How Understanding God’s Story Changes Yours

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Benjamin Gladd
In our contemporary world, in let’s just say, in the movies, whether it’s Marvel or Pixar, they’re called easter eggs. In the MCU, this movie connects to that. So in our culture, we call them easter eggs, but in the Bible, the way that we study this, the literature, we call them illusions. So let’s play it again. How many illusions Do you think there are in the New Testament?

Kendra Dahl
We would all say uncovering biblical theology in some way transformed our lives, right? And so that’s the subtitle of your book, how God’s story changes ours. Yeah, right. So let’s unpack that a little bit, though, like when you said that, Courtney, yeah. What do you mean? What are some examples?

Welcome to this episode of TGC Podcast. I’m Kendra Dahl. I work for the gospel coalition, and I am excited today to be having a conversation about the grand narrative of Scripture. And I am joined by Ben Gladd, Courtney Doctor, and Elizabeth Woodson. Thank you guys so much for being with us today.

Courtney Doctor
Thanks for having us.

Kendra Dahl
Well, let me tell you a little bit about my amazing guests. Ben GLAD is a pro, right? I mean, we are so lucky to be sitting a pro. Dr Ben glad Ben is actually our TGC. Is Executive Director for the Carson center for spiritual renewal, so that’s a pretty new role for him, though, in the last 12 years, is that right? 12 years, 12 and a half, 12 and a half years, he served as a professor of New Testament at RTS. What campus were you in the Jackson camp?

Benjamin Gladd
The Jackson one that’s the mothership.

Kendra Dahl
The mothership, okay, perfect. And while he was there, and in your you have just had an amazing career of writing innumerable books, right? What are some of your favorite books that you’ve written or edited? Yeah,

Speaker 1
so it depends on the day of the week, right? Each book has its own personality. So one of my favorites is the story we told that Greg Beale and I wrote together. We did that for college context. I also did one on the Gospels. Handbook on the Gospels I had just a ton of fun doing because I wrote it for pastors doing sermon prep. I wrote it for my students. Most of the time when I write I’m thinking, Can my mom understand this? Can my students understand this? Can Can my friends understand it? So hopefully, yes, yes and yes, I

Kendra Dahl
love that. Well, thanks for being with us. And then we have Courtney doctor here. Courtney is our Director of women’s initiatives at the gospel coalition, and you just wrote your first book. Though, you’ve written a Bible study as well. Tell us a little bit about some of the work that you’ve done. Yeah.

Courtney Doctor
So written, I don’t know, couple of Bible studies and and this book that just came out, I actually it’s the first Bible study I ever wrote, but we turned it into into a 10 chapter book with discussion questions at the end. And so, yeah, it’s very exciting, very fun.

Kendra Dahl
All right, I’m excited to talk more about that. And Elizabeth Woodson, we have joining us as well. So Elizabeth has a master’s in Christian education from Dallas Theological Seminary, and tell us a little bit about what you’re doing now. Elizabeth,

Elizabeth Woodson
yeah, I love discipleship in the local church, and so theological education in the local church. And so I spend my time meeting with churches, whether it is speaking to cast that vision or creating resources to help equip the people in the church, to help their folks think deeply about the word. And so just even I think about some of the work that you all have done, I have used some of that work in some of the things that I’ve done to help me create different resources. So it’s fun to be here with you all today.

Courtney Doctor
It’s so fun. It’s so fun.

Kendra Dahl
Well, I’m so excited to talk about biblical theology. I gotta tell you, one of the reasons I care so deeply about this is because I left my faith in college, and part of what the Lord used to draw me back into the church was that somebody gave my two year old daughter the Jesus storybook Bible, and I had never heard a Christ centered reading of Scripture, and that it transformed my thinking and made me think, I must have something wrong. If this is what the Bible is about, if it’s about Jesus, I might be open to it. And then a few years later, I went to the very first TGC Women’s Conference, and I’m telling you, Paige Brown, I can still I can probably, like quote to you things from her talk in what was that 2012 where she traced the theme of the temple through Scripture and blew my mind. So I’m just, I’m so excited for you all to help our listeners and viewers just think more deeply about these themes of Scripture, about the storyline of Scripture. So you’ve all clearly done a lot of work in this area, but why? What? What drew you to this discipline? Why this approach to Scripture?

