PneumaReview.com: Please tell our readers briefly about your conversion experience.

Carol Kaminski: I grew up in Australia in a Christian family, but my parents got divorced when I was young, and they stopped going to church. I continued to attend youth group at the local Baptist church and God provided wonderful “spiritual parents” who invited me to events and youth group camps. I received great Bible teaching, and when I was in my late teens, I responded to a gospel message and met Jesus. My life changed that day, and I have been walking with the Lord for over four decades.

PneumaReview.com: What ministries have you participated in since you became a Christian?

Carol Kaminski: Shortly after becoming a Christian, I got involved in youth ministry in my local church and helped to lead worship. I also led Bible studies and lived in a Youth for Christ home for homeless young women. When I was in my mid-twenties, I felt God calling me to go to Bible college. I studied at the Bible College of Victoria (now called Melbourne School of Theology) for several years, and then God called me to study overseas, which is what led me to study at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. After completing two master’s programs at the seminary, the Lord opened up an opportunity for me to do further study at Cambridge University in England. After completing my doctorate, I began teaching at the seminary, which is what I’ve done for the past two decades.

PneumaReview.com: A major focus of your work now is CASKET EMPTY. Please tell us the significance of the name as well as a bit about the ministry.

PneumaReview.com: Casket Empty is being used around the world. What languages have portions, or in some cases the complete CASKET EMPTY timelines been translated into?

Carol Kaminski: The Casket Empty material has been translated into several languages, including Chinese, Korean, Arabic, Farsi, Thai, and more recently, Spanish. God has been blessing this material and it has been a wonderful way to contribute to the global church. I was in Thailand at the beginning of this year and had the opportunity to train pastors and church leaders using the Casket Empty curriculum. What a blessing!

PneumaReview.com: You recently had a major commentary on 1 & 2 Chronicles published. Please tell us about some of the features of that commentary.

Carol Kaminski: Sometimes people are surprised to learn that I have written a commentary on Chronicles because it is one of the more neglected books in the Old Testament. I’ve always loved the stories of Israel’s kings like Asa and Jehoshaphat. They are such great kings who trusted in God amid insurmountable circumstances. It was great blessing to write a commentary on this theologically rich book. My commentary has been published in Zondervan’s Story of God Bible Commentary. What I love about this series is that each book is interpreted within the redemptive story of the Bible, so this means that books are not interpreted in isolation, but each one is interpreted in the context of Scripture. Another distinctive feature of the series is that each volume has forty percent devoted to application. This is unusual for a commentary on the Old Testament, but it is one of the great benefits of the series. This means that every chapter in Chronicles has a section on application!

PneumaReview.com: In addition, you have also written an eight-week Bible study based on these books. What is the format of the study, and how can it best be used?

Carol Kaminski: I wrote a Bible study on Chronicles because I wanted to make sure that the material would be accessible in the local church. My Bible study is called Cultivating Godliness because this title highlights so many of the important themes in Chronicles, like prayer, seeking the face of God, crying out to God for help, and singing joyfully to God. Through this book, God is calling his people to focus on his kingdom, and to cultivate prayer, seeking God, and trust in him. The Bible study is eight weeks, and each week one of these key topics is explored, so it’s a great opportunity for people to dive deeper into Chronicles in a small group setting.

PneumaReview.com: Do you think most Christians read 1 & 2 Chronicles in the course of a year? If you don’t think they do, why are these books neglected?

Carol Kaminski: I think Chronicles has been neglected for two reasons. First, since some of the stories are already in Samuel and Kings, people assume that there is nothing new in Chronicles or that it simply repeats material from these other books. But there are many additional stories in Chronicles that are not found in Samuel or Kings. Most importantly, the familiar stories have been applied to Israel’s new context, and we find may sermons and sermonettes in Chronicles that are rich in theology and applicable for our lives

The second reason why Chronicles has been neglected is that it begins with nine chapters of genealogies, and that tends to put off most people! But in the commentary, I explain how to understand the opening genealogies because they really do have a theological purpose. I think once people start to understand why they are included, the genealogies make more sense.

PneumaReview.com: What advice would you give to believers to help them see the value of these two biblical books?

Carol Kaminski: I would encourage someone to start to read through Chronicles, perhaps initially skipping over the genealogies to begin with, but to focus on the lives of Israel’s kings and the themes that are highlighted. People will find that these topics are highly relevant for our lives, and they provide wonderful examples for us, showing us what it means to walk with the Lord and trust in him.

