[x] Crossway+ members can shop select books and Bibles at 50% off in our 2024 Christmas Gift Guide. To receive your order by Christmas, choose UPS Next Day Air.

Podcast: Wayne Grudem on His Life, Love of Theology, and Translating the Bible (Wayne Grudem)

May 08, 2023 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

The Life and Ministry of Wayne Grudem

In today’s episode, Wayne Grudem talks about his life as a child and young adult, how he met his wife, and his journey to become one of the most influential American theologians of his generation.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | RSS

Topics Addressed in This Interview:

01:13 - Early Life

Matt Tully
Wayne, thank you so much for joining me today on The Crossway Podcast.

Wayne Grudem
Thank you, Matt. Good to be with you.

Matt Tully
I want to talk today about your life, your ministry, and in particular the big role that you’ve played at Crossway over the years and some really key things that you’ve been a part of with us. But maybe just to start, I wonder if you could share a little bit about your own story and how you came to be the theologian, the scholar, and the teacher that you are known as today. What was your home life like growing up? Did you grow up in a Christian family with Christian parents?

Wayne Grudem
Yes, I did. I grew up in a small town in northern Wisconsin called Jim Falls.

Matt Tully
Jim Falls

Wayne Grudem
Jim Falls. Not Jim’s Falls, but Jim Falls. I don’t know quite why, but that’s what it was named. It had 286 people.

Matt Tully
Oh, so real small!

Wayne Grudem
Very small. First grade was the one row in the classroom, second grade was the next row, third grade was the next row, and fourth grade was the next row. After that, you go to the other room: fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grade were in the second room. I went there seven years, through seventh grade. It was a predominantly Roman Catholic community. Most of all my friends were Roman Catholic.

Matt Tully
You weren’t?

Wayne Grudem
No. We drove to Eau Claire, a half hour away, for a Baptist church.

Matt Tully
I was just in Eau Claire actually. My car broke down in Eau Claire and I stayed the night.

Wayne Grudem
Really?

Matt Tully
Yep. Just this last weekend.

Wayne Grudem
Well, when I was 13, my parents moved us to Eau Claire, even though my dad’s job was in Jim Falls. He was part owner of a creamery there.

Matt Tully
A dairy creamery?

Wayne Grudem
Yeah. They made butter and powdered milk.

Matt Tully
Wow. So, coming from a small community like that in the cold north of Wisconsin, do you remember first developing a passion for theology, for studying theology?

Wayne Grudem
Well, for a long time I thought that my Christian life began at age twelve, when I had prayed with my mother to trust in Christ as my savior. And then at thirteen, at a Billy Graham Crusade in Minneapolis, I went forward as a recommitment of my life. And those were significant times. But now, Matt, looking back on my childhood, I loved to sing hymns, I loved to be in church. I can remember myself on the playground playing baseball or playing soccer or touch football—no, it wasn’t touch; it was tackle football—and I can remember myself riding my bike and praying regularly—just silently—on the playground. I loved to read my Bible, from a very early age—early elementary age—and those are things that I look back on now as evidence of genuine conversion prior to age twelve. So I don’t know when I trusted in Christ, but it was very early.

Matt Tully
Yeah, very early. Beyond, obviously, God’s own work in your heart to draw that out of you, were there things that your parents did, or others in your church, that had the influence on you to help instill a love for Scripture?

Wayne Grudem
The example of my parents, who would read a chapter from the Bible every night before they went to sleep.

Matt Tully
To you, or just for themselves?

Wayne Grudem
To each other, but I knew they were doing it. Occasionally we’d sit in, but they usually read after the children went to bed. And the influence of my pastor, who believed the Bible, and everything he taught came from the Bible. His example was significant. But when I was thirteen or fourteen (I don’t know which) our pastor at the Baptist church taught a junior high class on Bible doctrine. They had a little book called Baptist Beliefs by E Y Mullins, and I absolutely loved it. I just couldn’t get over the wonder and amazement that you could tell what the whole Bible said about God’s omnipotence or omnipresence or omniscience or the Trinity.

