "You know, Walt, I'd rather teach at a seminary than a college, seminary is, the college has a bachelor's degree. But a seminary has a master's degree and some have PhD. And I'd rather teach at a seminary." He said, "Well, let me go get the catalog and show you anyway." He went out the door to go up to his room to get the catalog. And as soon as the door closed, Margaret said, "Wayne, it's a job." - Yeah. - So I was very interested. - Yeah, right, yeah. So you go out there. - Yeah. - And John Piper was in the department. We became good friends. - You said earlier that you guys argued a bit. What did you argue about? - Questions of hermeneutics, author's intent. - Okay. - And the meaning of words and how you understand the meaning. It was all in good-- -
Speaker 1Yeah, but I would assume you guys are on the same page there. -
Speaker 2The question is, if the author is thinking one thing and writing another,
Speaker 1what rules? - Okay, all right. Let's not get into that. There's a lot of them back there. So now, were you members of the same church together at that time as well?
Speaker 2Did you go to different churches? - No, Domination was a Baptist general conference and John was in one church and I was in another one. -
Speaker 1Okay. And what did you teach during your time there? - Systematic theology. - Is this how you started your work on writing? Writing your volume? -
Speaker 2Yes, I used a theology book by Louis Burkhoff, which is right up there. - Yeah. Which is still a fantastic-- - It's an amazing book, but it's so compact. And he assumes that the readers have gone through Christian reform schools. He's in Grand Rapids at Calvin Seminary. And he assumes the vocabulary that college students just didn't have, the theological vocabulary. - Yeah. - And he used the Bible verses to quote verses. And he used the Bible verses to quote the Bible verse.
Speaker 1Oh, so nearly a decade of experience in the classroom Yes Really compelled you to begin working on your own volume
Speaker 2Yes, because after four years at Bethel Then I went to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois And taught theology there for 20 Well, I taught New Testament there for six years And then switched to the theology department Taught theology for 14 years Okay So, I had a lot of classroom experience Yeah And Bethel had students from many different conservative Protestant denominations And Trinity had students from all sorts of different denominations And that was a tremendous blessing Because if I wanted to talk about the Lutheran Conservative Lutheran view of the Lord's Supper What happens to the bread and wine If I didn't get it right, the Lutheran student in the class would say Wait a minute, we don't quite believe that Yeah And that happened again and again And so, I think I was able to reflect I hope accurately The differing convictions on various topics That different people have Different denominations hold
Speaker 1So, you start working on the book And how long does it take you to finish it? Or at least the first edition
Speaker 2Well, I signed a contract with I sent a proposal to Zondervan in Grand Rapids, Michigan And to InterVarsity Press at that time in the UK And they both wanted the book Okay But Zondervan had just been sold to HarperCollins Which is owned by Rupert Murdoch Okay And I was a little nervous about trusting the book to a publicly owned company Yeah Yeah And InterVarsity Press was still conservative And an independent publisher in the UK So, I signed a main permission or agreement with them And then Zondervan got the American rights American and Canadian I don't know, something like that As it turned out, both publishers were wonderful to work with Both Zondervan and Stan Gundry at Zondervan particularly Yeah And And
Speaker 1How long did it take you to write the volume? Was it a year, two years, five years?
Speaker 2And InterVarsity Well, it took ten years Okay And I was six years late Okay Because I had thought I'd get it done in four years When I talked to InterVarsity Who were good people to work with Yeah Kingdon, that was the name I was missing He was the editor Okay Went line by line with a red pen Oof Made many changes and really helped it a lot
Speaker 1Yeah A good editor is really a tremendous gift Yes Yeah I think sometimes Christians read books and they just think Wow, this guy, you know, he's just an amazing And in many cases, the person can still be amazing But it really is A good book is often a collaborative effort Between the author and the author itself Between the author and a or several very good editors
Speaker 2Yeah Even if they don't make many changes If they catch the things where people misunderstand what you mean
Speaker 1Yeah, that's right That's a long time to have a book in the pipeline Did you ever lose courage? Did you ever think maybe it's not going to happen? Or were you just trusting the process the whole way through?
Speaker 2I don't remember in detail I'll tell you one kind of humorous event I would I don't remember I finished the chapters and had them on these little three and a half inch Floppy disks Plastic, you know, kind of From back in the day, yeah That's right Then I'd send them to England where they would print it And write notes on it and send it back And it was corrected So we were making progress coming to the end And they said chapter 20 never came through Really? I'll send another copy It was a chapter on Satan and demons Oh, okay I see
Speaker 1what's happening here Yeah, a little bit of warfare there I don't know Yeah Okay, and then
Speaker 2We got it back in
Speaker 1Yeah Just pausing real quick on the writing of this One of the things that I've noticed about all of your works Is how your prose is simple without being simplistic Mm-hmm Yeah You're clear You're concise I think in many ways persuasive Is that something that you're self-consciously That you self-consciously worked on as an author To write in that style To not be as academic or obscure Or have you always just written like that?
Speaker 2I think every writer Whatever you're writing Even if it's just a personal letter or a note You have in mind The audience you're writing to Mm-hmm And I had an imaginary audience Of first-year seminary students Who hadn't studied any theology before Mm-hmm So that made me cautious about using Words that weren't defined Propitiation Eschatology Yeah Immutability Right All these technical terms And so my imaginary audience Was first-year seminary students With my parents visiting in the back row Mm-hmm And my dad went two years to college After World War II Then went into business My mom didn't have the opportunity To go to college But I wanted them to understand And they were lifelong Christians So that was my Imaginary audience That I wanted to understand What was going on And I think that helped me Make things clear
Speaker 1Yeah Well, you succeeded, brother Do you know Did your parents ever end up reading it?
Speaker 2I don't know if they read it They were proud of it They read the cover, if nothing else I can't remember I'm sorry, Sean Oh, that's okay Yeah, I can't remember if they read it or not Probably parts of it is the answer
Speaker 1What was your time like teaching at TEDS?
Speaker 2Enjoyed it 20 years I was there Yeah Yeah I joined the New Testament department It was Don Carson And I was there Doug Moo Grant Osborne And Walter Liefeld and me
Speaker 1Yeah What made you switch from systematics to New Testament?
Speaker 2They had an opening They invited me They knew my PhD was in New Testament They had an opening Okay And I got to teach beginning Greek And second year Greek So that was And then I taught some New Testament classes
Speaker 1That must have been an incredible Work environment Teaching with so many godly men Who were so sharp
Speaker 2It was a privilege
Speaker 1Yeah Wow Now at this time Have you entered into the fray at all Of the biblical manhood and womanhood controversy?
