Queen of the Sciences: Recent Episodes
Sarah Hinlicky Wilson
How dare anyone say one life is better than another? or the living of a life is wiser than another? Say something and risk legalism; say nothing and risk nihilism; and neither of those lead to a good life, either. In this episode Dad and I compile our sum total of 125 years of living, plus a lot of shortcuts gleaned from reading and talking to other people, to tell you what's worth pursuing, what's worth hurting over, and what's not. What you do with it is up to you!
We're in our EIGHTH year
of livin' the good life of theological podcasting.
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backing us on Patreon!
Notes:
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Related episodes: Nietzsche, Brain Mind Soul, Critical Social Theory, Jacques Ellul, Propaganda, Hey Jude, An Unlikely Marriage
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Sarah's article "The Church and Happiness"
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Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity: The Jovinianist Controversy
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India, Girls®
You might just be able to hear the explosion of the fireworks over the explosion of rhetoric upon the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America. Aiming to shed more light than heat, Dad and I discuss The Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776) from a theological perspective. Civic good is not the ultimate good, but it's not a negligible one, either. We find good reasons as Christians to support the American project, its self-corrections, and onward attempts to attain a more perfect union.
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Related episodes: Our Democracy?; Jefferson; Lincoln; MLK; Thurman; Two Kingdoms 16th Cent.; Two Kingdoms 20th-21st Cent.
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Sarah's short story in which Revolutionary-era Lutheran pastor Henry Melchior Muhlenberg plays the part of a detective
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The Declaration of Independence
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Samuel Miller's sermon on July 4, 1793, is found in Political Sermons of the American Founding Era, 1730-1805, Volume 2
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See also Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality
We're in our EIGHTH year—
and still fiercely independent.
Demonstrate your sacred honor
by supporting our liberty of mind and
backing us on Patreon!
A discussion between me and Dad about Katie Langston's phenomenal memoir Sealed, tracing her life from Mormon upbringing to conversion to Christianity to discerning a call into ministry. A must-read for anyone interested in the Latter-day Saints as well as hope and healing for people scarred from high-demand religion. Be sure to get the new second edition, now in ebook and paperback!
Tradition is a buzzword in confessional polemics: Protestants (supposedly) say Scripture only, while Catholics and Orthodox (supposedly) say Scripture-and-Tradition without hierarchical triage between them. Of course, it has never been that simple! Luther and Melanchthon and the Formula of Concord all insist that they were in fact more faithful to the tradition of the church against Roman innovation. Roman Catholics rightly point out all that is not explicit in Scripture and yet adhered to faithfully by the church, including Protestants (e.g. the word “Trinity” or infant baptism). For that matter, Scripture itself is a form of Tradition and full of Tradition—as the opening words of I Corinthians 15 attest, and much biblical scholarship of the past two hundred years has excavated.
So what do we even mean by Tradition? How do we judge it or select from it—because everybody in fact does just that? How do we know what is a faithful development from the original apostolic gospel and what is a treacherous deviation? What “principle of critical judgment” or “clear method of discrimination”? David Bentley Hart and his book Tradition and Apocalypse to the rescue! ... maybe.
Related episodes: Theology & Experience 1, Theology & Experience 2, Islam, Bondage of the Will, St Paul among the Philosophers
We're in our EIGHTH year!
Shouldn't such a tradition be supported?
Demonstrate your little-o orthodoxy by
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You foolish person! I Corinthians 15 isn't the place to come for an instruction manual, but for a redirection toward the one who was raised from the dead for the glory of God. In this episode Dad and I talk through what is—and isn't—the subject matter of the apostle's treatise on resurrection, where to be exuberant (i.e. doxology), where to be sober (i.e. the mechanics of the life to come), and why it makes all the difference to the living of this mortal life right now.
We're in our EIGHTH year!
And you haven't backed us yet? You foolish person!
Demonstrate your phronesis by
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Sarah discusses "The Water Bus," the last story to be covered from the collection Star Over Bethlehem by Agatha Christie Mallowan, with Kemper Donovan of the All About Agatha podcast!
Everything is authorized to me—but I will not let just anything have authority over me. And therein lies the path of discernment for a baptized Christian body in the world. Sex, marital and otherwise? Food, idolatrous or not? What has the promised resurrection to do with the mortal body in this life? In this episode Dad and I work our way through the 6th, 7th, and 8th chapters of I Corinthians to see both what the Apostle Paul concludes and how he gets there—and what that means for Christian bodies all these centuries later.
We're in our EIGHTH year!
What other podcast is both authorized and beneficial?
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Where is the debater of this age? All over the internet, apparently. The Apostle Paul would not be impressed, and neither should you. If the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of God, how much more its folly!
In the meanwhile, however, there is the real and contentious question of what, exactly, makes for God's wisdom and God's strength. Hint: if the answer does not include the cross of Christ, it fails the test. In this episode, Dad and I talk our way carefully through I Corinthians 1, 2, and a bit of 3 to discover how the foolishness of God exceeds human wisdom.
We're in our EIGHTH year!
And you still haven't backed us?
Now that is the wrong kind of foolishness.
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A quick introduction to a new ebook from Sarah: sermons on all four Passion accounts from all four Gospels. Download your free ebook of Lenten Postil on the Passion here.
Transfiguration Sunday is coming soon -- the 15th of February! Arm yourself against the inevitable rehashing of the same with this, the second of seven ways of looking at the Transfiguration. Or better yet, treat yourself to all Seven Ways of Looking at the Transfiguration.
SO MANY PROBLEMS when you try to think about the resurrection of the dead... one of the reasons it is abandoned as much by naive faith and scientific sophistication. Should we take such a challenge lying down? No, we shall not! In this episode, Dad and I rise to the occasion (see what I did there?) to think through, with the guidance of the gospel, what it even means to say that Jesus rose from the dead or that we too shall rise, what it doesn't mean, and why it would even be good news.
We're in our EIGHTH year!
And you still haven't backed us? Craziness!
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The Sermon on the Mount will make its once-every-three-years appearance in the lectionary starting in late January, so here is a re-release of Sarah's poetic paraphrase thereof. For downloads and print purchases of Sermon on the Mount: A Poetic Paraphrase visit Thornbush Press.
After a three-year interim, Dad and I finally return to Reinhold Niebuhr's magisterial work, The Nature and Destiny of Man, first delivered as the Gifford Lectures in 1939, then revised and published in 1943. In this episode on vol. 2, we discuss what Dad cribbed from Niebuhr upon his first reading this book 55 years ago (!), the question of metanarratives and what we can (and can't) know about history, why the atonement is necessary, and of course, Sarah's favorite topic, the Parousia of Christ. This year of podcasting ends not with a whimper, but a bang!
