Dru Johnson (00:00)
So Mike, what were you hoping to accomplish by putting together a conference on politics in the Bible?
Mike Tolliver (00:08)
Well, yeah, so we just finished the Bible First Conference that we talked about, I think a couple of times on this podcast in advance, well as just a few times. ⁓ And then of course, boosted on social media. But the conference itself went, in my opinion, great, especially as a first.
Dru Johnson (00:17)
Yes, we instantly ran a commercial.
Mike Tolliver (00:34)
conference first foray into this topic of the Bible and politics. And ⁓ so why did we, why did we do it? Is that?
Dru Johnson (00:44)
Yeah.
I think it was mainly your idea, if I remember correctly. What were you hoping to accomplish?
Mike Tolliver (00:49)
So, ⁓ yeah,
mostly to help cut through the noise of a lot of the talking heads about what Christians ought to do with respect to politics. And it’s a bit of a critical moment in terms of broader conversations. ⁓ So just thought that we would have an opportunity to resource the people in the pews.
with the best research and writing from folks they wanna hear from. And so we invited eight speakers to this conference from different traditions. You can never hit every tradition. And so even as we were there, we were like, this group would be great to have somebody present something from that tradition. But it was diverse. We got like a wide range of…
⁓ folks, some that you and I did not know previously. And actually one of my favorite papers was from somebody I’d never heard of prior to. So it was just a really good opportunity to connect with folks who are thinking and ⁓ connecting with the tradition of thought on the topic of the Bible and politics up to this point. So that’s why I really wanted to do it.
Dru Johnson (02:13)
⁓ Why did we try to ban the phrase Christian nationalism? ⁓ So I emailed all the speakers and said, could you please not use the phrase Christian nationalism? Why were we so intent on that?
Mike Tolliver (02:28)
Yeah, and if I’m remembering your prohibition, it was not necessarily don’t use the phrase. It was if you’re gonna use the phrase, define it so that everybody knows exactly what you’re talking about. And so as I mentioned kind of this ⁓ critical moment ⁓ in culture, there’s a lot of people who are using that phrase, most of whom are not defining the term, but in their mind, it’s crystal clear. And you can easily talk past each other. But there’s also a sense in which
like American Christian nationalism is a thing unto itself that is distinct from nationalism, broadly defined, that’s distinct from Christianity, broadly defined. And so when you ⁓ smack those two together in an American context, you have this like suddenly new thing. And so just making sure that if you’re gonna use that word, that it at least we’re all on board with how you’re using it, how you got there.
and then we can have a meaningful conversation. And there was actually one paper in particular that used that phrase over and over and over and over, but carefully defined it and actually traced the trajectory of how we got here. And I had friends that were in attendance who were PCA pastors who didn’t even realize the roots of their own views. ⁓
you know, coming into that paper. So they really appreciated that. was a lot of fun.
Dru Johnson (04:02)
Yeah, think we had a little bit more historical analysis of American political ⁓ alliances than we anticipated. And it was all interesting. ⁓ The name of the conference is Bible First. ⁓ Why I keep calling that an in eloquent name. It’s not a catchy name. It’s funny, Miroslav Volf got up there and he’s like, I really like this name.
This is a great name, because I really like doing Bible first theology. ⁓ But what did you think Bible first meant and how well do you think we did at doing Bible first thinking?
Mike Tolliver (04:47)
Yeah, I mean, the name itself is a little on the nose in the sense that we really wanted people who are going to talk about a Christian view of politics to demonstrate where the Christian view of politics comes from. And you can only do that if you’re starting from scripture. know, everything else is downstream of that. So starting with the Bible first, we put the methodology in the name. ⁓ Now,
you know, some did this better than others. Some got out of the Bible better than others. Some never left. And so, you know, there’s that, but then, yeah.
Dru Johnson (05:27)
And then
some eventually got to the Bible at the end of their talk, right? Yeah, yeah.
