You're listening to the Bible for Normal People, the only God ordained podcast on the internet.

I'm Pete Ends. And I'm Jared Byas.

Hey everyone, welcome to this episode of the Bible for Normal People. Our topic today is

a conversation about inspiration and our guest is Joe Gordon. He teaches at Johnson University.

Yeah, and he wrote a book called Divine Scripture in Human Understanding. And it trying to create a

theology of the Christian Bible. And that's a tall order. That's a difficult task. So we talk

about some of these big picture things that maybe we've talked about or touched on in the past,

like inspiration. What is the Bible? What do we do with it? So it's a good conversation to

draw out what are some of the issues and some of the challenges that we run into if we let the

Bible be what it is. Yeah, and still think of it as somehow inspired. And that's a tricky term.

And maybe we have to learn to define words like that very differently than we were raised to do.

So this is a conversation, this is a conversation that doesn't end folks. This is like what is the

Bible? And what do we do with it? This is just another angle of coming at it. And yeah, it's a

conversation that doesn't end. Yeah, and it's a good voice to have as part of that conversation.

So let's jump in with Joe Gordon. Folks interpreting Scripture that the ones who do it the best,

I think are not fundamentally interested in exclusively interpreting Scripture. They're

instead interested in knowing God, knowing themselves, and knowing history. They're interested in

in discerning what God might be doing.

Well, welcome Joe to our podcast. Great to have you. It's great to be here. Thank you.

Yeah. So where are you now? What state are you in? I am in the lovely state of Tennessee,

just south of Knoxville, Tennessee. Are you staying isolated and socially distanced? I am.

Very isolated in East Tennessee. Yes. Yes. Can it get more isolated? I think it would be

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