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Notes:
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Related episodes: Niebuhr on the Nature of Man, Resurrection according to Macrina and Nyssa, Before Auschwitz, Doctrine to Bible (and Back Again), Cybertech and Personhood, Propaganda, The Image of God
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Antti Raunio, "Martin Luther and Love"
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Need more on communism? Try this very digestible approach in Sarah's memoir, I Am a Brave Bridge, about the Hinlicky family's year in Slovakia just after the fall of the iron curtain
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Need more on the Parousia? Sarah's Forty Facets of the Ascension is now out on all platforms! And, guess what, lots on the Parousia in her Seven Ways of Looking at the Transfiguration, too!
This oft-overlooked little epistle of the New Testament is very likely the first extant work of Christian literature—characterized by the apostle Paul's intense pastoral love for his congregation in Thessalonica and comforting hope in the return on the clouds of the Lord Jesus. In this episode Dad and I dig into both these themes, the abundance of family language (some of it startling, to say the least!), explore non-creepy ways to affirm the Parousia, and note early themes of Paul that will stay the course as well as undergo development on the way to his late Epistles.
We're in our SEVENTH year!
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Notes:
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Sarah's book Forty Facets of the Ascension is available now!
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Gaventa, First and Second Thessalonians
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Malherbe, Paul and the Thessalonians: The Philosophic Tradition of Pastoral Care
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Related episodes: Apostleship Envy, Triple Predestination, Galatians 1, Galatians 2, Philemon, Romans
There is plenty puzzling about the doctrine of the resurrection, no matter which way you slice it. But it's extra puzzling if you prioritize the immortality of the soul over the resurrection of the body, and if you prioritize the resurrection of the body over the resurrection of the dead. In this episode Dad and I warmly invite Cappadocian father Gregory of Nyssa and his accomplished sister Macrina the Teacher to show us all the good impulses toward a doctrine of the resurrection, along with all the bad ways to defend it. Sometimes theology is best helped by bold mistakes!
We're in our SEVENTH year!
Show your support by becoming a Patron!
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Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and Resurrection
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You can pre-order my book, Forty Facets of the Ascension!
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Related episodes: Gregory of Nazianzus, Perpetua and Felicitas, Heaven Hell and the Life to Come, The Resurrection
Sarah talks with Tara Beth Leach and Mark Quanstrom of The Pastor's Table about hard-won lessons in gospel and ministry!
Sarah talks with the hosts of the Narrative Lectionary Podcast about the Book of Revelation, and especially the six lessons appointed for this year.
After our last episode on Pastoral Preaching, I had a brainwave. Dad and I talk about it.
Most church services include preaching... but why? What should be the focus of a sermon? For that matter, what should not be the focus of a sermon? And is any genre more or less compatible with law-gospel preaching? Plus: Sarah shares the worst sermon she ever heard. And a few other doozies besides.
We're in our SEVENTH year!
Show your support by becoming a Patron!
Notes:
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Iowa Preachers Project
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Related episodes: Law and Gospel Part 1, Law and Gospel Part 2, How to Hack the Law, Reflections on Tokyo Ministry
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Luther, A Brief Instruction on What to Look for and Expect in the Gospel
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Crossings Community template for law-gospel preaching
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Augsburg Confession Article 5
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Seven narrative sermons by Sarah
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Hays, The Faith of Jesus Christ
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Zahl, The Holy Spirit and Christian Experience
Dad and I are back on Enter the Bible to discuss whether and to what extent Christians are obligated to obey the laws found in Scripture.
Dad and I both moonlight on Enter the Bible to discuss whether faith is our work or God's work. Or maybe that's the wrong question...?
What's worse, a Christianity exceedingly well aware of the devil... or a Christianity totally unaware of it? What's worse, the devil you know or the devil you don't? Did the devil make you do it? or did God in disguise? In this episode Dad and I undertake a historical survey of Christian understandings of the devil, where it's gone wrong, and (if such a thing is possible) how to speak of the devil aright.
We're in our SEVENTH year!
Show your support by becoming a Patron!
Notes:
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Related episodes: Nenilava, the Blumhardts, Jacques Ellul, Powers and Principalities, Howard Thurman
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Ziegler, God's Adversary and Ours
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Žižek and Milbank, The Monstrosity of Christ
Luther's 1528 treatise is quite the diatribe against denials of Christ's bodily presence in the sacrament of his Supper. But it is also a deep exploration of the nature of meaning, what we mean when we speak, and above all what Christ means when he speaks. Plus, it'll set right anyone still misinformed enough to think that Lutherans teach "consubstantiation"!
We're in our SEVENTH year!
Show your support by becoming a Patron!
Notes:
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Related episodes: Holy Communion: Discipline, Holy Communion: Doctrine, Virtual Communion
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Luther, Confession Concerning Christ's Supper, in Luther's Works 37
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Uggla, Becoming Human Again: The Theological Life of Gustaf Wingren
A counterpart to our earlier episode on Bible to Doctrine (and Back Again), this one has us discussing Dad's forthcoming book, which is a theology of theology and an exegesis of exegesis! In particular we discuss the difference between starting with the incarnation vs. starting with the resurrection in christology, and all the downstream consequences of the respective decisions.
We're in our SEVENTH year!
Show your support by becoming a Patron!
Notes:
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Related episodes: Ellul, Tillich, Lindbeck, Jenson
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Ziegler, Militant Grace
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Mattes, Martin Luther's Theology of Beauty
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Dahl, Jesus the Christ
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Zahl, The Holy Spirit and Christian Experience
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Zachhuber, Theology as Science in Nineteenth-Century Germany
Or, how God took a burned, unwilling, and fearful pastor, and turned her into a joyful one. With, of course, a few bumps along the way. In this episode Dad and I reflect together on my six and a half years of missionary ministry in the world's biggest megalopolis, and what the very specific circumstances of church life here can teach us about renewing the church in the U.S. and elsewhere.
We're in our SEVENTH year!
Show your support by becoming a Patron!
Related episodes: Japanese Theologian Kazoh Kitamori, Holy Communion: Discipline, Virtual Communion, The Inhumanity of Lockdown
Also, if you haven't ever signed up for my e-newsletter, Theology & a Recipe, now's a good time to do so! I have recommendations for Japan-related books, and some upcoming main issues on Japan-related themes.
