The Dr. Jeff Show Ep. 77 – Daniel Spanjer

Episode 77: Summary & Transcript

Disclaimer: Please note that this is an automatically generated transcript. Although the transcription is largely accurate, it may be incomplete or inaccurate in some cases due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Episode Summary

The interview features a conversation between Dr. Jeff and Dr. Daniel Spanjer, a historian and professor. They begin by discussing Dr. Spanger’s upcoming book, The Advent Is the Story, which explores how Jesus was foreshadowed throughout the Old Testament. Dr. Spanjer explains that the Old Testament established the fundamental problem of humanity’s separation from God (Yahweh), a problem to which Christ was the only solution.

The discussion then broadens to the nature of history as a discipline, with Dr. Spanjer describing it as a creative and interpretive act of problem-solving, focused on understanding the “why” behind events to learn about the human condition. He argues that all human attempts to build a perfect society ultimately failed, pointing to the need for Christ.

Episode Transcript

Ryan Dobson (00:00):
Hi everyone. Ryan Dobson here for the Dr. Jeff Show. Summit camps are in full swing and kids are having a blast. In fact, my own son Lincoln is attending right now. There are so many kids who want to go to camp at Summit, but they just need a little help. A generous donor has agreed to match every donation to the Summit summer programs. Will you help a child learn the foundations of a Christian worldview at Summit? Donate online at summit.org/match and every tax-free donation will be doubled. Again, you can find that at summit.org/match. God bless, and let’s join the Dr. Jeff Show.

Dr. Jeff Myers (00:39):
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Every week I get to interview somebody new. This week, I’m going to interview Dr. Daniel Spanjer. We have got a fascinating conversation before us about how Jesus is seen in every aspect of the Bible, even in what we call the Old Testament. Some people think old, bad, new, good. All of scripture is a revelation about Jesus. We’re going to talk about that.

(01:32):
We’re even going to get into why we ought to take history more seriously and what historians actually do. What a wild conversation. It’s going to be a lot of fun. Thanks for joining on the show today. Dr. Daniel Spanjer, welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (01:46):
Thank you, Dr. Jeff.

Dr. Jeff Myers (01:46):
Glad to be here. It’s fun to have you here. We first met several years ago. You came out to one of the Summit Ministries adult conferences, and then for a couple of years, we had a Summit Ministries program on your campus at Lancaster Bible College. And I loved the place. I’m very sad that it didn’t work out. Turns out that people want to come to Colorado in the summertime.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (02:08):
Oddly enough, Lancaster is not the place. We have Amish. We have Amish.

Dr. Jeff Myers (02:12):
They loved all of that, the ones who came. But that site didn’t work out for us permanently, but we left with an enduring love of LBC and the people who were there and the leadership and the professors we had the opportunity to work with. And you’re one of them. Yeah.

So what came out of that was a relationship that enables us now to host you as a speaker here in our Summit Ministries programs in Colorado. And then also at the summit semester program, which is really in depth, like a three month long summit to help students really learn how to think, read, dialogue, and write biblically in community with other young adults. So thanks for your investment in the lives of so many Summit students.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (03:01):
I am so grateful. It’s amazing when you teach how much you learn and teaching students and watching the questions they ask them where they grapple just takes things to a different level for me as a professor, especially when you’re that intense and you’re with them that long. It’s not like you’re just one off in the class and out.

Dr. Jeff Myers (03:14):
That’s right.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (03:15):
You’re sharing life through all of this. So I grow probably as much, if not more than they do. So I’m grateful.

Dr. Jeff Myers (03:20):
They have a whole week with you, right?

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (03:21):
Usually at least three or four days. And it’s fairly intense. And as you can tell, by the way, I talk, I don’t talk slowly and it’s not easy, but they all endure it really, really well.

Dr. Jeff Myers (03:30):
Well, one of our graduates of the Summit Semester program is producing in the Summit virtual event right now. So we’re running multiple programs here. We’re doing podcasting in my office, which is why we have microphones because our studio’s being used for our Summit virtual program and 200 students are in that and then 185 students are here in person. So lots of things are happening, but the producer said, oh, I can’t wait for you to interview Dr. Dan Spanjer. You’re going to love this guy because he was at Summit Semester and he said A, B, C, D. And she started going through the whole thing. She remembered it all.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (04:05):
She remembered. That’s fabulous.