Matt Tully
That someone had done that work to kind of distill it down?

Wayne Grudem
Yes, it was a little one hundred fifty-page book—E Y Mullins, Baptist Beliefs. I still have it, and I still have my pencil notes in the margin.

Matt Tully
Oh, wow. From when you were a kid?

Wayne Grudem
Yeah. I learned later, looking back on Baptist history, he strayed from inerrancy and he wasn’t completely conservative in all his beliefs. He’s part of this abandonment of inerrancy that was part of the Southern Baptist Convention for a number of years before the conservative resurgence. But it still was, for the most part, very clear evangelical protestant theology. And I just was fascinated by it.

Matt Tully
You maybe couldn’t recommend it today, but it nevertheless played a role in your own life.

Wayne Grudem
Right. And I have a little book called Christian Beliefs that would be a good substitute for it.

Matt Tully
I don’t want jump ahead too much because we’ll get back to the publication of your Systematic Theology, and I don’t know all the stats, but I know it is one of the best-selling, most well-known systematic theologies in the English language in the world. Was there anything in your mind from that experience as a kid—with this smaller, little theology book—that was impacting how you were approaching writing your Systematic Theology?

Wayne Grudem
Let’s see. I grew up in this Baptist church in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, went off to college, and was active in the Christian fellowship group at Harvard when I was an undergraduate, and I became president of that group. I went to college with the intention of graduating from college, going to law school, and then going into politics. I was president of The Young Republicans in my high school. I was president of the student council in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.

Matt Tully
So your interest in politics starts very early.

Wayne Grudem
Yeah, earlier than high school, because at twelve years old in 1960 I campaigned for Richard Nixon against John f. Kennedy. But it was in a very strong Catholic town and all my friends were Kennedy supporters.

Matt Tully
You were against the tide there.

Wayne Grudem
I was deeply disappointed. I guess I can trace it back farther: when I just learned to read, I could read a campaign button that my dad had that said, “I like Ike”—that was Eisenhower’s nickname.

Matt Tully
So your parents were politically active and interested?

Wayne Grudem
Interested and conservative.

08:06 - Education

Matt Tully
At Harvard then, what did you study?

Wayne Grudem
Economics.

Matt Tully
What was it about economics? Was there a certain sub-discipline that you were interested in?

Wayne Grudem
My faculty advisor told me it’d be good preparation for law school. I didn’t know what to major in.

Matt Tully
So you were just thinking about that end result and trying to work that way?

Wayne Grudem
Right.

Matt Tully
I think that one of the next major educational milestones for you was an MDiv at Westminster Seminary. What got you thinking that direction?

Wayne Grudem
Freshman of sophomore year I majored in economics and I took a lot of the required courses. Sort of near the end of my sophomore year, I was president of the Harvard Radcliffe Christian Fellowship, and I found I was, in a way, fulfilling a pastoral role to other students. I loved it; I gravitated toward it. I loved teaching Bible studies and participating in Bible studies. I felt more and more the Lord calling me to do a teaching ministry. The example of my senior pastor at that time was very influential—Harold John Ockenga He was pastor of Park Street Church in Boston, and he had a remarkable teaching ministry. Dr. Ockenga had an earned PhD in philosophy. He would preach forty to forty five minute expository sermons on Sunday morning and then a different sermon Sunday evening, often without notes. It was remarkable. It had college students, who were around the Boston area, coming and just listening eagerly to his teaching. Nearing the end of my sophomore year, I thought maybe I could do that. And so I thought the Lord wanted me to go to seminary. I had almost finished the requirements for the economics major, so I finished those up in my junior year, but junior and senior year I took two years of Hebrew and a year of Greek.

Matt Tully
You just jumped right into the deep end with the languages.

Wayne Grudem
Right.

Matt Tully
Was it hard at all to give up on these political ideas and ambitions that you had, or was that a pretty easy decision?