Dad gets interviewed on Wipf & Stock's Theology Mill podcast to talk about his book, Lutheran Theology: A Critical Introduction!
Sarah once again joins Kemper on the All About Agatha podcast to discuss Agatha Christie's very Christian (though also very weird) short story, "In the Cool of the Evening" ... and theology abounds!
We are theologians who read the Bible. That is not a self-evident statement. But let's back up further... why does Christianity have a Bible at all? And now that we have it, how do we read it? In this episode we explore how we as theologians depend on the discipline of biblical studies, our appreciations and critiques thereof, and how Bible gives rise to doctrine... or is it maybe the other way around?!
We're in our SEVENTH year!
Show your support by becoming a Patron!
Notes:
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Check out Sarah's Seven Ways of Looking at the Transfiguration
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And Dad's Before Auschwitz and commentary on Joshua
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As well as Dad's related articles: “Scripture as Matrix, Christ as Content: A response to Johannes Zachhuber and Anna Case-Winters” in Luther Refracted; “Prima Scriptura: Saving Sola Scriptura from Itself,” Dialog 55/3 (2016) 223-230; “The Lutheran Dilemma,” Pro Ecclesia VIII/4 (1999): 391-422.
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Levy, Introducing Medieval Biblical Exegesis
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Juel, Messianic Exegesis
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Hill, Paul and the Trinity
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Wright, Surprised by Hope
Dad and I continue our discussion of the Ascension of Jesus in the New Testament: how John's entire Gospel is a cosmic parabola of descent and ascent, with a twist; why the Ascension is the crux of the matter for Hebrews's Day of Atonement interpretation of Jesus' sacrifice; and the apostle Paul's apocalyptic orientation to the ascended Lord.
From there we look at the presence, not absence of the ascended Jesus in our midst: in the preached word, in the Lord's Supper, and in the very bodies of his baptized believers.
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Torrance, Space, Time, and Resurrection
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Barfield, Poetic Diction and Saving the Appearances
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Luther, Confession Concerning Christ's Supper in Luther's Works 37
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Moffitt, Rethinking the Atonement
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Related episodes: Ascension in Luke and Acts, Holy Communion: Discipline, Holy Communion: Doctrine, Brain Mind Soul
Forty Facets of the Ascension, Sarah's new book, is coming to Kickstarter in mid-March! Sign up now to be notified the moment it launches.
In this episode, Dad and I discuss whether Jesus was a rocket ship, a hot air balloon, a cosmonaut... or maybe just the risen Lord whose bodily existence is integral to gospel proclamation! We look at some of the differences between Luke 24 and Acts 1's version of the Ascension (be prepared for some surprises) and the many things Luke had to argue against in order to argue for Jesus. If the Ascension has left you perpetually perplexed or scientifically stressed, fear not! This episode is for you.
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Once again, folks, that's Forty Facets of the Ascension coming to you on Kickstarter in mid-Marcy 2025!
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Also, Transfiguration is sneaking up on you soon (March 2)! If you didn't already get Seven Ways of Looking at the Transfiguration, you can get it instantly in ebook or audiobook, or order a print copy right now.
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If you count among that exalted elite who need good fiction and good theology at the same time, you'll be raptured over my novel A-Tumblin' Down. You can also sign up for my Substack for more theologically luminous storytelling.
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Related episodes: Luke Part 1, Luke Part 2, The First Two-Thirds of Acts, The Last Third of Acts
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Hans Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative
We're in our SEVENTH year!
Show your support by becoming a Patron!
From Seven Ways of Looking at the Transfiguration, Sarah reads the first chapter, "Metamorphosis : Jesus." Keep listening, or read by getting your copy at Thornbush Press, Audible, Amazon, or Bookshop.org!
How often do you celebrate the 1700th anniversary of anything? 2025 marks the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicea, which gave us most (though not quite all) of the Nicene Creed (completed and perfected at the Council of Constantinople in 381, but frankly, nobody wants to say "The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed"). Dad and I talk you through what's at stake in the trinitarian assertions of this Creed, compare and contrast it with the Apostles' Creed, and strongly urge you to make it a centerpiece of your preaching and teaching in this year of grace!
We're in our SEVENTH year!
(not quite our 1700th)
Show your support by becoming a Patron!
Notes:
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Phillip Cary, The Nicene Creed (if you read only one theology book this year, make it this one)
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Hinlicky, Divine Complexity (this is your second theology book of the year: tracing the movement of New Testament witness to conciliar trinitarian confession)
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Related episodes: Baptism, Infant and Otherwise; Athanasius Against the World; Gregory of Nazianzus; Islam
Sarah makes her third appearance on the fantastic All About Agatha podcast! With host Kemper Donovan she discusses Agatha's short story "Promotion in the Highest."
Happy new year!
We have a quick look over our stats for 2024, and unveil some big news about 2025!
Click here to be notified when Sarah's Kickstarter for a book on the Ascension goes live (~March 2025)!
Here for her Transfiguration book in case you missed it the first time around... Transfiguration Sunday is only a couple months away!
Subscribe here to Sarah Hinlicky Wilson Stories on Substack!
And if none of those moved you, then just hop on over to Patreon to express your appreciation for the Queen of the Sciences podcast!
The first of a series of five episodes in which Sarah discusses I Thessalonians with John Drury of the Fresh Text podcast. Remarkably apt for the end of one church year and the beginning of another!
Subscribe to Fresh Text to listen to the next four episodes with Sarah and John!
It's the ultimate smackdown! In this episode we discuss the covert work done by theories and doctrines of history, in church and saeculum alike, and why we can't stop theorizing about history once we've noticed it. We also drill down on two particular approaches to time and history within Christian discourse, what they mean, what they imply, and how (and how not) to deploy them.
Hoping for a SEVENTH year of Queen of the Sciences?
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Notes:
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Related episodes: Second Peter and the Second Coming, Unbaptized God, Technique and Propaganda with Jacques Ellul, The Bible in One Hand and the Newspaper in the Other?, Buddhism, Our Democracy?, Hegel
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Augustine, Confessions (specifically, the second half on time that you always skip over)
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Hinlicky, Luther and the Beloved Community
You may have missed the recent U.S. presidential election, since it was kinda inconsequential and nobody was paying any attention to it. Oh wait... In today's episode, Dad and I take up the topic of "our democracy" as it has been talked about in the U.S. during this grueling election year, why Christians have an investment in flourishing democratic government (especially considering the alternatives), how the distinctions between church and state, and God's two kingdoms, play out in a democratic nation, and what we can faithfully do in our callings as Christians and citizens. Plus, Sarah reminds you that you are not Bonhoeffer.