Speaker 2Yes, well I was still a PhD student at Cambridge Six of us wrote a letter to the Six of us PhD students wrote a letter to The editor of Christianity Today saying That the Articles they've published In support of evangelical feminism Saying that There's no unique leadership role For men in marriage Or in the church Do not seem to us to be Legitimate academic Arguments Yeah And they published the letter So John Hughes, my friend Don Carson was there at the time I think he signed it James Hurley, Andrew Lincoln Who was more conservative at that time I'm not sure who else But six of us wrote that letter Because we were concerned about The trend that we saw
Speaker 1And then how did you Get from there all the way to Danvers Well I was in Danvers
Speaker 2In the early 90s and early 90s And I was in Danvers for about a year and a half And I was in Danvers for about a year and a half And I was in Danvers for about a year and a half Dylan Scott the entry didn't say kephale in singular means source they said in plural it means source the many tributaries but in singular means mouth well the reasons for that is kephale could mean the end point of something this is the end point of our body so in modern Greek the ends of a rope are called the kephale the heads and so with the river the many tributaries that originated with the river and they flow into the river the heads and then the one singular kephale is the mouth and that makes sense if they mean the end point but if they're going to quote that line in the in the dictionary in singular use in Ephesians should be the husband is the mouth of the wife makes no sense at all yeah so they were misquoting the dictionary and I went and looked at well the University of California Irvine had compiled a database of millions of words of ancient Greek and you could get a print out of the uses so I got a sample print out of 2,300 some examples of kephale in ancient literature Plato Aristotle a lot of ancient authors I looked up 2,336 I think it was examples I found 49 or 50 where it referred to the person who was the head of an army general head of a nation head of a church and no places where it meant source as a general general sense so I published that and then the evangelical Theological Society meeting in Atlanta in 1986 was on women's role in the church and they had the the program chairman had I think five plenary session speakers who were feminists four or five the plenary session where the whole conference comes together yeah that's right not just individual papers so five people arguing for a feminist position and me as the sixth the minority view which wasn't the view of the members anyway excuse me oh you're fine and they let everybody respond the other speakers to respond to each of the papers yeah so I was outnumbered five to one or four to one I don't know so that was a great time and I defended the view of male headship in the marriage and and in the church yeah but I was troubled it looked like the evangelical feminists or the egalitarians which wanted to do away with me a little leadership in the home of the church was taking over the evangelical Theological Society which was the professional society conference held each year of all the people who taught Bible and theology classes at Christian colleges and seminaries right so I was worried that that viewpoint was taking over and it was not what I thought was faithful to Scripture so talk to friends and we've decided to get together to see if there'd be interest in forming an association to promote biblical values on the teaching of men and women Wayne House was at that Dallas seminary at that time John Hughes my good friend from Westminster seminary in Cambridge and a number of others also at that time when I was on sabbatical in England in 85 86 John Piper had written me a note saying we should do a book and I wrote a book answering this feminism which John and I had together opposed when I was at Bethel College and John had gone to be at Bethlehem Baptist Church by that time in Minneapolis so we started working on this book Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood and recruiting authors to write on different verses in the Bible and those topics so we were forming an organization called Council on biblical manhood and womanhood we were writing a statement of our principles which we called the Denver statement in the end and we were also working on getting this book published recovering biblical manhood and womanhood the Lord blessed our efforts we biblical manhood and womanhood the Lord blessed our efforts we put a big ad and two-page spread in the put a big ad and two-page spread in the put a big ad and two-page spread in the center of Christianity today he got center of Christianity today he got center of Christianity today he got announcing the formation of the Council on announcing the formation of the Council on biblical manhood and womanhood and biblical manhood and womanhood and biblical manhood and womanhood and printing the text of the Denver printing the text of the Denver printing the text of the Denver statement and we got letters from people statement and we got letters from people statement and we got letters from people saying I wept when I saw this I didn't saying I wept when I saw this I didn't saying I wept when I saw this I didn't know anybody held these views anymore know anybody held these views anymore know anybody held these views anymore and it was a huge response and then and it was a huge response and then and it was a huge response and then recovering biblical manhood and womanhood recovering biblical manhood and womanhood recovering biblical manhood and womanhood published by crossway came out in 92 published by crossway came out in 92 published by crossway came out in 92 ninety one ninety two and Christianity ninety one ninety two and Christianity ninety one ninety two and Christianity today was every year would take a survey today was every year would take a survey today was every year would take a survey and readers could vote they had to clip and readers could vote they had to clip and readers could vote they had to clip out a coupon a little form on the pages out a coupon a little form on the pages out a coupon a little form on the pages of Christianity today and mail by with of Christianity today and mail by with of Christianity today and mail by with the postage stamp yeah mail their ballot the postage stamp yeah mail their ballot the postage stamp yeah mail their ballot into Christianity today who votes for into Christianity today who votes for into Christianity today who votes for book of the year well we won mmm book of book of the year well we won mmm book of book of the year well we won mmm book of the year and the most influential book the year and the most influential book the year and the most influential book in the evangelical world in 1992 and for
Speaker 1in the evangelical world in 1992 and for in the evangelical world in 1992 and for those who may not know people who those who may not know people who those who may not know people who probably weren't even born in 1992 probably weren't even born in 1992 probably weren't even born in 1992 watching or listening to this watching or listening to this watching or listening to this Christianity today was a much more Christianity today was a much more Christianity today was a much more significant public publication back then significant public publication back then significant public publication back then than it is I think today yes and
Speaker 2than it is I think today yes and than it is I think today yes and quietly the editorial staff was much more quietly the editorial staff was much more quietly the editorial staff was much more sympathetic to the egalitarian view sympathetic to the egalitarian view sympathetic to the egalitarian view that there's no unique male leadership or that there's no unique male leadership or that there's no unique male leadership or headship role in marriage of the headship role in marriage of the headship role in marriage of the church yeah so I just heard anecdotally from church yeah so I just heard anecdotally from church yeah so I just heard anecdotally from someone who was there was aware of someone who was there was aware of someone who was there was aware of what was going on that the leaders at what was going on that the leaders at what was going on that the leaders at Christianity today were quite Christianity today were quite Christianity today were quite frustrated that our book won and it was frustrated that our book won and it was frustrated that our book won and it was the last year they allowed the last year they allowed the last year they allowed the book of the year to be determined by the book of the year to be determined by the book of the year to be determined by readers vote no yeah they have experts readers vote no yeah they have experts readers vote no
Speaker 1yeah they have experts who decided now yeah okay the Lord has who decided now yeah okay the Lord has who decided now yeah okay the Lord has continued to bless it brother you know continued to bless it brother you know continued to bless it brother you know when I first got saved I was a default when I first got saved I was a default when I first got saved I was a default egalitarian yeah it just made sense to egalitarian yeah it just made sense to egalitarian yeah it just made sense to me that's the culture yeah that's the me that's the culture yeah that's the me that's the culture yeah that's the culture right had a lot of defaults culture right had a lot of defaults culture right had a lot of defaults stupid positions and which I'm not stupid positions and which I'm not stupid positions and which I'm not intending to say all egalitarians are intending to say all egalitarians are intending to say all egalitarians are stupid but the position I held was it stupid but the position I held was it stupid but the position I held was it was ignorant and stupid and one of the was ignorant and stupid and one of the was ignorant and stupid and one of the ways that I came out of it was I when I ways that I came out of it was I when I ways that I came out of it was I when I got plugged into reform theology I was got plugged into reform theology I was got plugged into reform theology I was introduced to cbmw stuff and that was introduced to cbmw stuff and that was introduced to cbmw stuff and that was yeah a little less than 20 years ago so yeah a little less than 20 years ago so yeah a little less than 20 years ago so here we are today it's still bearing here we are today it's still bearing here we are today it's still bearing fruit yeah yeah fruit yeah yeah