Mike Tolliver (05:31)
Yes, right, right,
right. And so from that standpoint, it became obvious who was playing the game and who wasn’t. ⁓ And so, you we’ve talked about ways that we can kind of coach ⁓ both the speakers and the attendees on what it is that they’re going to be receiving from there. Because the history of
Christians doing politics in the American context is incredibly important. And there are many folks, like I mentioned, those PCA pastors that didn’t even know the roots of their own views. ⁓ That’s actually critical to say, wait a minute, I’ve inserted something cultural into my reading of scripture. ⁓ And so like, that’s all fair game. ⁓
but at the same time, we don’t wanna merely do that. And so like, it becomes this opportunity to equip people in a fully orbed way. Now you did mention, we did stick exclusively to the American context, which on the one hand is disappointing because there’s so much more, and even the American context is so heavily contextualized by the Western tradition. So you have both the Near Eastern and the
Far Eastern tradition, the Orthodox history, ⁓ well beyond the walls of that Western tradition ⁓ that would just be fascinating to get a broader perspective of. But for a first conference, I think we got a really good first go, we’ll say.
Dru Johnson (07:14)
Yeah, getting the conversation started. I mean, I think for me, was hoping probably naively that everybody would spend two thirds of their paper carefully tracing the biblical thought on some particular political components, like coercive power. Okay, let’s trace coercive power from Genesis 1 forward, or the rule of law. What is the rule of law and how does that work out?
all the way through. And we got some tracing, but I realized ⁓ I don’t think we had any biblical scholars in that group or any biblical theologians or people who kind of do that tracing work. Although we had a few papers where they did do a sufficient amount of like, hey, this idea shows up here, here, here, here, here, ⁓ and everywhere in scripture. So, know, this kind of, I’m not making this up ⁓ approach, which I thought was really helpful. ⁓
Mike Tolliver (08:00)
Mm-hmm.
Dru Johnson (08:10)
And then some of it was helping us contextualize how Americans had used the Bible to various ends, positive, negative, you know, undetermined what they were doing with the Bible. ⁓ Yeah, I wonder what was the biggest kind of takeaways for you, like things you learned? Because you’re more in the political theology and political thought side than I am. ⁓ So what was mind-blowing or mind-numbing for you?
Mike Tolliver (08:39)
Well, I’ll share like some things that were said there that have stuck with me in really powerful ways. ⁓ You Miroslav, remember him saying, I’m a citizen of the new Jerusalem. And like that, the sense that we are all dual citizens at least ⁓ in some sense. so he was, his paper started in Exodus went to
Dru Johnson (08:55)
Mm.
Mike Tolliver (09:08)
the end of Revelation with the new heavens and the new earth, new Jerusalem. ⁓ And then he went back to Jesus. And so that was just a fun paper. And when he said that, I was like, ⁓ I feel like that vision is something that every Christian needs to have at the forefront of their mind and in every sphere of life. ⁓ And so I just appreciated that ⁓ reminder. I really liked, ⁓
Dru Johnson (09:30)
Mm-hmm.
Mike Tolliver (09:38)
I was actually looking back through my notes. So ⁓ James ⁓ Wood, he had ⁓ five categories for the nations that he then traced through scripture. And he went through them, I only grabbed four. So I’m looking for the final version of the paper to actually fill that out. But that list of things that he went through, ⁓ again, the four that I have that,
Dru Johnson (09:44)
James would, yeah.
Yeah.
Mike Tolliver (10:07)
the nations, so Jewish Gentile, the nations are judged for refusing to worship the Lord, violating God’s moral reality, profaning God’s sanctuary and rejecting Israel’s king. And so as he’s like mapping these things out, I’m thinking like, this is great ⁓ and really good. And I have more questions that came out of that.
Dru Johnson (10:26)
Right.
Mike Tolliver (10:34)
But like that’s the sort of thing that really gets people thinking in new ways. How is it that the God of Israel is judging the nations on something that they weren’t given special revelation about? And yet he’s holding them to account.
Dru Johnson (10:53)
if there is such a thing as special revelation.
Mike Tolliver (10:56)
Sure, the Bible is, yeah.