Six years of top-quality theological podcasting... Show your support by becoming a Patron!
Notes:
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Related episodes: Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Howard Thurman, Martin Luther King Jr, Two Kingdoms 16th Century Edition, Two Kingdoms 20th and 21st Century Edition
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Tocqueville, Democracy in America
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Heise, The Gates of Hell (on the elimination of the Russian Lutheran Church during the Soviet period)
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Bonhoeffer, Ethics and Letters and Papers from Prison, plus DeJonge's Bonhoeffer on Resistance
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Hofstadter, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics"
Many religions are historically entangled with one another, but no relationship is as close, fraught, or dangerous as that between Judaism and Christianity... kind of like a pair of biblical brothers, in fact. In this episode Dad and I discuss the enormous number of things these two have in common, why that makes the not negligible difference of assessment about Jesus so explosive, how we might learn from one another, and how we might learn to wait for God to confirm our faith, one way or another.
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Related episodes: Islam, World Religions, Unbaptized God, On Hamas's Attack on Israel, Before Auschwitz, Galatians 1, Galatians 2, Nehemiah, Luther and the Jews, The Relationship of the Old and New Testaments
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Nostra Aetate
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Cohen, Everyman's Talmud
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Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son
Six years of top-quality theological podcasting... Show your support by becoming a Patron!
What's that story about the medieval monk who tried to find peace through religious good works, got wise to the power and corruption of the religious establishment, had a breakthrough to trust in the mercy of the transcendent one who became immanent for our salvation, and as a result left the monastery, got married, had children, and worked among ordinary folks? No, not Luther. Shinran! In this episode, Dad and I explore the rather startling parallels between the True Pure Land school of Buddhism in Japan and Lutheran Christianity, then discuss what the implications of these overlaps may, or may not, mean from our theological perspective.
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Related episodes: Islam, World Religions, Justification by Faith, The Certainty of Faith, Justification by Faith Revisited, Faith Just Faith, Japanese Theologian Kazoh Kitamori
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Most of the information in this episode I drew from Jodo Shinshu: A Guide; you might also be interested in Taitetsu Unno, River of Fire, River of Water: An Introduction to the Pure Land Tradition of Shin Buddhism
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Armstrong, Buddha
Six years of top-quality theological podcasting... Show your support by becoming a Patron!
Subscribe at Sarah Hinlicky Wilson Stories on Substack to join the communal reading of A-Tumblin' Down!
Six years of top-quality theological podcasting... Show your support by becoming a Patron!
After considering "World Religions" as such, in this episode Dad and I turn our attention to considering a specific world religion. But our burden here is not to discuss the details or the disputes about or within Islam, but mainly to inquire about it as a challenge to Christian theology. Do we wrongly exalt the finite man Jesus to the status of the infinite? Does our complex creed betray a fatal weakness compared to Islam's simple one? How did God as Christians know him allow a competing monotheism to arise under his providence? Not surprisingly, we also put some theological questions of our own to Islam.
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Related episodes: World Religions, John of Damascus, Fear and Phobias, Two Kingdoms 16th Century Edition, Two Kingdoms 20th and 21st Century Edition, On Hamas' Attack on Israel, Luther and the Jews
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Some resources for more in-depth study of Islam on its own terms: Fletcher, The Cross and the Crescent; Saeed, Islamic Thought: An Introduction; A Common Word: Muslims and Christians on Loving God and Neighbor
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Qureshi, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus, and see also Janosik, John of Damascus: First Apologist to the Muslims
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Sanneh, Summoned from the Margin
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Shoemaker, Creating the Qur'an
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Manji, The Trouble with Islam
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Also consider listening to this episode I did with Enter the Bible on the variety of millennialisms and the temptations of interpreting history
You know that there is such a thing as "world religions," and you know which ones they are. But why? Where did such a notion even come from? And why are some in but some aren't? Is "religion" even the right word for everything categorized under it? And if not, why has "religious studies" come to dominate, not to say replace, "theology" at virtually every college in America? In this episode Dad and I trace the genealogy of the concept of both "religious studies" and "world religions," take a look at what one might dare to call a crisis of faith within these disciplines, and give some ideas about how religious studies and theology can actually do each other some good.
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James, The Variety of Religious Experience
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Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions
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Shoemaker, Creating the Qur'an
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Orsi, Between Heaven and Earth
Six years of top-quality theological podcasting... Show your support by becoming a Patron!
The more ecumenical dialogues establish agreement, the more they turn up disagreement. Why, 115 years into multilateral Christian dialogue and 60 years into bilateral dialogue, does Christian unity look farther away than ever? Why can't we all just agree? In this episode, Dad and I delve deeply into Lutheran theologian Robert W. Jenson's book Unbaptized God, which posits that the problem isn't disagreement at all—it's disastrous agreement on a faulty premise at the root of the theological enterprise. We agree and disagree with Jenson, both of which reactions prove to be tremendously fruitful.
Notes:
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Jenson, Unbaptized God
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Apocalyptic and the Future of Theology
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Related episodes: Apologetics, Second Peter and the Second Coming, John of Damascus, Chalcedon vs Luther, Bonhoeffer's Christology, A Hegel with all the Fixin's
Holy moly! Six years of top-quality theological podcasting! Why not show your support by becoming a Patron?
Is the apologetic enterprise coercing people outside the Christian faith into a decision on which their eternal fate depends, conceding the terms of the debate to the culture's notion of what's important, or making fruitful contact in ways specific to the person and situation? (I bet you can guess our answer.) In this episode, Dad and I examine some worse ways of making a defense for the faith that is within us en route to some recommendations of a more excellent way. Plus, Sarah complains even more about Tillich.
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Related episodes: The Bible in One Hand and the Newspaper in the Other?, Chalcedon vs Luther, The Resurrection, Good Tillich, Bad Tillich, Niebuhr, Critical Social Theory, An Unlikely Marriage, Luther and the Jews
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McDowell, Evidence That Demands a Verdict
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Pannenberg, Jesus: God and Man
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Tillich, Systematic Theology vol. 1
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Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine
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Sarah's book of law-gospel parables, Pearly Gates
Holy moly! Six years of top-quality theological podcasting! Why not show your support by becoming a Patron?