Speaker 2fruit yeah yeah and I remember when we were meeting and I remember when we were meeting and I remember when we were meeting during the ETS conference every year for during the ETS conference every year for during the ETS conference every year for a couple of years we would meet see we a couple of years we would meet see we a couple of years we would meet see we would meet secretly and we have no notice would meet secretly and we have no notice would meet secretly and we have no notice on the door of who we were what we were on the door of who we were what we were on the door of who we were what we were doing because it would just stir up so doing because it would just stir up so doing because it would just stir up so much controversy yeah but now the much controversy yeah but now the much controversy yeah but now the evangelical world is evangelical world is evangelical world is I think come to uh I think come to uh I think come to uh the the the the the organizations the the the the the organizations the the the the the organizations the institutions institutions institutions the denominations that take the Bible the denominations that take the Bible the denominations that take the Bible most seriously have come to adopt a most seriously have come to adopt a most seriously have come to adopt a complementarian complementarian complementarian view that they're view that they're view that they're men and women are equal in value and men and women are equal in value and men and women are equal in value and dignity and personhood and equal in the dignity and personhood and equal in the dignity and personhood and equal in the image of God yeah but there's a image of God yeah but there's a image of God yeah but there's a leadership role for men in marriage and leadership role for men in marriage and
Speaker 1leadership role for men in marriage and the church yeah speaking of that I'm the church yeah speaking of that I'm the church yeah speaking of that I'm probably a more expansive complementarian probably a more expansive complementarian probably a more expansive complementarian I know that Danvers tries to really I know that Danvers tries to really I know that Danvers tries to really focus on those two things right but uh focus on those two things right but uh focus on those two things right but uh are you when you think about are you when you think about are you when you think about complementarianism beyond the home in complementarianism beyond the home in complementarianism beyond the home in the church do you do you hold two unique the church do you do you hold two unique the church do you do you hold two unique roles for leadership for men in roles for leadership for men in roles for leadership for men in positions like police military things positions like police military things positions like police military things like that or do you try to is your view like that or do you try to is your view like that or do you try to is your view just more limited to home in the church
Speaker 2I think there are fainter Echoes I think there are fainter Echoes I think there are fainter Echoes or fainter resonances of male leadership and female support for that leadership in different areas i just i was doing something on what's a fair writing article and what's a fair share for people to pay in taxes income taxes and i googled the forbes list of 400 wealthiest people in the world most of them are men top 10 are men okay top 12 are men i didn't look beyond that Yeah. Well, what's going on there? Patriarchy. Yeah. Yeah, because it has to do with the male drive to achieve and produce. Yeah. And some people are just incredibly gifted at it. Gifted, well, yeah.
Speaker 1I recently visited a church that had faithful, sound gospel preaching. And many other aspects of the church seemed good and biblical and healthy. But during the singing portion of our worship in that service, I experienced something very strange. All of the lights in the auditorium were off except for the lights on the stage. The only people who were singing during this time of supposed corporate worship were the people who were on the stage. None of the people around me in the congregation were singing. I looked to my left. I looked to my right. I saw some people kind of mouthing. Mouthing the lyrics of the songs. But nobody was really singing. Not to God. Not to one another. That's a problem. And I think you know that this is actually a very common problem. But it doesn't have to be this way. God's people are called to sing to him and to one another. And we can do better. And so I invite you now here formally to think through what biblical worship, biblical singing, congregational singing can and should be like. According to God's word. We're going to have a conference in Birmingham, Alabama on July 25th to think through exactly this. If you are interested in coming, click on the link in the description. I hope to see you there. Do you have any fun stories, maybe not so fun stories, from your time working on the Danvers Statement for those who weren't in those sessions, who weren't behind those closed doors? What was that like?
Speaker 2I remember the meetings. I guess they were fun. But there was a sense of purpose. And it was a matter of great significance that we were dealing with. Maybe more weighty than anything. Yeah, fun wouldn't be the word. There's a sense of collegiality, of comradeship. There's a sense of cooperation on an important project that was very evident there.
Speaker 1Yeah. Was it pretty easy? Was there pretty significant alignment among the members? Did you have any sticking points?
Speaker 2I don't recall any specific sticking points. Oh, I think I had put at one point the distinctions between men's and women's roles. I had. written find an echo in every human heart. And other members of the committee that we were putting it together with said, well, not everybody has that in their heart. So we shifted. My wording was these differences, find an echo. And the wording that we came up with should find an echo in every human heart. Now that's an improvement over my first proposal. Yeah. And John Piper was marvellous. Yeah. Yeah. He was marvellously influential. He was an English major at Wheaton. And he's just very good with the English language. Yeah. That's so cool.
Speaker 1You've been involved in several controversies. Not because I think you're quarrelsome or chasing controversies, but just because you're at a seminary and they're not teaching inerrancy and you believe that and so you speak up. Yeah. And you seem like you're a fairly irenic theologian. Has that been intentional on your part to contend for the truth well, to be polemical, but to always maintain that irenic nature?
Speaker 2Looking back on life, I think that God gave me an irenic temperament that I don't get mad at people. That's good. At least not usually. Yeah. I suppose if I saw someone being really abusive to a child or something like that, I'd feel angry. But in debate with people, I was on the debate team in high school. And I did well at debate. But I think of it as a game almost. It's fun to interchange with each other. So. Edmund Clowney was president of Westminster Seminary when I went to college. He was the president of Westminster Seminary when I went to college. He said to me one day, Wayne, God has made you a good controversialist. I think that was the word he used. And I don't enjoy animosity between people, but I do enjoy exchanging ideas and attempting to understand each other and talk each other into a different viewpoint. Yeah. Great. And the choice of issues. I didn't choose the inerrancy thing. It was there at Fuller. And I was there, and I was confronted with it. I didn't choose the biblical manhood moment and thing. It was making itself known in publications, evangelical publications, while I was in doctoral work. But then it was in full bloom on some faculty members at Bethel College when John Piper and I were there. And so recently, recently, without seeking it out. Oh, I know this. You talked about the book, The Poverty of Nations, The Sustainable Solution. Yeah. That happened because I was in London speaking at a conference on Christians in business. And there was a couple there from Nairobi, Kenya. And they were Christians in the business world. And the wife of that couple, said to me one time after a major meeting, she said to me, "Wayne, why is Africa so poor? Are we under a curse?" And I stood there with my mouth closed. I could not think of one thing to say. I didn't know. I had to say, "I don't know." And now I know. I think we have 79 reasons why the culture, the economic climate, the leadership, the government structure, a lot of the cultural values in a society, determine whether they earn their own prosperity or remain in poverty. - That's right. - And no nation has ever come out of poverty because of foreign aid. - Correct. - They've only come out of poverty when they create their own wealth.