Dru Johnson (10:59)
Yeah,
and I think, you know, and this is where the biblical side of me wants to and I think Anthony Bradley brought this up actually in his Q &A is, you know, there’s the goyim, the nations, but there’s also um, right, which is a people group. And I think it can, there’s a question as to whether those are two different categories.
whether those can be conflated or synonymous ⁓ or, ⁓ you know, when we speak about people groups, are we actually talking, like what binds a people group together? it the, cause in Genesis 10, it’s location, language and hierarchy leadership of that people group, the clan as it were, the chief and the clan. ⁓ And are we, can we say something like the United States? I think this came up in one of the papers like,
Maybe it was James Woods, but the United States isn’t, it’s more like an empire if you were to compare it to what the biblical authors are talking about when they talk about the nations, it’s more like a conglomeration of nations into an empire or a federation as we would call it. I there’s a reason why it’s called, I almost wanted to yell out, yeah, it’s called the United States. It’s actually not called America, it’s called the United States of America. ⁓
But yeah, so anytime we say America should because the Bible says nations do X or Y or Z, we might already be making a fundamental category error at that level. And that conversation got started there. I don’t think we got finished or clarity on it, but at least it was dredged up. Yeah, I’m wondering who you thought did the best
Mike Tolliver (12:40)
Right.
Dru Johnson (12:49)
doing a Bible first paper.
Mike Tolliver (12:52)
Yeah, I would say probably James Wood. ⁓ I really appreciated his project there. And I’ve connected with him ⁓ outside of that. And he is working on a broader project developing these themes. And ⁓ I’m anxiously awaiting that, so to speak.
especially if what we got in his paper is a taste of what’s to come. Now, there are a number of the speakers who worked with scripture ⁓ to varying levels of effectiveness. And ⁓ so just because you’re in scripture doesn’t mean that you’re necessarily, like you said, tracing those biblical themes across the narrative. And ⁓ like,
you mentioned with the idea of a nation, how that develops. I remember that as well. think it was in Anthony’s paper that that question came up or that conversation happened. And I remember keying in on that as well because you have in Genesis 10 and 11, what seems like at least a baseline for what their concept of a nation is. And- ⁓
Dru Johnson (14:13)
Right. Or
it could be at least a baseline that you could then go out and test against other passages. Right.
Mike Tolliver (14:20)
Right, absolutely,
absolutely. And then see how that works out. ⁓ And so nobody really did that. And what’s more actually, I had the question during the panel discussion. ⁓ I don’t know if you remember, but just kind of keying in on the fact that everybody was really comfortable appealing to a number of voices outside of scripture. Some folks appealed to.
⁓ know, bits and pieces of scripture here, but only one speaker actually even appealed to Torah. ⁓ And you you get the bulk of political instruction in the Torah and the prophets. And of course the prophets are just interpreting Torah. So if you’re leaving out Torah, you have an anemic politic as a Christian. And so like I asked the question of the room.
⁓ Why is that? And, ⁓ you know, at least the Anthony’s paper on the historic black church was that they are more than happy to enter in conversation through Torah, ⁓ primarily by identification with, ⁓ you know, the vulnerable and the care for the vulnerable that is on every page in Torah. ⁓ And so, you know, I really appreciated that.
and basically ask the question, why is it that the white church historically is not comfortable doing that? And I don’t know that I ever got an answer to that.
Dru Johnson (15:54)
Yeah, I don’t know if anybody knows the answer to, mean, I’m sure somebody’s writing a PhD on it right now, or maybe somebody’s written a book on it, but that, Well, and I always, you know, I was talking, it’s funny perception and reality. So, I had several people come up to me at the conference and say, so is there anybody outside of the reform tradition going to be represented here? And I was like, what are you talking about? They said, it’s all reform people who are here. I said, no.
Mike Tolliver (16:01)
Let us know if you are, yeah.
Mmm.
Dru Johnson (16:23)
she’s Armenian Orthodox. ⁓ Those people over there are COGIC, Church of God and Christ, Black Pentecostal. Those people over there are all Pentecostal. That guy is Anglican, but he’s Anglican Pentecostal, right? ⁓ That guy’s just straight Pentecostal. ⁓ So I think there was, ⁓ it’s kind like when I worked at King’s, students thought everybody was homeschooled at King’s College in New York City.
They’re like, oh, all these kids come from homeschool. And I’m like, actually the majority of our students come from public schools, but 15 % were homeschooled, which is, probably like once you meet three people who are homeschooled and you’ve never met any homeschoolers before, it feels like, you know, everybody’s homeschooled. I think we had a little bit of that as well as once you hear two or three people speak freely from the book, not the book of church order, the book of common prayer, which maybe is a book of church order of sorts.