Whose all-time favorite NT epistle is Second Peter? Yeah, I thought so, i.e., nobody's. Terse yet wordy, full of highly developed doctrine yet also threats of judgment, and most likely pseudepigraphal, it's a tough nut to crack. In this episode, Dad and I haul out our exegetical nutcrackers and extract the sweetmeat (to push an already overstrained metaphor too far—though you gotta admit, it fits with Second Peter's prose style), which, oddly enough, proves to be the Parousia of Christ and God's astounding patience, desiring that all, yes all, come to repentance. Plus, more on the Transfiguration!
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Sarah's book on the Transfiguration is now in print and available for general purchase! Get Seven Ways of Looking at the Transfiguration as an ebook and audiobook direct from Thornbush Press, print (or any other format) from Amazon.
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Bauckham, Jude–2 Peter
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Schnelle, The History and Theology of the New Testament Writings
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Harink, 1 & 2 Peter
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Saarinen, The Pastoral Epistles with Philemon & Jude
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Related episodes: Jude, The Transfiguration, I Peter, Faith Just Faith
Holy moly! Six years of top-quality theological podcasting! Why not show your support by becoming a Patron?
Sarah talks with Amber Noel of The Living Church Podcast about ... the Transfiguration! If you've skipped all the others on the Transfiguration, listen to this one. The sheer force of our exuberance will bring you around.
Seven Ways of Looking at the Transfiguration is now available in all formats (ebook, audiobook, paperback, hardcover) from Thornbush Press, Amazon, and Bookshop.org!
If you'd like to request it from your library, make sure to furnish your librarian with the ISBN! Ebook 979-8-9899141-1-1 ; audiobook 979-8-9899141-2-8 ; paperback 979-8-9899141-3-5 ; hardcover 979-8-9899141-4-2.
Take a sad song and make it better? In this episode, Dad and I explore the oft-overlooked Epistle of Jude, including theories of authorship, its lavish use of apocryphal sources not included in either Christian or Jewish scriptural canons, its incipient trinitarianism, and the ongoing urgency of its charge against antinomianism. Also, is Jude the middle term between Paul and James?
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Bauckham, Jude–II Peter
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Schnelle, The History and Theology of the New Testament Writings
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Saarinen, The Pastoral Epistles with Philemon and Jude
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Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism
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My "little book of parables" that Dad referred to is Pearly Gates (my #1 bestseller!)
Holy moly! Six years of top-quality theological podcasting! Why not show your support by becoming a Patron?
The one in which we totally betray our convictions and bargain for material blessings in return for our immortal souls. Oh no wait, that's a different podcast and a different hashtag. In this episode, Dad and I sort out what a blessing actually is and does, how it is that God can bless us but we can also bless God, and the implications for pastoral practice. Along the way, we also discuss the recent Catholic declaration from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith on blessing, Fiducia Supplicans.
Notes:
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Fiducia Supplicans
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Johannesson, Thérèse and Martin
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My conversation with James Hazelwood, host of the Everyday Spirituality podcast, on... wait for it... the Transfiguration! And more specifically, my book Seven Ways of Looking at the Transfiguration. Get yourself the ebook or audiobook right now from Thornbush Press! Print edition coming next month.
What do women want? For that matter, what do men want? Is it (ever) the same thing? Is sex God's greatest joke on his long-suffering creation? Dad and I entertain these and a number of other notions, as we solve all problems of the war of the sexes in an hour and twenty minutes. Plus, good news: the patriarchy is over. I beat it.
Notes:
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Related episodes: Seminex, Elisabeth Behr-Sigel, Critical Social Theory, Jacques Ellul
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See Dad's articles "Why Women May Be Ordained" in Different Voices/Shared Vision and "Whose Church? Which Ministry?" Other than my book on Elisabeth Behr-Sigel, my main contribution to the conversation is "The Epistle of Eutyche"
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Manne, Down Girl
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Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture
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Harrington, Feminism against Progress
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Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
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Solberg, Compelling Knowledge and A Church Undone
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Ruth-exclamation-point, because evidently Podbean won't let you do four-letter titles. Hmm. Well anyway, in this episode Dad and I talk through this absolutely delightful little book of the Old Testament, one of only two named for a woman and the only one named for a Gentile. In particular we explore the necessary and good yet self-contradicting and troubling aspects of the Law, why neither Law nor Love are improved by being reduced to one another, the personal nature of hesed (the Hebrew word for loving-kindness), and why none of it works without... God! God-exclamation-point!
Notes:
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LaCocque, Ruth
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Smit and Fowl, Judges and Ruth
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Related episodes: Joshua, The Saul Saga, How to Hack the Law
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Preachers should preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, so we are told. Maybe Karl Barth told us so. Maybe someone in your church with an axe to grind. Or a sensitive conscience eager to be compassionate and relevant. Should we? In this episode, we continue our explorations of technique and propaganda with the help of Jacques Ellul, pressing the question: how can we possibly propagate the gospel with integrity in a media landscape polluted with propaganda?
Notes:
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Related episodes: Technique and Propaganda with Jacques Ellul, The Image of God, Powers and Principalities, Howard Thurman
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And speaking of propaganda... I actually have yet another podcast, The Disentanglement Podcast, in which my husband Andrew and I try to figure out loud and in the midst and mess of life how to extricate ourselves from all the digital systems that entangle and ensnare us. It's half practical and half philosophical. Oh, and a whole lot shorter per episode than Queen of the Sciences. If that sort of thing matters to you.
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Nearly everyone thinks the world has gone off the rails, and nearly everyone has a theory why, from kids these days to the moral breakdown of the West to the internet. We return to the conversation started by French Protestant philosopher Jacques Ellul more than 80 years ago, and find him startlingly, alarmingly prescient. In this episode we consider his proposal that technique, in the sense of efficient means by technological instruments, has become our all-defining reality, and answer the question that haunted us some time back: is it propaganda all the way up and all the way down? (Yes.)
Notes:
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Ellul, Presence in the Modern World and Propaganda
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Plekon, Hidden Holiness, Saints As They Really Are, Living Icons
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Related episodes: Private Public and Propagandistic, Cybertech and Personhood, Postmodernism for the Perplexed, Hannah Arendt
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Popularly considered the last of the church fathers, John of Damascus gathered up the fruit of early church reflection on the Trinity and the person of Christ in his learned tome, The Orthodox Faith. But in addition to the usual wrangling with the Greek philosophical heritage and the monotheistic challenge of Judaism, John had a new adversary to consider: the even more radically monotheistic Islam. In this episode, Dad and I sort through John's record of Chalcedonian orthodoxy from the 8th century, his "double-mindedness," and what pressures led to the enormous internal doctrinal tensions that he passed on to the generations to follow. Such that, in this episode, Sarah admits defeat.