Speaker 1So. - Yeah. Well, speaking of that, you've written on so many topics. I think the most significant aspect of your legacy is gonna be probably your systematic theory. Theology textbook and how many students have used it and profited from it. But I mean, just right behind you, I'm just looking right over your shoulder. I see a massive tome on evangelical feminism. I see one on theistic evolution. I see one on politics. I see one on Christian ethics. You've done a lot of writing. -
Speaker 2Okay. I'll tell you how they came about. Was it theistic evolution? - Mm-hmm. - Well, I taught on the question of evolution for one class period. - Mm-hmm. - For one period per term, because that was just part of what we did, but I didn't get into it very much. - Mm-hmm. - When Margaret and I were in England on a several week study break there, a British couple, man and his wife, who were active lay persons in the evangelical world in England, took us to dinner and said, "Wayne, theistic evolution is overtaking the whole evangelical movement. In England, we need somebody to do something about it. Will you edit a book that would bring together different authors?" I said, "I just have so much on my plate. I cannot do it." - Mm-hmm. - My problem is Margaret was there and she heard it too. - Yeah. - And we got home and she said, "Wayne, this is really important." So maybe not all listeners know what theistic evolution is, but it's saying Darwinian evolution, the Darwinian evolutionary theory, and it's saying that the system is a system of evolution. - Mm-hmm. - And that's the way it is. - Mm-hmm. - Mm-hmm. - Mm-hmm. It contradicts so much of the Genesis narrative. I just think it's wrong. So anyway, Margaret said, this is a really important way and you can do it. And so I was open to the idea and I called J.P. Moreland and Stephen Meyer and they were interested in co-editing. So we were underway. Wow. Christian Ethics, Margaret, was just encouraging me to do that.
Speaker 1Well, can I encourage you on that Christian Ethics book? Yeah. So not a theologian in the proper sense of the word, although we are all theologians. But I'm a pastor and we have an elders training cohort in my church that current elders go through, but also prospective elders. And the goal is, if you never go to seminary, to give you a foundation in systematics, church history, philosophy of ministry, et cetera. And one of the blocks of our study was on ethics because so often you have character qualified men who are apt to teach the word of God. But then someone will walk into their office and say, we're considering IVF, what should we do? And the pastor's kind of like, I don't know, you know? And so we walked our guys through the first page to the last page of your book, Christian Ethics. And Luke did that with us. And Luke, wouldn't you say that that was just one of the most edifying times of study we've had together?
Speaker 2I'm glad to hear that.
Speaker 1So many men were so helped. And I'm just now extrapolating out beyond our elders group. I think so many people have been helped by that book. And honestly, as I was reading through it, brother, I was just stunned that any one human being could know so much about so many different things.
Speaker 2Well, there's a secret.
Speaker 1Okay, study hard.
Speaker 2No, Reformed Theology has done a lot of the work ahead of us and I learned it in seminary.
Speaker 1Okay, what do you mean? Elaborate on that.
Speaker 2Well, the reason I've written on different topics is I think the whole Bible speaks to every area of life, at least in general principles. That's right. And that's one of the wonders of Scripture because of God the Creator who made us for this kind of life. But the Lord has been good because I had Berkhoff and Calvin and Bovink and many, Hodge.
Speaker 1You're just thinking their thoughts after them.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean, so much of the work of theology and ethics, I mean, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do that. is there a chance that we could get permission from the copyright owners? to revise the Revised Standard Version and make it more faithful. And he said he'd try. So he tried. They tried talking to the National Council of Churches in New York City, which owned the copyright. But that's the umbrella organization for all the liberal Protestant denominations in the United States. And they weren't anxious to talk to evangelicals.
Speaker 1If you ever see Council of Churches together somewhere, it's probably not good.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's it. So what I didn't know at that time was that before I called, John Piper had called Lane Dennis with the same question.
Speaker 1You guys are always syncing up.
Speaker 2Yeah. So anyway, they tried and they couldn't get a resolution. So some months went by. I talked to Lane Dennis again. Lane, what happened? Well, we couldn't get an agreement. They weren't interested. Lane, would you mind if I tried once more and wrote a letter to them? He said, that's fine. So I spent one Thursday, I got up and he doesn't have any classes at Trinity. And I spent the whole day working on a letter to David Lull, who was in charge of Bible translation and utilization for the National Council of Churches. And I called him up in New York City and I said, could I send you a. a follow-up letter from me with the approval of Crossway Books? He said, yes, but you've got 15 minutes and I'm going out of the country. So I faxed him the letter, seven pages, saying what we would do if we were allowed to have the RSV as the base for a new translation. Yeah. He got the letter. They were interested. Their lawyers started to talk to Crossway Books lawyer. The lawyers went back. They said, yeah, we're going to do it. They went back and forth and back and forth, and they couldn't come to an agreement on what the wording would be as to how they would grant the permission. So they ended up saying it will be revised in accordance with the description of the translation project contained in the letter from Wayne Grudem to David Lull on March such and such, 1998, whenever it was. 1998, I think. So they came to an agreement. And that letter, that was just the Lord's grace and blessing in it. Yeah. We worked, then we started to put together a committee and got some wonderful scholars to help, most of whom had used the Revised Standard Version as their default translation because its principles were still the King James principles of essentially word-for-word translation. There was liberal influence that had crept in in the 1940s to that translation. Yeah. So we began to work, and it was just the most rewarding, exciting, wonderful time of professional lives.
Speaker 1I mean, do you assign, okay, you guys work on Romans, we'll work on Galatians.
Speaker 2First draft of every book was sent to usually someone who had written a commentary on that book, an expert in that book. Okay. And then it went to an Old Testament committee and then to the whole group. And we kept changing our processes. We worked along, trying to get more of it done before the meeting. And there's some changes where there are 12 of us on the committee. And if you get 12 out of 12 saying, yes, make this change, then we had collected all those nearly unanimous judgments and passed 500. 500 changes as one motion. Okay. But then there were some times when we would take, oh, I remember one time we took 45 minutes on trying to decide whether it should be and or but in Ephesians 1.
Speaker 1Yeah. Okay, yeah.
Speaker 2And God or but God.
Speaker 1Yeah, going into Ephesians 2, yeah.
Speaker 2So that was an exception, but it came out right. So, Sean, everybody on the, there were 12 of us on the committee. We needed nine votes to pass a change in the RSV. We made, I think, 60,000 changes. But a lot of them were the obvious thee and thou. Right. So, 8% of the RSV was changed to make the ESV. Sorry, the ESV. Yeah. Came out in 2001. The week before. The week before it came out, the week after 9-11, this is 9-18 of 2001. I flew from Phoenix to New York City and Lane Dennis, the president of Crossway, and Marvin, no, yes, two other executives from Crossway Books, four of us went to see that man I wrote to, David Lowe, to get him to have a final sign-off on their book. And they were granting us permission to use this, their copyrighted material. Yeah. And I kind of brushed up on why we'd made decisions on a number of verses, and I thought there'd be somebody there attacking our translation decisions and things. And we got into the building, the National Council of Churches, dark rooms with the lights off, empty hallways. They're going broke. Or at least they're very strapped for funds. And there wasn't any committee to question our translation choices. They just wanted a one-time lump-sum payment that Crossway was going to give them. Wow. So we sailed through.
