Beeson podcast, Episode 421 Kelly Kapic December 4, 2018 Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson podcast coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now, your host, Timothy George. Timothy George: Welcome to today's Beeson podcast. Well, today we're coming to you from Denver, Colorado, where we've been involved with a number of different professional theological society meetings, Evangelical Theological Society, Society of Biblical Literature. So many societies get together every now and then, and this year it's in Denver. I'm privileged to have as my guest today one of the people who's made a presentation here, Dr. Kelly M. Kapic. Welcome, Kelly, to the Beeson podcast. Kelly Kapic: Great to be here, thanks for having me. Timothy George: Now, I think I first met you, if my memory serves me well, when you were a student, I won't say "just a student," 'cause you were already pretty far along in your thinking about theology but you were at Reformed Theological Seminary. Kelly Kapic: That's amazing you remember that. Timothy George: Yes. Kelly Kapic: That's true. Timothy George: We had a wonderful conversation over lunch- Kelly Kapic: Over a Cuban sandwich. Timothy George: That's right. Better memory than I. I've known you for quite a while and from RTS you went along to do PhD at King's College London. Kelly Kapic: Yep. Timothy George: Did you work with Colin Gunton? Kelly Kapic: Yeah, Colin was one of my supervisors. He and Susan Hartman Moore. Timothy George: Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, Colin Gunton, just one of the great names, I think, in theology of the recent generation. Now you have been for some years at Covenant College, Lookout Mountain, Georgia. Kelly Kapic: Yep, since 2001. Timothy George: Yeah, I was gonna say Tennessee 'cause it's right on the border. Kelly Kapic: Two miles, two or three miles away, yeah. Timothy George: My hometown is Chattanooga, which you can almost see from the campus of Covenant College, a beautiful, beautiful campus, a wonderful school founded in the Christian tradition, faithful to the Gospel. We're honored that you'd take time away and speak with us. I wanna talk about a number of different writings. You're a prolific writer and your writings tug our heart and challenge our mind all at the same time, but let's begin with how you became a Christian. Kelly Kapic: Oh, yeah. Thanks for asking. I'm originally from California. Some of your listeners will know Creedence Clearwater Revival. I was born and raised in Lodi. "Stuck In Lodi" is one of their great songs. But yeah, I was born into the Catholic church, baptized as a child, but at some point in elementary school basically my brothers and my mother and I stopped going. My father's been faithful, still is to this day. By the time elementary school was over, I was really unchurched. My middle school years, strangely enough, were like people's college years in terms of stuff I was doing. Long story short, I started going to a Baptist youth group my freshman year in public high school. Kelly Kapic: I went because some of the kids I partied with went there. I was getting us in trouble. I thought, "Well, if I go to this church, people will get off my back." Sure enough, though, God was speaking to me and used that group. About six months later, converted. I was in the Baptist church. Some years later, by the end of high school I was introduced to Reformed theology through some people I started reading and went to Wheaton, got involved with a Presbyterian church. It's an eclectic background. Timothy George: You'd been a Catholic, a Baptist, and now you're a Presbyterian. Kelly Kapic: That's right. Yep. Timothy George: Dare I ask what's next? Kelly Kapic: When we lived in England, part of the time we were in an Anglican church. Timothy George: There you go. Well, you mentioned your awakening to Reformed theology. When did you start thinking about theology and even wanna think about pursuing it as something you'd give your life to studying? Kelly Kapic: Yeah. The youth minister who I was converted under ended up leaving that church, going somewhere else, and he was a Biola grad as a youth minister. On a plane trip, somehow he got introduced to JI Packer's writings, started reading, and because we had a friendship, he started feeding me material even though he didn't live in the same area. Then I was introduced to RC Sproul's stuff and I was good friends with people, so I would mooch lunch off of them and take my lunch money and buy RC Sproul tapes. It's pretty embarrassing, really, to be honest with you. By the end of high school, I really had a sense of I really wanted to do theology and I really wanted to do it at a high level and serve the church and the academy. Timothy George: Right. Well, I'm gonna talk about a couple of your books. The one we'll begin with is right on the topic we're talking about now, "A Little Book for New Theologians: Why and How to Study Theology." It's a little book, 120 pages or so, a small book, and yet it's a book about a very deep and important topic. You say you wrote this for young theologians and it's modeled in a way on a book by Helmut Thielicke, an exercise for- Kelly Kapic: Yeah, young theologians. Timothy George: Young theologians. Helmut Thielicke was a great theologian himself and a pastor, as well. But say a little bit about this book, what you're trying to do, and how you got into it. Kelly Kapic: Yeah. Thielicke's book is a classic. It really helped me early on in my journey. Since 2001, I've taught at Covenant College. It's a Christian liberal arts college and one of the reasons I