Notes:
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Can't get enough of Trinity and christology, especially with respect to Greek metaphysics? Then by all means rush right out and get yourself a copy of Dad's Divine Complexity and also Divine Simplicity
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John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith (and generally speaking checking out the great selection in the Popular Patristics series)
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Related episodes: Atonement, Image of God, Melanchthon's Loci Communes, Oh, Anselm!!!, Gregory of Nazianzus, Irenaeus, Athanasius
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The Council of Chalcedon (451) gave us the famous christological formula that Jesus Christ is one person in two natures, without change, division, separation, or confusion. It also gave us a lot of conundrums, enough to cause the first major split of the church between the Syriacs and the Greeks. Among others trying to sort out the perplexities of Chalcedon was Martin Luther himself, whose own christological formulations might just run afoul of Chalcedonian orthodoxy. So in today's episode we entertain the question: was Martin Luther a Chalcedonian heretic? Or should we possibly say, was Chalcedon a Lutheran heretic?
Notes:
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Zachhuber, Luther's Christological Legacy
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Cross, Communicatio Idiomatum
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McCormack, The Humility of the Eternal Son
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What's worse, being bound by the Law or untethered from it entirely? It probably depends on where you're standing. In this episode, Dad and I trace out two kinds of challenges Christians have had to work out with respect to the Law—whether the Law given to Israel applies also to Gentile believers in Jesus Christ, and whether the Law in any respect contributes to justification. Then, we explore working definitions of legalism and antinomianism as misconstruals of the Christian's relationship to the Law, leading to the ultimate question: are legalism and antinomianism really, at root, the same thing after all?
Related episodes: Galatians 1, Galatians 2, Romans, Luther and the Jews, Sermon on the Mount, Atonement
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My second appearance on the All About Agatha podcast, talking to host Kemper Donovan about Agatha Christie's speculative-mariology-fanfiction story, "The Island"!
Here's a link to my previous All About Agatha appearance: Star over Bethlehem
And if that still isn't enough Agatha Christie for you, check out my article in the new issue of the fabulous magazine The Mockingbird, "Agatha Christie, a Very Elusive Christian."
Death! Disaster! Panic in the streets! In this episode Dad and I try to understand how fear and fear-mongering have come to grip our wealthy and (historically speaking) unprecedentedly free societies. Toward that end, we also explore the metastasis of the psychiatric diagnosis of debilitating phobias to a biopolitical strategy for accusing and shutting down anyone who doesn't agree with or approve of certain things. But above all, it's a call to the courage of conscience for anyone tired of having the bullies run the show. Fear not! The Lord is with you.
Notes:
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Related episodes: Transfiguration, Perpetua and Felicitas, Private Public and Propagandistic
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Read, mark, and inwardly digest Luther's commentary on the First Commandment in the Small Catechism to "fear, love, and trust in God above all things"!
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Horn, People Love Dead Jews
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The Scriptural Reasoning inter-faith dialogue project
Holy moly! Six years of top-quality theological podcasting! Why not show your support by becoming a Patron?
The prayer our Lord Jesus taught his disciples, in address to his and their heavenly Father, by the power of the Holy Spirit! And probably the most-prayed prayer of all time. (Well, except maybe "HELP!") In this episode Dad and I pore over each petition, with a great deal of help from Luther's Catechisms, discuss why it is we should pray, and the greater truth that we can and are invited to pray.
Notes:
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Related episodes: All About Prayer, Sermon on the Mount, Revival and Renewal with the Blumhardts
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Sarah's Sermon on the Mount: A Poetic Paraphrase
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Luther's Small Catechism (and Sarah's Memorizing Edition therof) and also his Large Catechism
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Sarah sits down to chat with Roger Lowther of the Art Life Faith podcast!
Also, in the unlikely event you missed it, the Transfiguration book Kickstarter mentioned in this episode has already ended (after exceeding all expectations!). But you can preorder the ebook on Amazon, where it will be published on August 6, 2024.
In remembrance of an event that took place 50 years + 1 week ago, Dad tells the story of the internal schism in the Missouri Synod, the "walkout" of professors and students from Concordia Seminary St. Louis, and the founding of a seminary in exile, popularly known as Seminex. It is the founding story of why American Lutheranism looks the way it does today and mirrors the wider cultural polarization, yet with uniquely theological elements all its own. Triumphalists on either side beware; this is a tragedy.
Notes:
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Todd, Authority Vested
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Burkee, Power, Politics, and the Missouri Synod
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Tietjen, Memoirs in Exile
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A Statement of Scriptural and Confessional Principles (LCMS)
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See more on Dad's new blog with a number of essays on this history, Theological Ramblings,
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Andrew Christiansen of Doth Protest and Dad discuss Karl Marx's reception and use of Martin Luther.
We've discussed the Crucifixion and the Resurrection, Anselm and Aulen, and salvation itself all over the place... but until now, never "the Atonement." Could that be because the word itself tends to dictate the outcome? In this episode we talk about the origins of the English word "atone," exchange some thoughts on the Epistle to the Hebrews, and then dive deep into an essay by theologian Robert Bertram commenting on Luther commenting on Galatians. Joyful exchanges abound!
Notes:
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Bertram, "How Our Sins Were Christ's"
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Sarah's article "The Law of God," now also published in Common Places in Christian Theology
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Luther's 1531/35 Galatians commentary in Luther's Works vols 26 and 27
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In church, do your sins actually get forgiven, or are you only assured that in general God likes to forgive sins? Do you have to be penitent for the absolution to work? How penitent? Can a mere human absolve on God's behalf? And if so, how do absolvers know whether they ought to loose something or whether they'd better keep it bound up? In this episode, Dad and Sarah discuss Luther's little known 50 Theses on the Remission of Sins, from the year 1518, which has been dubbed by scholar Oswald Bayer as really truly the first Reformation text. From there we talk about general and corporate absolution in public worship in comparison with specific absolution of a private confession, and what qualifies as a faithful, evangelical liturgical practice of absolution.
Notes:
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Luther's 1518 Theses on the Remission of Sins
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Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg
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Studying Luther in Wittenberg
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Bayer, Promissio
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Liturgical resources for confession and absolution from the Lutheran Church in Australia and New Zealand
Holy moly! Six years of top-quality theological podcasting! Why not show your support by becoming a Patron?
Sarah talks with Katie and Gretchen of Freely Given about her forthcoming book, Seven Ways of Looking at the Transfiguration (Kickstarter's closed, so look for it in July 2024!).