Speaker 1Wow. Do you remember how much they paid for those rights? Yes, but it's proprietary information.
Speaker 2Oh, okay. All right. It was very, very reasonable.
Speaker 1Okay, yeah. And how many times has it been edited since then, the ESV?
Speaker 2So it first came out in 2001, we met again in 2005, 2010, 2015. So every five years, basically? Yeah, it may have gone six or seven, and then it went to 10, and now we're not going to meet for a long time. Okay, yeah. The little changes, the first time we made 250 changes or something like that, and the next time we made 110, and then down to 35. I'm making up those numbers, but the number of changes we made were smaller each time.
Speaker 1Yeah. Yeah. So that was your work on the actual ESV translation. Right, the text of the Bible. The text of the Bible. Yeah. Now let's talk a little bit about the ESV Study Bible, how that came about and how you worked on that.
Speaker 2Well, Lane and E. Beth Dennis, Lane is the president of Crossway Books. He and E. Beth, for some reason, decided that they would ask me if I would be the general editor. And I don't know why they did that, but we've been friends. Scraping the bottom of the barrel. Yeah, they were. And so that was a joy and a privilege. I had a student assistant, Travis Buchanan, who worked in the next room to me for a couple of years, and he was a huge help. So I'd say, Travis, give me all the options from the commentaries, options on Leviticus 11.4 or whatever. And in a few minutes, he'd come back with the options, and I could read the arguments and make a decision. Okay. So I'd read the Bible a few times,
Speaker 1and I would imagine so. So does this mean, Wayne, that you had to read every note? Yes. That made its way? How many notes are there? Do you know?
Speaker 2Well, to give you a sense of the size, the Bible itself in the ESV, I think, has 740,000 words. We added 1,400,000 words of interpretative and explanatory material in the footnotes. Yeah. Now, on purpose, you notice that the notes, the text of the Bible has a larger font. Good. And the notes are in a smaller font, and that's supposed to visually say to you, these are the important words. Right, yes. That's God's word. These are human comments on it.
Speaker 1Wow. When you went through the references that are in the comments, the cross-references, did you guys do those yourself as well, or did you just take.
Speaker 2I was in-house employees at Crossway Books.
Speaker 1Just going through every text going, what are some good cross-references, and then writing them down?
Speaker 2I think they took a system of cross-references from another Bible. Okay. And maybe it was out of. It might have been the American Standard Version of 1901 or something like that. Yeah. I don't know. They either got permission or they used something that was out of copyright protection. Okay. I don't know. It was out of my hands.
Speaker 1Okay. And then. And how often do these study Bible notes go through editing?
Speaker 2I hope never.
Speaker 1Okay. So it was like a one-and-done kind of thing. It was a one-and-done, yeah. Okay. Have you. Has there been any conversation? Because, again, right, what you wrote there is not inerrant. Right. So is there. Are there any notes that you've seen or heard of since it was published that you thought, man, maybe we should. should go back and tighten up some of that language
Speaker 2probably but i don't remember
Speaker 1any specifics okay
Speaker 2it would have been i got an email and said we're correcting this note because of this this part of the lake is near this near to this village and i just see the email and i just okay fine okay good
Speaker 1um that must have been a lot of pressure huh i mean we're talking about the translation of the very words of god yeah and then supplementary notes to help people better understand the very words of god did you feel the weight of that i
Speaker 2suppose i did but i just thought of it as a joy
Speaker 1right yeah it's a privilege a deep serious joy yeah yeah well as we're having the by the way do you know how many copies of the esv have been sold worldwide
Speaker 2oh i didn't know and i forgot let's see it's in the millions but i don't know
Speaker 1well i gotta tell you brother one of uh so before i got saved i was a drug dealer i was a gangbanger i ran the streets i was a hustler where uh in alabama is that right yeah i was a pimp and then um i got saved and i really struggled to read the bible yeah i really struggled to read the bible uh but i knew i had to yeah i was like this is you know and i wanted to and uh and then i started trying to read theology the very first theology book i read was by philip yancey who has unfortunately recently disqualified himself yeah for the ministry but it was the jesus i never knew and it was it gave me the first hit of like oh okay i can read books that help me to better understand the bible and then uh somewhere along the way somebody introduced me to john piper who introduced me to you uh you know your books and teachings and writings and then somewhere therein i was gifted an esv oh yeah it meant so much to me to be able to read when i first got saved though the bible that i carried around with me just in case i needed to witness to somebody what were those little gideon orange yeah like hard as a brick kjv bibles yeah and i would try so hard to read it and understand it and i struggled much and then um when i got a bible that i could read and understand it completely changed my walk with christ wow and then i got the esv study bible and i just couldn't believe that whenever i struggled with a verse i could just look down and find help there and i think for five years i just tore through that thing over and over and over again uh so thank you thanks lord yeah how many how many copies luke as of
Speaker 32024 is the only metric i can
Speaker 1find okay 2024 two and a half million certainly they've sold many more than that now it keeps going up yeah i think it's going up i'll find out next week we have a
Speaker 2board meeting for crossway
Speaker 1okay before this interview uh you were telling me that uh everything that you do with crossway in relation to the esv stuff is soaked in prayer it's just a bunch of really godly people depending on the lord
Speaker 2yeah i think my expression was there's i've been on the board at crossway for something like 20 years i'm not quite sure but the board meetings have a lot of prayer and so my i think my statement was there's there's prayer and integrity at the heart of the crossway book publishing company yeah that's right
Speaker 1right prayer and integrity amen praise god yeah you know uh you've been in the ministry for a long time in one form or another and some people think that whenever you look behind the curtain it could be pastorally it could be with a publishing company it could be with a seminary you're going to see how the sausage is made and you're going to be repulsed and i don't think that's always true i think there's sinners in every organization yeah and satan certainly has his scheme and he's going to be repulsed and he's going to be repulsed and he's going to be repulsed and he's going to be repulsed and he's going to be repulsed and things don't always go swimmingly but i have found on numerous occasions that when you do get behind the curtain what you find there is just a bunch of really godly people humbly depending on the lord to to do ministry sean
Speaker 2that's a really good observation and i think you're correct people can become cynical yeah
Speaker 1and with each passing day another leader seems to fail or morally compromise or go over to roman catholicism or whatever it's it's easier than ever to become
Speaker 2cynical yeah i uh i put that in the category of the lord cleaning house before revival comes
Speaker 1yeah or even as revival is coming yeah i'm getting ready to preach on ananias and sapphira to my local church this week yeah and it's just such a pivotal moment of the lord making sure his people know this will not be tolerated yeah right the spirit is filling the entire church they're bearing witness to jesus good works are being performed many are being saved but judgment also comes along with them yeah yeah sorry just to ramble on that a little bit more what's fascinating in the text is that uh it says that many feared
Speaker 2and stayed away they
Speaker 1stayed away and i think uh i think many modern evangelicals would look at this idea that you people were afraid and stayed away and they would say you did not succeed but a mark of faithfulness in acts 5 is that when discipline comes to the church to preserve its holiness it does create fear and some people do stay away and that precisely
Speaker 2makes it successful yes i'm not i'll trust you yeah