Dr. Jeff Myers (04:06):
Yeah. Yeah. So I can’t wait to dig in. Now, you’re a historian.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (04:10):
Correct.

Dr. Jeff Myers (04:10):
We’re going to talk about theology a little bit today and we’re going to talk about history. And I think because we’ve got about 30 minutes, I think we can dig in pretty deep on a couple of things. But one thing that you mentioned that I’m really interested in, I have a lot of questions about, and I bet the people who are listening or watching have a lot of questions too.

You helped your church put together a study book called The Advent Is the Story. Correct. And that comes out as a book in September you mentioned. All right. So we’re recording this summer 2022. And here in a little while, this book will come out and this will help people get ready for Christmas time. And it is, Jesus is at the center of the biblical story. And then Jesus is actually what we call the Old Testament.

(05:05):
So our Jewish friends call it Torah. What some other friends, it’s interesting, different terminology have now started to call the first Testament because old and new implies a value judgment. One is, well.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (05:21):
That’s old, in the past.

Dr. Jeff Myers (05:21):
Old. That’s in the past. The New Testament is what we really…

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (05:24):
One is those mothballs and one sounds like it smells like a new cockpit.

Dr. Jeff Myers (05:28):
Exactly. It’s exactly right. So we want to go back in scripture with understanding the life of Christ, the birth of Christ as the hinge point on which history returns, but then you go back and look at the Old Testament and you see Jesus in the pages of the Old Testament, which I think is fascinating. And in fact, there’s a children’s book, the Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd Jones. Yeah.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (05:56):
I haven’t read it yet.

Dr. Jeff Myers (05:58):
I could read it to you if you want. Okay. It’d be enjoyable. I would appreciate it. I read it to my kids when they were little. It really helped me. Sometimes when you read children’s stories, when you’re an adult, you think, “Oh, that has meaning that I didn’t realize all that time ago.” Some books don’t. Go, dog, go. Never got much out of that one. Yeah, I never. I looked at that recently. Why did we read that? We read it. It was fairly pointless.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (06:24):
The kids required it.

Dr. Jeff Myers (06:24):
Yeah. Well, it’s because it’s easy to read and it’s funny, but you have other books like the Velveteen Rabbit and you look back and you think that was profound. That’s profound, the message in that story. Well, so the Jesus Story Book Bible is like that, but what you’re doing is kind of like what the Jesus Storybook Bible is for children. You’re now doing for adults, which gives us a chance this coming Christmas season to help people go deep.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (06:53):
Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Myers (06:54):
All right. Having said all of that, let’s start looking back. When you say you see Jesus all through the Old Testament, the First Testament, Torah, what is it? Talk about what that means.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (07:08):
Sure. Yeah. So I think in theology, we say a couple things about seeing Jesus. Certainly we see certain aspects of his office as prophet, priest and king and we see those develop. And I think theologians have done a wonderful job. I think what we miss sometimes is who Jesus is, not what he does. So who is he? The real problem for all of us begins when we become separated from Yahweh. Yahweh is our meaning, our truth. He’s our beauty. When we sin, we fall for him.

So really the question is, how does Yahweh now begin to bridge the gap? But he doesn’t just bridge the gap merely by building a bridge or speaking to us. He has to actually create conditions under which he can actually, the infinite holy God can come to us somehow and we can be returned back to him. And I think oftentimes we, in order to see Jesus, we want to get to John one, which is awesome, but you have to deal with actually Genesis three because it’s how God begins the story of that bridge.

(07:57):
I often tell it this way. I can say the Bible’s a story of two buildings. The one building is man’s attempt to restore himself to God in the tower of Babel. But right after that piece is a failed attempt by people. The next is the story of the temple. And it’s the story of how God has one piece at a time been building the framework for how he creates a space for us to engage him. And I think we forget, sometimes, how detailed that story is and it’s never complete. We see that.