Mike Tolliver (17:04)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dru Johnson (17:20)
Yeah, I think ⁓ when you have those kind of free appeals to things that maybe you’ve never heard of or you don’t pay attention to, it feels like, everybody knows this in the room except for me. So I would say we actually had a ⁓ decently diverse set of voices in both the audience and amongst the speakers. Again, we could always do better, and I think we will want to in ⁓ future conferences. I thought ⁓ also Anthony Bradley ⁓
You know, this question of, it’s funny because I always tell him like my favorite group of people to teach Bible to is COGIC groups, which I used to do with an organization, Church of God in Christ. So it’s all black Pentecostal, Church of God in Christ. And number one reason is they know the Bible so well, you can just like refer to story or go back through a story, show them one thing and they’re like, okay, I get it. And then they just start making the connections instantly. And so to your…
to your point of like, is it that the black church knows the Torah? ⁓ I think there’s going to be, that would be true in bits. There are bits of the Torah that are more important than the prophets are more important to them. I get the sense that even when people were appealing to sections of the Torah, they didn’t understand how the whole Torah works together. There’s kind of a, mean, even Miroslav, you know, his, he famously now said he’s got a little garage where he parks.
all of these passages that he doesn’t know what to do with. So he’s okay with bits of the Torah, but there are clearly large bits of it that he just doesn’t know what to do with it. You kind of have to park in the garage of difficult passages. ⁓ And so I think there is, I think what we see in these conversations is a broad, the church has still not taken the Torah seriously. ⁓ And so they don’t understand what Jesus is doing with the Torah. And so they, and I think somebody even said it at this conference.
I don’t remember if it was this conference or somewhere else I was, but talked about some radical new things that Jesus was doing and everything they mentioned. was just like, that’s straight out of the Torah. Like three or four things. Just like every single one of those is Torah. That is not new, right?
Mike Tolliver (19:25)
Yep.
That was actually also Miroslav’s paper. It was.
Dru Johnson (19:32)
maybe that’s, maybe
it’s all, So, and I’m sure if I’d pointed that out, he’d go, yeah, of course. Yeah, that’s, you know, that’s part of the tradition. That was part of the Torah. But just that kind of ⁓ walling off Jesus’s ethics and Jesus’s teaching and, know, what sometimes is called a Christo-centric approach to theology ⁓ from the Torah seems to me to still be an unhelpful enterprise.
And we see varying degrees of success of people who can actually integrate the Torah into Jesus’ teaching as decently as Jesus himself did.
So yeah, we need to do more work on that front. go ahead.
Mike Tolliver (20:14)
Well, so if I can ask
a question ⁓ to maybe give an example of how this could be done, because you mentioned the coercive use of power. ⁓ And that was actually, it was one of the questions that I asked during the day one panel. ⁓ And then have along with it an example from Torah that we could maybe talk about because.
I’m curious what you do with it. It’s a difficult passage for me and I don’t quite know what to do with it. And so at least, ⁓ you know, maybe we could hold ourselves to that standard for a second. And so to bring everybody up to speed then the idea of the coercive use of power, ⁓ Robert George has a book, you know, famously says, making men moral. This idea that law itself is a formative tool and ⁓
What do we do with that for those folks that ⁓ disagree with the morality that is underlying the laws? And the example I gave in my question was, whether it’s 1 % of the population or 99 % that is not Christian, there’s going to be somebody who doesn’t agree with this Christian moral vision as it’s worked out in the laws of the land. So to bring them in alignment,
then there is some sort of coercive power of the state to say, no, you really can’t kill your neighbor. ⁓ That’s not okay. Like, and we’re gonna put you in prison or do whatever we do as a result of that. ⁓ So that’s course of power. I’m curious then from Torah to take a look at this as an example. ⁓ The foreigner in the land could be put to death for taking the Lord’s name in vain.
That seems like an example of the rightful place of coercive power in government at just face value. So I’m curious, what do we do with that? How do we tease that out?
Dru Johnson (22:20)
Right.
We execute people who draw on one dollar bills. Yeah, I think this is a great example of that kind of that idea of a nation. ⁓ is an, is, is Israel equivalent to a nation state as we would say today, right? You can say it’s a group of, it’s a people group. You know, you could say for sure it’s a nation. It seems to be go by under the idea of whatever nation is there, which people can argue about nation state is a different thing.
Mike Tolliver (22:27)
Help us there.
Yeah, right, right, right.
