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This transcript has been edited for clarity and space.
David Capes
What are the challenges of writing the commentary since many of these authors have been trained by white faculty members. What’s the challenge of taking a training from a Duke or a Princeton where the faculty is primarily white? Coming out of that culture, and yet, now you’re writing for and you’re doing church with another culture. How do you make that transition?
Esau McCaulley
There are two things I want to say. I believe that every culture, bears within it both the image of God, the fact that we’re all created in God’s image, so we reflect divine creativity from the culture that we produce. But every culture also has evidence of the fall, because people who create the cultures both have the image of God and their fallen nature. Every culture is going to be the mix of good and bad, which means you will look back on any culture’s activity over time and see both glory and shame. For that reason, I don’t think everything that is Western is bad because of the sins of people in the West.
Because I think that some day people are going to look back upon me and my generation and say, here are all the ways which we failed to reflect God fully in the world. But I want to believe that despite that failure, something from what we’re producing right now, even in the black context, has worth. In other words, people will say African Americans from 1979 to 2025 hold something that’s good and something that’s bad. Here’s the good. I will put aside the bad.
And so for me, I think that’s true of all cultures so that yes, you can go to Duke and you can go to Princeton. They’re going to be elements that you learn there that are bad, because they created a culture that doesn’t always allow for multiple forms of expression. And those elements of it that are bad you set aside, but the elements that are good and lasting, you hold on to. And so, I’m very thankful for the degree that I received from the University of St Andrews. I’m glad that I studied with N T Wright, but he is a white British evangelical. I’m not a white British evangelical. So, there are things that Tom’s interested in that I don’t actually care about, and things that I’m super passionate about he doesn’t care about. But I can use the skills that he taught me as his student in my own context.
I think that the tricky part is when professors don’t give their students the freedom to do that. In other words, they don’t just give them tools. They say that the tools must be used to build this kind of house, or they say that the tools that we have are the only tools that count. And I was blessed to not be taught that way. I wasn’t taught that only the things that I was being taught in St Andrews were the only things that were valuable. I was given the freedom to be myself. I think that the scholars who are wrote sections of The New Testament in Color have done the hard work of asking, what have I learned that is useful that I need to keep? What have I learned that I need to set aside?
David Capes
Here’s a statement you made early in talking about African American biblical interpretation. “To assert the value of African American biblical interpretation is to insist on our place in God’s kingdom. It is not a demand for a solo performance. It is to join the chorus of cultures singing praises and offering laments to God”. Comment on that.
Esau McCaulley
You [in the audience] may not know this. I wrote a book called Reading While Black. It came out in 2020. That statement actually echoes what I say in Reading While Black. So, they’re meant to be, this was not the solo performance. You have a soloist and you can have a choir. The soloist sings a little bit, and then the choir comes back in. As I imagine these two books, Reading While Black was a solo that would then be followed by a choral piece, because I think that we need each other.
And the question is, is the Spirit at work in the entire body of Christ, or is the Spirit at work only in one part of the body of Christ and is the Spirit at work in the body of Christ across time and culture? Then we should hear from people across time and culture. If we want to understand God rightly, we also need the chorus. Here at Lanier, they’re going to teach you about the Reformation, because the people from a different time in a different context had insights that are useful for us today. Christians learn across time. We learn not just the stuff we said, but what Christians have said in the past. We also learn across culture. Maybe God designed it that way. We need each other.
To assert the value of African American interpretation is to assert the fact that we are a culture, and because we are a culture, we have unique gifts to offer. Sometimes we think of American culture as being one thing, but there isn’t just one American culture. There are American cultures. And I would even say something like, Texas ain’t Alabama! If you ever read German scholarship, it is different than American scholarship. The Germans just do things a little bit differently. They think a little bit differently. Their theology just reads different. And if you read British scholarship, it’s actually different from American scholarship. One of the reasons that people like N. T. Wright so much is he got a little bit of
American in him, in the way that he argues. British are very understated, even in their scholarship, very hesitant to make strong claims. And we’re Americans, we’re bold. We just invent heresy left and right [laughter]. The way of being as Americans influences the kinds of theology we produce.
We understand this intuitively, but when we break it down to actual ethnic groups in America for some reason then people feel uncomfortable. What I’m trying to say is just like there’s German culture and even Aussies, we understand that there are distinctives. Those cultural distinctives form habits of reading that then influence how theology is produced. We need each other in order to balance out the any weaknesses.
I’m not telling y’all how to sing in church, but let’s talk about the “Hillsongification” of worship music. Two churches make all the worship music sung in many churches. That flattens us out. And you ask, why do we all sing the same 10 songs? And why do they all sound the same? It’s because the same five people wrote them and they have had the same experiences. But if you listen to a gospel song, they are different than worship songs, not just in rhythm, but in content. A worship song might say, “Love you, Jesus, you’re amazing.” And they might say it 15 times over and over again with the guitar riff in the middle of it. But you listen to a gospel song, and it would be much more concrete. “When I could not pay my bills, someone came and fixed it. When I was sick with cancer and I was dying, etc.” In other words, there’s a concrete earthiness to gospel music. The songs are written differently.
Gospel music has an ethos that comes out of cultural experience. Even happy gospel songs are a little bit sad because there’s a sense of joy arising out of suffering that can’t be manufactured. All that to say we recognize this stuff in every arena of life except biblical interpretation. And what we wanted to do with the commentary was create a chorus.
David Capes
So a chorus of singers, [a chorus of cultures].
Esau McCaulley
People ask me sometimes how to use the commentary. There are two pieces of advice that I would give to people, on how to use this book and actually how to read any book. Avoid both excessive criticism and excessive paternalism. Excessive criticism is, I’m just hostile because it’s different. I would say the first thing to do is lower your defenses and be open to the possibility that someone can teach you something you don’t know. The second one is equally dangerous. It’s theological paternalism. Just because it’s from an ethnic minority, it doesn’t mean that it’s correct. You could say, “I’ve listened. I tried to understand you deeply. I’ve not listened with a critical ear. But nonetheless, I think that you’re wrong,
and here’s why, . . . “ Then you can actually have a conversation.
Do I agree with every single exegetical decision in the commentary? No, I do not. But I listen to them, I learned and this is actually interesting. I still disagree. The ability to understand how to engage across cultures without excessive criticism or excessive skepticism, is a kind of skill. Some people because they’re just afraid of all discussions of diversity are hyper critical. Some people because they feel so guilty because they’ve never read anything outside of their own context, just blindly accept whatever they read because they just want to get something that’s diverse. I say no, no, no. Learn how to critically read stuff. And this is also true of any scholarship.
It is rare that, even if I disagree with someone theologically, that there’s nothing good from this book. It’s rare that a book is completely wrong in every single way. It happens sometimes, but it’s actually an accomplishment to be wrong for 250, 300 pages in a row. And so, I normally say, I disagree with a lot of things from the book, but here are two things that I can pull from it that can make me better. And sometimes people are wrong in a way that’s interesting. You might say this is wrong but I don’t know why it’s wrong. I need to dig deep in my own understanding to articulate what is bad about this idea. And in finding out what is bad about this idea, I discover in fresh ways what is right about the gospel. Sometimes the argument is so good, it’s annoying. You think this is good, but it can’t be true, because there’s something missing.
It’s the search for truth. You’re encountering a variety of ideas. What does it mean to be a student, if you’re going to learn, if you want someone to say, here’s all the stuff that you already know. We’re going to grow that knowledge base without any challenge. No. You have to be challenged in order to grow as a thinker, which means you have to find things that you both agree with and things that you disagree with and learn how to do the emotional labor of discerning what is good and what is bad.