Speaker 1it's okay um now we we we left off kind of your career trajectory uh at least in academia at ted's yeah uh but we're sitting here conducting this interview in phoenix arizona right where you taught at phoenix
Speaker 2seminary for how long 2001 to 2000 24 so 23 years yeah
Speaker 1something like that uh how did what what precipitated that move your
Speaker 2bride allergies no not allergies margaret um was in a car accident when we were in chicago and um after that she began to have some chronic pain issues that were aggravated by cold weather okay and humidity and chicago area is um cold in the winter and humid in the summer and some friends in illinois said wayne we have a second home a retirement home that we've bought in mesa arizona which is a suburb of phoenix would you ever like to go and stay there for a few days i said sure so we came out to phoenix area to mesa and stayed in their home down in janmeek and margaret felt better it's dry here and it's warm yeah most the time it doesn't get really cold like chicago yeah and a few months later we came back to the same house and she felt better and i said margaret i would move here if it would make you feel better but i'm only trained to do one thing i i'm i'm not a plumber or an electrician i can teach theology right and there's no seminary here later that week she said she was looking at the yellow pages which you know oh yes i do but my kids
Speaker 1don't know what the yellow pages is the phone book
Speaker 2yeah it's a category of listing of phone numbers by uh the thing the thing that is sold by plumbers electricians whatever she said wayne there's a seminary here called phoenix seminary i said what and we drove over and visited and it was just a fledgling startup seminary but we started talking to them and one thing led to another and i i called up the academic dean steve tracy and said would you have a job for me possibly here and they made room for me to come i
Speaker 1mean that that must have been he must have just been like we'll find you a job i mean i don't know the mechanics behind it i'm not sure what is happening
Speaker 2but they they're very kind to me gave me a nice teaching schedule that gave me some time to write yeah so i was happy um i'm going to ask
Speaker 1what's maybe a a silly question but i'm just going to go for it you went to harvard you went to cambridge you had a pretty incredible writing teaching career was there any element of you that thought you know i'm wayne grudem i'm and i'm about to go you know kind of start over again at this brand new seminary that nobody's ever
Speaker 2ever heard of no i don't think so i knew it was smaller at the time it had 250 students and trinity had 1500 it had nine faculty members and trinity had 65 so it was a smaller institution but they were so gracious and doing a good job the the seminary has um for its master divinity students it has a oral exam in their graduating year their senior year where if you're the student about to graduate i can ask you tell me about the doctrine of the trinity or tell me about the two natures in one person of christ yeah or tell me about the doctrine of sin you any any question i can think of from your and i was really impressed with the high quality of answers that the students were giving who hadn't studied with me at all they were studying with the previous faculty members who had been there but um there's influence of dallas seminary and influence of talbot seminary in the faculty and they were doing a good job wow when did you retire or are you retired well it kind of depends on i'm not sure how to answer that okay i retired from i went from teaching uh two or three classes to teaching just one class per term for a couple years and then sean i i should remember i think it was in the spring of 2004 that i taught my last class okay yeah and this is 2006 now yeah which one 20 2024 oh okay you stopped in 2024 2024 to 2026 that's two years ago and the seminary gave me a really nice graduation party oh
Speaker 1that's cool yeah did you get a gold watch or anything no but a thousand people came oh wow uh did you have to retire because of the parkinson's he's under two
Speaker 2thousand i don't know you got any further figures i don't know i was tired as i walked out of the i love being in the classroom i love interacting with students but i had a new kind of weariness that i had not felt before and i took it as the lord's sign that it was time for me to yeah stop yeah and um i don't regret it it was right uh and i've been able to finish up some writing projects as a result of not having a teacher now what
Speaker 1what do you have coming down the pipeline as far as writing goes okay well
Speaker 2since i moved in here to this retirement community as well um i was able to complete a revision of my commentary on first peter okay a revision of my christian ethics book okay um especially because i wanted this new view of divorce to be available okay um but there's more than two legitimate grounds in first corinthians 7 15 i think
Speaker 1there's more than two what are they abandonment and adultery
Speaker 2those traditionally and then abuse
Speaker 1would you put that under forced
Speaker 2abandonment um the verse says uh in such case let's see if the husband leaves let him leave in such cases the believing brother or sister is not enslaved and i was able to track down examples of the greek phrase in such cases where it applied to more than a single example a kind of example so in the jewish writer philo in the first century he talked about the plagues that came on the pharaoh and the egyptians when they had israelites captive in egypt and he said philo said the egyptians woke up and found the firstborn sons were all dead and as often happens in such cases they feared that another disaster was about to come as often happens in such cases never ever never before had it ever happened the firstborn son was killed in every family okay right so i think in such cases there must mean in cases of similar seriousness or severity okay so i go over to first corinthians 7 15 and paul says if the husband leaves let him leave in such cases i think he means not just when there's desertion but with other circumstances that damage a marriage as much as desertion or adultery gotcha that's for pastoral advice that's a decision the pastor needs to make in each case or the elder board needs to make in each case so
Speaker 1an example of that would be something like significant abuse yes very much so wow okay yeah good i'm glad you got to work on that
Speaker 2anyway so i've been so i've been able to publish some things and um i just finished well i've been working at chapters for a book on democrats republicans and the teachings of the bible okay um i don't know if it's going to turn out to be a book or not okay but it's it's turning
Speaker 1away okay uh speaking of republicans and democrats um a couple years ago you had a a statement about endorsing trump and then you changed your mind and then you re-changed your mind again uh we can talk about the specifics of that but uh i just want to tell you brother that i was actually just encouraged by your humility and doing that it reminds me a lot of tom schreiner who's famously sort of changed his mind on cessationism uh and he made it
Speaker 2went the wrong direction right he's
Speaker 1also changed his mind on romans 7 a number of times yeah well but i think it's a mark of humility you know he doesn't seem like this guy who's like well listen i'm tom schreiner and if i put it with the word out i gotta stick to
Speaker 2that word i like tom schreiner a lot he's a really good friend
Speaker 1yeah well the same thing for you brother to come out and change your mind publicly like that and yeah yeah so trump's
Speaker 2not perfect but he's doing a lot of good mm-hmm that's where i am now okay okay
Speaker 1uh speaking of changing your mind on things everyone from augustine of hippo to ben shapiro of daily wire have uh kept a running list of things that they have changed their mind on throughout their career what sorts of things have you changed your mind on
Speaker 2uh i can't remember all the things i've changed my mind on i can't remember all the things i've changed my mind on
Speaker 1because there's been so many
Speaker 2maybe not maybe there haven't been that many i don't know the one obvious one as we just talked about is i think now that there are more than two grounds legitimate grounds for divorce
Speaker 1okay yeah that's one okay um
Speaker 2i went from being an amillennialist to a premillennialist based on george ladd's arguments in a book edited by anthony hokumuk on the four views of the millennium i became a premillennialist i couldn't answer george ladd's arguments okay on revelation 20 okay