Elizabeth Woodson
For me, it’s something that I think I fell upon that I was working for a church, and so I went to seminary. And you know, you take all these classes digging deep into the scriptures, but I think being able to zoom out and see the story as. One large narrative was something that I may have done, like once or twice in a seminary classroom, but I was given the assignment to create a class to talk about that at a church I was working for. And so I think my love is just, how do you take these theological ideas and make them applicable to everyday people? And so writing that class and teaching that class and digging into different resources, my mind was blown and just the bigness of the story and the implications for what it means for how we live as God’s people. And so I’m really glad I kind of fell into it, because it’s just it colors the way I do ministry in a much different way than it did before.

Courtney Doctor
Yeah, yeah, I would even say it colors the way I live the moments of my days. So for me, it wasn’t the Jesus storybook Bible, but it was sitting in a year long class, my first year in seminary, and it was Covenant Theology, and I remember Mike Williams standing up saying, I’m going to I’m going to kind of tear apart maybe your framework for understanding scripture, and I’m going to rebuild it. And he said, you will find out that you get to keep a lot of what you’ve always had, but, but I might rock your world just a little bit. And he did. He absolutely so to see the cohesiveness of the story, the way it holds together, from beginning to end, from beginning to forever, maybe we actually, I think we each have a book that’s from something to something from beginning to remind us, from Garden to glory and yours is like from, yeah. So we all kind of like this theme of like we’re going somewhere. But I it, it did. It rocked my world. It was kind of, you know, Jesus, storybook Bible sitting, having to teach that class. It my whole love of the Bible just grew exponentially. And then, as a result, my love of God, the One who holds this that, you know he, he, he identifies Himself in isaiah 46 you know, I am God alone. I am the one who knows the end from the beginning. And it’s just like it’s such a beautiful attribute of who he is that he is holding, because he knows the end from the beginning and and so he holds it all together. So, yeah, it just, I just fell in love with it. Yeah, yeah.

Benjamin Gladd
I grew up a dispensationalist. I mean, I was Rapture Ready. I remember when I was, oh gosh, maybe late elementary, junior high, somewhere in there, I walked in the house. This is, you know, pre cell phones. Of course, walked in the house. Nobody was home. Nobody was home. It happened, my youth pastor was right.

Speaker 1
So that was the context of how I read the Bible. And when you read the Bible along Israel over here, church over here, Old Testament over here, New Testament over here. What that does is that it bifurcates. There is no story. There is no meta narrative. And I mean, I received that all the way through college, and it really wasn’t until grad school when there were other legitimate options, and they were more compelling to me than than my dispensationalism. So that’s it’s yeah, we’ll get into the weeds at that point, but it’s pretty exciting, but that’s why I’m so passionate about it, because I remember reading it one way, and now I’m reading the Bible another way, and it’s so invigorating and so life giving and compelling that I want to tell the world exactly Well,

Kendra Dahl
I think that’s so fascinating that we would all say Like uncovering biblical theology in some way transformed our lives, right? And so that’s the subtitle of your book, how God’s story changes ours. Yeah, right. So let’s unpack that a little bit, though, because I think it could be hard for someone to understand how, why? Why does it make a difference? Like, why is the storyline of Scripture such an essential part of Christian education? But also, how does that even trickle down into how it affects your everyday life, like when you said that. Courtney, yeah, what do you mean? What are some examples? Well,

Courtney Doctor
I mean, I think it anchors our story into something bigger and more glorious. It gives not just meaning and purpose to God’s on this mission right to redeem all things back to himself, you know, to reconcile all things back to Himself, and He calls us into that mission. And so, you know, so often. I mean, how many times have we heard? How many times have I prayed? You know, Lord, what is your will for my life? Well, the better question is, how can my life serve your will? How can I serve what you’re already doing? And so to know what the mission of God is, to know what he’s about actually informs the moments of my days, and it’s the story that starts shaping that, right? So you see, God got us the same yesterday, today and forever, and so the same God who told Adam and Eve to fill the earth with with other image bearers, well, we’re still called to fill the earth with other image bearers, right? We’re still called to go into. All the world, the same God who told Israel be holy as I am holy, we’re still called to pursue holiness, to bear his image more accurately as we’re conformed more and more. I mean, it informs everything that we do, and so it changes it. It gives it. It gives it meaning and purpose and dignity and and specificity of how I spend my days?