PneumaReview.com: Please identify some of the major themes in 1 & 2 Chronicles for us.

Carol Kaminski: I’ve already mentioned some of the themes like prayer, seeking the face of God, crying out to God for help, but there are also other themes like generosity, listening to wise counsel, and unity. The book also presents a vision for God’s people, who are called to be a worshipping and witnessing people among the nations. So, there’s also a global vision in Chronicles, this is why it begins with all those genealogies!

PneumaReview.com: What do these books have to say to the church today?

Carol Kaminski: The book of Chronicles was written during the final period of the Old Testament. God’s people had been in exile in Babylon for seventy years and now they have returned and rebuilt the temple. But life has not been easy back in Jerusalem. God’s people are living under the Persian Empire. They must rebuild their homes and start all over again. And there is no king ruling on the throne in Jerusalem. But it is during this time of transition and upheaval that God calls his people to focus on his heavenly kingdom and to cultivate godly habits in the covenant community. In our context, we haven’t been into exile, but we are facing a major transition because our Christian values that used to be so much part of our culture have become increasingly secular. The question for us is: How do we live in this new context? The book of Chronicles can help us. The Chronicler, inspired by God’s Spirit, is presenting a vision of God’s everlasting kingdom with worship at the center. This is surely a much-needed vision for us today!

PneumaReview.com: Where can people learn more about Casket Empty and your books on 1 & 2 Chronicles?

Carol Kaminski: People can find out more about Casket Empty by going to our website casketempty.com. My commentary on 1-2 Chronicles is available on Amazon simply by Googling “Chronicles” with my last name “Kaminski.”

Part of the Rightly Understanding God’s Word series by Craig S. Keener.

As appearing in Pneuma Review Spring 2006

Take a course on biblical interpretation with New Testament scholar, Professor Craig S. Keener.

The Reader’s “Social Location”

For those of us who embrace the Bible as God’s Word, our goal is always to hear what God was saying in Scripture. Because we believe God inspired the authors, we look for that meaning first of all in what God inspired the original writers to say to their original audiences. However else a text might be applied, it is the original meaning we can be sure was correct, and that provides us the model for how to apply Scripture in our own situations today.

Some students of literature have moved away from the question of what the author meant to the question of how a reader understands a text. Although we do not emphasize that question here (our primary goal for interpreting the Bible is understanding what the author meant, because we believe the Bible’s authors were inspired by the Holy Spirit), it is an interesting question and has some relevance. Different readers understand texts in different ways, and that is often because of the cultures and traditions we start with. Being sensitive to this issue can help us better understand why people interpret texts the way they do. Sometimes it can even expose our own prejudices or ideas we simply took for granted because we assumed that everyone thought the same way.

For example, a minister in a church that practices infant baptism may read about the baptism of the jailer’s “household” (Acts 16:33) and see a proof for infant baptism here. Someone who practices only believer’s baptism will object that we do not know that the jailer’s household included infants and that they all seem to have heard and believed (16:31-32). In modern biblical debates, everyone reads chosen passages in light of other passages they believe support their viewpoint. This is not to say that we should not try to make a better case for one position than another, but simply to observe that we most naturally incline to positions we have been taught. Recognizing the history of various lines of interpretation can help us guard against bias in the way we read the Bible. Church history is a very important safeguard in helping us put our own views in broader perspective. We can recognize the background of our own views and consider how this background influences us for good or ill. We can also challenge ourselves: how “obvious” is a view of a Bible passage if no one in history ever thought of it before? (This is not to say that majority views in church history are always correct, either. Sometimes those majorities simply reflect the cultures of those Christians writing down most of the interpretations! But church history does help us be more cautious.)

Recognizing different backgrounds (“social locations”) of various interpreters can also enrich the way we read the Bible. People in different settings ask different kinds of questions than people in other circumstances do, so we can sometimes learn from people who ask different questions as long as we follow the rules of context noted above. For example, Medieval European theologians focused on what the Bible says about issues like the nature of God, Christ, salvation, and angels. These questions are legitimate (and issues like Christ and salvation are central to the New Testament and to Christianity), but a believer who is beaten every day while working as a debt slave in Pakistan will also want to hear what the Bible says about justice, about suffering, and about comfort. The questions do not contradict one another, and both may come to legitimate conclusions; the Bible is big enough to address both kinds of issues.