Wayne Grudem
I haven’t given up. I haven’t run for office, but I’ve been active in writing about political issues.

Matt Tully
So you were able to continue to think deeply about those kinds of issues?

Wayne Grudem
Yes. God’s word says a lot about government. I’ve lectured on government-related topics in Poland, Hungary, the UK, Brazil, Peru, and China. Well, not China but Hong Kong, when it was still safe.

10:55 - The State of the Evangelical Church

Matt Tully
Skipping ahead in your life, you were at Cambridge and did more doctoral work in Cambridge. You served at TEDS—Trinity Evangelical Divinity School—for two decades, and since 2001 you’ve been at Phoenix Seminary as a professor there. What have you learned about the state of the evangelical church over those decades of teaching the next generation of pastors in those different contexts? Do you feel optimistic about where the American church is today? Are you more encouraged than you were at the beginning of your career? Where would you be at on that question?

Wayne Grudem
Well, I’m optimistic. I’m hopeful. Part of it is observation of what has happened around the world through much of history. As church historians and history of missions people can tell, the number of people who read their Bible daily and prayed—which is a good thumbnail estimate of evangelical, born again Christians—it was 3% or 4% of the population of the world. Then in 1950 or so, it notched up to 5%, then 6%. As the years went by, since 1950 (basically during my lifetime) 7%, 8%, 9%, 10%, 11%, 12%. I don’t know if it’s 13% or 14% now, but it’s the most growth in the percentage of population, for genuine Christians, the greatest percentage that has ever happened in history. It’s all in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Matt Tully
I was going to say that maybe runs counter to our experience here in the West or in the US where it seems like we hear stats of declining church involvement and declining respect for the Bible. But you’re saying a lot of that’s happening in other parts of the world—the global South, often as it’s referred to.

Wayne Grudem
Yes, and that’s where the church is growing and experiencing remarkable revival, or has experienced.

Matt Tully
It’s so good to keep that in mind as we think about where Christianity is at in the world.

Wayne Grudem
Yes. But my conclusion from that is he’ll pass by and not bring revival to North America and Europe and Australia. I don’t think so. I hope he won’t. I hope he’ll bring revival to us as well. So there’s that. There’s the Evangelical Theological Society. What was I saying recently to you in our conversation before we started?

Matt Tully
Just the growth of the number of scholars who are involved.

Wayne Grudem
In 1986, we met in Atlanta, and I think there were 325 or 350 people present. Now we have 2,600. Part of it’s more pastors coming and more seminary students, but another part of it is the amazing growth of evangelical scholarship—an increasing number of Bible-believing, evangelical seminaries. When I went to seminary when I graduated from college in 1970, I decided on where to go to seminary, and I think there were maybe five or six, maybe seven, solid, Bible-believing seminaries that I could choose from. Today, I think there are seventeen or eighteen that I could recommend a student go there and get a good education. Well, that’s amazing. And I think it’s possible that this is the Lord preparing for revival, preparing for a greater incoming of massive numbers of conversions.

Matt Tully
You served as president of the Evangelical Theological Society.

Wayne Grudem
I did, in 1999.

Matt Tully
As you think about—and obviously, through your own writings and work you have been at the forefront of a lot of theological conversations that the evangelical church has had over the last five decades—so as you think about where the church has been over the last few decades and what’s on the horizon for us theologically, what would you recommend that pastors and scholars, who love the Bible and love the church and want to see the church flourish in a healthy way and love the gospel, what are the theological things that they should be focused on, aware of, and study up on to be prepared for what’s coming?

Wayne Grudem
Oh boy. I think there may not be one answer that fits all. In Acts 20:27 Paul says, “I did not shrink back from declaring to the whole counsel of God.” So all of the Bible is what we should teach and believe and follow. All of the Bible is what the enemy and the secular culture attacks. So preach the word. Teach it.

Matt Tully
Are there certain areas of the Bible that you feel like are particularly under attack today that the church needs to be reinforced in in some way?