Elizabeth Woodson
Yeah, I think about both identity and hope. And so, you know, my some of the work that I do is kind of thinking about how secularism, you know, changes the way people think about the way they live their lives and what they worship and the story that they live in. And so helping people understand that we all live in a story. And so how can I evaluate not what, which story is better, which story is more beautiful? And so I think about one of the aspects about the story of Scripture that really stands out to me, this idea of shalom. Michael Williams, I think it’s far as a cursed found. He talks about sin as an intruder. And so growing up, sin was where the story started, and the resurrection of Jesus from the grave was where the story ended. And it’s just to zoom out and see that the Lord created us in Shalom, and he will bring us back to Shalom. And in the moment where I talk to so many people who what they desire is shalom, they might not call it that, but that’s what they’re looking for. That’s what their actions are taking them towards. And so for me, it just it centers me, and this is who I am, and this is what I’m moving towards. Is what I get to be a part of that is so beautiful and much more beautiful than anything the world has to offer. And to know, oh, the world is trying to offer me a story. And if I’m not living in this one, I’m living in the airs. Love that, yeah,

Kendra Dahl
I think that’s such an important the narrative piece, to say it’s not just like, oh, that’s one nice story, and otherwise, I don’t have one, that we’re all in a story and it’s what we’re believing. Yeah, what would you say?

Speaker 1
So the what the Bible is trying to do is pretty amazing, because it’s telling us not just the story of Israel, not just the story of the patriarchs or the story of Jesus, it’s telling us the story of the cosmos from the beginning to the end. And you read the early chapters of John, in fact, the way that he orchestrated, the way, that way that John organizes Jesus life. It’s the first week of his life and the second week of his life. Then, of course, John’s John’s Gospel opens within the beginning was the word goes back to Genesis one. So really, what we have then in the life of Christ is he’s bringing about a new creation, a new age, and that that is already set in motion. So you have the story in the Old Testament organized around creation, fall, redemption, new creation. It cycles over and over again. But here’s the thing, in the Old Testament, you never have new creation. Just when you think you’re going to get new creation, you don’t get it. Even when Israel comes back into the land from exile, just when they think this is it, it doesn’t happen. It’s not until Jesus at His baptism, and when he really that’s when the new creation breaks into history and all that the Old Testament has implicitly and explicitly anticipated began both positively and negative. So some was easy for us to talk about the in breaking of the kingdom, but there’s also the in breaking of the tribulation and persecution and false teaching. It’s both. So you have the end of history has now broken into the present. And so the idea here is, well, how, how do Jesus the apostles? How do they tell us to organize our lives in light of that reality, both good things and bad things, positive and negative. And they tell us. On the one hand, be excited, be grateful. It’s better to be where you are now than Moses on the on on the in the Old Testament. On the other hand, be sober, wake up. False teaching is here. Persecution is here. The battle is still waging on. So the idea then, is we’re confronted with with both sets of realities, newness and persecution, tribulation, and so every day we relish we’re thankful for God. He’s working in our lives. We’re God is growing his kingdom through us. On the other hand, it’s really hard to do it in the in their actually interlocked kingdom and tribulation are interlocked, and you can, even though you pull them apart, they’re like this in our lives. So we’re just getting started. Tell me to stop.

Kendra Dahl
What I love that you’re drying out. I mean, we think about, like, systematics categories. It’s often where a lot of people appreciate the study of theology in, like, neat categories, right? And I’m definitely more like, I love the unfolding story. I get wrapped up in that. But the reality is, the unfolding story is what underpins all of our theological categories. So what you’re describing, you know, we think about our doctrine of Scripture, it’s like, how can we trust? The authority of scriptures. Like, look at this incredible unity, right? How? I mean, hasn’t it bolstered your confidence in the word as you’ve studied the storyline, right? Like, who can make this nobody could make this up. No, right?

Courtney Doctor
You get to the last two chapters, and you’re like, oh my, it’s all there, right? It’s all there. It’s like, yeah, so many mic drop moments there, yeah.