And of course Christ makes this point even when it comes to the point of the temple. The temple was never meant to be fine. I will tear this down and rebuild it in three days. But there’s so much detail in how God lays the groundwork for that relationship to be reconstructed that when Jesus comes, I think it was supposed to be an aha moment for the Jews to say, “Oh, that’s what the temple was. Oh, that’s what the sacrifices were.”

(08:45):
So I don’t, and I think you made a good point off camera where he said, “We want to be careful not to simply just go back and read Jesus into everything.” But actually what happens is you read the problem into the Old Testament to which there’s really only one solution at the other side and that’s Christ.

Dr. Jeff Myers (08:58):
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, perfect. That helps me so much because I do want to be careful that we’re not just saying, “Oh, well, and that, and that. ” Because we now have this understanding, we sort of take that and then reframe all of our previous experiences. But what you’re saying is, it’s actually the other way around.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (09:18):
Amen.

Dr. Jeff Myers (09:19):
There was a development that this is where humanity was. By the time you read Genesis one, two, and three, the creation of the world, the man and the woman, the fall. And by the time you get to Genesis six, God said he wished that he had never made them, they were that evil. And then you start to see that there’s this problem that everyone faces. And it does seem, I haven’t encountered a worldview yet that doesn’t say there is something wrong with the world that needs to be fixed.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (09:52):
Exactly. Exactly.

Dr. Jeff Myers (09:54):
It could be the Marxist worldview says, “What’s wrong with the world is that people are oppressed.” And the reason they’re oppressed is because their material resource, the material world is all there is and the material resources have been withheld from them and so we need to have a revolution. But for everybody, they know there’s something wrong. Right. Okay. I’m just processing all of this a lot.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (10:18):
Well, and so if I can springboard off of that, I think what we often see as wrong is things aren’t working, right? So say, well, there’s death and there’s disease, there’s fighting. Those aren’t the problem. Those are the symptoms of the problem. The problem is we don’t have our Yahweh. The problem is we’re not in relationship with He who’s the true, the good and the beautiful and the hope of every heart and the yearning at nights.

I say every problem and every human effort to overcome Marxism, even in the ancient time monarchies, all of these were really interesting human solutions that never actually addressed the true problem. So if you look at the ancient Zigarats and temples, they actually had it backwards. They built spaces for the gods to come down so that we could feed them. And the whole point there was to give the gods what they lacked. And if they stayed out of our way and we stayed out of their way, hopefully we wouldn’t have a war or something that happened.

(11:05):
And this is the point that actually it’s not keeping them at arm’s length so that they don’t annoy you or threaten your life. The point is to actually have one of them, God Yahweh, invite us into relationship with him. And the absence of that relationship is why all of these things happen. And I think this is where we even sometimes misunderstand Christ wasn’t coming to fix our disease. He was coming to show us that disease is the result of a broken relationship between me and us.

And so how much of our story in the Old Testament is God trying or trying? He speaks without accident and clearly it’s us who don’t get it, but he clearly shows all of these are just consequences of the real problem. And so seeing Jesus in heart because he’s the incarnate Yahweh in our midst, that absence is the cause of all our problems.

(11:48):
I think sometimes we, the First Testament, however you want to say it, we don’t realize that’s what this story’s trying to tell us. It’s not trying to just tell us, here’s what’s going on, here’s the plan, here’s why things go wrong. It’s trying to say, “Don’t you see Yahweh is all you’ve ever wanted and needed.” And when we come into the Annual Testament, realize there’s never been a time when we’ve had it unless he comes to us, which I think is old John’s point in John one.

Dr. Jeff Myers (12:09):
Yeah. I think most of the people who are watching or listening, they’ve had some training and worldview and maybe some training in theology, but I’d love to have you talk a little bit more about that idea. You said the source of the problem is that we don’t have our Yahweh or have a broken relationship with our Yahweh.