Wayne Grudem
Teaching about the differences between men and women, that there are two genders in the human race—male and female—and they are immensely different. Though we’re both men and women equal in value and personhood before God, God created us in his image—“male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27–28). And then he told them to have dominion over the earth. So, maintaining the true distinctiveness of men and women. We have different reproductive organs. We have different bone structure. We have hundreds of thousands (or perhaps millions) of different patterns of wiring in our brains, so we approach situations and problems differently. Margaret, my wife, instinctively sees what’s happening in situations much faster than I do. And I’m pulling into the $5 parking lot for a building we’re going to go into, and she says, Wayne, all the people without PhDs are parking across the street in the free lot.

16:52 - The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood

Matt Tully
Those who know you know that you’ve been involved in the broader conversations about biblical gender roles, the Bible’s teaching on men and women and the differences there, and complementarianism. But going back to the heyday of some of those conversations when you guys were starting the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood (CBMW) and issuing the Danvers Statement on men and women’s roles, could you ever have imagined where our culture would be at today, especially in light of the transgender lobby and the transgender push that we see in our culture today where it’s far beyond just gender roles now? There’s a questioning of gender itself happening. Could you have imagined that we’d be in this spot?

Wayne Grudem
No, I’m not good at predicting the future until it happens. But it is part of a larger movement that I see as an attack by the enemy, by Satan and his forces, to destroy the human race. And one step in that direction is trying to make everything the same, trying to say there’s no difference between men and women. Everything women can do, men can do; and everything men can do, women can do. It’s foolishness, but it’s part of the culture. So that’s one area that needs to be taught. And related to it are principles for morally right sexual conduct—no sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman. And the church is under attack by the secular culture in that way. And sexual immorality is viewed as romantic and positive by movies and TV, and so we face that question.

Matt Tully
You played a pretty important role in establishing the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and then producing, as we said, the Danvers Statement, which was a summary of what you see as the Bible’s teaching on manhood and womanhood. As you reflect back on the progress of that conversation in the evangelical church and where things have landed today, would you say that you all were successful in what you were trying to accomplish in starting that council and publishing on this topic over the years? Do you look back and say, Yeah, we did what we wanted to do. We accomplished that. Or do you feel something different?

Wayne Grudem
I feel that God gave us much grace in that whole denominations committed to either the Danvers Statement on male and female roles or something very similar to it in wording. The Southern Baptist Convention (which is huge) the Presbyterian Church in America, Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, thousands of independent Bible churches, and number of seminaries. Westminster, Reformed, all the Southern Baptist seminaries, Missouri Synod Lutheran Seminaries, Concordia in Fort Wayne and Concordia in St. Louis. There are others, but it has been a mark of faithfulness to Scripture to commit to a complimentarian position on male and female roles. If I go to another city and I’m out of town on a Sunday and I want to visit a church, I look on the website and if it’s all male elders, I think they’re standing against the culture and they’re going to be faithful to Scripture in other areas. But if there are men and women elders or women pastors, I know that they’ve moved away from following the whole Bible, and more compromise is coming soon.

Matt Tully
In the midst of all of the conversations and arguments and debates and controversy surrounding this issue over the years, have you been able to hold on to relationships, even friendships, with egalitarians who you disagree with on this issue, but nevertheless you would want to say we are fellow brothers and sisters and I appreciate them and respect what they’re doing?

Wayne Grudem
Well, with some. Craig Keener is one. He’s been a friend for years. He’s an egalitarian and past president of the ETS. Prolific scholar, but the nicest guy you’ll ever meet. He’s been a friend. While I was at Trinity, for instance, Walt Kaiser and Grant Osborne were egalitarian—mildly egalitarian, not militantly. We maintained genuine friendship throughout the twenty years I was at Trinity. Walt Kaiser wasn’t there the whole time, but when he was, and even after he left. So, yes with some; with others, no, there hasn’t been—well, no. Not that there’s been hostility, but there’s been no desire for a friendship or a relationship.