Kendra Dahl
Well, in the same with the doctrine of God, I think of, I think it’s J i packer who talks about the, you know, the intersection of God’s wisdom and sovereignty and goodness, and how we see his actions in the lives of the patriarch, shaping them into who he needs them to become, right? And then we see that all throughout Scripture, how God is working. And then that forms our belief of, okay, this is the God I worship. Like you said, you know, the same God who created and has given us a mission and given his laws, the same God that we worship now. So, I mean, those things are crucial doctrines for our lives, right? I mean, are there other I think, think of some of the theological implications that you’ve found to be under you know that the Bible storyline is the underpinning for those, I think,

Elizabeth Woodson
about the doctrine of humanity. And so I think, again, in my work, is just engaging with the people who are trying to figure out what it means to follow Jesus. And so a lot of times, that’s folks who they were in the church they grew up church was really just moralism for them. And so coming back to, how do we help add color to what your view of Scripture is? And so this idea of holiness, and so holiness as wholeness is that for me to be truly human is for me to walk in the way of Jesus and to be holy, to be the image bearer that I was designed to be in the very beginning. And so to see all the ways in which the value of humanity that we see through Scripture, the differences between Israel and the nations around them, and sometimes, when they’re leaning more towards the nations than they are towards the way of Jesus, a way of what they see with the covenant and so but to see that thread throughout and then to pare that back to Okay, now, who are we supposed to be in light of this? And again, to me, it’s this is the more beautiful vision than the options you’re being given. That holiness isn’t just about us checking off boxes and following rules. It’s about you being the fullness of who God intended for you to be and who you will be in eternity.

Courtney Doctor
I love that. I think the doctrine of sin understanding, you know, how can Paul write in Romans six that we’re dead to sin. But when we trace our relationship with sin through the story, even just in the four main parts, it starts making sense, right? So if the four parts are creation, fall, redemption and new creation, well, our relationship with sin changes in each of those categories. So in creation, we were able to sin, right, obviously, but we didn’t have to. After the fall, after the exile out of the garden, we are not able to not sin. That’s how we’re born. We’re born in Adam, and we are unable to not sin. And so what’s the difference? Why can Paul say in Romans six that we’re dead to sin? Well, it’s because in the in redemption, if, when we’re united to Christ, when we’re born again by the Spirit, we’re born into Christ, and our relationship with sin changes, and we are able to not sin. We will never do it perfectly in this life, but we actually have the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit to say no to sin at any given moment. And so it changes. And then we look forward to, we long for what’s going to happen in the resurrected in our resurrected bodies, in the new heavens and the new earth, and we will not be able to sin. That’s why new creation is even better than Eden, to take Nancy’s book title. It’s, it’s why it’s better is because we will actually not be able to sin. And that’s a beautiful thing. And so we get to we get to see the Kingdom breaking in to our here and now when we’re united to Christ and and we get to taste bits of it now, as we long for the completion of it one day.

Kendra Dahl
But you know, once you have the Bible Story Line down, like you’ve just got it all right, you just heard it all the story,

Courtney Doctor
yeah, I’ve learned nothing sitting here from either Elizabeth or Ben so far. I’m kidding. I’m totally like learning this is real time education for me, as I’m listening to the two of them so well,

Kendra Dahl
I’m especially curious for you, Courtney, having written this Bible study several years ago and then reworked through it to write your book, did you encounter any new aha moments? Or Ben and Elizabeth, as you guys are working through the storyline? I mean, what are some of your favorite like, I’ve never seen this before,

Courtney Doctor
the connections you’ve made constantly. Yeah, I think that even that, what I just said, like, the the story could have been creation, new creation. It could have been that, right? And it wasn’t. And I didn’t account for that. The first time Nancy wrote the foreword, and she was like, so you say nothing about the current heaven. And I was like, oh. Okay, so I went back and rewrote some of that. I was like, Oh, she goes, You just jumped to the new heavens and the new earth. And I was like, Yeah, I did. I didn’t even account for, like, so I have a whole section now on understanding, you know, the intermediate state and, and so, yeah. I mean, I’m constantly learning and growing in my understanding of it,

Kendra Dahl
But not you guys, right? I mean, you’ve got it.