So you’ve got kind of two big terms in the Old Testament for God. You have the Elohim, the God, and then you have Yahweh, our God. You have the creator God, the relater God. I’m not sure exactly how to describe it, but when you use the term Yahweh, can you talk a little bit more about what that means because that helps us set the stage for Christ.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (12:54):
Excellent. Yeah, that’s a great way to say it, Jeff, because I think what the Jews knew about the term Yahweh was this is the unspeakable God. And I think what sometimes we miss as Christians, we’ve made God very relatable, which is only true because of Christ. We don’t realize there’s a profound distance between a God who’s as holy as Yahweh. So it was only the tetragrammar. You can only say the four letters. He was so holy, you couldn’t even name his name.

And I’ve done this before when I’ve worked with students and say, try to find Jesus after you’ve engaged Yahweh through the scriptures. Try not to start with Jesus and then go back and read the Old Testament because what the Jews understood was that God was so holy and so transcendent that he had to be held at arm’s length, that he couldn’t be seen.

(13:35):
And that’s why to know that we need to be brought back to him is the major problem because it’s an insurmountable gap. And Artsy Scroll has done a lot on this, I know in his career too, but I think we’ve missed some of those terms so that Jesus at the end doesn’t become really necessary. I mean, he likes us. I’m glad he likes me, but he bridged the infinite gap between a holy God and me who ought not be in that space at all. And so if you realize that’s your problem, then Jesus becomes the only solution to it. And so I think you’re right. Saying Yahweh is important because it reminds us of exactly how the Jews knew that he did interact with him.

I think of in Exodus 32 and 33 after Moses stands in the gap really and says to God, “Don’t kill these people because of the golden calf, save them and this is your reputation too.” And God finally says, “You know what? I’ll relent.” And then Moses, let me see your glory. I said, “You can’t. You will perish in an instant.” And I think even Moses for a second there lost himself, right? Yes. Oh, God’s relatable. Look, he did a nice thing. And he said, no, you don’t understand exactly who I am yet, not even you Moses and all of your wonder can actually bridge this gap. This is an infinite gap.

Dr. Jeff Myers (14:39):
Yeah. Yeah. Man, I love this conversation. I love the way you approach the theology with the heart of a historian.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (14:48):
No one says, heart of a historian, by the way, Jeff. I appreciate that.

Dr. Jeff Myers (14:51):
Nobody says that?

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (14:51):
No, it’s the mind of a historian, history.

Dr. Jeff Myers (14:56):
I get the mind of history, but the heart of history. No, I love it. Because you haven’t mentioned Schleermacher one time. You haven’t mentioned Boltmon or Moore. Not once, not once. So this way of understanding history though, I really want to dig into because I have to be honest with you, I dreaded taking my university history class so much that I waited. We had one required history unit. That was it. Just one required class.

I waited until my senior year to take that class and loved it. Oh, really? I loved it so much. I loved my professor. I could picture him to this day just walking back and forth in front of the class in the well with this goofy grin on his face and bedhead. His head’s hair stuck straight up, which I kind of relate to these days. And I loved it and regretted then that I had missed all the opportunities to study with that history faculty at my university.

(15:58):
So I did start going back and studying it on my own. But historians don’t just look at things that happened in the past. They have a framework to help us understand the meaning of things that happened in the past. And so your doctorate is in history.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (16:14):
Correct.

Dr. Jeff Myers (16:15):
And I’d love to just have you talk about that for a minute. I just have in mind, maybe some of the people who are listening now think, “I probably should study history more. I should better understand history from a biblical worldview.” Or maybe they’re thinking, “I think maybe academics should be something I take seriously as a potential calling.”

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (16:36):
Yeah, amen. Just so everyone knows Dr. Jeff just recommended history, so now you know you have to do it. Yeah, and that’s a great question. I think I didn’t like history until I got to college and then in grad school really realized what it was that was so wonderful. And you’ve captured it in a nut in that history. I often tell students, if you had to capture the last 10 days and just list the facts, how big would that book have to be? Well, it’d be nearly infinite. So history is all about selecting facts. And then you say, “Well, why do you select a fact?” Well, because it’s important. Okay, now we’re in it. So what makes something important?

