Via Media Podcast, Episode 1 Timothy George December 7, 2018 https://www.beesondivinity.com/the-institute-of-anglican-studies/podcast/2018/What-Can-Anglicans-and-Baptists-Learn-from-One-Another Speaker 1: [singing 00:00:00]. Speaker 2: The Institute of Anglican Studies at Beeson Divinity School welcomes you to Via Media, a podcast exploring the religious and theological worlds from an Anglican perspective. Here is your host Gerald McDermott. McDermott: I am greatly privileged to have as our guest Dr. Timothy George, the dean of Beeson Divinity School here in Birmingham, Alabama. Beeson is an interdenominational divinity school on the campus of Sanford University, which is a Baptist university, and the divinity school started in 1988. Dr. George was the founding dean that started the divinity school, and I think I have to say, and Timothy I'm sure you disagree with this, but I believe that you're the most respected Baptist theologian in the world. I feel very privileged to teach under you, and I'd like to just ask you a question because you earned your doctorate at Harvard University in 1978 after having earned a Masters of Divinity at Harvard Divinity. McDermott: Here you were a conservative Baptist as a student, at a divinity school, at a university not exactly known for conservatism. What was that like? George: It used to be known for conservatism back in 1636 when it was founded, but it's been a while. That's true. I went to Harvard not because I was seeking a kind of bastion of conservative theology. I was well aware that was not the case back in the 1970s when I went there. I went there because of the wonderful libraries it had, some of the great scholars with whom I wanted to study, one of whom became my major professor George Hunston Williams. In all those respects, I was not disappointed in Harvard. George: Now, people sometimes say to me, "How did you come out of Harvard so conservative?" The answer is I was that way before I got there, and I didn't lose what I had. What I had, I had gained largely from my wonderful godly grandmother who taught me that God is real, that Jesus loves me and died on the cross for my sins, that the Bible is worth giving your life to study for. I had those kinds of, you might say, foundational values with me, and I encountered all kinds of things in philosophy, religion, phenomenology, and higher critical study of the bible. I wouldn't say I was not phased by it, but what Harvard taught me to know why I was a conservative. It taught me to think and it taught me to study at a depth level that to this day I'm grateful for. McDermott: We are very grateful that you kept that conservative theology, and you started this wonderful divinity school here at Beeson, and I'm very grateful to have been here in my third year now, and I'm grateful that you hired me to help run the Institute of Anglican Studies here at Beeson. I wonder if you could tell our audience a little bit, Timothy, about how and why you started this Institute of Anglican Studies at Beeson Divinity School. George: Beeson Divinity School is named for Ralph Waldo Beeson. He grew up a Methodist, he married a Baptist, they became Presbyterians. He had this broader vision of the body of Christ and said, "We have something to learn from one another." As a part of that, he established within this school five chairs, which must be filled by our charter, by persons from a variety of Protestant denominations. One of which is Anglicanism. That really is the genesis of what we're calling the Institute of Anglican Studies at Beeson. It really goes back to Ralph Beeson's vision, which I was happy to try to implement as best I could as the dean, but it really came from him. George: The idea that we have something to learn from one another, and one of the major Protestant expressions of the Christian faith is the tradition that we call Anglicanism, going back to the reformation of the 16th century, and taking form in lots of different ways. He wanted that to be a part of Beeson Divinity School from the very beginning. It took us a while to get there, and I'm so glad that you accepted our call to come and be the Anglican chair of divinity. I think you're the third to fill that position in the history of our school, and you and I first met some years ago when I was speaking in Virginia where you used to live for a number of years, and we had lunch together. I had no idea that our paths would cross later on in our ministry, but thanks be to God it has. McDermott: I'm very thankful too. I first heard about you when you came out with a book long after you had established yourself as a reformation scholar. Your book Theology of the Reformers, a friend of mine tipped me off to it in 1989. I read it and loved it. In fact, I still use it in my history and doctrine courses that I teach here at Beeson. McDermott: Here you are. You're a very well known reformation scholar Timothy, and this last year of 2017, the 500th anniversary of the reputed beginnings of the Protestant Reformation, you were speaking all over the country about the reformation, and you've got a wonderful chapter on the English Reformation in your book Theology of the Reformers. And I wonder if you could tell our audience Anglican and non-Anglican what you think were some of the most important contributions of the English Reformers. George: A lot of people think about the reformation in England. The