Speaker 1
So I do a lot of it’s called the use of the old and the new. And it’s a whole field. It’s gigantic, not just within the church, but within academic circles. And so that was my my PhD work was in that I just continued the ride in that area

Kendra Dahl
is that where there’s some debate about, like, if this is an illusion or categories give us this is one

Benjamin Gladd
of my favorite things to talk about, so I appreciate that we can, we can trace a lot of this. It’s again. This is just the New Testament, not used to the old in the old but just New Testament. Guess, no, this is a Q and A, I’m taking control. How many Old Testament quotations are in the New Testament. How many do you think it’s less than 100.

Speaker 1
350 Okay, so now those are quotations. There’s something less than a quotation, and it’s called an illusion. Yes, an illusion. Now, in our contemporary world, in let’s just say, in the movies, whether it’s Marvel or Pixar, there’s inside out two that just came out. They’re called easter eggs. The MCU, this movie connects that. Yeah, so in our culture, we call them easter eggs. But in the Bible, the way that we study this, the literature, we call them illusions. So let’s play the game

Courtney Doctor
Again, because it sounds more academic, sounds amazing.

Benjamin Gladd
So it’s a way. It’s a way to reference something indirectly. It’s almost insider language. So let’s play it again. How many illusions Do you think there are in the New Testament? More than 1000

Kendra Dahl
I appreciate that.

Speaker 1
Revelation. Two quotations to the Old Testament. Two that’s all chapter one, over 500 illusions. There are some verses in Revelation that are four and five illusions deep in just a single verse. So that tells us something, that tells us that number one New Testament authors, they prefer to, they prefer to refer to the Old Testament indirectly, kind of sneaky in some way, because it’s more powerful to the reader, the more overt you become, the less force it has. But if you do, if you talk in illusion, then it can evoke all these different emotions, like, wait a minute, that reminds me of that movie or that song or whatever. It’s far more powerful. And we know that the New Testament authors were much more into illusions than quotations. So what does that have to do with this discussion? Because it’s every single day, every single day when I’m discovering an illusion or something, I’m like, I never saw that before, because you’re working at a ground level, and you can see where the New Testament authors are referring to a string of texts in the way that they blend it, the way that they’re doing biblical theology. We can trace that out, and it’s amazing, and it’s life giving.

Courtney Doctor
And I just want to tell the world about it. Okay, give us an example, because I want to know.

Benjamin Gladd
it’s really every day where it’s like, oh man, I didn’t even, you know, I’ve been studying the Bible my whole life, and I’m like, I didn’t even know that was the case. Or, like, I always like to give this example, because I think it’s a lot of fun. So in Matthew three, when Matthew 13, I’m sorry, in Matthew 13, when Jesus is discussing. The parables of the kingdom. He talks about how and this is, it’s in two parables, or maybe it’s just one explained. Yeah, it’s in two occurrences in Matthew 13, when those who resist the kingdom are thrown into the furnace of the fire, and it’s unbelievers. And the exact same wording is found in Guess what? Old Testament text, Daniel three, wow. And so some commentators say, Oh, that’s not an illusion. It doesn’t make any sense.

Speaker 1
But notice the ingenuity in Daniel three, it’s the righteous who are thrown into the fire. Right in Matthew 13, it’s the unbelievers, the unrighteous, are thrown into the fire. They say, No, it’s not an illusion. It’s like, no, it is. It’s called irony, because it’s okay you mess with God’s people by throwing them into the fire. Now God is going to mess with you using your own invention. Wow. And so we can see this type of language the way it works, and it’s very powerful. I mean, yeah, we there are, there are 1000s of these, not hundreds, 1000s of these and, and really, even, even if you look at good commentators, they do focus on the quotations. Good ones should. And they’ll make some, you know, they’ll they’ll make a nod to illusions. But again, this is a field that’s wide open, and there are so many new books coming out, new articles, new things, that we’re really kind of on the cutting edge here of really getting into this stuff. And now it’s trickling into the Old Testament. So we’re now seeing the prophets, the Old Testament thing, yeah. And it’s, you know, you have all these great scholars and commentators working on this. I’m kind of right there in the middle, just as an observer watching it, doing a little bit of it. So it’s a lot of so this very much relates.

Courtney Doctor
The New Testament’s use of the old is like this big. So the New Testament’s use of illusions is gonna be a whole, whole set will have to be booked.

