Bill Hendricks: 

Well, welcome to The Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture to show the relevance of scripture and biblical theology to everyday life. I'm Bill Hendricks, the executive director for Christian Leadership at the Hendricks Center, and I want to welcome you. Let me begin our podcast today, before I get into the actual topic, with a bit of history, that's the best way to do it. 

I think in about 1890, 1891, somewhere in there, a young music student named Lewis Sperry Chafer, he quit his studies at Oberlin College in Ohio, and he began traveling with an evangelist named Arthur Reed. And before long, Chafer married. His sweetheart's name was Ella Case. The Sperry's then launched a traveling music ministry that took them all over the United States for about the next 30 years. And before long, Sperry is being asked to preach and to teach in the churches that he and Ella visited. And through those encounters, he met countless pastors and students and they kept saying the same thing, "We want more thorough education," in what they talked about as Bible exposition and interpretation. And burdened by all of these requests, Chafer eventually moved here to Dallas, Texas, and with his brother and several others, he founded the Evangelical Theological College with the express purpose of emphasizing what was called expository preaching and the teaching of scriptures according to the plain, normal historical meaning of the words of scripture in their original languages. 

That college, of course, eventually became Dallas Theological Seminary. The school's motto from its very inception has always been, Preach the Word. And by preach is meant expository preaching. Now all of this raises the question then, what exactly is expository preaching? And what does the seminary mean by that term and the term Bible exposition? To help us talk about this and the implications of it, I am very honored to introduce a seminary graduate as well as a seminary professor named Dr. Carl Laney, who is Professor Emeritus out at Western Seminary in Portland, Oregon. As I say, Dr. Laney has his ThD from Dallas Seminary, and before that was at was Portland Seminary for your ThM and MDiv. 

J. Carl Laney: 

Yes. 

Bill Hendricks: 

So Carl, welcome to The Table Podcast today. 

J. Carl Laney: 

Thank you, bill. It's a privilege to be here. 

Bill Hendricks: 

And I just should mention that we're particularly privileged to have Carl with us because as we're recording this Table Podcast, he is at Dallas Seminary for the week for what is known as the Nathan D. Maier series in Bible Exposition. And maybe we'll get into talking about who Nathan Maier was and the purpose of that. 

But Carl, before we jump into all of this, let me roll the clock back. Tell us about your background, where you grew up, and really how you got into theological studies yourself and so forth. 

J. Carl Laney: 

Oh, thank you, Bill. Happy to do that. Well, fortunately, I grew up in a Christian home, and God was at work through my mom and my dad to bring me to faith in Christ when I was 10 years old. I was baptized at First Baptist Church in Eugene. That was the beginning of my spiritual journey. But like many young people, I wandered from the Lord and especially in my early college days, but an organization, Campus Crusade for Christ was really instrumental in getting me back on track. 

There was a fraternity brother who was involved with Campus Crusade and he challenged me to walk with the Lord and to help him to be a witness at the Sigma Chi House at the University of Oregon. God used that man to change my life, to get me on track again with the Lord. I tell the story in greater detail in my book, The Story of the Bible, where I tell my testimony. But that was the beginning of my spiritual journey, which eventually led me to Western Seminary where I did my M.Div and Th.M. Then wanting to teach and preach the Bible, I decided to enter the Bible Exposition program here at Dallas Theological Seminary and had a wonderful three years studying with Dr. Pentecost at Dallas Seminary. And that was a wonderful experience and I'm really glad to be back here again. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Just out of curiosity, when you were there in Eugene in college, where was college again? 

J. Carl Laney: 

University of Oregon. 

Bill Hendricks: 

University of Oregon. 

J. Carl Laney: 

The Fighting Ducks. 

Bill Hendricks: 

There you go. What was your intended major? What did you major in? 

J. Carl Laney: 

Well, I majored several different majors. I started out in business, eventually ended up in public administration, because it was a general administrative degree program. I did an internship at First Baptist Church with Dr. Jack MacArthur, father of John MacArthur. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Gotcha. 

J. Carl Laney: 

I worked with a college youth for a year there at First Baptist Church. I was beginning to kind of transition from a general administrative background to more interest in ministry and then came to Western Seminary. That's where I really got involved in studying the scripture and was thrilled to get into the word of God and wanted to teach it. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, that's actually a question I wanted to ask you. At what point the Bible sort of became the central text for you as far as your growth? 

J. Carl Laney: 

That's good. Well, it was in my time at Western Seminary as I got into the biblical languages. I wasn't a great student at the University of Oregon, I just wanted to get that done and move on to other things. But when I got to Western, I was studying something I really loved and I wanted to deepen my understanding. So the Hebrew, the Greek, all the biblical exegesis, and I did well in that, thank you, Lord. But that whet my appetite to no more and to teach. I led some Bible studies while at the University of Oregon and then had some opportunities to give some first sermons, but that whet my appetite for further studies. I realized if I wanted to be a teacher of the word, I needed to get all the training that was available. And since Dallas Seminary offered a doctorate in Bible exposition, I felt like that was the place for me. 

Bill Hendricks: 

So there you've used that term Bible exposition. I think of you as viewers or as listeners or both, you may be a person who you know all about Bible exposition. You may be a seminary graduate, and this podcast attracted your attention because of your interest in that topic. And on the other side, you may be someone who's like, "What in the world is Bible exposition? I occasionally hear that term, but I have no clue what it means." So when you use that term, how do you define it? 

J. Carl Laney: 

Yeah, good question. Well, there's lots of different styles of preaching. Some people preach about the culture, some preach about morals, some people preach about topics, various topics in scripture. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Some people preach about politics. 

J. Carl Laney: 

Yeah. 

Bill Hendricks: 

These days. 

J. Carl Laney: 

That's a dangerous one these days. But Bible exposition, as I see it, is explaining the Scripture, explaining how the argument of the text develops principles for living. So I look at the words, I look at the sentences, I look at the context and seek to explain what is going on verse by verse. And for me, that's Bible exposition. It's not my thoughts, it's not my ideas or my politics or the culture. It's what does God say to us and how can I make it clear to the people who are listening to my sermon? Charles Ryrie was an expert. He was a brilliant man, two earned doctorates. But he didn't impress people with his erudite ideas. He took people to the word of God. He made it clear and understandable, and that's always been my goal. The best compliment that has ever paid to me is that, you make the Bible clear and understandable. And that's my goal in teaching. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Now, I heard in that definition, if I could put it this way, I heard a presupposition, which is that God himself is actually speaking to humans through the Bible. 

J. Carl Laney: 

Yes. Yes. 

Bill Hendricks: 

And some of us may take that for granted, but I think there's many people in the culture for whom that's new news. I reference Lewis Sperry Chafer, of course, our founder at DTS initially. He founded the seminary at a time when many people in the culture and in churches, they thought the Bible was an interesting text. It had historical and certainly moral value. Is was good teaching. But this idea, God himself speaking through the Bible was not… No, that that's an impossibility. 

J. Carl Laney: 

Yeah. Well, the Bible teaches that it's the word of God. All scripture, Paul says as he writes to Timothy, is God breathed, the breath of God, the very breath of God, the breathing out of God's words to us, all scripture is God breathed and profitable for teaching, reproof, for correction, for training and righteousness, that the people of God may be proficient through God's word. So the word of God is given to us in the Bible, we have general revelation through nature that tells us that God exists. And then we have the special revelation through his word that tells us how we can be saved and points us to Jesus, the Savior of humanity. 

Bill Hendricks: 

Well, this really dovetails with our slogan about the Table Podcast. We want to show the relevance of biblical theology to everyday life. You use the w