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For many, the deep theological education that one receives at a seminary has felt unattainable due to geographical and time constraints. Dr. John Schwandt is helping to bridge this gap with Redemption Seminary, a fully online self-paced program that allows people at all stages of life to dive deep into the Bible with the pairing of 1:1 live mentorship and rich courses. Join us as we chat with him about the value of theological education for everyone – not just pastors!

Episode Transcription

Note: This transcription may vary from the words used in the original episode for better readability.

Marlin Detweiler:

Hello again. You are joining us for another episode of Veritas Vox, the voice of classical Christian education. Today we have with us John Schwandt, the president of Redemption Seminary. Welcome, John.

Dr. John Schwandt:

Hi, Marlin. Fantastic to be having this conversation across the United States. You're down in Florida. I'm all the way up in Bellingham, Washington.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah, I'm actually sitting in my car today through necessary circumstances. And one other item of disclosure just for the audience, John. You and I have been good friends for many years and I should say, in case someone thinks I should have said it. So I will, that I have been invited by you and have agreed and serve on the board of Redemption Seminary and really enjoy what's going on there.

But before we get started with talking about the seminary and also your background in Greek, tell us a little bit about yourself, your family, your education, and maybe a little bit about your career path.

Dr. John Schwandt:

Well, thanks. It’s getting longer as I'm getting older. These stories just keep coming in. The Lord just keeps surprising me. I would not have chosen this career path if it were up to me. Well, to start with, I'm married and have four kids. They're growing up and moving out. So I'm a grandparent now.

Marlin Detweiler:
Wow!

Dr. John Schwandt:

Yeah, We're thrilled with this.

Marlin Detweiler:

Your beard shows the gray at the top, doesn’t it!

Dr. John Schwandt:

Yes. Yeah. We'll see how long that lasts! I grew up in Idaho in a mainline church and really just was an American. What do you view Christianity a a central piece of my identity. It just was kind of in the fabric. But when I went to high school I basically rebelled and thought that that Christianity, or at least what I was taught was just stories. And that we were just fooling ourselves, wasting our time. So I became an atheist. And then that blossomed as I went to college and I became a strong atheist. I was majoring in philosophy.

Marlin Detweiler:

Where were you in school?

Dr. John Schwandt:

So I went to University of Idaho in Moscow, and I loved to debate the campus crusade people. I was in a fraternity. I would love to get into it with them and bring up the problem of evil, or whatever. All the cheap shots I could I could bring out.

And then I couldn't in my own heart disprove Christianity, though. I was taking all these philosophy courses, and the best I could get was solipsism. There's no meaning in anything, not even in my own arguments. And it just didn't even hold together. And it really made me mad. Like a lot of Sartre, you can just hear it in his writing, where he just hates his own position.

And so I was the proverbial atheist, “There is no God and I hate him.” And I didn't like that I had this hatred as well because it was working against my argument. And the whole time my mom was praying for me and would send me notes and things saying I'm praying for you.

And I hated that as well. I didn't like that. And so you could just see the trouble I was in. Eventually, the Lord just changed my heart. I realized I had no putting to stand on my own positions. They were they were vacuous. And that no matter how crazy the world saved through Jesus coming to Earth in the form of a man 2000 years ago was, it was the only thing that made sense and that made conversations like this make sense.

Transcendence makes sense now. And so it was another interesting story. I was done. I walked out along the roads. It was snowing. I didn't think I was going to come back. But these two old people, I don't know. I'm a very conservative Christian, but I also think these two people could have been angels, in my mind. They were they were at least sent by God. They came by. They pulled over and asked me if I wanted a ride. I did not look like someone you should ask if they want to ride to. And I said yes. They brought me back into town. This was before the sun was coming up. It was snowing and I knew that that they were going to church.

And I was like, they would really like it if I said, “God bless you.” And so I was having this big turmoil in the back. I was crying kind of in the back. And as they dropped me off, I said that that was my moment of repentance. And I just started repenting from there on out.

That was my first year in college, and then I just swung and wanted to dive deeply into Christianity as far as I could get. And so eventually I finished my degree in Landscape Architecture, I was working on philosophy, but I always wanted to study theology.

Marlin Detweiler:

So you didn't go to church with them that day or anything?

Dr. John Schwandt:

No.

Marlin Detweiler:

But the reason I ask, I had a funny story. I was I was driving to church, happened to be driving by myself, but I was in college, so I was back at my parent's home and I saw a hitchhiker under a bridge. He’d obviously slept there hitchhiking. And he said he was headed to the turnpike and it'd be too much explanation to give all the geography on this.