Speaker 1
So there is that commentary that Greg Beo and Don Carson did called the commentary of the New Testament. That’s the word. Take that into a second edition, and I’m working with Greg and Don on that project. And one of the things we’re having the authors do is pay more attention to illusions now, because we’re becoming more sensitive to them. We’re seeing them more clearly. The connection is very strong. A lot of good dissertations coming out, and so you’re doing biblical theology at an at a ground level that’s exciting, that affirms everything that we’ve said. It’s one story related to Christ and His people, and we can see, yeah, all the specificity of it.

Kendra Dahl
Okay, so how about for the listener who’s like, okay, whatever you just said. But where do I start? Right? I’m like, you’re talking about dissertations, and yet I’m listening to you thinking the Bible is alive, guys, right? So how could somebody start to approach the Bible differently with this perspective, or start to grow in their understanding? I feel like there might be some good resources available, but really, like, how would you advise someone who’s just like, Wow, I’ve never heard a Christ centered reading of Scripture, like, where do I start?

Courtney Doctor
Well, I’ll plug from beginning to forever by Elizabeth Woodson. It’s a Bible study on the Bible story, and it’s real good. It’s real good. What is seven weeks? Eight weeks, eight weeks, eight weeks. So

Elizabeth Woodson
I just gives you just a flyover review with a lot of footnotes. So check the footnotes, because there’s gold. Some of these folks books might show up in the footnotes, but yeah, I think that’s from Garden of glory. Is always like to get the flower review, but then to dig deeper, you know? So I think about the king and his beauty. I think that’s Thomas shiner. I think about, is it or is it kingdom through covenant have been really helpful for me to give, like, a more deep review, but still accessible to folks and

Courtney Doctor
you mentioned far as the curses found. Mike Williams. It, Michael Williams. Michael D Williams, it. It’s a pretty accessible. It’s kind of maybe a level up, you know, from, you know, when I wrote from Garden to Gloria, basically, was trying to take, you know, some of his work and make it, make it even just more accessible. So I use Disney movies and stuff Exactly. Exactly. You know Nancy Guthrie even better than Eden. So her, she takes nine themes and traces them through the story. And so I would say, study the story first understand what the story is and what the major parts of what guns do. Lean at each of those major, you know, times in the story, and then go read even better than Eden, because you’ll get a sense of going through it nine times, how these themes start in the garden, and we see them all the way through to the end. And it’s just beautiful.

Kendra Dahl
Well, in your dictionary, right? It’s kind of like a glossary, right? That or like, people can go and look up specific areas of Scripture.

Speaker 1
The easier one would be. Greg mio and I did the story retold. Okay, that’s for college students. I picked out. There are over 300 pictures that I killed myself finding. Took me a long time to do that. And we go, the first chapter is the story of the Bible. Second Chapter is the New Testaments of the old how do you how do you organize that? How do you think through that? And then we go from Matthew the revelation, and we really talk a lot about this as we work through each each book. I’m also finishing a book. It’s a study Bible with Robin and HOLMAN The CSB translation, hopefully, hopefully comes out next fall. It’s a study Bible on the New Testament, use of the old nobody’s done it before, quotations and illusions. It’s not exhaustive, but it’s really, really good.

Courtney Doctor
That’s really good.

Benjamin Gladd
I can’t share with you any my secrets.

Kendra Dahl
Exactly. I’m gonna need that and then.

Speaker 1
But what’s amazing is that we’re redoing the cross references in it. So I’ve taken the last two years to rework these cross references so that you can when you open up the New Testament, we’re not at the Old Testament. We’re just New Testament. When you open up the New Testament, you will see in the body of the text the illusions in the body, underline in italics and in blue font, and the quotations are in blue, bold font. And then you will see that in the references for all 1000s of them. Finally, somebody. Because, yeah, it’s, it’s, it takes a tremendous amount of work and but I think the time has come to produce, to produce a volume like that. So, yeah, yeah. Well, excited for that.

Kendra Dahl
It makes me think of when I was a new believer. I read, I did a Bible. What is the Bible reading plan where it’s like 10 chapters a day, but it’s like cross sections? Is it that’s not Professor Horner? Is it? I don’t know. Maybe, maybe, maybe we’ll put it in the show notes, if I can find what it actually has. But I remember reading through it had me in Exodus as I was reading through Hebrews, and that’s where I kept I was like, Oh, my goodness, connections in this, you know. So I think about how much parallel scriptural reading is beneficial in that way, where it’s like, maybe you’ll be reading in the Psalms, and then you’ll see that psalm quoted in the Gospels and and where your mind starts to build that network of connections, where, I think having those cross references is so helpful, but there’s also just the reading, the vast reading of Scripture over and over again, that we start to be able to make those connections absolutely ourselves, ourselves, right? That’s why I think of the New Testament. When there’s an illusion, these people knew the scriptures. Oh, yeah, so they heard it. Yeah. Like we, you just, we miss it, right?

