Noted theologian Douglas Ottati joins the show to discuss his new book A Theology for the Twenty-First Century.

TRANSCRIPT

0:01

Welcome to Jessup think I'm your host Mark Moore and your co host Rex Gurney. And on the show today we have Dr. Douglas o Tati, who is the Craig family distinguished professor of Reformed theology and justice at Davidson College in North Carolina. In fact,

0:17

he actually was teaching at Union Theological Seminary in Virginia when I was getting my doctorate and he was one of my professors about 29 years ago. So it's gonna be an interesting show today.

0:35

Thanks again, Dan, for joining us on the podcast all the way from North Carolina. Well, thank

0:41

you, Mark. It's a beautiful spring in North Carolina is probably not as dry heat as you have in California. But it's beautiful out here right now. We have blue birds flying around. I mean, it's it's a great picture of God's world. You enjoy it.

0:56

Yeah. That I've always told my wife if we moved anywhere. It would be North Carolina, America.

1:01

That's a good spot. It's got mountains. It's got a beach. It's got Sandy stuff. It's got a lot of things.

1:07

Yeah, that's that's grabs I'm good friends and kind of the Chapel Hill and Durham area. And I think I've been through Davidson is it is the city, called Davis is a little town. Charlotte isn't?

1:22

Yeah, it's exit 30 offer route 77. So we're about I want to say we're about 17 miles, 20 miles from the city of Charlotte. We're in the same county as they are. But we're in the northern part of the county. And it does, the town now has a lot of nice different things. They've got a nice little Italian restaurant. I'm really pleased about that. Because I grew up on a little Italian family. So I like to get something good to eat. They got a really good proprietor over there and all that kind of stuff. But I hear that some time ago, a dog could have gone to sleep on Main Street not been disturbed. A little bit since then.

2:00

Right. Right. But and you have a connection with Rex, that I actually didn't know that when I emailed you to set up this interview. And then seminary Virginia.

2:15

Yeah, yeah, a long time ago, but 21 years. Since I was there, I actually dug I don't know if you are aware of it. But without mentioning your name, because you know, frankly, would mean anything to anybody. I do actually use my first day in the first seminar I ever had at Union, which was with you, in theological method where we had to deal with trash, but I use it as sort of an example when I'm talking about the fundamentalist modernist controversy. And so the story I sort of tell and I have to say that I was so intimidated, actually, by you that that very first seminar, but so I went to a Southern Baptist evangelical seminary and got an M div a number of years before that. And for some inexplicable reason, they had given me the annual theology award when I graduated, which I don't understand why they did that, because I was a church history guy anyway, but whatever, whatever. I'm feeling pretty proud of myself. Because, you know, I got an award, and I, you know, and so five years later, I am in your seminar, and the very first day, I had never heard of anyone that you were talking about. And this little light bulb comes on above my head. It's like, Oh, it's like, there's two different worlds out there. And they don't even talk to each other. And they sometimes don't even act like each other exists. And so real, real kind of steep learning curve. For me to start off there.

3:41

I bet I bet. And ours troughs, you know, that's, yeah, there you go. That's a reference thing. And he and he's got certain questions in mind, and they hold up really well, for the modern period, they never go away. Right, you know, like, what do you want to make out of historical criticism in the Bible? And does it make you less confident and what you prefer to believe? Bec