Dru Johnson (22:55)
⁓ And then you can have collections of states like the United States or the European Union or whatever. ⁓ So I would argue that when you’re in the Torah, ⁓ coming into Israel is not the same as becoming an American citizen. It’s actually something fundamentally different. So it’s not like you just immigrated and now we’re making you take a test on how many stars are in the flag or whatever.
⁓ You who wrote the the which amendment? It’s actually you You know to be a part of a people group, you know, like Ruth says my God is ⁓ your God will be my God, right? There’s this idea of allegiance and fealty To the God of that people which would have been completely understood in the ancient Near East Not even just a people group You could talk about cities in the ancient Near East where this city worships Marduk or this city is an Ishtar our first City
And so if you come into the city, like you can bring your other gods with you and you can do all that junk, but you, you know, you’re, need to pay homage to this, this God. ⁓ if you want to, if you want to be a member of her now, it wasn’t as, I don’t think as cleanly stated as that, as it is in Israel. Also, when you talk about executing somebody for blaspheming, Yahweh, in some way, I also want to separate out the history. there, you know, this is going to be touchy for some people, but.
it seems to me that the Torah is very clearly portraying, and the Gospels and Acts, I would say, are doing something very similar. You have lots of signs and wonders ⁓ that are meant to convince the people of Israel, not just Egypt and the Pharaoh, but to convince the people of ⁓ Israel who God is and what he’s up to. And so they have lots of historically verifiable reasons that they themselves have experienced and seen. So it’s not even passed along to them. ⁓
as to why they should fear this God, and they do, and the texts are very clear that they were afraid of God because they had seen these things, right? ⁓ And so they had really good reasons not to have a giant orgy to a golden calf, which is why the punishment was so severe. Like if you’re gonna experience all those things and you’re gonna see all those plagues, and you’re gonna see Moses’ words align with reality in this bent nature, where nature gets bent left and right in God’s way, ⁓ and you’re still going to like…
ascribe all of that to another God and have a massive orgy to them, then that’s going to be problematic for what God is trying to do with that people. There seems to be like a certain ability of encourageability to override your potential membership in that community, right? But that doesn’t appear to be normative after the Torah. So once you get established in the land, you don’t really hear about them executing Sabbath breakers or ⁓
or God striking down people, right? God striking people dead because they did something. You get it with Ruth, again, because their husbands do ⁓ bad things. ⁓
Sorry, I just conflated Tamar’s ⁓ husband with a brother, son-in-law, sorry. ⁓ But in same thing in the New Testament, in Acts, you get God striking down Ananias and Sapphira for a seemingly menial infraction, like something that… But again, it’s at that very beginning where the gospel is going out and everybody needs to be on board and they have lots of really good reasons not to lie, cheat, and steal.
Mike Tolliver (26:12)
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (26:36)
And maybe you can say the same thing about Judas to some degree as well. And so there’s something more intensified and extreme in these inaugural phases of nation, ⁓ which is actually true in the United States and I’m sure a lot of places, right? Like ⁓ you could get capitally punished for a whole host of things 250 years ago that would be unacceptable today in a settled nation state like the United States as well. ⁓
So yeah, I think this is an example where you really do need to take into account the flow of the Torah and what God is trying to do and why blasphemy ⁓ in that situation might be such a heinous thing in which ⁓ later, it’s not that it’s not a bad thing, but it’s just not, God’s not going to punish you publicly or you don’t have to punish somebody publicly for that. That would be my intuition.
you know, the twin peaks of the Torah and the gospels to draw a horrible analogy. ⁓ You seem to have that kind of movement going on, ⁓ which is, if I can just say it crassly, it’s kind of like, if that won’t convince you, you know, kind of like ⁓ Jesus with Lazarus and the history of Lazarus and the rich man, right? If they don’t listen to the Torah, I mean, this is actually his point. If they don’t listen to the Torah,
They’re not gonna listen to a dead man resurrected. That’s not gonna impress them. They’re just gonna find some way around that as well. So they’re not even listening to the Torah, so why waste your time with them? I think it’s hard for us to imagine, A, that there are people so incorrigible that God gives up on them or that God strikes them dead, or he judges them immediately. And I think it’s hard for Christians not to immediately jump to the conclusion, well then maybe we should be striking, you know.
maybe we should be judging people immediately. And I think this is a lot of what you get with Jesus is like, you don’t need to judge people. When he talks about judgment, he really seems to be talking about, in many instances, this kind of like eternal perspective of judgment. Where are they going to stand in the resurrection? And he’s like, yeah, you don’t have to do that, right? I’m going to take care of that later. But it doesn’t mean that you don’t make judgments about people or make a discerning call. Like you would be a fool if you do.