But to make it short, I had to. I was driving to church, taking him about a third of his way there. So I said to him, I said, “Look, if you go to church with me, I'll take you to the turnpike where you will be more likely to get a ride to where you're going.”

So he said, “I'll do that.” I have no idea what resulted. But I went to a small Mennonite church at that point, the church I was raised in. Everybody was very friendly and nobody asked any questions. They just come up and introduce themselves to him and say, “Hi, how are you doing? Thanks for being here.” Yeah, I think it was really a remarkable experience for him and I don't know if I'll ever know if anything resulting from it was kind of fun. So I thought maybe you were in that category.

Dr. John Schwandt:

We will know in heaven here. We'll have this conversation again with that gentleman. So I finished college and decided I would start as a landscape architect and then decided I wanted to switch my career and hobby. So I went back to school to finish out philosophy because I wanted to go into apologetics. I wanted that philosophy. But then I realized I really should go to seminary to get my theological ducks in a row before I go and get a master's degree or Ph.D. in philosophy.

A lot of people don't even know what a seminary is. The seminary is just a theological graduate school where you can get a Master’s degree.

Marlin Detweiler:

That's really a good, simple explanation. That's important to what we're after today, what we're talking about.

Dr. John Schwandt:

Yeah. So, I got a master's in theology, and languages were not my strong point at all. In fact, I hired tutors before I went to the seminary because this seminary required languages and it was strong in them. And that's what I wanted. I wanted as rigorous as I could get. And that's why I hired tutors because I knew that it was going to be so difficult for me.

And I had failed Spanish in college a number of times because I just didn't want to learn a different grammar. I thought, okay, just give me the different vocabulary and the decoder ring and I'll figure it out. I didn't realize, okay, you have to learn a different grammar. I was unwilling.

Marlin Detweiler:

But you have become quite well known over the years and in a prior career really for your emphasis, your knowledge and your encouragement with regard to Greek. And I want to get to that. But right now I want to focus on hearing about how Redemption Seminary came about and who it caters to, who had served so well.

Dr. John Schwandt:

Basically, I had this dream with some other people that seminary was just too expensive, too inconvenient. We just wanted to make it as accessible as possible for as many people as possible to get a deep understanding of theology. That understanding that you would get through that experience, that I had to leave my town, move across states and just kind of take loans out to go to seminary.

And we didn't think that that was necessary. So that was our dream was to create a format where people could learn the same theology that you get in school, in seminary, in a physical brick-and-mortar seminary, but also learn at your own pace. This is for mothers very busy, we have professionals, we have lawyers, we have doctors, we have truck drivers, all sorts.

Marlin Detweiler:

And professional athletes!

Dr. John Schwandt:

Professional athletes, yes! These people all have crazy schedules. We all have crazy schedules and we believe seminary shouldn't wreck your life, shouldn't wreck your spiritual disciplines in order to advance in that. So how can we reinvent that?

Marlin Detweiler:

Really great way to look at it. Yeah, the seminary experience for many people is pick up after a career up to 30, 35 years old for many pick up and move and stop for three years. Whatever you've been doing, that's a tough way to go for many people.

Dr. John Schwandt:

Yeah, well, a lot of people drop out or just say, “It's not it's not available for me.” And so seminary, I don't think it's just for future pastors. It really should be for anybody who wants answers, who wants to dig down deeper and bless others with their gained wisdom. So what what do we need for that?

We need it to be 100% online so people don't have to move. But at the same time being 100% online, we also didn't want to lose that relational quality. So that's where we have mentors and, the lecture part of of school people get very excited about. I think that's that's where the learning happens, it’s in the lecture. That's just like a great book delivered very nicely. All of it just yeah, information delivery, the knowledge happens in your own head. How are you applying that?

And the real skill then is learning how to apply that theology to your life, but in regular school, you don't have anybody checking that work. And that's the most important work. They're just checking to see if you have the information. But with mentoring, one on one mentoring, we have a person who's looking at questions that ask you to apply and seeing how you're weaving it into your life.

And boy, that's where the learning really happens. So that was a big component. We're seeing benefits that aren't available in traditional seminaries and weren't even thought of. So there are trade tradeoffs. So some people view online school or nontraditional school as something less. It's really something different. And so traditional school is more of that monastery mentality. This is more of an apprenticeship model.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah, Well, I've often said with regard to online education that one of the things you have to define is what's most important. And as far as I'm concerned, with all my experience in education, the most important part of education is the teacher. And when you like our online school, have no geographic limits for who you select, you have the ability to do things that other institutions don't because no one location can field the same quality that you can field when it's entirely available from anywhere.

Dr. John Schwandt:

Right! Yeah. So we're able to get the best lecturers. And not only do we get the best lecturers around, we get we also look for people with teachers hearts. And a lot of times the lecturers aren't the best people with teacher’s hearts.