Dr. Jeff Myers (17:03):
Yes.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (17:04):
And I think then all of a sudden it becomes this really creative enterprise. History is not. My professors who are not historians always joke with me, history must be boring, nothing ever changes. I get that line. Little do they know, a new book comes out on the American Revolution every year, like clockwork, because interpreting humanity is really, really difficult. And we have this amazing, and I say students, history is probably 90% imagination and 10% facts. You can’t change the facts. They’re crucial, but it’s how you imagine those connections actually work.

And here’s the key word, why did they happen? I can tell you George Washington across the Delaware, very easy. Why? Man, there is a really complex subject and it requires knowing humans and psychology and the moment and the historical context that they’re in.

Dr. Jeff Myers (17:47):
That’s right. It’s a British strategy.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (17:49):
Right.

Dr. Jeff Myers (17:50):
And what Washington knew he had the capacity to do with his army and what he didn’t have the capacity to do. I mean, there are a million different things. Yeah.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (17:58):
Right, right. And so what comes out of it is, and I know there was one of the speakers this morning, Dustin was talking about myth and I think he did a really good job of saying myth is an overwrought word in the modern terms because we imagine somehow that if you get all the facts added upright, you’ll have an objective view of the past. There’s no such thing. You don’t want one, by the way. It would be born plain and it wouldn’t teach us anything.

But if you’re learning about humanity, it takes interpretation and imagination to rescribe that and go, “Yeah, why did he do that? What if we missed it the whole time? Maybe there’s another fact we’ve got to account for and we can explain it differently.” When you start doing that, you realize that history is a wonderfully creative space to function.

(18:32):
And you also learn that no two historians will ever agree. Between three historians there’s four different opinions, right? I mean, that’s just the way it is where the story is.

Dr. Jeff Myers (18:40):
Well, it’s the dialogue that takes place that is the fun part, but that’s super hard to capture. As you mentioned, I mean, people can put out a book, but most historians I know when you read their book, you’re looking at their tentative thesis rather than their final conclusion about the way they’re putting things together.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (18:59):
No, that’s exactly right. And I tell students when you read it, students oftimes they’ll see a history book and they’re really like, “Oh, I guess that’s what happened.” Well, no, that’s what that person thought most likely happened, but they’ve selected out of the five billion facts, they’ve selected the 200 that makes sense to them, the next history. And you’re right, that historian in 20 years will rewrite that book when they realize they found new things or they think of humanity differently.

So history is not as boring as simply just the compilation of facts. It has to be at some point, an imaginative reinterpretation that makes it meaningful and significant. That’s why. And what do you learn in the process? And this is the thing, I don’t learn why revolutions happen. I learn who human beings are and what human beings go through and what they wrestle with.

(19:37):
And I don’t have to live in the American Revolution now to experience some part of what they went through. And so why wouldn’t you take advantage of this tremendous, as the founders called a laboratory of human emotion and experience, where you could learn how much about yourself in the process?

Dr. Jeff Myers (19:51):
Yeah.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (19:52):
And I think that’s where history becomes really valuable.

Dr. Jeff Myers (19:53):
Wow. I can imagine how much fun it would be to teach history where you do, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which is so rich with American history. If you drive an hour east, you’re in Valley Forge. If you drive an hour west, you’re in Gettysburg, right? And between Valley Forge and Gettysburg, you cover a huge part of American history. Do you get to take students on those kinds of things, experiences?

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (20:24):
Yeah, we do. We do. I think the college schedule being what it is gets difficult to actually make those things happen. But we’ve done it more probably in recordings and things like that. We can post those resources than we have with students, but it probably happens more in secondary school than often happens in college. Although I have a colleague who teaches on history also, usually civil war, he will try to get students out to Philadelphia again, and then also out to Gettysburg, which is usually a very fruitful trip.

Dr. Jeff Myers (20:47):
Yeah. I love when I go to a city and I see the buses pull up and lots of little kids get off the bus. I actually find myself praying, God, give them some meaning to this. Make it something more than just we’re out of school for the day and we get a sack lunch and all of that.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (21:04):
And I get to poke my friend in the back of the bus there.

Dr. Jeff Myers (21:06):
Yeah. Make it something that really plants some good seeds, but I love seeing it. I love that teachers do that. And this is still a big deal in the part of the country where you live. If you’re a bus ride away from Philadelphia, then we are going to Philadelphia and we’re going to go to the Constitution Museum, all the different things.

