Welcome to After The Fact, a Knowing Faith mini-episode where we look to take a big

question and address it in just a few minutes. Typically, the questions we consider will

line up with our larger topic for the season and that's certainly true for our time today.

We're discussing Romans on Knowing Faith this season and joining us today is Dr. Stephen

Presley. Dr. Presley is Associate Professor of Church History and the Director of Research

Doctoral Studies at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and he has written widely on the subject

of early Christianity with a particular emphasis on Irenaeus. Dr. Presley, welcome to After The

Fact. Thanks for joining us. Kyle, thank you so much for having me on. Appreciate it.

Absolutely. Glad to have you. So Dr. Presley, maybe somebody is listening to this and they go,

okay, I've got Paul's words. Why should I care how Irenaeus was reading Paul at all? Before we

even talk about the way Irenaeus read Paul's Christology, why should I even care what Irenaeus

had to say about Paul at all? I've got the Bible. Why do I need Irenaeus' commentary on it?

It's a great question. I'll answer in two ways. First, when you read Church History, you see the

beauty of the way God has been at work among the people of God at different places and at different

times. We are not the first to come to the biblical text and to think about the biblical text and in

fact, so many of the issues he was facing in the second century are relevant for a lot of

conversations today. Nosticism in general that creeps up into theological discourse today or

Marcy in the way he pit an Old Testament God, it gets a New Testament God,

affines its way into our readings of Scripture. So what's old is new. What was back then is today

and we're stuck with the realization that there is nothing new under the sun and the importance

of recognizing that, again, that we're not the first to come to the biblical text, that the

issues that Irenaeus or they face in early Christianity are often percolating into our conversations

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