Speaker 1so there i once heard somebody tell me that they become a they became a premillennialist listening to i won't tell you the name but a famous preacher trying to preach revelation 20 from an amillennial perspective and he walked away from that sermon going yeah i'm a premillennial
Speaker 2guy now yeah it's pretty good pretty strong um i'm not sure it's a change of mind but on this immigration issue i have been drawn more to say um okay on immigration there's a question of should we defend our borders i think yes should we admit people to come from other countries and become citizens of the united states or visitors tourists whatever i think yes who and how many that's a question that has to be answered but then what about people who came here illegally and are still here and who have
Speaker 1built their lives here and
Speaker 2built their lives here that's the hard question to answer so i there's a spectrum you have on the one hand of the spectrum on the one hand you have a man who crossed the border 15 minutes ago and hid under a tree and now the border patrol picks him up i think everybody would say he should be sent back most everybody on the other hand you have what i call deeply rooted long time good neighbors where a person has been working for years faithfully doing a good job in his work gotten married raised children who only speak English not not Romanian or Spanish or whatever is the language of his native homeland but in the current system he can't ever leave the country because he can never come back it would be 10 years and he might possibly qualify for a visa but might not and what good does it do for anyone to kick him out tears apart his family I think so on that spectrum there's got to be some divisions made where there's some judgment calls it seems to me that we need something other than citizenship and other than a green card maybe call it a blue card you're lawfully here you can work you can drive you can pay into social security and medicare but you cannot become you can never become a citizen you can never vote that's a proposal put forth by Hugh Hewitt in the Fox News editorial opinion section of their website and he said on Monday Monday morning maybe it's Tuesday morning this week anyway February 2nd or 3rd and that seems to me to be I'm moving more toward favoring that position because we've got to honor Romans 13 about being subject to the civil government but we also have to honor love your neighbor as yourself and we have to honor the many verses that talk about caring for the sojourner and so I'm showing mercy to the sojourner yeah it seems to me that does that kind of solution does both yeah
Speaker 1anything else that you've changed your mind on that you want to highlight before we move on
Speaker 2Margaret have I changed my mind on anything
Speaker 1well there you go if she can't remember it must not be that significant
Speaker 2I'll think of something after you leave
Speaker 1right
Speaker 2any oh when I first published systematic theology in 1994 I said I couldn't decide between old earth and young earth positions yeah and Hugh Ross has convinced me that the old earth position is right
Speaker 1okay and he I'm guessing has convinced me that the old earth has convinced you not from an exegetical argument no from measuring
Speaker 2but you know if you know two angles of a triangle and one and the length of one side you can figure out the other two sides yeah so he can do that with the stars and the base of the triangle is the orbit of the earth around the sun which is a big base of a triangle yeah
Speaker 1and
Speaker 2those distances are light years away
Speaker 1have you found that to be controversial since changing your position on that
Speaker 2yeah I taught a bible class adult bible class at Scottsdale Bible Church for 11 years I think something like that and I taught through systematic theology and I got more pushback on the possibility of old earth instead of young earth view on that issue than on any other issue that I taught yeah it's a hard one because people think it says you know day one day two day three day four day five day six and creation days and days mean 24 hour days I think not necessarily so in the day of prosperity be joyful in the day of adversity consider yeah
Speaker 1so you hold to a day age
Speaker 2theory yeah John Lennox has a view that there's 24 hour days followed by long periods of time yeah that's one possibility and that's really trying to split the difference isn't it yeah that's a real third way option and day as a long day age I think that's a real possibility I think
Speaker 1John Piper in an interview once said that he was convinced of old earth from John Sailhammer yeah actually arguing it textually like exegetically kind of making the point old earth
Speaker 2is John holding old earth
Speaker 1now from from I'm John Piper yeah I think the way he answered it in the interview and if we're if I look it up after this and I'm wrong we'll just cut this part out but I think he said he leans towards old earth okay yeah because he was persuaded from an argument made by Sailhammer
Speaker 2yeah John Sailhammer and John Piper and I were all in the same department at Bethel College in St. Paul oh there you go I shared an office with John Sailhammer
Speaker 1yeah his work on the Pentateuch is fantastic
Speaker 2yeah I miss John
Speaker 1oh it stuck out to me because that was at a formative time in my in my walk with Christ where I thought if you don't believe in six 24 hour literal days like what are we even doing here right you know and then for John Piper who was at that time like a real hero of mine and still is by the way I don't know why I said it that way for him to go I think I lean this way it kind of opened up at least the possibility there yeah I think a lot like even some people in my church they fear um um not uh old earth stuff because they think it's just the door opening up to Darwinism
Speaker 2yep and I don't think so but um I understand that people feel that way
Speaker 1yeah yeah that's right greatest actually sorry uh you're doing great by the way this is a long interview um did you ever pastor alongside your academic responsibilities
Speaker 2six weeks you gave me the old
Speaker 1college try huh tell me that story what happened there
Speaker 2um a church in Hawaii called me and said we need an interim pastor for the summer we'll give you an apartment and a car we'll bring your family and we're um just a few miles well they look basically down in Pearl Harbor okay so near they're in Waikiki um and I said I'm sorry on Wahoo not far from Waikiki Beach okay so we went there for the summer and I was the pastor okay it was an incredibly joyful time um but a hard time there was a church discipline situation involving one of the members of the church but the deacons they had deacons instead of elders and I worked through it together and it was a learning experience for both of us and the Lord was gracious um and I so yeah but did you ever serve as like a lay elder I've been an elder at two churches in Illinois and Scottsdale Bible Church and now Illuminate Church here in Arizona okay four different churches anyway okay yeah
Speaker 1um what do you think is the biggest theological threat to the church at this current moment I don't know
Speaker 2what's the biggest
Speaker 1okay sorry maybe I shouldn't state it in the superlative yeah what are some
Speaker 2important ones uh abandoning the inerrancy of scripture is always a perennial problem yeah yeah because liberalism basically is saying this is only a human book it's a merely human book written by fallible human beings um and I as an evangelical Christian say these are not only human words they're also God's words at the same time that's a huge difference yeah um I think egalitarianism or evangelical feminism is a continuing threat when churches abandon male leadership in the home in the church they're on the way toward more liberalism correct um and um the cultural pressures um to endorse the legitimacy of homosexuality uh and transgenderism and related issues that's a that's a huge cultural issue that the church must not compromise on yeah um most of
Speaker 1those are threats they're all threats from the left is there any threat from the right that concerns you
Speaker 2harshness yeah um and vindictiveness um there are um some voices that purport to be by evangelicals oh I don't know I don't know I don't know I don't know Thank you. I know an example. I think he died, so he's not around anymore. But this man who used to go to funerals of homosexuals and hold up posters saying, God hates homosexuals or something like that. That's a harshness that is probably maybe demonically inspired.