love being at a liberal arts college is because my students are studying everything. They're studying biology and history and philosophy and psychology, but everyone there takes an Old Testament class, a New Testament, and then a year of theology. One of my privileges is to try and convince them all that theology is for all of them and that they're all theologians. At risk of sounding cheesy, the question isn't, "Are you a theologian," but "Are you a good one?" They're my primary audience as I was wrestling through these things, trying to help them think of theology in a more wholistic way. But I also had a growing dissatisfaction of the way I saw a lot of theological texts being written, where there was such a strong divide between theology and pastoral concerns, and I'm trying to fuse those back together. Timothy George: Yeah, often theology is seen as abstract, abstruse, something that's for [hitty 00:06:22] nerdy, intellectual types. You really want to say theology is a practice of the people of God. I love that definition of William Ames, "Theology is living in the presence of God." Kelly Kapic: Exactly, yeah. Timothy George: We have a chapter in this little book called "Humility and Repentance." Kelly Kapic: Yeah. Timothy George: Why is that appropriate to a book on theology and theologians? Kelly Kapic: Yeah. You know, I myself am a Reformed theologian and one of the sad ironies is that if you follow Reformed theology through, it should be cultivating the most humble people possible because of this confession of, "We're just so reliant on God and His grace and sovereignty" and all that. Yet sadly, ironically, we are often known as some of the most arrogant people. You can't actually learn theology, you can't learn anything, apart from humility. You have to be open to growing, to input, to feedback. I just think about even John the Baptist and Jesus, out of the gate, repent for the kingdom [inaudible 00:07:27] at hand. What's going on there is not simply, "Refine some of your behaviors," but, "You're gonna have to revise what you think about God and His ways in the world." That requires humility. Timothy George: You say you're a Reformed theologian. Well, all good Reformed theologians are Augustinians. Kelly Kapic: Yeah, yeah. Timothy George: We read Augustine. Calvin quotes him more than anyone except the Bible. One of the main motifs in Augustine's, not only his "Confessions," but his whole theology is being on via, on pilgrimage, on the road. That's a motif that you pick up, as well, pilgrimage. Say a little bit about that. Kelly Kapic: I love the imagery of pilgrimage. It's definitely Augustinian. It's definitely in the Psalms. There's psalms of certain other things. I love it because theology is not about learning the answers. It is about walking this road with the people of God on our way to glory and sometimes we take wrong turns. Sometimes we turn and there's a beautiful vista and we see things we didn't expect and it's fantastic. Sometimes we really need to ask directions. Sometimes we need to slow down. I just think that imagery is so much better than static imagery of, "Just learn these answers." When I have students, my goal for them is not- I mean, we're definitely dealing with content, but I need them to learn to think theologically rather than just learn a bunch of answers. Timothy George: If you have an interesting, a hankering, for theology, particularly a young person, this is a book you can put in their hands and it would really help them because you're not overly laborious. It's a brief book, but a book right to the point of what is at the heart of theology and how one cultivates the discipline of theology in terms of the life of faith. I recommend it strongly. You've written so many other things. I wanna talk about a couple of your other books. First of all, before we do that, how do you work? How do you write? Kelly Kapic: That's a good question. I'm actually a very slow writer. I just find I've got to push forward slowly and it's really about a marathon, not a sprint. It surprises people, but if I have a day where I write 500 words, I think it's a fantastic day. You know, summers have been important to me and trying to just plug away a little bit as we're going through the year as been important. The school has also provided some sabbaticals, which have been helpful, but for me, it's just things are on my mind and I'm slowly trying to push them aside or push them forward. I guess the last thing I would say is I do always work on multiple things at the same time. Timothy George: Yeah. Kelly Kapic: Sometimes I'm working on something for eight years. Timothy George: Right. Kelly Kapic: There's always just different levels of things I'm working on. Timothy George: Do you write at a computer, or how do you do that? Kelly Kapic: Yeah, it's interesting. I do. I write at a desk and- Timothy George: You compose at the computer. Kelly Kapic: Yeah. But I find often when I'm stuck, I actually have to get out just scraps of paper and a pencil or pen. Timothy George: So you are a human being. Kelly Kapic: Yes, yes, yes. I can't actually know where I'm gonna go typing. I have to visually do it with paper and pen for sure. Timothy George: That's interesting. Let's talk about your book on the Trinity, one of your books on the Trinity. I mean, we've been talking about this book, "A Little Book for New Theologians" How do you introduce something so massive as a theme, so encompassing of all reality, as the doctrine of the Holy Trinity? You've written a book, "The God Who Gives," and it's a book about the Trinity but the subtitle says a lot, "How