Mike Tolliver (28:58)
Right.
Dru Johnson (29:00)
lived a life where you didn’t make judgments about people. ⁓ So I don’t know, punch holes in that.
Mike Tolliver (29:08)
Well, yeah, I wasn’t necessarily asking to ⁓ then punch holes in it. It was more just to say that if we did a Bible in politics on the coercive use of power, ⁓ that could easily be one paper that I would then hope to hear seven others that maybe look at it from a different lens and consider different texts or the development. Because I think your point of ⁓ nation formation,
⁓ Or if I could just say it slightly differently, I’ve been thinking about ⁓ in connection to other things, ⁓ recontextualization of the law dependent on the people’s relationship to the land. It happens. Why is there a deuteronomy? Why do you need a second law? It’s because the situation of the people changed with respect to the land. And so when these things happen, ⁓ you know, it…
Dru Johnson (29:52)
Yeah.
Mike Tolliver (30:06)
it is contextualized again for that time. And I think I have told you that I think that’s exactly what Jesus is doing. ⁓ And so, I would say the same thing in maybe different terms and we’d get to see it ⁓ in a fuller way that way.
Dru Johnson (30:26)
Yeah, and it actually brings up something that did come up in the conference that we were trying to avoid, which was this discussion of natural law ⁓ versus revealed law. And ⁓ again, I know next to nothing about natural law, ⁓ unlike these people at the conference had lots of sophisticated thoughts. But I did think it was one of those things that ⁓ it to me seems like a very stark contract. Like you can’t just say natural law and then you say,
Well, like it’s wrong to kill people. Everybody knows that. And I think that’s generally true. Like societies do recognize that it’s wrong to kill people wantonly, right? But the problem with it is it has a certain conception of what law is and that these are rules that you break or keep. And the biblical law does not fit that conception of law. So it’s to me, like you said, if law has this moral
morally formative effect, and specifically the biblical law has a ⁓ coaching effect that it’s actually meant to instruct and to guide you into what kinds of people you are to become, not merely give you rules that you can keep and therefore be righteous and make God happy. ⁓ Then it’s difficult to find a way in which natural law could even fit the construction of what biblical law is doing, right? It seems to be just apathetic at that point, which I tried to point out, but nobody took my.
Mike Tolliver (31:48)
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (31:54)
Nobody took it seriously, which is fine. I don’t blame anybody for taking it seriously. I opened the conference with ⁓ two mornings of opening rants where I just said, like, here’s what I hope we’ll talk about from the Bible. And nobody did.
Mike Tolliver (32:08)
Nobody did.
Dru Johnson (32:12)
The vulnerable came
up a couple times in various ways, but yeah.
Mike Tolliver (32:16)
Yeah, and I’m hopeful that you develop that further ⁓ to give us a ⁓ solid ⁓ testimony to what the Israelite king ought to do. Like does kingship look like? And I found even myself as you were describing that, reframing my expectation for Jesus’ return. ⁓ Like I previously would have envisioned
Dru Johnson (32:29)
Mm.
Mike Tolliver (32:45)
Okay, first coming, he’s here for the in gathering, the loss, he’s coming. People didn’t expect it. People expected the conquering king. ⁓ Great, they weren’t wrong. It was with respect to expectation. They were wrong with respect to timing. But to your point, and actually this was ⁓ the interview with, I think it was Matthew Halstead that you did. When Jesus comes back, there’s no battle.
And yet somehow it worked its way into my mind that, there’s gonna be this battle. The gates of hell shall not prevail, but it’s gonna be a battle and then Christ is gonna take ground and boom, conquering king, robe dipped in blood.
Dru Johnson (33:27)
What do you mean it somehow worked into your brain? Like you’re a child of the eighties and nineties in American
evangelicalism, right? Like Frank Peretti, yeah. Zohar Astray in Christianity, the forces of evil against the forces of good. They’re battling it out, right? ⁓ Yeah. Yeah. Who’s going to win? Yeah.
Mike Tolliver (33:34)
Yeah, this expectation. Exactly, right, yeah.