But I’d like to talk a little bit about American history, if that’s all right, because you’ve outlined a way of understanding history from a biblical viewpoint that’s going to be a lot different than the way a lot of historians think of it. Some people think of history as cyclical, like Oswald Spengler or George Santiano, others think of it as from the goo to you, right?

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (21:55):
That’s good. I like that.

Dr. Jeff Myers (21:56):
And then, but there are all these different views, but you’re talking about the arc of history in a very different way than most of us were ever taught it.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (22:07):
Yeah, I think that’s fair. I think, what history does for us, I mean, I think there are cycles. Peter Kraft makes a good point about this. Humans go back and forth between polls. It’s a pretty common human experience, but I think there has to be some sense in which there’s a grand narrative happening. Now, the problem is the historian doesn’t know what the grand narrative is from the facts. What didGaw want to do with the American Revolution? I have no idea. He didn’t reveal that to me. But what he did allow me to see is how human beings have to interact with the ultimate truths.

Dr. Jeff Myers (22:31):
Yes.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (22:32):
What’s ultimately meaningful? They don’t go into war because they’re bored, they have nothing to do grappling with something. I often say this, that what you study in history are people trying to turn earth into heaven, most likely transforming it into hell.

Dr. Jeff Myers (22:45):
Wow. Say that again.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (22:46):
Yeah. So most often people try to transform earth into heaven and usually just succeed in transforming it into hell.

Dr. Jeff Myers (22:52):
Wow. Wow.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (22:53):
And if you think about a lot of dictators, and this is what I try to get students to see, they’re made with the image of God. So they’re trying to, they see the world as broken and they think they understand what’s broken about it. So let’s track how they tried to bring it about. And did they succeed in fixing something? Sure. Even states that are evil found some ways to do some good things, but ultimately they’re going to fail. And so the attempt is an image of God in you attempt.

And this is the arc I think maybe you’re referring to, is that’s an arc of human history that’s a constant from tribal societies up to modern societies. It’s not like they’re any less advanced. They’re grappling with the same human problem we’re all grappling with and they have a limited set of solution sets they’re using.

(23:30):
And I say, can you get inside their mind and appreciate they’re dealing with heavy problems and this is the solution they’ve chosen. But of course at the end of the day, this is the wonderful part, Jeff, this is where I love. Usually somewhere at the end I’ll say, so what did we look at? Look at Republics, monarchies, which one of these works? Yeah, to this degree to that degree. What do we know? Come Lord Jesus and quickly.

Dr. Jeff Myers (23:48):
Yeah.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (23:48):
Because ultimately, human beings, as wonderful as they are at amazing things, they cannot answer the one thing we all need and the proof is in the pudding. What society has not failed? What society, in all of its best intentions, even America as much as I love it, has not created problems with every good thing that they’ve solved? One problem solved is ten created. This is the normal human condition. And when you’re honest about that and you look in, I think as a Christian, you become more convinced that humans are not the answer to their own problems. This is not. It becomes too obvious.

Dr. Jeff Myers (24:16):
Yeah. What would you say, because I like to read history now. I’ve repented from my lack of interest as an undergraduate.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (24:26):
We accept that repentance. Historical societies everywhere.

Dr. Jeff Myers (24:28):
In fact, I did my master’s thesis on history as a rhetorical device. Nifty. Because I was studying, I was in the speech communication department, coaching debate while I was getting my master’s degree and how people sort of harness the events of the past, interpret them and use that as an argument for what our future course should be. Perfect. So we were talking about that. So I felt like that was my full penance writing a master’s thesis.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (24:56):
Yeah, that’s right. You paid more than enough.

Dr. Jeff Myers (24:58):
I paid more than enough. But I still love reading about it. I love reading not just what happened in these situations, but how the author as a guide is helping bring me into the situation so I can kind of understand it from the inside out.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (25:16):
Right.