21:30 - Systematic Theology

Matt Tully
Let’s talk about the book that you’re best-known for, your Systematic Theology. You first published it in 1994 which, by my count, is somewhere around almost three decades ago. What led you to write that book? What was it that prompted you to undertake what I’m sure for many would feel like a huge, daunting task?

Wayne Grudem
The reason was students couldn’t understand Berkhof.

Matt Tully
Louis Berkhof.

Wayne Grudem
Louis Berkhof’s Systematic Theology, a marvelous book, but there are some problems with it. Number one, it had untranslated Greek, Hebrew, French, German, Latin, and maybe a little Dutch. I can’t remember. So students found it very difficult. The English words in it were sometimes theological terms that were unfamiliar to students. So I started teaching from it, as I thought it was an excellent book, and it was just hard for students. The other thing that Berkhof did was to save space, I think, with the word count, he would list Bible verses to prove at point of doctrine but give only the verse reference and not spell out the verse and not print it out.

Matt Tully
Which probably means people don’t ever look them up.

Wayne Grudem
They don’t, so they don’t get the teaching of Scripture, and Scripture is powerful. It changes people’s hearts and minds. So I thought, We have to have something that people can understand and something that will give the quotation of the verse itself, not just the Bible reference. What if he says, Ephesians 4:12 (I’m just making this up randomly)? Who knows what that says?

Matt Tully
Right. Most of us are not going to know most of those references.

Wayne Grudem
All of us are not going to know most of those references.

Matt Tully
Some people, I’m surprised at their memory for pulling that stuff out.

Wayne Grudem
Yeah, maybe Vern Poythress at Westminster Seminary, but not normal people. Although, I could say that when I got to Harvard as a freshman in 1966, the Dean’s office had assigned me a roommate named Jerry Brock from Fresno, California. He had memorized all of Matthew and all of Romans for Youth for Christ quiz contests. So I’d say, Jerry, what’s Matthew 18:4? And he would rattle it off.

Matt Tully
You could see the filing cabinet in his brain?

Wayne Grudem
But that’s unusual.

Matt Tully
Your systematic theology, last I saw, has sold over half a million copies. Maybe that’s out of date at this point.

Wayne Grudem
Over 800,000.

Matt Tully
Eight hundred thousand to date. Did you imagine it would have that resonance worldwide when you first wrote it?

Wayne Grudem
No.

Matt Tully
What were you thinking? What was the original print run, or what were you thinking was going to be the impact of the book?

Wayne Grudem
I thought it would be an alternative that people could understand. I wrote it for first year seminary students, but I imagined, as my hypothetical audience I was writing to, I imagined my parents were visiting in the back of the classroom, and I wanted them to be able to understand. My dad went to college for two years and then went into business. My mom didn’t go to college. But they were lifelong Christians. I wanted it to be understandable to ordinary Christian readers. And then Berkhof didn’t give any application to life. He would just give the doctrine and be done with it. And yet I thought even the most theological books in the New Testament, like Romans or Hebrews, those books have a lot of application to life—Ephesians—even though they have really rich theology. And so if the Bible doesn’t teach theology without application to life, neither should we. So I tried to emphasize at the end of each chapter questions for personal application, and then I put a hymn in because I would always begin class with a hymn. And the Lord has blessed it in a way that he has used it to draw people closer to himself in a way that I never expected.

Matt Tully
Do you often hear from people who have read the book and found it helpful or it’s impacted them in some way? How often do you get those kinds of responses?

Wayne Grudem
I can’t walk twenty feet down the hallway here at ETS without somebody stopping me.

Matt Tully
That’s amazing. What does that feel like today? You’ve been living in with that for probably a couple decades at least now with so many people having benefited from the book. How does that impact you today?

Wayne Grudem
It just makes me thankful for the privilege of being able to do something that brought benefit to God’s people and that he has blessed it, and I’m just thankful for that. I don’t want to do anything that would dishonor the Lord and make the book not profitable for people.