Marlin Detweiler:

It's that's understandable. Yeah. Gifts are different, right?

Dr. John Schwandt:

I've talked to some of these great lectures and asked, “Would you like to mentor and really invest yourselves in the student’s life where they’re the primary emphasis, not the theology?” and they’re like no, “I like what I like. My theology.” Like, okay, it's not the job for you then. So we have over 20 mentors that students select for each course, so you can select people from your denomination or differences or just they have different expertise.

So each course, you can stick with one or vary it for each course. And that's kind of how we deal with the multi-denominational aspect as well. So you don't have to agree with the lecturer. This is all about applying that theology. You don't even have to agree with the mentor.

But in heaven, we're going to have people from every denomination there. And we need to get better at breaking down some of the silos and interacting with one another. I'm not saying that there's just this big pudding of theology, and differences don't matter. But I do think we have to get better at talking to one another and appreciating some of the truths that are in each background.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah, I might even say we need to get better at listening rather than talking. We need to get better at talking. But listening is more important because it helps us understand. How would you define the core of the seminary’s belief of what the summary stands for theologically?

Dr. John Schwandt:

We really just tried to distill down what really matters, and a lot of that is authorial intent of the Scripture so does the Scripture when you're interpreting the Scripture, does it mean what the the original authors meant? Do you force your meaning into it, or do you take it as it was intended?

So the intended meaning of the of the scripture. So that allows us to have a real argument and not just be theologically beating our chests. And then that prayer works. And basically, once you have those two things, the belief in a personal God that Scripture is authoritative, that has meaning that we can argue over, and prayer that our God is a relational God, that prayer works.

Wow! Pretty much that kind of line puts everybody in the same camp, and so then we had the the Apostles Creed on top of that. But that's pretty much the core.

Marlin Detweiler:

The seminary is now five or six years old?

Dr. John Schwandt:

We were founded in 2018; our first students came in 2020.

Marlin Detweiler:

What have you found to be the real value points, and how has the mentorship played out? What you've dreamt of is now coming to fruition, and how would you say the dream has been realized or modified?

Dr. John Schwandt:

Well, I listen to the graduates and we're continuing to record interviews with the graduates because our students are older. Our average age is 40, 42. And the thing with older people is they let you know what they think generally, and I guess younger people do too, but older people really do. So, our students and graduates have surprised me with how they are and what they're doing. A lot of them are going on for doctoral work. A lot of them are using their last project to advance their ministry. That's how it was designed: you don't just prepare for your future. Each course is designed to further your current ministry; you weave it into your life.

Another thing is that we didn't want to constrain the spirit. Or another way to think about this, I guess the school was built on an industrial mindset where it's a factory, and you bring in the raw material, and you want all the the output to be the same cookies. Where, “He's a Harvard man,” and they all look the same. And we intentionally did not want to do that. We wanted to be the opposite of that. God has a different calling for everyone. And so we want the graduates to be very different from each other but thankful. And that thread of gratitude and acknowledgment of the Lord's blessing and advancement, that growth, our motto is “From strength to strength.”

And so just seeing that development, and that's what we're seeing in lots of different ways from these students. One just had an interview recently with Gregory Richardson; he is a lay Christian, so he's not in full-time ministry. And he makes a strong argument that the church needs theological experts in both domains, full-time ministry and lay Christians.

And he just made that argument so strongly, and in his joy of weaving theology into his life.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I look back on my life and the people that I've had the opportunity to sit at their feet, so to speak, and the theological depth that they were able to teach me. I hope they think that I learned it, but it was so different than what was typical of my growing up, and even more so, it was so atypical of what is common in the life of today's Christians.

I had a discussion recently with another man who, when I talked about the value of what is called covenant renewal worship, his comment was to say, well, not everybody is called to be theological. And I wasn't talking about something particularly theological. You could get into something deeply theological with covenant worship, but I wasn't.

And I thought this wasn't the time or the place. But that's a sad commentary and really something that needs to be addressed. If we start thinking that “Jesus is my friend,” we don't really understand the nature of holiness. We don't understand that the real work of redemption, our theological imprecision, and the casualness with which we approach theology puts us in a position of maybe even not believing what Christianity really is, that we've made up another religion in some senses, and it's something we should take very seriously. And I love that Redemption Seminary is doing that.

Dr. John Schwandt:

That's a really important paradox or...

Marlin Detweiler:

Distinction?

Dr. John Schwandt:

Yes, the distinction there between the holiness, the reverence, and the approachability of God. And it's something that is a mystery. God with us is one of the profound mysteries of the Bible. And some people could argue that is the story of the Bible is how does this happen? And you can get into trouble when you fall into one ditch or the other, where He’s so holy that He is not approachable, but it is so approachable that He’s not holy. And so the theology is for everyone.

