In this episode, Aaron Lee interviews author and professor Kevin Chen about his book, Wonders From Your Law. Read Aaron’s book review here.
Aaron Lee: Hi everyone. This is Aaron for SOLA Network. I’m here with Kevin Chen. Kevin, I reviewed your book, wonders from your law. I found it fascinating. I found it academically exciting. By saying academic because it is an academic book, but thank you for taking the time to come here and talk to me about it. Can you please introduce yourself and maybe a little bit of your work, and then we can get into your book talking about Nexus passages, why they’re important, and maybe explain how they relate to biblical theology. So yeah, that can be a good way for us to get started.
Kevin Chen: Okay, okay, sure. Well, first of all, Aaron, thanks for having me on. I’m really honored and glad to be on this SOLA podcast with you. Thanks also for powering through that really long book that it is, and it is an academic book, yeah. So special thanks to you for that. Little bit about me. I’m a professor of Old Testament studies at Gateway seminary here in Southern California in Ontario, and I have been teaching for over 14 years. Previously, I taught at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee for nine years, and then I taught for five years at Christian Witness Theological Seminary in San Jose, California.
As for this book,it’s a book on Old Testament theology which relates to your question about biblical theology. “Nexus passages” are passages. Well, first of all,
Nexus passages” is a term that I invented. I made it up. So sometimes people say I’ve never heard that before. I was like, Well, yeah, that’s because. No, no one ever to my knowledge, you know, has used that term. But really, all it means is, like a passage that has a lot of connections to other passages in the Bible. So like some I think we already know what some of them are like. One example would be like Second Samuel seven, where God makes a covenant with David to give an eternal Kingdom and Eternal Throne, which is really a prophecy about how Jesus is going to come from David’s line that particular passage, if you’re to trace the connections to like other passages in the Old and New Testaments about God’s David, David’s house, things like that, there’d be, like, a ton of connections. So a passage like that, that has a high number of connections. I just gave it a name, “Nexus passages”, as for biblical theology that itself is a, it’s like a, it’s like a subject that people study in seminary or maybe sometimes on their own.
But basically we’re trying to do in biblical theology, or Old Testament theology, like this book is specifically about, is you’re trying to put all the pieces of the Bible together, right? So, as we know, like the Bible is like a long book, and even when you focus on the Old Testament, like my book does, it’s still 39 books. And it’s like, how do you fit all these things together?
So that’s what you’re trying to do. And these Nexus passages, as I’m calling them, help. It’s not like a silver bullet, but they help you to connect different parts of the Bible together.
Aaron Lee: I love that you gave them a name. I actually didn’t know, know that it was an original, like naming device, that nomenclature, I guess I could say, and so I think it’s great. The book you mentioned, they’re like subway stations, right? Like little dots on the subway station. Is that correct?
Kevin Chen: Yeah, I used a metaphor of a subway station. And I don’t know if any of us have had the experience of traveling to a major city, there are some of these, like in Asia, right? But also in other parts of the world, where you’re traveling on the metro, or the subway, or whatever, and you’re in the station, and you’re looking at the map, and it’s like just this. There’s like, so many lines and all these stations with all these foreign names, sometimes, but as as complicated and messy as that map looks, it’s actually got designed to it, and the engineers, city planners, etc, they they put in a lot of thought to designing that subway system that the map represents.
And what makes the whole system work is that you can transfer from one line to another. So let’s say there’s, like, 15 lines, and they’re all these different colors. You can travel from, like, the red line to the green line, if there’s if they intersect, and there’s a transfer tape station where you would get off and, you know, get off the red train and get on the green one, and I use that as a metaphor to describe what Nexus passages are like. So the Old Testament, or the Bible, can feel like it’s this tangled mess of lines going in all these different directions, but these Nexus passages connect different lines together for us. So, yeah, that particular metaphor comes from some personal experiences, like looking at these maps. And I don’t know why I felt like connecting that to these passages in Scripture.
Aaron Lee: Yeah, yeah, it works for me. It works for me. It’s great. Um, you also mentioned it being like, you know, the pieces of the puzzle, I guess putting it all together, and that was really helped for me, to me as well.
I don’t remember when I first heard about biblical theology. It had to be like, maybe when I was in college, or something like that. But I want to know your experience studying the Bible, and when this entire concept of biblical theology and the Nexus passages, you know, when did that catch your attention? How did that change the way that you read the Bible? I’m sure there had to be some.