Dr. Jeff Myers (25:18):
But in a way, if we were to put a word to it, that word would be incarnation.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (25:26):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think I was just reading Georgi Flovrosky’s article. Had a nice little essay and his works on Christian and history. And he makes exactly the same reason used that word, but he says, “If we were objective facts like a scientist, I don’t need to get inside of those. I’m just measuring things.”

But if I am another human being, then immediately because they are meaningful, I have a root, a bridge into their mind and heart where I can actually understand them. And that’s the whole point, to get to know them. And I think in one sense, we get to know ourselves better, but then I can actually know this person because they’re also human. So I hadn’t thought of using incarnation in that sense, but I think there’s truth to that.

Dr. Jeff Myers (26:00):
Yeah. Yeah. So every little story that we read about, there’s a big story behind it that helps, that the truth of which enables us to gain understanding of all those little stories.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (26:11):
Yeah. And that’s a tricky piece. I think all historians are wrong to some degree, which is why all history is somehow myth making. Because the explanation you’re going to bring is limited. It’s not going to entail things. It’s going to have to twist things because you can’t understand everything entirely. And the other part I always try to tell students is if the way I’m understanding the American Revolution is not probably how someone in 1778 understood it. Because as Flavoroski mentions, I can’t see 1778 without seeing 1781. He didn’t get to see that.

Dr. Jeff Myers (26:38):
Great point. Yep.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (26:39):
And so I love doing World War II history students and saying, at what point in America know they were going to win this thing? Well, you see the war very differently when you don’t know you’re going to win it, then I look at it now and go, “Oh Jorge, Guadalcanal was fine because they were going to get through that.” That’s not what they were thinking. We may not get out of this alive. That changes the motivations and why you’re fighting and what you’re learning from fighting.

Dr. Jeff Myers (26:59):
Yeah. So good. That’s really good. I love it. Well, I want to think I’m just curious too, because I know you love, you grew up on a farm.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (27:12):
I did.

Dr. Jeff Myers (27:13):
And so you love farming, you love auto mechanics, you love the things that are hands-on as well. And we did get a chance to talk about that. I meant to ask you at the outset of it, and I didn’t. Do you see any relationship between the kinds of things that you do like that every day and the sort of things that you do academically? Because I mean, I remember this guy, Matthew Crawford, wrote a book called Shop Class as Soul Craft, and he was a motorcycle mechanic and also a political scientist.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (27:50):
Quite a combination.

Dr. Jeff Myers (27:51):
It is quite a combination. But I’m just curious how you, do you see that as, “Oh, this is what I do to get away from my academic work or how do you see being an academic just as part of being a human?”

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (28:05):
That’s actually a great question. And I think one of the things I love the most about history, and this is why I try to teach history, is it’s a set of complex problems, right? So you lay out a problem, so you’re a colonist. What would you do about that? And students come up with a typical trite answer. Well, you would fight. No, no. Why? Wait a minute, wait a minute. What’s going to mean for your family?

So you’re going to run off to war now. Your wife’s back at home taking care of the farm. She’s got no means of paying for it. There’s no government running in to help recover this. So you’ve got a huge set of problems. And what I’ve tried to tell students, and this is a great point you’re making actually, because what I love about mechanics and that sort of world, is it’s entirely problems to solve.

(28:41):
And so it’s not just a set of instructions, you just do this and the car runs, you’ve got to figure out, you’ve got to tell yourself a story, wait a minute, a car normally runs this way. That’s going wrong. Well, I’ll connect it this way and you tell yourself this magnificent story. Well, it must be shorting out here, and then all of a sudden you realize you’re wrong, got to retell the story again. History is really very similar in the sense that something’s not right about the situation.

So how would you tell the story so you can get from, let’s say, I don’t know, 1932 to Churchill’s takeover and right fighting of the war. Well, that’s a problem I can’t explain. Well, I’m going to tell this story. It doesn’t have that effect. I’ll retell the story. So I think, problem solving, and I’ve actually learned that there’s two in my mind, two ways of doing history.

(29:20):
One’s more a poetic way of doing it, which you’ve read history, so you kind of know you talk rhetoric. It’s a more poetic approach to telling history. The other in my mind is problem solving. How do you get from this point to that point and cover all the facts at the same time? And if your story you tell leaves that one out, retell the story, similar to, I think, solving a problem that’s in the mechanical arena, which is what really attracts me to it.