26:19 - The ESV Translation Oversight Committee

Matt Tully
Another thing that you have been involved with that has similarly had a huge impact around the world is the creation of the ESV—the English Standard Version. You served on, and continue to serve on, the ESV Translation Oversight Committee. How did you first get connected to the work on the ESV?

Wayne Grudem
I called Lane Dennis, the President of Crossway, and said, Do you think the National Council of Churches would give us permission to revise the Revised Standard Version? And he said John Piper had called him recently with the same idea.

Matt Tully
Had you guys conspired on that ahead of time?

Wayne Grudem
No.

Matt Tully
That was just a providential act that both of you had this idea?

Wayne Grudem
Yes, but my first teaching responsibility was at Bethel College in St. Paul, Minnesota from 1977 to 1981. For two of those years, John Piper was in the same department, so we talked a lot. We both used the Revised Standard Version as our personal Bible.

Matt Tully
How old were both of you at that time? Do you have general sense?

Wayne Grudem
Well, I was born at 48, so in 1978 I was 30 years old.

Matt Tully
And John was probably a little younger?

Wayne Grudem
Thirty-two. No, he’s older. He’s maybe two years older than I am. We used to argue a lot when we were young faculty members about hermeneutics and how to get the right meaning from the author’s intention.

Matt Tully
So not just specific interpretations but actually how to do hermeneutics correctly?

Wayne Grudem
Yes.

Matt Tully
What were the battle lines there?

Wayne Grudem
I can’t remember. I could remember if I tried, but it had to do with the difference between a book that’s merely a human book, where the human author’s intention is decisive, and a book like the Bible, which is unique and has a dual authorship, and it can have meaning that the original human author didn’t understand or intend.

Matt Tully
So both you and him have this idea for the need for a new translation—a revision of the RSV—and you call Lane. How did you get roped in? Were you always wanting to be involved, or was it more of, Hey, you should go do this?

Wayne Grudem
Well, he said he would contact the National Council of Churches and see how they would respond. And he came back to me after a while and said they responded that they wouldn’t allow us to have permission to use the Revised Standard Version as a basis for a new translation.

Matt Tully
So they said no.

Wayne Grudem
They said no. And then I said, Could I try once more? And Lane, who was president of Crossway at the time, said, Yes, that’s fine. You have to contact David Lull, who’s in charge of permissions for the National Council of Churches. He’s in New York City. So I put it off and put it off, and then one day (I think it was a Thursday) I didn’t have any of his teaching responsibilities at Trinity, and I just felt the Lord wanted me to work on this. So I spent seven hours just entirely focused on writing a letter to the National Council of Churches, telling them what kind of translation we would do and explaining in detail what we would do with a number of verses. It was maybe a five or six or seven page letter when I finished it. I called David Lull, this man at the National Council of Churches in New York City. It was a quarter to five in New York City, and I asked if I could send him a follow-up letter and that Lane Dennis had given me permission to write. He said, Yes, you got fifteen minutes and then I’m leaving the country*. So I faxed him the letter.

Matt Tully
Before 5:00pm you got it over there?

Wayne Grudem
They were interested. I explained to him who would be involved in the translation and the kind of translation we wanted to do. We’d change Isaiah 7:14 to “a virgin shall conceive” not “young woman.” We’d change four verses in the New Testament to put the word “propitiation” back in the Bible, which is important in the doctrine of the atonement. We would change Psalm 45 from “your divine throne” to “your throne, O God.” I faxed the letter, and they came back and said they were interested. And so Lane Dennis and the Crossway leadership began discussions with the National Council of Churches. The lawyers on both sides were involved in the contract negotiations. They couldn’t come to agreement in the details, and finally they ended up saying the revision would be done in accordance with the principles laid out in Wayne Grudem’s letter to David Lull on March such and such of 1996.

Matt Tully
So that became the core document.