Kevin Chen: I was so blessed in my youth group, in my high school years, and even onto my college days under the same pastor, to study scripture seriously under him, and that eventually led me to go to seminary. And I think it was really in the seminary that one of my teachers, who’s been with the Lord since 2017 Dr John Sailhammer, his teaching really brought out how interconnected scripture is. And so I was taking these classes from him, and he was showing us all these amazing things in the Bible about how this passage is connected to this other passage, and it’s not just the connections, but how these connections can help us understand Scripture itself. So to use, like a really, hopefully quick example here, like in Genesis 3:15, God says that the seed of the woman will come and crush the head of the snake. And that’s a prediction of of a future conquering hero who’s going to defeat that serpent, who I take to be Satan. And that’s a great and important prophecy in and of itself.
But when someone like my teacher, points out to you that you know there’s other passages in the scripture that reuse or refer to this original prophecy, then it’s like, whoa. There’s like, some more continuity to Scripture, and it shows you that just how important that original prophecy was, such as, and this is just one example, like in Numbers 24:17, there’s another messianic prophecy that says that a star will come from Jacob and a scepter will arise in Israel, probably talking about a king, right? And he’s going to crush the foreheads of Moab, Israel’s enemies. And so the amazing thing about that verse is not only that, it’s saying that there’s going to be an End Times Israelite King who’s going to defeat Israel’s enemies. But it’s also reusing the imagery and the picture from the seed of the woman prophecy in Genesis 3:15. And so he just was showing us these kinds of things over and over again. I was like, wow, this is amazing. So it opened my eyes to studying scripture, not only passage by passage, which is still valid and really important, but also being sensitive to when there are connections, important connections, to other passages.
Aaron Lee: I think it’s kind of incredible that you were aware of it at such a young age. I’m just imagining you like like you, and when you know, I guess what you said High School, right? And just kind of opening your eyes at such a young age, oh, that was, like, awesome, yeah, yeah, some, some of those stuff was like in seminary, sure, but it started like,in my review, I mentioned a significant presence of Nexus passages in poetry and song. Okay, so I want to make sure, first, Did I did I read this correctly in your book? Is that correct and true statement? And then, um, I get this is a personal question now, like, what implications does this have for the songs we sing in church today? I can imagine there’s got to be something that is relatable and applicable from this. Let me have it.
Kevin Chen: Yeah, you got it right as far as your observation, and I love your question, you know, coming from a worship leader, worship leader standpoint, sometimes, like, I’m actually in the congregation, right as, yeah, yeah.
Aaron Lee: So yeah, we didn’t say from the get go, but yeah, we go to the same church. I recently found out. We’ll talk about that later, though.
Kevin Chen: There’s a couple, I think, fascinating things about the question that you’re raising. One is that yes, there are Nexus passages in the Old Testament, and not all of them, but a good number them are poetry and or songs. And I think that shows you how important the poetry and the songs are to the Bible and the meaning of the Bible. So that’s amazing that, yeah, on the one hand, we might, you know, talented folks and gifted folks, perhaps like yourself, you might read Scripture and extract things and, you know, craft them into music or something. But there’s also already songs in Scripture, obviously the Psalms, but also in some other places, because some of the Nexus passages that you saw in the book are poetry, but not in the Psalms. So it you know, there might be, I did one on the Song of the Sea, right from Exodus 15.
And extending this to your question that you actually asked, I think there’s a parallel. What kind of parallel is there? Well, in the Bible, a Nexus passage that’s also a poem is really drawing together other passages from the Bible. It’s distilling. You could also say that sometimes it distills theology from different parts of the Bible and then puts it together and presents it in a beautiful, memorable and theological way in that poem or song. And the parallel, maybe you already know where I’m going, is that that’s, that’s what’s our best songs do?
We could use a classic example of hymns, right? So why do him stand the test of time, right? It’s because a lot of them are doing something similar to what you find these biblical poetic Nexus passages doing ie Isaac Watts or something like that, or Charles Wesley. Their minds are like already, like so saturated with scripture, and then they can pull different things from different parts of Scripture and put it together into a particular song that sometimes we still worship God with today?
Aaron Lee: I mean, it sounds like a defense for biblically rich theologically sound songs. Is that? Is that correct?
Kevin Chen: Yeah, yeah. I hadn’t even thought of that, but that’s why I love your question so much, because I think it, I think it has application and it connects there.
Aaron Lee: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I, whenever I interview people, I like to ask personal questions. And that was like, Okay, this is I’m just gonna ask him then, well, one, because I do believe that, yeah, they’re not, there must be some application there. But then also you’re part of the congregation, so it’s like, okay, we can make this really relevant for us. I want to shift gears now. And this is a bigger question, I think, why and how should preachers incorporate Nexus passages into their sermons?
Kevin Chen: Yeah, this is also a really good question. So one other piece of terminology that I can add to Nexus passages is that nexus passages are related to something called illusion, or sometimes called intertextuality.