Sarah talks with Katie and Gretchen of the Freely Given podcast about her forthcoming book, Seven Ways of Looking at the Transfiguration (Kickstarter's closed, so look for it in July 2024!).
John Drury of Fresh Text and Sarah discuss all things Transfiguration in light of her forthcoming book, Seven Ways of Looking at the Transfiguration (Kickstarter's closed, so look for it in July 2024!).
And, if you want to hear their next two conversations about the Transfiguration, including the mind-blowing discussion of the Gospel of John, be sure to subscribe to Fresh Text right away!
Jason Micheli of Crackers and Grape Juice and Sarah discuss all things Transfiguration in light of her forthcoming book, Seven Ways of Looking at the Transfiguration (Kickstarter's closed, so look for it in July 2024!).
All about the Transfiguration of our Lord! And, to be perfectly honest, all about Sarah's new book, Seven Ways of Looking at the Transfiguration (which, as you'll hear, launched as a Kickstarter, and will be available for purchase starting July 2024). Among other topics: Why Elijah and Moses of all possible visitors from Israel's past? Why does Peter offer to build booths, of all weird things (and is he really as much of a dope as every Transfiguration sermon you've ever heard claims)? How does the apostle Paul handle the Transfiguration? And why, for heaven's sake, does Second Peter of all oddball epistles feature the Transfiguration??
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I have a new podcast! For people who need good fiction and good theology at the same time. Two final episodes here to whet your appetite—so if you enjoy them, please hop on over and subscribe to Sarah Hinlicky Wilson Stories so you won't miss a single episode!
My lecture at the Parkville Plus seminar hosted by Australian Lutheran College in Adelaide, South Australia, on "Three Nineteenth-Century German Lutheran Saint Calendar Proposals."
I have a new podcast! For people who need good fiction and good theology at the same time. Two more episodes here to whet your appetite—so if you enjoy them, please hop on over and subscribe to Sarah Hinlicky Wilson Stories so you won't miss a single episode!
Dad speaks about preaching to political and cultural issues as an exercise of both Christian discipleship and lefthand-kingdom stewardship at the Love Teach Heal Academy for lay preachers and teachers.
I have a new podcast! For people who need good fiction and good theology at the same time. Two episodes here to whet your appetite—so if you enjoy them, please hop on over and subscribe to Sarah Hinlicky Wilson Stories so you won't miss a single episode!
What makes human beings to be in the image of God? A rational soul? A capacity for action? An openness to the divine? Is it a given or an achievement? Who or what has it, and who or what doesn't? And does the image of God tell us only about humans, or can it tell us something about God, too—without remaking God in our own image? We wrap up Season 5 of Queen of the Sciences tackling these fraught questions!
And looking toward 2024 and Season 6, here are some fun things you should most definitely check out:
—Seven Ways of Looking at the Transfiguration, my first-ever Kickstarter, launching in mid-January!
—Dad's new weekly sermon!
—My new fiction podcast, Sarah Hinlicky Wilson Stories!
—And a ton of newly available articles from Dad for your edification!
Notes:
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Dalferth, Creatures of Possibility
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Strawn, The Old Testament Is Dying and "From Imago to Imagines" in The Incomparable God
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van Huyssteen, Alone in the World?
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McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary
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Cary, The Nicene Creed
FIVE SOLID YEARS of theological podcasting! Show your enthusiasm, apprecation, and support by contributing to the cause on Patreon!
Is it a brain? Is it a mind? Is it a soul? What hath neuroscience to do with theology? In this episode Dad and I discuss recent work on the function of the brain and especially its hemispheric differences, and what this has to do with rationality, bodiliness, and faith.
Notes:
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Kandel, There Is Life after the Nobel Prize
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Doidge, The Brain That Changes Itself
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McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary
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I discuss "transgenre theology" on episode 19 of my new podcast, Sarah Hinlicky Wilson Stories!
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The brand-newest of any theological writing Dad and I have ever covered on the podcast! We discuss "The Spirit of the Lord Is Upon Me," the recently released statement of the International Lutheran-Pentecostal Dialogue, following discussions that took place from 2016 to 2022. Full disclosure: Sarah worked as a consultant to the dialogue on behalf of the Institute for Ecumenical Research, an independent house of studies that delegates consultants to all the ecumenical dialogues of the Lutheran World Federation. Besides Sarah's offering of some insider illumination on the text, the two of us discuss what an ecumenical statement is, what it isn't, and how it can become fruitful across the church.
Notes:
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"The Spirit of the Lord Is Upon Me"
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The Institute for Ecumenical Research
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The Lutheran World Federation and Pentecostal World Fellowship
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Related episodes: Making Ecumenism Sexy Again, Nenilava, Theology and Experience 1, Theology and Experience 2
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Dad discusses the upcoming lectionary reading from Joshua 24 with Rachel Wrenn and Tim McNinch of the First Reading podcast!
After giving Tillich his due in the last episode, in this one Sarah goes off, more or less blaming Tillich and his book The Courage to Be for everything that has gone wrong in American Lutheranism for the past 75 years. Overwrought and unjust? Probably. Dad makes the case for Tillich at least asking the right questions, and not accepting certain false solutions. But we both agree there is a more excellent way. If nothing else, you'll enjoy hearing the generation gap on display as you've never before heard it on this podcast!
Notes:
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Tillich, The Courage to Be
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Related episodes: Oh, Anselm!!!, Reinhold Niebuhr, Barth Ain't So Bad, Bonhoeffer's Christology
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For universality from specificity rather than the other way around, consider my novel A-Tumblin' Down
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Dad and I respond to the Hamas terror attack on Israel.
Notes:
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Related episodes: Good Tillich, Before Auschwitz, Luther and the Jews
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Please read Dad's Before Auschwitz; I also commend Dara Horn's People Love Dead Jews
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Statement from Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton of the ELCA
The little-known story of expatriate German theologian Paul Tillich's radio addresses from America to the German people in the depths of World War II, exhorting them to name and reject the false idol that was holding them hostage and driving millions of people to death. In this episode Dad and I explore how Tillich drew on the depths of the Bible's prophetic speech to analyze the Third Reich and the Germans' own complicity with it, the uniqueness of that situation, and what we might be able to learn from it.
