En Route: Journeys in Faith and Modern Life

Dennis talks with psychologist Richard Beck about his latest book, The Book of Love. Richard is a professor of psychology at Abilene Christian University and a Senior Fellow of the Saunders Center for Joy and Human Flourishing. The book weaves Richard’s own faith journey together with the Hebrew Scriptures, the Gospels, and the early church. The conversation asks what it looks like to read Scripture through the lens of love, and why that is so hard when anxiety about “getting it wrong” sits underneath so many biblical arguments. Richard writes for both conservatives and progressives, so listeners on either side will probably hear something they like and something they don’t.

In This Episode:

• Grace for bad readers of Scripture (14:46). We expect to reach heaven as sinners, so why would God be graceless toward our biblical misinterpretations? Dennis and Richard discuss extending grace to those who read differently, on both sides.
• The cross as a theophany of love (18:50). Richard argues against penal substitutionary atonement while pushing back on a progressive view that skips over the cross. The cross, he says, delivers two messages at once, judgment on human sin and love from the foundation of the world, and the parable of the prodigal son holds both.
• Prophetic self-criticism (30:32). Israel put its own worst failures into Scripture. Richard says that courage is stunning, and wonders where we have lost it, since most prophetic speech is aimed at God’s own people.
• Acts 10 and Acts 15 (34:59). Richard connects Peter’s vision and the Jerusalem council to his first book, Unclean, and to the psychology of purity and disgust. He draws on the Wesleyan quadrilateral to show how experience can shape how we read, noting that at the council “the stories won that day.”
• Fruits of the Spirit as coordinates (49:18). Discernment about where God is at work is not vague, Richard says, and it cuts both ways. He points to Paul’s call to let judgment begin with the house of God and says, “You are the one being evaluated here. Stop evaluating other people.”
• The current moment (53:45). Richard offers a critique for each side of the political aisle. For the Christian right, he points to divine solidarity with the oppressed, the teachings of Jesus, and pluralism as a sign of the kingdom. For the progressive side, he points to the risks of reducing Scripture to social justice and the need for forgiveness, reconciliation, and hope.

Links

• The Book of Love by Richard Beck
• Richard’s Substack, Experimental Theology

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