English Reformation as being simply an act of state. Henry the Eighth needed a divorce from his wife Catherine of Aragon, he married this sweet young thing Anne Boleyn, and so the Church of England began. That's too simplistic. There was within England even before the reformation a kind of wellspring of piety, of fervor, of biblical faith going back into the Middle Ages, and even earlier than that. There's a tradition that was recovered in a way in the English Reformation of the 16th century, they weren't starting all over from scratch as you read somebody like Richard Hooker. He talks very much about reason, but also about tradition and about scripture. These are all very important themes in the English Reformation. George: Now, when I added that chapter in my book Theology of the Reformers, I was trying to think who would be a good representative of the English Reformation for the readers of this book? I had several choices. I could have chosen ... Probably a lot of people thought I would have chosen Archbishop Thomas Cranmer. He was a very important figure especially in the formulation of the Book of Common Prayer. The liturgy that still is such one of the stellar contributions of the English Reformation. Or I've already mention Richard Hooker. He would have been another good choice. We could have gone later into the 17th century. There were people like William Perkins, and all kinds of great figures that stand out. George: I chose to go back to what I consider the headwaters of the English Reformation in all of its various phases, and I chose William Tyndale. We remember him as a translator and martyr because of his devotion to give the Word of God to the people in their native tongue, but he was also a very masterful theologian. What I tried to do was to show how William Tyndale gave his life in the service of the church as a translator and martyr of the faith, but also as a person who dug very deeply into wellsprings of the Christian faith itself. George: I don't have any apologies for Tyndale. I wish he were better known. He needs to be better known. That's one reason I chose him. McDermott: That's been of great interest to our Anglican students when they take my course, and I think it will be of great interest to our listeners. Now Timothy, as I said before, I think you are one of the world's best if not the world's best known Baptist theologian, and certainly most respected. You have known a lot of Anglicans, you have traveled in Anglican circles, you have spoken at conferences put on by Anglicans, and you've preached in Anglican churches. In fact, last week I heard you preach in an Anglican church. What do you think Anglicans should learn from Baptists? George: That's an interesting question. Who am I, a Baptist, to say what Anglicans should learn from us? It might be the other way around. Maybe they'll ask me that question next. But anyway, I would say Baptists are good at some things. We're particularly good at sharing the Gospel with people. Evangelism, church growth, missions, that's the heartbeat of the Baptist movement. Another thing I would say as a Baptist distinctive that Anglicans, I think, have learned from Baptist and others, and maybe still need to learn and relearn again, and that is the importance of religious freedom. The 16th and 17th century when Anglicanism was born was not particularly a great century for religious freedom. There were religious wars, and sometimes wars of Protestants against Protestants. George: One of the hallmarks of the baptist tradition is an unstinting commitment to religious freedom not just for Baptists or dissenters, but for everybody whoever they are. Whatever faith or lack of faith they might have. We believe as persons made in the image of God they're endowed with the kind of dignity, and they deserve respect, and they deserve religious freedom. That would be some of the things I would offer if Anglicans would be interested in learning anything from us. McDermott: You wondered, if I might turn the question around and I will, is there anything that Baptists could learn from Anglicans do you think? George: Sometimes Gerry, I'm called an Anglo-Baptist, and that has nothing to do with my ministerial orders. It has to do with my, I would say, sensitivity to the way we worship God, and I love the Book of Common Prayer. I love the Authorized Version of the King James version of the Bible mainly because that's what I grew up on. If you ask me to quote the Bible, that's what you'll get because that's what I learned. That's something that came right out of Anglicanism. Of course, based on the work of William Tyndale, who we spoke about before. Those are wonderful things. How to worship God as the New Testament says decently and in order. That's often take up by the Presbyterians, and they think it's their exclusive right, but it belongs to all the people of God, and there's a beauty of holiness there that I find. George: Another thing I would mention about Anglicanism that I find very important, and I wish Baptists would recover our own heritage here that you have a wonderful theological heritage. Very often, I think that's not so carefully recognized. Very often, Anglicanism is presented, it seems to me, as a kind of very narrow Via Media between two extremes. Again, that's too simplistic. It leaves out too much. I'd say go back to your Anglican formularies to the Book of Homilies, to the 39 