Dr. Jeff Myers (29:40):
Yeah. With that approach, you’re probably constantly thinking about reflecting on our own times, my lifespan, your lifespan, what has happened during our lives and what do you see happening now? I wonder if you’d comment on that because you know what? If at the end of this Joe, you just say this is relevant. Being a historian is relevant to everything. Being an academic, that’s relevant. That’s not something that I have to, that’s not just me getting the degree so I can get a job, but there’s real thought if you’re a Christian and how all of this comes together from Jesus all the way back to the whole, all of history that led up to Jesus and all the way to now.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (30:27):
Right. Yeah. I think where moderns miss this is we, and this is what I think a lot of the modern left is missing, is there’s no sense of disconnecting from history. As if history is all corrupt, everyone got it wrong and we’re getting it right. You are in some way or another a construct of this historical framework. So when I go through the enlightenment and I start unpacking, that’s really interesting, usually around the 17th, early 18th century.

I start putting in terms and students’ lights go on and go, wait a minute, is that why we think this isn’t some great solution. We are a derivative of these ideas that have come down. So don’t think that somehow you’ve finally landed on the solution. They’ve been dealing with the very same problem in the 1780s and 90s that you and I are dealing with. We haven’t changed all that much.

(31:05):
I mean, Carl Trueman I think has shown that the ideas have spun out a little wider than they were intended, but in the sense they’re still following the same trajectories. And I think it’s really helpful to realize you’re not some genius that just came up with this. And if you understand how your ideas connect, you might then be able to be critical of them a little and go, “Oh, that’s why I think maybe I need to think twice about that.” I ask the students all the time, I said, “Do you think you live in the same universe that Moses did?”

(31:29):
Because Moses didn’t know anything about viruses. If you told Moses you should take a shot, he wouldn’t know what you’re talking about. So how is your world that different than his? And maybe you ought to think he had a beat on life in the world that you don’t because you’ve been influenced by another set of, yes.

And so to get out of your skin and your mind into someone else’s teaches you sometimes, “Oh, that’s why I believe it. That’s not necessarily the truth. That’s what I’ve been handed. So how do I recorrect that to bring that back into alignment with the scriptures?” Sometimes that’s really difficult to do, but I think to one degree or another way, I’ll have to do that.

Dr. Jeff Myers (32:00):
Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I’m so glad that you are here having an influence on our students. And I love conversations like this. And I look forward to reading the advent. The Advent is the storybook when it comes out. And I’m just super grateful for your time this afternoon.

Dr. Daniel Spanjer (32:18):
Well, thank you very much, Jeff. I really enjoyed this and appreciate all your leadership here at Summit. It’s a wonderful place.

Dr. Jeff Myers (32:23):
Thanks to my guest today, Dr. Dan Spanjer, for joining the Dr. Jeff Show. You can find this new book that he’s talking about called Advent Is the Story: Seeing the Nativity Throughout Scripture, wherever great books are sold. You’re going to find out how Moses, Isaiah, Micah, and other biblical writers predicted the coming of Jesus and give us a new understanding of all of scripture. I really appreciate your joining this week. Thanks for being a fan of the Dr. Jeff Show. Thanks for being the kind of person who wants to listen to a program like this and be a difference maker. That means a lot to me. I’ll see you next week.

Ryan Dobson (33:01):
Thanks for listening to the Dr. Jeff Show. And don’t forget, you can help a child attend Summit summer session by going to summit.org/match. All your donations that are tax deductible will be doubled. God bless, have a great week, and we’ll see you next time for another Dr. Jeff Show.

Dr. Jeff Myers (33:19):
Listeners, I want you to know that our podcast is on Edifi, which is a truly powerful app that brings together thousands of the best Christian podcasts in one place. For your listening enjoyment, you can download it at edifi.app. Be sure to share this show if you have enjoyed listening to it and leave a review, if you would, on the site where you download the show, that helps more people know about the Dr. Jeff Show, and I’ll look forward to seeing you next week.