Basically, that’s when that’s just referring to the general reality that some passages in the Bible are intentionally related to another. So one passage might allude to another, or there might be intertextuality that’s intended by the author between two passages. Going back to your original question, Nexus passages are those passages like I defined in the book itself, that have a really high level of interconnectivity. So that means that the connections they have to other passages are going to be really a lot. So I think practically speaking, as someone who teaches and preaches in a church setting occasionally, is that I wouldn’t necessarily try to show all the connections to a Nexus passage. In a sermon, there’s there’s too many.
I would still want to focus on the particular passage that we’re teaching on, but I might draw out one or two other passages that really help us understand this one. And I think that that’s good enough. So in that setting, I’m not trying to demonstrate that this is a Nexus passage, because one or two passages related passages wouldn’t necessarily do that, but it does, like sort of slowly introduce the congregation to the fact, Whoa, yeah, there’s, there’s, there’s significant sometimes to another passage, helping us understand the one that we’re focusing on right now.
Aaron Lee: Yeah, it sounds like you don’t want to hijack the sermon from the next standpoint, or just make it a whole lecture on biblical theology. Um, yeah, I guess, be selective in what can actually support the text or the aim of the preaching goal, I guess, yeah. Um, well, man, thank you so much, Kevin, for the time we’re getting close to the end here.
Can you tell us about your interest in Chinese theological education? So let’s make this relevant for SOLA, I guess. And then, how do Nexus Passages Help Asian Americans better understand the Bible? Do you have any thoughts on how this can connect to our ethnic heritage and then, yeah? I mean, this is bonus question, I guess so too for your career journey included being an electrical engineer and then going to become a seminary professor. Yeah. So I guess all of this, does this have anything to do with with your background as an Asian American?
Kevin Chen: Yeah, yeah, definitely. Stereotypical Asian American job, right? Not that everybody needs to do that. But to start from the first question in this series, Chinese theological education, I feel like that’s a special kind of God thing. I at the start of my teaching career. About three years in, I started getting asked to teach in Mandarin, and that was something that had never, ever crossed my mind, because I was not a good Chinese school student. I only made it to sixth grade until, presumably, my complaining, you know, stopped my parents from, you know, trying to continue any further. And so I didn’t really touch it, that is manner for like, 20 years.
But I started slowly getting into it. And from the very beginning, even though my Mandarin was really bad, I just had my eyes open to the tremendous and even overwhelming needs in Chinese circles for theological education. And so I get, kept getting asked every year to help out for a couple weeks. And even though it was only two weeks a year, I was like, basically inspired to self study Chinese so that I could get better every single year that I was doing it. And a few years after that,
I got invited to teach at my second institution, Christian witness in San Jose, which is a Mandarin speaking seminary. And leading up to that, I was already feeling like I wanted to do more than two weeks a year, and then it became a full time job for five years. So I’m still trying to juggle both. I actually teach in English at Gateway. I also teach in Mandarin at Gateway, and it means a lot to me to be able to do both and my students have been so patient and understanding of my learning and even just really encouraging me and supporting me.
So that’s that side of it, Nexus passages and Asian Americans. I would extend it to Asians, at least for this particular subway system metaphor, I feel like the Asians that I talk to like it. I mean because, because we’ve ridden these subways, whether you know it’s whatever you know major city it may be, they kind of like that metaphor, or or we like that metaphor. I like it.
And yeah, the career journey, I’ll give you a short version of it. I, I, yeah, I think I wasn’t really, I really enjoyed studying Scripture since my high school years, but I was not sure about whether I was going to, like, go into full time ministry or anything like that. And so I also liked math and science, and so I went that route, you know, with engineering and then worked for three years. But actually at that time, I was already taking seminary classes part time. And it was towards the end of my MDiv studies at Western seminary up in Northern California that I started thinking, Okay, what should I do next? And it was also at that time that I started taking classes from that professor I mentioned earlier that I felt so inspired by his teaching. And so ultimately, you know, there’s, there’s a lot of prayer and agonizing that went into it, but I decided to quit my job and to study full time for a PhD. And even during that time, I wasn’t, you don’t really know that you’re necessarily going to become a professor even after you get the degree, if you get it. But by God’s grace, you know, a door open for me, and by God’s grace, I’ve been doing it for this amount of time. So thanks be to God for that.
Aaron Lee: That’s an incredible testimony. I’m thankful that you’re open to sharing all of that with us, you know, and also just, I’m thankful for your work. I know I said it was an academic book, which is true, but I don’t say that pejoratively. Okay, I’m very, I’m very excited to read it. And I think, um, I think your work is incredible. Thank you so much, Kevin, for sharing with us here at sola. And on a personal note, I’m looking forward to just doing life together with you at FCBC Walnut, thanks for the time.
Kevin Chen: Thanks so much, Aaron. It’s a pleasure to talk, and I look forward to more times like this.
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