Articles of Religion, which I still think is found in the Book of Common Prayer today in very small print though at the back of the book I believe. George: Make it larger, read it more often, study the history of Anglican theology, and piety, and spirituality. I think Baptists have a lot to learn in that arena. McDermott: Thank you for that. Now, you mentioned that Anglicanism is often called Via Media between tomorrow extremes, and it's true, and I think there is some truth to that. In fact, there's quite a bit of truth to that. We Anglicans talk about being the middle way between Rome on the right you might say, and the extremes of Protestantism on the left. But speaking of Rome, Catholic Rome, Catholicity. I ran into some Southern Baptists the other day. In fact, it was a Southern Baptist pastor and his two interns, and they came to listen to something that was Anglican and Lutheran, and I told them that we're having a conference next September that I'll tell our audience about in a future podcast called What is Anglicanism, at which you are one of the speakers Dr. George, and they're very interested. McDermott: They're Baptists who are very interested in Anglicanism, and there's a new movement called Baptist Catholicity where it seems Baptists are getting interested in liturgy, and Baptists are getting interested in sacraments. What do you think about this new movement? George: I'm wildly enthusiastic about it. It's coming out of a group called the Center for Baptist Renewal. I'm one of their fellows or whatever they call me--a cheerleader for that effort. It's mainly a group of younger scholars who have been studying the early church fathers, and the great tradition of the Christian faith. They want to go back and to retrieve, not recapitulate, but to retrieve for the sake of renewal some of these great themes of the Christian faith that belong to all of us. George: Now, just the term Baptist Catholicity sounds to some of our listeners, I'm sure like a contradiction in terms, is kind of like a Protestant pope. Can you have such? Baptist Catholicity is a way of saying the Baptist movement is a renewal movement within the one holy Catholic and Apostolic church, and therefore are Baptists Catholic? Yes we are. We ought to be more fully than we claim sometimes to be because let me put it in a rather crude way. Why should the Roman Catholics have all the fun? Why should they get all the goodies? The riches of the Christian faith. I'm talking about say like the writings of St. Augustine in the early church. Who can't be edified by that? George: The great tradition of Christian worship and liturgy that you refer to. That belongs to everybody. It doesn't mean we're required as Baptists to follow exactly the Roman missal or the Anglican Book of Common Prayer or any other formulary, but it's offered for us because we're a part of the Body of Christ. The whole people of God extended throughout times as well as space. That's what I understand by Baptist Catholicity. I think it's a good movement, it's a little bit edgy sometimes. Okay. It makes a few people nervous, but if you dip back into our own Baptist roots, read our early confessions, you read some of our great theologians, people like Andrew Fuller in the 18th century, you'll find a lot of this stuff is already there. George: It's a matter of bringing it out, dusting it off, and making it shine again in the 21st century. McDermott: Now, let me ask you a little bit more about that Timothy. My colleague Mark DeVine, who is a Baptist theologian, who has been here a whole lot more years than I have, and he's known you for many, many years, he has been teaching me about the Baptist sacramental tradition. I didn't know there was any such thing as a Baptist sacramental tradition, and he has been telling me that it is wrong for me to think as a non-Baptist, that all Baptists at all times everywhere have always believed that the Lord's Supper is nothing more than a simple intellectual remembrance of what happened 2000 years ago. Is he right about that, and could you tell us a little bit more about that? George: Mm-hmm (affirmative). He's 100% right. The word that most Baptists today would use to talk about the Lord's Supper and baptism is the word ordinance. It's a good word. Jesus ordained this, we obey it. That's a part of it. But the word sacrament is also found in the early documents of the 17th century with reference to both baptism and the Lord's Supper, and I'd say within the last 30, 40 years there's been a resurgence of interest in Baptist sacramentalism particularly with reference to the understanding of baptism as not simply getting wet as a way of testifying to your faith. George: Yes, we say something to God in baptism. It's a confession of faith, but God also says something and does something in and for us in baptism. We oughta celebrate that. That's what a sacrament is. Same with the Lord's Supper. Not merely a symbol. A symbol is never merely, is it? A symbol is a sign that conveys the reality of that to which it points, and that's what the Lord's Supper is. We come to the table of the Lord and we commune with the risen living Lord Jesus Christ. There is a real presence of Christ there. George: Now, we might argue about transubstantiation, consubstantiation, how are the elements changed, what do you do with them when people have finished consuming them. All these kinds of liturgical