To some people, that word is a loaded word, theology. Some people think that it means systematic theology, and it doesn't have to mean that. I initially wanted to be in apologetics. I was strong in systematics. I wanted to know the answer to everything. And I'll tease out the scriptural response to any possible problem or question. And that's what my job here is, and maybe even produce a book that would be very helpful. And I think a lot of people think, okay, systematic theology, these books, if they are actually showing you how the Bible applies to every question, well, what do you need the Bible for if you have the systematic? That's the instruction manual for life.

So that's the danger of systematics. They are important because we have to apply it. But what I really fell in love with actually from finally making it through the languages, and that's what happened when I was when I went to the seminary, they had an intensive Greek course. It was only four weeks long, and so it finished before I could quit.

And then I realized, well, shoot, it's a finite body of knowledge. And so even someone as slow learning as me, I can get through it eventually. And so, and then I ended up teaching it. That's how I became a Greek scholar, is by teaching it.

So that's where a real dramatic change happened for me as well. Once I started reading the scriptures in Greek and I take my Greek Bible – any time someone was reading the Bible in English, I read it in Greek, because it's I feel that’s an immediate blessing right there. I can hear both at the same time.

Marlin Detweiler:

That's quite an ability you’ve developed.

Dr. John Schwandt:

Well, you can get it from almost the first week of Greek. Once you know the alphabet and you know some words you can start just picking out words. You get benefit from that and eventually it gets more and more and more. And then you start to look at the causal connections and you really start to meditate on the actual words in the Bible, not in translation, but the actual words.

And you start to think about it. And I fell in love with the Bible just from the original languages and so much that I didn't care about systematics as much anymore. I didn't want to go into apologetics anymore. I just wanted to read the Bible and talk and draw out these connections from chapter to chapter, what's happening between verses, and the structure of things. It was just so engaging. I didn't realize the depth in there. That's why I put my career in there.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah, you became a Greek scholar. You taught Greek in a college. You worked in developing Greek curriculum in a number of different ways, developed the Greek exam. That's the context within which we first met years ago. And I have come to think of you as the go-to guy for Greek. And in our classical education circles, we hear a lot about Latin, and for very good reason.

And Latin is taught as a way, as a tool of leverage for mastering English, whereas Greek is not nearly as much that tool. It's not the way to master English, but it is still very important in a classical education. What would you say about that to our listeners who are considering Greek for themselves or for their children in their classical education?

Dr. John Schwandt:

Well, so I also taught Latin. I know Latin and I love Latin. Latin is its own animal. It's a sister language to Greek. And actually, I was working on conversational Latin, conversational Greek. And they are actually super close. The oldest books would teach Greek from Latin. They just presumed a Latin understanding and then just a little tweak, and then you know Greek. People might argue with me, that's a little more than a little tweak.

Marlin Detweiler:

I think I'd argue with you!

Dr. John Schwandt:

But if you go all the way and come out the other side of this tunnel, it actually is. Everything, all the structure, is the same. They have their own way of doing it. There are so many commonalities between them. And actually, I think Greek is an easier language than Latin.

We could get into words like declension. Latin has five, Greek really has three. There's only one conjugation for verbs in Greek. And there's there's many more in Latin. So, Latin is a little more complex. Kind of like English, Latin has a lot more spelling options. It's actually a little more difficult. Greek does tend to be a little more poetic. But I do think historically speaking, the scholars who studied classics or even if they were true scholars, you just didn't learn Latin without learning Greek as well. There are sister languages. I'm a sucker for these old books, and they will move in and out of either one.

And I get it now. It's just it's taken a while to get there. So it's not that it's not a huge step. A big question I have for homeschoolers or Christian classical education people is why are you learning Latin?

Are you learning it for English grammar, for mental push-ups, just so that you can have a higher level of reasoning, or just faster processing? It does all that. But are you going to read any Latin with it? What's the benefit of it? With Greek, you're going to get the benefit of the thing that you're studying. You're going to be reading the Bible.

Marlin Detweiler:

It's pretty remarkable to think about, and it's amazing to me to consider I need to go sit next to you in worship sometime and watch you do that, that would be great.

Well, John, thank you so much for joining us today. Redemption Seminary is doing some great work. I'm excited to be a part of it. I'm excited for our people to become more familiar with it.

So thank you for joining us today.

Dr. John Schwandt:

Thank you. Any time.

Marlin Detweiler:

Yeah. Folks, you've been with us on an episode of Veritas Vox, the voice of classical Christian education. Thank you for joining us.