The Stone Chapel Podcast
A conversation with The Humble Skeptic
I was recently invited to join David Capes for a conversation on The Stone Chapel Podcast and that episode has just been released. David is the New Testament editor for the Word Biblical Commentary series (which I highly recommend) and the author of numerous books including The Divine Christ, and Matthew Through Old Testament Eyes. Below is an edited version of our exchange, or you can listen to the full conversation here.
DC: Shane Rosenthal, welcome to The Stone Chapel Podcast.
SR: It’s great to be with you, David.
DC: I saw you and your wife at the Lanier Theological Library recently, and that was marvelous. Gary Habermas was our lecturer that weekend, and we had a great time.
SR: Yes, thank you so much for the invitation! My wife and I really enjoyed our time there—this was our first time at the library.
DC: We’ll have to get you back for many reasons. We’re going to talk today about your persona as The Humble Skeptic. I guess you’re proud of that.
SR: You know, I was shopping around different ideas when I decided to start my own podcast, and I wondered whether this particular name would work, since so many Christians think of “skeptics” as outsiders.
DC: They’re the ones who question everything.
SR: Right. But this title for my new podcast has actually done very well. The way I like to say it is that we’re all believers, but we just can’t all be right because we have so many disagreements about what we believe. And everyone who believes certain things also happens to doubt other things, and often out doubts are rooted in prior beliefs. When a Jehovah’s Witnesses come knocking at your door, most Christians don’t automatically believe them. So we’re believers and skeptics at the same time.
DC: So you have this persona, and your website is called The Humble Skeptic. I love that. It has many wonderful, well-produced episodes that are just beautifully done. You weave music and tell stories, it’s just phenomenal! It’s more than just a podcast—it’s something else. And you started this because you’ve been in radio for quite a while.
SR: Yes, for around three decades. My friend Michael Horton and I had the idea to create a theological talk show way back in 1990. We wrote some grant proposals and launched a show called the White Horse Inn. I was the producer of that show for most of its history, and I also hosted the program myself for a few years.
DC: What would you say is the main mission of The Humble Skeptic? What are you trying to accomplish?
SR: My main goal is to inspire curiosity. I mean, if you’re in a room with a hundred Christians, there may be four or five different views about really important biblical issues just with that small group. You can’t just say, “Well, I am going to go with the interpretation I was raised with because it’s my tradition and I’m comfortable with it.” The question is, why do you think your interpretive tradition is right in contrast to all the others? When you get curious and start digging into these questions, you’re likely to bump into all kinds of interesting things in the Bible that may never have noticed before. For example, when you start to understand the Old Testament roots of many of the things Jesus says and does, that’s when you really begin to understand the significance of Jesus’ identity and redemptive mission.
DC: Your tagline is: “Truth isn’t afraid of questions.” How did you come to that?
SR: There are a lot of people today, even in Christian circles, who think that faith is a blind leap. That’s something I discussed in almost every episode of my podcast during the first year. In fact, I recorded a lot of man-on-the-street interviews in which I asked Christians about the meaning of the word “faith.” Most said it’s not something you can prove—it’s kind of a blind leap. Then I asked why they decided to take this blind leap here in this religious direction, as opposed to others. Often, they just don’t know how to answer that.
I’ve also discovered that many people think faith shouldn’t be questioned. But there’s a scene in the Gospels in which John the Baptist started asking questions. He told his disciples, to go ask Jesus if he’s really the one. This the guy who said “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”
DC: Is there another guy coming that we should expect?
SR: He seems to be doubting the words of his own sermon! But Jesus doesn’t scold him for asking that question. In fact when you look at that carefully (Matthew 11) it appears that Jesus simply provided him with evidence. “Go tell him what you’ve seen and heard.” He provided John with eyewitness testimony that matched the Old Testament promises.
DC: And when you look at the Psalms, they are full of questions. You look at the book of Job, it’s full of questions. And yet we are of the opinion that we shouldn’t ask these deep, theological, troubling, personal, and sometimes spiritual questions. It seems odd to me that we have come to that point.
SR: Yeah, one of the psalmists even asks, “Where are you God? Are you sleeping?” If you were to ask questions like those in a typical church today, that could cause a stir. The biblical text allows room for those kinds of questions, even from someone who’s really struggling and doesn’t even know whether God is listening. It should all be on the table. The particular approach that I take is the same one we find in the pages of the New Testament. Paul didn’t mind people questioning him since Luke says that the Bereans checked to see whether the things he was saying about Jesus were really taught in the Old Testament—and they were commended for doing so! Therefore, we shouldn’t have any trouble questioning things, particularly since Paul instructs us to, “Test all things.”
DC: I love that. I haven’t really thought about it in those terms, but I like that about the Bereans. That’s terrific.