And who’s gonna win, right? Yeah, it’s just there in my mind. ⁓
So, you he said that I filed it away. And then you mentioned the role of Christ in his return, isn’t as conquering King, it’s as judge, which was also a facet of what the King did in ancient Israel. It’s not disconnected in any way, shape or form. It’s just that’s what’s appropriate for that timing. And so I found that personally very beneficial. And I just wanna see others
Dru Johnson (33:57)
Right.
Mike Tolliver (34:14)
benefit from that as well.
Dru Johnson (34:16)
Yeah, I was a little shocked and we don’t have to belabor the point, but not shocked. Like to me, Deuteronomy 17, when it talks about what future elders need to do, what the Levites can do, what judges can do, basically to solve all the issues that come up in normal life. I mean, it’s the same thing that Moses ran into, right? He’s solving all of these disputes in Exodus 18 and his father-in-law comes in and is like, why are you?
Why are you doing all this menial labor of judging? Like, don’t you have wise people who can take care of this? And so they parcel out the work. And so I feel like Deuteronomy 17 is doing that with regional issues, like village, village, clan, et cetera. ⁓ And then it turns to King and gives you like this very clear expectation of what a King can’t do and what a King must do. And all of it is shocking, right? I mean, it’s, it’s, and it-
You know, like if you want a political philosophy from the Hebrew Bible, it’s unclear to me how you don’t have that as a major feature of what, what God is doing politically with Israel. And then what implications that might have for anybody who wants to construct or reshape government in a way that at least honors God, even if not with all God fearing people in a nation. So yeah, I was, I was hoping for a heavy dose of Deuteronomy 17.
But as it goes with all things Tor, I’m just left disappointed.
Mike Tolliver (35:46)
Well, so then next year when we do this or something along those lines, we will do some coaching ⁓ for folks that participate and ⁓ hopefully get ⁓ a little bit more of a focused result in the direction that we’re looking for.
Dru Johnson (36:04)
Yeah. And maybe, you know, it was, think this is great for a first conference because I’ve done first conferences like on interdisciplinary stuff, uh, people coming from different, you know, history, theology, um, political science, uh, et cetera. And the first conference is just like, all right, let’s see where people are at. It really is just gauging how people are thinking about it. So in some ways it’s very valuable information, even if not everybody was giving the kinds of papers that we exactly wanted.
Mike Tolliver (36:24)
Hmm.
Dru Johnson (36:33)
⁓ We learned a lot and they were all, I mean, let’s face it, they were all very fascinating papers, ⁓ regardless of how much they fit the format that we wanted. ⁓ And now I’m thinking like, okay, next year we probably need to say something like, hey, ⁓ here’s five passages, pick one that you want to, Deuteronomy 17, like play Deuteronomy 17 out across the scripture, what you think is going on and then what the implications might be for.
Mike Tolliver (36:39)
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (37:04)
I don’t know, Honduras in 2027, right? Give us some lively examples. So ⁓ I sense that politics, a Bible First Politics Conference is gonna recur, but we also wanna do it on other topics. So what are some other topics that you would be looking forward to?
Mike Tolliver (37:25)
Yeah, I would say anything that equips people well for, you know, success in life. ⁓ You know, Jack Collins always used to say that wisdom is skill in the art of godly living. And I’ve yet to come across a better definition than that. And so I would want any topic that we discuss to help people gain skill in the art of godly living.
you know, that’s easily ⁓ in the realm of family, ⁓ conversations around parenting or dating, you know, I mean, gosh, like how has that changed in the last 20 years? ⁓ So family, then ⁓ technology, the use of technology, which again, drastic changes.
Dru Johnson (38:04)
yeah.
we could do dating and technology
like Bible first, I kiss swiping goodbye. Yeah, yeah. And wisdom, I don’t you like the, know, when when our knowledge finally makes the 18 inch journey from our head down to our heart, that’s wisdom. Don’t you love that one?
Mike Tolliver (38:22)
Ooh, that’s good. That’s got legs. ⁓
Mmm. Mmm. That’s good. So
good. So, you know what? I’ll jettison the other. How about that?
Dru Johnson (38:41)
Sorry,
sorry, the former pastor in me is cringing. ⁓ Yeah, I think of something like education too, like ⁓ K through 12 education and then higher education as well. Like what does scripture say about education? Of course, you’re supposed to teach your children, teach your children well, right? According to song. But how? Like what exactly are the techniques ⁓ and who has the authority to teach and who do you accredit as a teacher and what’s, you know?