Part of the Rightly Understanding God’s Word series by Craig S. Keener.

As appearing in Pneuma Review Fall 2004.

Take a course on biblical interpretation with New Testament scholar, Professor Craig S. Keener.

Bible Background (Part 1 of 2)

In any communication, some matters are stated but others can be left assumed. For instance, I am writing in English, on the assumption that I and my readers both know English; if Paul wrote to the Corinthians in Greek, he could assume that they knew Greek. I assume that my readers know what a Bible is, and would be safe to assume that my readers know what a car is, what a radio is, and what pounded yam is (though Paul’s readers knew none of these things, except what the Old Testament part of the Bible was). Paul could likewise allude to specific customs his readers practiced without explaining them, because the Corinthians already knew exactly what he meant (e.g., “baptism for the dead,” 1 Cor 15:29). But for us to understand Paul’s meaning we must either know Greek or have a translation, and we must either know the culture the biblical writers shared with their audiences or have access to resources that help explain that culture. What the writer could assume as part of his meaning was as much a part of the meaning as what he had to state.

We have noted previously the importance of whole-book context, because most books of the Bible stress particular themes addressing particular issues. We should not skip from one book of the Bible to another (except where one book specifically refers back to an earlier and widely circulated one), at least not until we have figured out each passage in its own context first. But one reason particular books emphasize particular themes is that they addressed particular situations. Although people sometimes ignore such verses, many verses explicitly state particular audiences for these books—for instance, the Christians in Rome (Rom 1:7) or in Corinth (1 Cor 1:2). There are appropriate ways to apply these books to today, but first we must take seriously what these works explicitly claim to be: works addressed to specific audiences in specific times and places. In other words, before we can determine how to apply the ancient meaning today, we must understand the ancient meaning. To skip this important step in Bible interpretation is to ignore what the Bible claims for itself.

Part of the Rightly Understanding God’s Word series by Craig S. Keener.

As appearing in Pneuma Review Winter 2004.

Take a course on biblical interpretation with New Testament scholar, Professor Craig S. Keener.

Whole-Book Context

While it is important to read each passage in the context that immediately surrounds it, it is also important to read it in the context of the entire book in which it appears—whether John or Judges or James or other books of the Bible. Often the particular passage fits into the argument of the entire biblical book, or sometimes it connects with themes that run through that book. In some cases, the story runs over several books in our Bible that were once connected as extended narratives (for instance, the Moses story in Exodus carries over from the Joseph story in Genesis, and 1 Samuel through 2 Kings are one long story; so also is Luke plus Acts).

1. Jewish-Gentile Reconciliation in Romans

Many Christians urge non-Christians to be converted by believing in Jesus’ resurrection with their heart and confessing with their mouth that Jesus is Lord. This summary of how to respond to the gospel is based on Romans 10:9-10. Romans 10 does in fact describe salvation in these terms. But have we ever stopped to examine why Paul specifically mentions the mouth and heart here (rather than in some other passages which describe salvation)? Would Paul deny that a deaf mute could be saved simply because they could not confess with their mouth? Or does Paul choose his particular words “heart” and “mouth” for more specific reasons?

We look first at the immediate context, as we did in the previous chapter of this study. Paul believes that we are saved by God’s grace, not by our works. Contrary to the means of justification proposed by Paul’s opponents (Rom. 10:1-5), Paul demonstrates from the law of Moses itself that the message of faith is the saving word (10:6-7). As Moses said, “the word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart” (10:8); Moses was referring to the law (Deut 30:10-11, 14), but the principle was also applicable to the gospel, which was also God’s word. In Moses’ day one could not ascend to heaven to bring the law down from above; God in his mercy already gave it to Israel on Mount Sinai (30:12). Nor was it necessary to descend again into the sea (30:13); God had already redeemed his people and brought them through the sea. They could not save themselves; they had to depend on God’s mighty grace (cf. Ex 20:2). In the same way, Paul says, we don’t bring Christ up from the dead, or send him down from the Father; like the law and Israel’s redemption, Christ’s salvation is God’s gift to us (Rom 10:6-7). Moses declared that this message was “in your mouth and in your heart” (Deut 30:14), i.e., already given to Israel by God’s grace. Paul explains that likewise God’s message was in your mouth when you confessed Christ with your mouth and in your heart when you believed in Him in your heart (Rom 10:9-10). Faith could come only from hearing this word, the gospel of Christ (10:17), as we noted above.