Wayne Grudem
It became the legal basis on which the translation was done.

Matt Tully
Oh, wow.

Wayne Grudem
So that letter became the contractual basis on which the ESV was carried out. And there was one sentence at the last page that said, And any additional changes that we think exegetically defensible—or something to that effect—which gave us true and complete freedom. And we ended up changing, I think by one count, I think we ended up changing 60,000 words, or 8% of the RSV text. So 92% of it is the Revised Standard Version, which is the revision of the American Standard Version of 1901, which is a revision of the King James Version. So the ESV is a direct descendant of the King James Version. It’s the great-grandson.

Matt Tully
We often talk about it being in the legacy or in the stream of the King James Version.

Wayne Grudem
Yeah, very much.

Matt Tully
And how involved were you in assembling the team that would eventually actually do the translation work?

Wayne Grudem
Very. It was a conversation between Lane Dennis and me: What do you think about adding J I Packer? He was teaching at Trinity at the time.

Matt Tully
Was he the first name you guys added to the list?

Wayne Grudem
No, Vern Poythress was. And John Piper decided he couldn’t take the time from his pastoral responsibilities, so he gave us comments throughout, but he wasn’t actually on the Translation Committee. With J I Packer, he was teaching at Trinity on an adjunct basis, or as a visiting professor, and I went to his apartment and began to talk to him. I said, Would you be interested in working on an evangelical revision of the Revised Standard Version? And he didn’t pause a second. He said, Yes!

Matt Tully
He’s on record for saying, I think in a video we shot with him once, that he considers his work on the ESV as the most significant work that he did in his whole ministry and career.

Wayne Grudem
Yeah, I think all of us who were involved feel that way. We knew that he would be great on the English language and on theology, but the hidden surprise was his knowledge of Greek was phenomenal (he’s passed away now). He had read classics at Oxford, which meant, number one, when he was eighteen years old, he was among the best Greek and Latin scholars in England to get into Oxford. Number two, he spent three years translating Greek into English, English into Greek, Greek into Latin, Latin into Greek. His instinct was similar to a native speaker’s instinct for the language. Although we had five members of the committee who had PhD-level competence in Greek, his instinctive sense of the nuances of the language was better than all of ours, at least in my opinion.

33:49 - The ESV Study Bible

Matt Tully
Let’s skip forward then a few years. The ESV is published first in 2001. In 2008, Crossway releases the *ESV Study Bible, one of our bestselling bibles, again, known around the world. And you served an important role in that project.

Wayne Grudem
Yes, as the general editor.

Matt Tully
So what did that look like on a day-to-day basis?

Wayne Grudem
The comments on each book of the Bible were usually done by people who had published a commentary on that book—specialists in each book. The notes on 1 Corinthians were done by Frank Thielman at Beeson, a really well-respected New Testament scholar. Then it came to Tom Schreiner, the New Testament editor, and he would make comments and suggest revisions. Then, when he was satisfied with it, it would come to me as the general editor. And then Tom Schreiner and I were supposed to come to an agreement on what changes we wanted. We worked together well, and it usually came out just fine, except when we came to 1 Peter 3 and the discussion of “Christ preached to the spirits in prison”—the notoriously difficult passage. And he has the wrong understanding of it.

Matt Tully
So you guys came to a bit of an impasse?

Wayne Grudem
Well, we went back and forth and back and forth on the wording, and we were limited in length. Finally, we ended up saying we can each have, I don’t know, 273 words or something like that.

Matt Tully
That’s one of the distinctives of the ESV Study Bible is that so often in passages like that, where there are sort of competing interpretations, the notes will present that and may maybe still say, We think this is the right one*, but I think many have found that a very helpful feature.

Wayne Grudem
Right. First Peter 3:18–20—Christ preaching to the spirits in prison—you have Tom Schreiner’s view and my view, and they’re both presented with equal number of words.

Matt Tully
Very intentionally.