Benjamin Gladd
I have people give and out, and I’ll, I’ll leave you with this. But I do one of my biggest objections that I hear from just whether it’s, you know, people chiming in or listening to me or whatever, is, well, how in the world there’s, there’s no way that they would have known it. There’s no way that Paul’s audience or somebody would have known it’s like, Look, you get any 10 year old kid who’s seen all the Marvel movies, yeah, and that kid knows everything. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And I’m like, Okay, if this, if a 10 year old could do that with movies, I think, yeah, you know scripture’s audience can do that with the whole Old Testament. I mean, they, they were, they were really excited about the Bible, and they knew it very, very well. And we have to there’s a submission to scripture here, and then there’s this snobbery that we’ve got to get rid of. And that is it’s we think that we know the Bible better than they do, that we think that we can rise above the text, that we can understand it better than Paul understand it, than these apostles themselves, then we can adjudicate. No, you’re not. You don’t really mean that or no, that’s not that connection. No, it is that connection.

Kendra Dahl
Well, this has been so fun. I have so many more questions I want to ask you, but I’ll just wrap up with one. I think we heard a little bit then about what you’re working on, but I don’t know that you ladies shared what’s next for you. So this vast field of study, I’d love to hear what are you working on next?

Elizabeth Woodson
I’m working on a book that kind of examines this idea of the different stories that people are living in. And so I always think of it as an apologetic of beauty. So yes, we know the Bible is true, but why is it actually the more beautiful option for what you’re looking for? And so taking people through the different ways they’re looking for Shalom, and then showing them how the Lord, through Jesus Christ. Christ is the only way to find that. And so giving people the tools to not just to see the stories they’re choosing to live in and to see and explain and internalize why the Bible is not the only, not just the true option, but the more beautiful option for them and the world.

Courtney Doctor
Oh, I love that. Love that. Well, I turned in a few weeks ago a manuscript on the book of Titus, Bible study on Titus. So I’m excited about that. I co authored that with Hunter B list, and we just had a great time, kind of not overplaying Titus two, but really thinking a lot about Paul and Titus relationship and older and younger. And so that was really fun. I have before me this fall, the opportunity to write a children’s book and to write it to my grandchildren. And I don’t know yet what it’s going to be on, so I’m really praying about like, Okay, if I could say something, what do I want to say? And then my next book, book will will most likely be something on how the story informs missional living, how it informs how we live this thing out. And so I’m just still trying to kind of structure and think through, think through that.

Kendra Dahl
Yeah, so exciting, yeah. I mean, you told us. But do you want to highlight any other favorites?

Courtney Doctor
No, are you going to do Old Testament’s use of the Old Testament?

Speaker 1
So we are doing, I don’t want to give you his name, but there’s a really good Old Testament scholar who we are going to do use the old, the old for CSB, yeah, it’s just a ton of work. It’s a ton of work. And then I’m doing an Old Testament. I’m one of the authors for an Old Testament introduction. So the New Testament one is the story retold. Greg B and I did that one. And then Michael Morales and Danny Hazen are doing the story foretold. So I had so many people. I had, yes, yeah. So I said I had so many people ask, When are you going to do an Old Testament volume? And so then I went to IVP, and I said, Would you guys be interested in this? And they said, Yes. Then I found two other guys that would do it with me. So doing a mark commentary, I just got a whole, whole stack of stuff.

Kendra Dahl
You don’t see me, I’ll just be like at home, reading, right? Exactly, exactly, giving me a reading list of my life. Well, this has been the last delightful. Thank you guys so much for joining me and thanks for listening to this episode of TGC podcast. I hope it’s been helpful. I know it’s really encouraged me to just look again at the scriptures anew and just see God’s wisdom in orchestrating this story that we would behold his son. So thank you guys.

Courtney Doctor
Thanks.