Theology Without The Bullsh*t: Recent Episodes
Derek Mellott
A podcast dedicated to exploring the history of Christian theology and the implications Christianity has on our lives. With people leaving the church in droves and interest in theological questions waning, it's time to get a fresh perspective on faith by exploring where it came from and what it means today.The Rev. Dr. Paul Capetz and Derek Mellott discuss these themes and more weekly on Theology Without The Bullsh*t.
In this week's episode we discuss how the role of the sacraments change in Lutheran theology; namely, the eucharist.
This week's episode discusses the roots of the reformation and how the thoughts of a Catholic monk changed the direction of Christian faith forever - Martin Luther!
In this episode we discuss the rational proof for God's existence by virtue of Anselm's ontological argument, and the empirical proofs offered by Thomas Aquinas.
Tonight we discuss the emergence of Scholasticism during the Middle Ages and the implications therein.
Continuing on in our exploration of Christianity, the professor and I discuss the Middle Ages. We briefly touch on the east/west split of Christianity and the Roman Empire, Monasticism, Scholasticism, the Renaissance, and the Reformation.
Tonight Paul and I discuss the Pelagian Controversy. Here we address Augustine on grace, free will, and predestination.
Hey everyone! It's a special episode tonight. Paul had ministry work to take care of this week and I wanted to provide some content tonight since we took a month of while I was on vacation. Tonight I go into my own personal beliefs about the content of theology highlighted by my own experiences and insight.
Hey everybody and welcome back to another new episode! This week we address the Donatist Controversy. At stake here is whether the moral qualities of a priest nullify their ability to perform the sacrament.
This week we cover the topic of Augustine's distinctions regarding properly ordered love versus improperly ordered love.
This week's episode goes over St. Augustine's privation theory of evil. After being influenced by Neo-Platonism, Augustine measures evil as a lack of goodness because "being" in-and-of-itself entails a measure of goodness. In other word, that which has being, has goodness. Therefore even Satan is measured in terms of a lack of goodness while still having goodness simply by virtue of being. Incendiary though that might be, listen for more details!
In this week's episode we explore the life of Saint Augustine and his conversion to Christianity as outlined in his autobiography. Next week we will be going over his theological contributions.
Today we unpack the distinctions that were debated between the Alexandrian Christians of Egypt and the Antiochene Christians of Syria; namely, in what ways was Jesus fully human. The conversation gets pretty nuanced as we go into detail about the debate but stick with it! We also share our own commentary on the debate which adds a bit of an intellectual break towards the end.
This week's episode is a little dense. We unpack the debate between Athanasius and Arius which was settled in the Nicene Creed. While they both agree that the divine logos from John's prologue was incarnate in the flesh of Jesus, they disagreed on whether the logos was God or a creation of God.
This week's episode picks up where we left off last week in the 2nd century. We go over the Gnostic understanding of who Christ was characterized by Docetism. We then contrast that understanding by outlining the other end of the spectrum which is the position of Jewish Christians called Adoptionism. These two ends of the spectrum pave the way for the first creed of the Church to be covered next week as we allude to the debate between Athanasius and Arius as formalized in the Nicene Creed.
Sorry for a few connectivity issues in the first 20 minutes. I was recording from my camper and the WiFi is less than ideal up there
In this week's episode we talk about the 2nd century Christian, Marcion, and his treatment of the apostle Paul and how his heresy resulted in the canonization of the Old Testament. We then discuss what Gnosticism is and how it influenced Christianity.
This week we go over Paul's letters and the Gospels. We break down the two-source theory and talk about how we can come up with approximate dates for when these items were written.
Apologies for the audio quality of this week's episode. Still working out some technical details. In this week's episode we explore the ancient world. We go over Hellenism, Judaism, and the cultural context of Jesus' world. We briefly talk about the apostle Paul and describe the historical considerations that will help us move forward through time as we place Christianity into its historical context.
This week's episode is dedicated to a great theologian, Schubert Ogden. Professor Ogden, one of Paul's mentors, passed away last week after a battle with cancer. We take his definition of theology and define what it means. It is a complex topic but the Rev. Dr. Paul Capetz helps us unpack Ogden's description of theology.
On this week's episode, we introduce ourselves and talk about why we are doing the podcast. We go over what we mean by Theology Without The Bullsh*t and what you can expect from this podcast moving forward. Thanks for listening everybody!