Wayne Grudem
And then with the Old Testament, the same procedure happened, but it would go to Jack Collins—C John Collins—at Covenant Seminary in St. Louis, and then it would come to me.

35:53 - Daily Life

Matt Tully
As a last couple of questions, What does a typical week look like for you these days?

Wayne Grudem
Well, at my request, I’m down to teaching just one class a year at Phoenix Seminary, but I’m still involved. I’m a member of the faculty and feel like I’m very much a part of things. I’ve gone down to one class per year. They usually require Theology 1, Theology 3, and Christian Ethics, and I do one of those per. So, what does a typical day look like? I get up and three things have to happen: I have to eat breakfast, I have to go walk for half an hour—partly jog and partly walk—

Matt Tully
Outside?

Wayne Grudem
Yes. But before seven in the morning in the summer in Arizona

Matt Tully
Before it gets too hot.

Wayne Grudem
Right. And I need to spend time in the word, praying and reading the Bible. And if those three things get done, then the rest of the day is work.

36:53 - Margaret

Matt Tully
I think we’d be remiss if we didn’t talk about your wife, Margaret, as we think about your life and all that God has done and through you and your life. How would you summarize her role in all that you have done?

Wayne Grudem
Well, first of all, I have to say that when my parents moved to Eau Claire, Wisconsin just before eighth grade started, I came to junior high and there was a seventh grade girl that was very interesting to me. She was twelve and I was thirteen, and we didn’t start dating until high school, but God gave me a special affection for Margaret out of all the girls I knew. I had a sense that we’d be together. She had a number of boyfriends, or potential boyfriends, but I won.
Matt Tully
So she didn’t have that initial sense quite as quickly as you did?

Wayne Grudem
Oh, I think she did, because she would break dates and go out with me. So I think God gave us that affection for each other.

Matt Tully
So then what impact has she had on you over the years?

Wayne Grudem
Well, she prays for me. She is a good counselor—very wise—and she cares for the household and the children when the children were at home, and enables me to have freedom to work on the writing project that is underway.

Matt Tully
Does she ever read any of your writing projects before you send them off to the press?

Wayne Grudem
Unfortunately, no.

Matt Tully
You would like her to?

Wayne Grudem
I would appreciate her comments, but she hears me teach in adult Bible classes and conferences.

Matt Tully
She gets enough Wayne Grudem at home?

Wayne Grudem
Yes. It’ll happen once or twice a day where I’ll walk into the other room where Margaret is and say, Could you please pray for me? I’m stuck on this paragraph—or this verse or something—I can’t quite get going on this. Or my ETS paper that I presented this morning—I started to work on it, started to work on it, started to work on it. Finally, I went and said, Margaret, please pray for me. I’m not getting a sense of how this paper should develop. And then what do you know? It came out just fine.

Matt Tully
So her prayers have been a help.

Wayne Grudem
Very important. Yes.

39:18 - Loving Jesus and Loving His Word

Matt Tully
Maybe as a final question, As you reflect back on your life and all that God has done through you over the years, and I know you’re a humble man and you recognize his activity in and through what you’ve accomplished, how would you want people to remember you?

Wayne Grudem
Someone who loved Jesus and loved his word. Sorry.

Matt Tully It’s okay.

Wayne Grudem
As someone who loved Jesus and loved his word, and sought to teach it faithfully. That’s about it.

Matt Tully
Thank you again so much for talking with us today and reflecting on your life and ministry and what God has done. We’ve all benefited from it in so many ways.

Wayne Grudem
It’s been a privilege.

Popular Articles in This Series

View All

Podcast: Help! I Hate My Job (Jim Hamilton)

January 06, 2020

Jim Hamilton discusses what to do when you hate your job, offering encouragement for those frustrated in their work and explaining the difference between a job and a vocation.

Crossway is a not-for-profit Christian ministry that exists solely for the purpose of proclaiming the gospel through publishing gospel-centered, Bible-centered content. Learn more or donate today at crossway.org/about.