the Trinity Shapes the Christian Story." Kelly Kapic: Part of what I'm interested in is we've become so familiar with something, we stop seeing it. Sometimes it's not that you're saying something new, you're saying something old in a new way so people can see it again. We talk about grace all the time and we lose its understanding. Part of what's happened in some recent scholarship is to say, "Actually, exploring the idea of gift, which linguistically you can go back"- Gift and grace are basically the same thing. I think that can really help us understand some things. The basic plot line is this. God gives us everything when He creates out of the overflow of His love, but He does say, "I'm giving you everything, but not this." Not 'cause He's bad, but because He made us, He knows we can't handle this thing. Kelly Kapic: The Fall is basically humanity taking the one thing God didn't give and then the fundamental question is, "How will God get it all back?" Will He come and grab and destroy? The surprise of the Gospel is God gets it all back by giving even more. He gives Himself through the gifts of His Son and His Spirit. I'm trying to frame it in terms of, "Actually, the gift of the Son and the gift of the Spirit are God's answer to the crisis of the Fall," but it's still in terms of the Creator God who gives. The Triune God creates and the Triune God redeems. He does it out of this overflow of His divine generosity. Timothy George: It's a wonderful image. That's one of the images. Why is the Trinity so hard for so many people? Kelly Kapic: I think partly because we tend to think about it in terms of just abstract philosophical categories. Sometimes even people say, "Well, I don't know." They know they're supposed to believe in the Trinity, but they're like, "Where is it at in the Bible?" Those are actually really good questions. The truth is I think the Bible is profoundly Trinitarian, but we should look at how the Bible reveals God as Triune and it's often revealed through the people of God experiencing God. BB Warfield has this wonderful, very profound statement where he says the Trinity is revealed after the Old Testament and before the New Testament. Kelly Kapic: It's so great 'cause people are like, "What writing is that in?" His whole point is the Trinity is revealed with the coming of the Son and Spirit, and the New Testament is reflecting on that, but the reality of the Son and Spirit is the reality of the Triune God. The people of God then experience this and then have to articulate and express it. I think most people become Christians and Trinitarian not because they've actually thought about it, but because they've experienced the love of the Father through the grace of the Son and the power of the Spirit. Timothy George: You see that in baptism, you see that- Kelly Kapic: Yes. Timothy George: -in the doxology, the worship of God's people. Kelly Kapic: There's a strange dynamic where in some sense I feel like, "Oh, guys, I wish we were more Trinitarian," and then I have to tell people, "And yet we're more Trinitarian than you know." Timothy George: Yeah. Kelly Kapic: You know? Timothy George: I like this definition of the Trinity. How do you define the Trinity? Well, theologians have tried. One of those I think that comes pretty close is Jürgen Moltmann. I don't always agree with Moltmann on a number of issues, but he hits the nail when he says, "The doctrine of the Trinity is nothing less than the story of Jesus as the story of God." If you take that really serious, that opens up into the very thing you're talking about, the Triune reality of the God who is inexhaustible in His generosity and in His love. Kelly Kapic: Yep. No, that's right. I think the Old Testament is Trinitarian, but you only see that in light of the Son and Spirit. Then we go back as Warfield says there. You've been knocking stuff in a dark room. You turn on the lights now and now you see it. Timothy George: Yeah. Kelly Kapic: But it's in light of Son. Timothy George: It's a great book. "The God Who Gives: How the Trinity Shapes the Christian Story." Let's talk about one more book that you've written and just for our podcast listeners, we're choosing three. You probably have done, what, 20? 13? Kelly Kapic: No, no, no, I've done I think 10 or 12. Timothy George: Oh, okay, well, you're on your way. You're a very young theologian, if I may say so. This is a book that really came out of your own experience of angst, of struggle, of darkness. It's a book entitled "Embodied Hope: A Theological Meditation on Pain and Suffering." What led you to write this book? Kelly Kapic: The short story is in 2008, my wife, we'd just celebrated our 25th anniversary. It was great. But my wife was diagnosed with cancer. We went through that through various surgeries, and around 2009, she was declared cancer-free, which was incredible. We thought, "God, that was really hard, but thank you. You've been faithful." But then 2010, she was president of US MEDAIR, which is an international relief and rehabilitational organization. It's based on Switzerland. She was involved with the US and there had just been this Haiti earthquake and she was involved with helping teams' logistics and stuff. She'd just had a meeting with some pastors about possibly doing church planting in Haiti. This is God's work. She should be safe. Kelly Kapic: After that meeting, she called me from the side of the road and said, "I'm not sure I can make it home." She was driving our stick shift. She said, "My leg's not working right. I'm not sure what's going on." Well, that was in 2010 and to make a long story short, that began