Speaker 1Yeah, there's a lot of that right now. Yeah. And it's almost the equal and opposite reaction to the craziness that we see on the left. The Overton window is expanding, and it's almost like it's in the air right now where Christians feel like, well, because things are so bad, it's okay for me to be this harsh. Which is funny. When I was in the military, one of the things that they teach you is that it is precisely in the heat of the battle when you must keep your head most of all. Right? Wow. Christian decorum doesn't go out the window because the battle is on. It's precisely when we need it the most. Yeah. Yeah. Last question before we do the rapid-fire questions. What has been your greatest joy? The rapid-fire questions are going to be fun. What has been your greatest joy in serving the Lord all these years?
Speaker 2Well, I was going to say being married to Margaret.
Speaker 1That's a great answer, brother. That's a great answer.
Speaker 2Okay. You mean in Christian ministry? I think working on the ESV Bible translation.
Speaker 1Yeah. I mean, just spending that much time soaking in the Word of God?
Speaker 2Yes, and putting forth reasons and arguments for this verse or that verse to say this or that wording with 11 other godly scholars. Yeah. That just was, for all of us, an unforgettable experience. And we ended up as friends, which doesn't always happen. Yeah. So, and, you know, we had so many decisions to make, and we'd vote. And just, if you need a little dose of humility, it's interesting, and you can enjoy being outvoted 11 to 1. It happened to everybody from time to time. Right. You have an idea, and then at the end of the day, you look back and you say, in the multitude of counselors, there's wisdom.
Speaker 1Amen, brother. God's Word. God's Word gives us the answer once again. Yeah. Okay, are you ready for these rapid-fire questions? I'm not sure. Okay, well, trust me, you are. You've been preparing for this your whole life without even knowing it. Tea or coffee?
Speaker 2I switched this. I've been drinking coffee, and since morning, I switched to tea.
Speaker 1Okay. Favorite TV show?
Speaker 2I don't watch TV very much.
Speaker 1Okay. Trapped on an island with the sermons of only one preacher. And they're audio sermons. Who do you choose? Spurgeon, probably. Okay, so that's the Collected Works, which makes sense. What if they were audio only? Like you had Martin Lloyd-Jones,
Speaker 2John Piper. Probably John Piper. I listen to Ask Pastor John.
Speaker 1Still? Quite often. Yeah, I listen to him this morning. A little quick story time. So I was a missionary in Peru for about four years. Yeah. And we were in the jungle, and I used to have to ride, my motorcycle out to these villages where I would go preach. Yeah. And sometimes it would be a pretty long ride. So I would, whenever I would be in the city, I would download as many John, Ask Pastor John episodes as I could. Yeah. And then I would put them on my little iPod shuffle, and that's what I would listen to, ride the motorcycle back and forth. It was a really sweet time. Yeah. Okay, Lewis or Tolkien?
Speaker 2I think Lewis. Is he a. Is he a. Well, I like them both.
Speaker 1You got to choose one. C.S. Lewis. Favorite novel? Oh, I don't know. I saw in your library here, your fiction shelf is pretty slim, so. Yeah. If you don't have one, that's okay.
Speaker 2Well, again, I listen to Charles Dickens. I'm missing the title right now. Hard Times, Great Expectations, yeah. Yeah, that may be. One of Charles Dickens' novels may be the best. Okay. Favorite movie? The first Star Wars.
Speaker 1Okay. Mountains or beach? Oh, beach. Champagne or wine? Wine. Least favorite candy?
Speaker 2Butterscotch. Butterscotch. Okay.
Speaker 1Drive or fly? Always fly. Morning person or night owl?
Speaker 2Little of both.
Speaker 1Take a risk or play it safe?
Speaker 2I think I'm play it safe.
Speaker 1Mayonnaise or mustard? Mail. Text message or email?
Speaker 2Email, because my Parkinson's, it's hard to get the type of text messages.
Speaker 1Yeah. Night out or night in?
Speaker 2I think night in.
Speaker 1Burger King or McDonald's? McDonald's. Kindle, hard copy, or audio book?
Speaker 2I like all three.
Speaker 1Okay. Mexican, Italian, or Asian?
Speaker 2I think Mexican.
Speaker 1Football, basketball, baseball? Football. Burgers or barbecue? Burgers. Chinese takeout or sushi? Chinese. Cold or hot? Hot. ESV or hot? Hot or NIV? Rock or rap? Neither. Okay. Classical or jazz? Classical. I feel a little silly asking you this question, Wayne, but I have to, because this is the questions we ask every guest. Okay. If you had to have a unibrow or no eyebrows, which one would you choose?
Speaker 2I don't even know what a unibrow is.
Speaker 1You know where it connects in the middle? I choose the unibrow. You choose the unibrow. Nice. Okay. Trapped on an island with only one systematic theology. Yeah. Which one do you choose and you can't choose your own?
Speaker 2I can't choose my own?
Speaker 1You can't choose your own.
Speaker 2Maybe Bob Vink.
Speaker 1What hymn would you like to be sung at your funeral?
Speaker 2All My Life You Have Been Faithful. What's the. There's a different one.
Speaker 3There's All My Life You Have Been Faithful. That's not the one you're probably talking about.
Speaker 2That's the one I'm talking about. That is? Yeah.
Speaker 3All My Life You Have Been So, So Good. That one? Yeah. Oh, I forget the name of it. Goodness of God?
Speaker 1Maybe. I think that's the title of that. Okay. Last question. Most important question. How many holes does a straw have? One. That's right, brother. You ended on a high note. Well, Wayne, thank you so much. This has been a fascinating interview. I really think it's going to be edifying for the church. I'm thankful for every way that you've served the body of Christ, for the way the Lord's blessed you in your marriage and with your family. And I pray that he'll continue to do so. Can I close this out in prayer? Yeah. Okay. Lord, a man plans his course, but you direct his steps. What a gift that is to know that when your will is leading and guiding our steps, we are in the very best place we can possibly be. We thank you so much that as we've heard the story of your providence and the life of our brother Wayne, that it's been a story of much fruitfulness and faithfulness, that you've been with him, leading him and guiding him every step of the way, keeping him humble and dependent on you, but also filling him with your spirit, empowering him, equipping him to lead, to teach, to stand as a bold witness for the sake of the gospel. Not just parts of the gospel, but the whole gospel as it's been handed down to us in your word. We thank you for your word and for all the ways that you're still building up your church. We pray that you'll raise up many more Wayne Grudems in the days to come, as long as you tarry for the edification of the body. We ask this with great hope and expectation in the name of Jesus. Amen. Amen.
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