God: Theology for Everyone (Part 1) With Malcolm Yarnell

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This transcript has been edited for clarity and space.

Malcolm Yarnell
Hello. My name is Malcolm Yarnell and I am a research professor of theology at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth Texas. And I’m also a teaching pastor at Lakeside Baptist Church in Granbury, Texas, and I’m glad to be with you today.

David Capes
Dr. Malcolm Yarnell, Malcolm, good to see you. Welcome to The Stone Chapel Podcast. It’s a delight to see you here in my office. You’re on the campus of the Lanier Theological Library to do a course for us in the Lanier Certificate for Theology and Ministry. It’s a course on Christian theology, and it comes right out of your book entitled, “God.” We’re going to be talking about that a little bit later. But for those who don’t know you, who is Malcolm Yarnell?

Malcolm Yarnell
Yes, you need to know who’s speaking to you! I am a child of a former military officer and his wife, and grew up in a military context. When I was about six years old, I began to read the Bible. It’s too funny, actually, David. My parents didn’t like the fact that I would try to read and leave the light on, staying up late, and so they turned off the light and told me to go to bed. But I found a flashlight, and I was reading the Bible under the covers! I got to tell you, I was so impressed, just the experience of knowing who Jesus Christ is and how much God loves me through reading the Bible under my covers. That had a profound impact upon my life.

David Capes
You were undercover! I’m glad you did that, because I used to put under a transistor radio under my pillow, an AM transistor radio, and I’d listen to the Atlanta Braves. So that’s why you’re a theologian, and I’m a baseball fan!

Malcolm Yarnell
So I grew up in a military context, which means that we moved in all over the United States and North America, and was exposed to many different cultures. So, I have a wide appreciation for multiple cultures, which has really come in handy. Because after I had a call to ministry, I knew that God had called me to be a teacher. I have had the privilege of teaching students from around the world, both at Southwestern Seminary and beyond. I really enjoy dealing with people from multiple cultures. For instance, I just met with one of my former PhD students last week, who is the President of the Ukrainian Baptist Theological Seminary. And one of my other PhD students, who’s now graduated, also was a
Russian Baptist. It has been my call to help students from around the world to move to the next level in their discipleship with their minds, surrendering their heart, soul, mind and strength to the Lord. Dedicating the whole of themselves to the Lord. I am a teacher of teachers, a pastor to pastors, an evangelist to evangelist, a missionary to missionaries. That’s my calling, and that’s who I am.

I’m married and have five children, all adult children, and we have three grandchildren currently, and are looking for more.

David Capes
All right, Christmas is going to get really busy around your house. And you’re the author of a number of books, and we’ll be talking about one of them today. You’re working and editing and, doing all sorts of creative things. You have a website.

Malcolm Yarnell
Yes, my website is malcolmyarnell.com. Some of the books are listed there. I’m mostly an academic writer, but in this book and with this series, what I’m trying to do is take away the academic which can be an inhibition to people growing in their relationship with the Lord. We can make theology too complex and too obtuse and abstract, and I’m trying to bring theology, with this book and this series of books, such that the average person can come to know God better and learn how they might advance in their knowledge of the Lord.

David Capes
The book you’re talking about is entitled, “God,” which is a little bit of a pretentious title.

Malcolm Yarnell
It is a pretentious title.

David Capes
The subtitle is, “Theology for Every Person.”

Malcolm Yarnell
That’s right, yes. The whole series will be entitled, “Theology for Every Person.” In the end, there will be three volumes, God, Word and Spirit. And really, the idea for the title came from the publisher, and it was so funny. I’m always teaching my PhD students that you’ve got to narrow your thesis, and so they know this is my message to my research students. And during a conference one time, one of my students pointed out, well, Dr. Yarnell, you’re always telling us to narrow our thesis, and you have a book entitled God. Because, you know, there’s God and then there’s everything else that God has created. And so, it is a pretentious title, and yet, in an attempt to help people to know who God is, this seemed to be a good idea to the publisher, and it was their idea. A way to try to keep it simple, was to
use simple titles.

David Capes
I like the way you begin. I’ve said, take the word theology and break it down. Theos which means God and logos, which means thought, or word, in this case. It can also mean the idea of thinking. I basically said, If you ever thought about God, if you ever speak about God, you’re a theologian.

Malcolm Yarnell
That’s right. And I have drawn from the Reformation in particular and the Renaissance. So with Erasmus of Rotterdam, he made a statement, and it had a huge impact, by the way, on William Tyndale in particular, but also on Martin Luther. That is that every Christian is a theologian. And I would go beyond that to say every human being is a theologian, for God has revealed himself generally to every person, and that requires a response from us about who we think God is, that makes us all theologians. And so, everybody’s a theologian. The question is are we engaging in theology correctly? And my hope is that by writing these books, I help people to learn to think and become theologians. For we’re all theologians. I think the question is are we going to be good at it or not?

David Capes
Yes, exactly. Because you can have a lot of weird thoughts, strange thoughts about these things. One of the key driving ideas in your book is the idea of journey and tour. You talk about taking everybody on a grand tour. And you’re the guide.

Malcolm Yarnell
Yes. I think sometimes even the word “theology” can take people and set them off. I know often I’m asked in a context where people may not know me, what is it that you do? And I tell them, I’m a teacher, and what do you teach? Systematic theology. And immediately I will see people’s eyes begin to glaze over, and they’ll begin to look for the exit. What is systematic theology? And I have to tell them, it’s just thinking in a logical format about who God is and what God does, that’s simply all that it is.

But theologians, because we’re academics, can often make theology much more abstract and inaccessible than we need to. So, my project is to try to make the truths of God, which are recorded in Scripture and which are available in nature, to some extent, available to the average human being to take and to know God better. I think having an idea of a grand tour or a journey, or even, if you will, a pilgrimage, we’re going somewhere. None of us has, as a human being, an entire knowledge of God. We’re growing in our knowledge of God. And so don’t look at theology as a list of facts or propositions or statements, although there is that aspect to it. But look at theology as a journey you’re going and growing deeper into who God is. And for me, that’s what theology is. I don’t think any human being has a total grasp of God in their mind. And I think we’re always growing in our knowledge of God, and sometimes we forget things.

I have to relearn things. And I want to encourage people to come to know God through His word and to grow in their knowledge of God. I look at it as a journey and one that we are on together. Nobody has all the answers. All of us are on this together, and we need to have conversations and listen to one another. That doesn’t just mean listening to one another in our own context but listening to the history of humanity and of the church in particular, as it learns to read God’s word and be led by His Spirit to understand who God is.