very serious chronic pain which ended up taking us six years later all the way through Mayo Clinic. She has a very rare thing called urethral myalgia or Man on Fire disease, and then a tissue disorder. Every single day, my wife deals with very serious pain and fatigue. There's never a day without that. Kelly Kapic: Eventually, wrestling through that, with her encouragement she wanted me to be more public and wrestle through some of this because of how it could help me and help others and out of nowhere, I received a Templeton Grant to spend six months starting that. That's the background. Timothy George: What are you trying to say in this book? Kelly Kapic: Yeah, the basic thing I'm trying to say is it's about the body and the first part of the book is saying our physical bodies really matter. It is legitimate to lament. Lament is an important part. As Protestants, we don't have a very good theology of the body. I try and talk about that. Then the middle of the book is the body of Jesus and the importance of the incarnation and His death and resurrection and trying to really meditate. The whole book has to be centered on Christ. But as Protestants, we're often very good about talking about "Jesus died for you sins", but we're not good about, "He entered into solidarity with us and He knew suffering." Then the final third of the book is the body of Christ. Basically one of the things we've really learned is suffering is a team sport in the church and I've really come to think faith is, and I've seen the real negative effects of our rugged individualism trying to do this on our own, even just in terms of having faith with Jesus. I think we believe for each other when things are hard. Anyways. Timothy George: Now, you all have children. Kelly Kapic: Yep. Timothy George: How's that been a factor in this? Kelly Kapic: Yeah, it's been big. We were married nine years before we had children, so when she was diagnosed with cancer, I think they were three and five. Now they're older teenagers. But this has become their story. Their mom was a hiker and would always take them around. She became the reader of all the stories to them. But yeah, my kids have had to really grow up and they chip in and do a lot. They're amazing. But it's definitely part of their story. Timothy George: I love the way you bring together, just as you said, Christology with ecclesiology in terms of this experience of the body of Christ. You know, the Catholic tradition has a way of talking about this that actually makes me uncomfortable, to talk about the church as the extension of the incarnation. There may be a certain sense in which that has some truth. It also has some dangers. Kelly Kapic: Right. Timothy George: Because there's a uniqueness about the incarnation that isn't duplicated, replicated, ipso facto in the church. Yet there is an intrinsic, inviolable connection between the God who became flesh, "The word became flesh and walked among us," John 1:14, and the life of the body of Christ, the people of God. That seems to be at the heart of what you wanna say in this book. Kelly Kapic: Yeah, I mean, 'cause I share your concerns about that. Yet we both would say, I'm sure, it's interesting. How does God give hugs now? It takes His people to wrap real arms around people and bring warmth and care. It's this funny thing. God doesn't need us and that's actually really important, but He delights to use us. When you can hold both of those things together, you can be liberated from guilt and then freed to actually love people rather than doing it out of some strange thing. But the people of God, we really desperately need each other. I believe that. Timothy George: You know, this is a book I think that a person can take and read and really be helped by. It's deep. It's theological. It's personal, existential. Yet it's also theological. In fact, you bring together two things. You say Christians in the throes of suffering must develop pastoral sensitivity and theological instincts. Talk about that. Kelly Kapic: Yeah, I mean, that's what drives who I am and how I think of theology in my writings in general, but here is a way to talk about it because I think what happens is we have people who really love theology, often in my tradition love theology, but to be honest, not very nice or they just don't have very great emotional intelligence. We can hurt people. Then you have other who are really great pastorally, can enter into pain with others, but are pretty soft and loose with orthodoxy. I just don't think those should be at odds. Real orthodoxy is compassionate. Real theology is pastoral. I'm trying to say let's get good theology and good pastoral practice. Let's stop choosing between those. We have whole traditions that choose between those or, even as you know, institutions that say, "We're this" or "We're that." I think the Scriptures and the Gospel and the church say, "No, no, no, we need both." Orthodox pastoral care. Timothy George: My guest today on the Beeson podcast has been Dr. Kelly M. Kapic. He is Professor of Theological Studies at Covenant College, Lookout Mountain, Georgia. A wonderful theologian, a prolific writer. We've been talking about three of his books, "A Little Book for New Theologians," "The God Who Gives," that's about the Trinity, and then "Embodied Hope: A Theological Meditation on Pain and Suffering." I recommend them all highly. Thank you, Kelly, for this conversation. Kelly Kapic: It's been a great pleasure. Thanks for having me. Announcer: You've been listening to the Beeson podcast with host Timothy George. 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