niceties that we get involved with because we take it seriously, we can disagree on some of those things around the edges, but we have to see this as a moment of encounter with Jesus Christ himself. It's His table, it's His supper, the Lord's Supper, and he invites us to meet him there, and this is very well represented in the Baptist tradition. George: When you look at a figure like Charles Haddon Spurgeon, maybe the most famous Baptist preacher in history. He talks about coming to the Lord's table, and as he puts it going right through the veil into the arms of Jesus himself. That sounds like real communion to me. McDermott: Wow. I daresay that many of our listeners will say with me that there is far more common ground between Baptists and Anglicans than most Baptists and Anglicans have ever thought. George: I think that's true. McDermott: And I wonder, Timothy, if you would agree me that in these days when the culture is attacking Christian orthodoxy more and more, and when the true churchis becoming, you might say, a distinct remnant more and more in the west at least or in the global north, that we will see more and more Baptists and Anglicans seeing more common ground with each other than in the past. George: I was at a conference not too many years ago, and seated next to me, we were both speaking, was the great Methodist ecumenical theologian. One of the greatest ecumenical theologians of our time Geoffrey Wainwright, and I forget now who the speaker was or what he was saying, but it was really bad. Geoffrey kind of punched me in between the break and said, "Timothy, there are only two kinds of people in the world anymore. Those of us who believe something, and those who don't." I think there is a commonality of faith among believers in Jesus Christ, who take seriously his word in the holy scriptures, who take seriously the life of faith, the life of the church, the worship of God, that does draw us together. It doesn't mean it eliminates all of our differences, and if there's one thing I'm very much against it's a kind of easy going ecumenism that obliterates the differences, that's not real. It won't last. George: But the closer we come to Jesus Christ, the closer we come to one another, and that's what I've called an ecumenism of conviction. Not an ecumenism of accommodation. On that front, I think Baptist Christians and Anglican Christian, and many, many others, but we're talking about these two great traditions that share a lot in common have some differences. But the closer we come to Jesus Christ as Anglicans and Baptists, the closer we'll come to one another. McDermott: Excellent. Thank you. As we close, I'm thinking about Anglicans who might be listening to this podcast, and they're thinking of going into the ministry. Or maybe they're not sure if they're going to go in the ministry, but they just want to study theology at a deep level. Why should they come to Beeson? George: I'm not sure they should. I always tell prospective students, where you go to seminary, where you go to study theology is one of the most important decisions you'll make in your life. It's like getting married, and you're not to enter into it as the Book of Common Prayer says lightly or unadvisedly, but carefully, prayerfully, and in the fear of God. Now, assuming you do all of that, Beeson ought to be on your list of options. Why? First of all, we're a school that takes seriously the great historic Christian faith. We believe strongly in the Word of God and holy scripture, we believe and teach the great tradition of the Christian faith, the things that are dear to historic Anglicanism are dear to us here at Beeson Divinity School whether we're Anglicans or not. George: I also think that there is a receptivity to Anglican students here. It's grown over the years. It goes back to the beginning of our school as I said earlier with Mr. Beeson's vision. But I think the role that you play as our Anglican chair of divinity, the services that we offer within the Anglican worship tradition, the speakers that we have, the conferences that we put on, all of these are ways of undergirding a distinctive Anglican identity within the context of the wider Body of Christ. If you think about it, that's where you'll serve in the world. That's the kind of place you'll find yourself in ministry. You will almost entirely certainly not be in a little tiny Anglican, or Baptist, or Presbyterian corner of the world with nobody else except the people who are just like you. George: But what we want to do is to teach people to go down deep into their tradition, not to slough it off, not to compromise it, but to deepen it by exposure to the wider, the richness of the Body of Christ. McDermott: Thank you so much Dr. Timothy George. Dean of Beeson Divinity School for joining us today. Speaker 1: [singing 00:24:07]. Speaker 2: You've been listing to Via Media with host Gerald McDermott. The director of the Institute of Anglican Studies at Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Sanford University in Birmingham, Alabama. The Institute of Anglican Studies trains men and women for Anglican ministry, and seeks to educate the public in the riches of the Anglican tradition. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational evangelical divinity school training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. We hope you've enjoyed this episode of Via Media.