Who’s gonna be accredited as a teacher, whether you try or not, ⁓ in your children’s lives? How much risk do you let them be exposed to? There’s lots of great teaching in scripture that needs to be, I don’t have any answers to any of these questions. These are all like, this is why you have a conference, so you can hear some of the best people give you some of the best wisdom.
Mike Tolliver (39:11)
Mm-hmm.
Right, but ⁓ so again, I think it was Dale’s ⁓ paper and thank you. I wanted to say Dale Allison, I knew that wasn’t right. ⁓ Anyway, Dale’s paper ⁓ discussed the political engagement strategies from like the 50s forward. And in one of them, fascinating, he talked about the neo-Calvinist sphere sovereignty and so.
Dru Johnson (39:35)
Dale Coulter, yeah.
Right, which was fascinating. Yeah.
Mike Tolliver (39:56)
Even the reason I’m keying in on this is because even in the conversation on education, you cannot separate the spheres. Like we couldn’t possibly have that conversation if we bracketed out history and politics. ⁓ We couldn’t possibly have it. And yet there’s a stream of which I’m well acquainted with that would want to do that. ⁓ But I remember even in ⁓ James Skillens,
Dru Johnson (40:10)
Right, right.
Mike Tolliver (40:25)
the good of politics. He talks about the history of ⁓ public versus private education in this country actually comes out of the way that New York and Massachusetts handled the question of Catholic schools. And at the time dominated by Protestants and they essentially said, okay, look, you know what? We’re not gonna prevent you from having a Catholic school. We’re just gonna deny you access to public funding. That’s where it comes from.
Dru Johnson (40:37)
Right.
Right.
Right.
Mike Tolliver (40:55)
And at the time, the Protestants were the in group and the Catholics were the out group. Nothing has changed since then. And yet the conversation now is shaped by who’s in and who’s out. Well, the Protestants are out. So like, how do you have that conversation without bringing those things in? Anyway, you caught me pontificating there.
Dru Johnson (41:15)
Yeah.
No, It was the sign of a good conference as I walk away with a thousand questions spinning in my head and ⁓ kind of rethinking so many things that I thought I understood or had a grasp of. So I think there was a ⁓ A1 success on that one. A plus first place success. ⁓ Yeah, I can think of other topics like I definitely want to do one on incarceration.
at some point, ⁓ you know, and some, some, certainly some stuff on economics, micro macro economics that will be less nerdy than that sounds. But, ⁓ but yeah, I can imagine like should I just saw an interview with that, young influencer who’s Christian, who seems to, he seemed to know scripture very well. I don’t know who he is, but ⁓ he was interviewing Kenneth Copeland and he, and he’s just putting the question and he goes like, didn’t Jesus say like,
Mike Tolliver (41:47)
Yeah.
Okay.
Dru Johnson (42:14)
don’t take anything with you, just go and you’ll be provided for. And Kenneth Copeland actually like had some pushback. He goes, well, yeah, but didn’t Jesus clothe people ⁓ when he healed them? You know, the demoniac who he clothe, he’s like, where’d he get the clothes? ⁓ Didn’t he have a burster who was in charge of the money? Because we know that because Judas stole from the money sack, right? It’s like, so he had like a budget and money and you know, obviously the point is, well, how much money?
is enough and you know, like I think there’s all kinds of interesting questions we can frame here and I’m sure listeners will ⁓ also have lots of topics that they will want us to pursue, including things on, I think somebody mentioned on Facebook, public policy, like how do you determine public policy? How do you enforce it? How do you frame it? How much should Christianity or any particular religion get to influence it, et cetera? Okay. Well, ⁓ that to say that the report is positive.
It was a very interesting conference. I’m glad it was mostly pastors who were there. That was actually, I did not expect that. I thought it was just going to get a wild mix of people, but it was a mix of people, but it was mostly people who worked in ministry. And so that was really encouraging to see all those people. And I think everybody had a really good time.
Mike Tolliver (43:33)
It like it. Yeah.
Dru Johnson (43:35)
I did, but I was drunk almost the entire time. Just kidding. Just kidding. Okay. Thanks, Mike.
Mike Tolliver (43:45)
Thank you, Dru Till next time.
Dru Johnson (43:47)
Until next time.