Notes:
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Tillich, Against the Third Reich
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If you read no other book by Dad, be sure to read this one: Before Auschwitz
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Related episode: Before Auschwitz, Hannah Arendt, Reinhold Niebuhr
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Sarah discusses premillennialism, postmillennialism, amillennialism, and Revelation 20 with Katie Langston and Kathryn Schifferdecker of the Enter the Bible podcast. Check out Katie's memoir of leaving Mormonism and becoming a Christian, Sealed: An Unexpected Journey into the Heart of Grace, and listen to Dad's and my discussion of it on a bonus episode of Queen of the Sciences!
Christ the center, Christ for me, Christ for us, Christ as church, Christ the humiliated and exalted one, Christ the Lord who is nothing like der Führer who reigned over Berlin at the time a young Dietrich Bonhoeffer gave these university lectures. In this episode we sift through Bonhoeffer's appropriation of Luther's christology, lightly inflected by Karl Barth, as well as his own corrections and innovations, in the service of a community centered on Christ... and no one else.
Notes:
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You may know these lectures as Christ the Center but we worked from the new translation in DBWE 12.
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DeJonge, Bonhoeffer's Reception of Luther
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See Dad's "Luther's Anti-Docetism in the Disputatio de divinitate et humanitate Christi (1540)," pp. 139-185 in Creator est creatura
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Luther, "Confession Concerning Christ's Supper," in LW 37
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Sarah mentioned her novel A-Tumblin' Down
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Related episode: Bonhoeffer's "Life Together"
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Sarah discusses why God heals infections and cancers, but doesn't regrow amputated limbs, on this episode of Enter the Bible with Kathryn Schifferdecker and Katie Langston! Check out related episodes Illness and Healing and Miracles (with Some Help from C. S. Lewis).
Elect exiles, spirits in prison, slaves, wives, the devil qua prowling lion, but above all lots and lots of the risen Lord Jesus... the First Epistle of Peter has it all! Dad and I get so carried away with this brief letter than we sort of rush to finish at the end, and even so have an outsized episode. But don't worry, we get into that bit about Christ preaching to the dead. Plus, Dad mispronounces French again, and Sarah goes off on Bible-believin' Christians who deny that baptism saves, when it says so right here.
Notes:
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Related episodes: How To Be a Congregation, Baptism: Infant and Otherwise
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Davids, The First Epistle of Peter
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Harink, 1 & 2 Peter
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My sermon on the "elect exiles" of I Peter 1
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And my book To Baptize or Not to Baptize: A Practical Guide to Clergy
What do you think five years of top-quality theology podcasting is worth? Register your vote by joining our highly select band of Patrons. Get some cool swag and support your favorite podcast in remaining stridently independent and advertising-free!
Dad discusses just what the phrase "faith of Christ" in St. Paul's letters means on this episode of Enter the Bible with Kathryn Schifferdecker and Katie Langston!
Or, the one in which Sarah at long last reads the first work of Protestant dogmatics, and has an existential/vocational crisis as a result. Dad talks her off the ledge.
Notes:
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Melanchthon, Loci Communes (1521 edition) and Loci Communes (1559 edition) (there are lots of other editions in-between)
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Quere, Melanchthon's Christum Cognoscere
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Sarah's To Baptize or Not to Baptize and Small Catechism: Memorizing Edition
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Related episodes: Bondage of the Will, Before Auschwitz
What do you think five years of top-quality theology podcasting is worth? Register your vote by joining our highly select band of Patrons. Get some cool swag and support your favorite podcast in remaining stridently independent and advertising-free!
Dad discusses how the 12 tribes of Israel entered the promised land on this episode of Enter the Bible with Kathryn Schifferdecker and Katie Langston!
The famous, no, infamous, no, notorious treatise by the reformer at his most white-hot passionate. Mild-mannered Erasmus didn't stand a chance. And neither do you. Which turns out to be good news!
In this episode Dad and I sort out what The Bondage of the Will is actually about, what it isn't about, how it is true freedom even for religiously-minded people (maybe especially for them...?), and the delights of a theology you can't possibly programitize.
Notes:
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Luther, Bondage of the Will, in LW 33
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Kolb, Bound Choice, Election, and Wittenberg Theological Method
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Vestrucci, Theology as Freedom
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Ruokanen, Trinitarian Grace in Martin Luther's The Bondage of the Will
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Late in life, after penning thousands of pages, Augustine received a request from an admiring but understandably intimidated friend for something a little shorter. This "handbook" is the result—a veritable greatest-hits compilation for this most influential of Western fathers. Everything from evil as privation to predestination, when and whether to lie and how to grow in love, justifying faith and almsgiving to oneself (!).
Notes:
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We read this edition of Augustine's Enchiridion
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See also our episode on Augustine's City of God
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Sarah talks with Kelsi Klembara of the Outside Ourselves podcast about A-Tumblin' Down, and a few other things besides! Plus, here's the link to my new podcast: Sarah Hinlicky Wilson Stories. Or just search for it in whatever app you're using right now!
Why our last regular episode didn't show up in your podcast app. Please, please listen to this message.
Update: Literally within five minutes of my uploading this short protest, both Apple and Spotify let the episode on "The Inhumanity of Lockdown" through. Take the lesson and protest censorship! They back down. At least for now.
We break our habitual reserve on what's been inflicted on the body politic over the past three years with this extended discussion of lockdown—and its essential inhumanity cloaked in the garb of science and righteousness. Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben with his concept of biopolitics is our guide. We realize that this has been an incredibly painful set of issues for many of you to even attempt to discuss, so we try to model a way of talking about without rancor even while calling it like we see it. But we hope, whatever you thought and however you managed, your conclusion is the same as ours: Never again.
Notes:
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Related episodes: Before Auschwitz, Illness and Healing, Faith to the Aid of Science, St Paul among the Philosophers, Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague, Virtual Communion
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Agamben, Where Are We Now?
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Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler
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This is my only other public statement related to covid: "Churches During Lockdown: Near Disaster"
What do you think five years of top-quality theology podcasting is worth? Register your vote by joining our highly select band of Patrons. Get some cool swag and support your favorite podcast in remaining stridently independent and advertising-free!
Not your usual Queen of the Sciences crossover! Sarah talks with Kemper Donovan of the All About Agatha (Christie) podcast to parse the great detective novelist's short story "Star over Bethlehem," and more generally Agatha's little known but deeply felt Christian faith.
To everything there is a season... even a season for gaining an appreciation of the odd little book of Ecclesiastes. Maybe middle age is precisely that season. Overcoming our own initial biases against Ecclesiastes, which is the ultimate inkblot test within the canon of Scripture, we place the Preacher in historical context as a template for taking the ancient wisdom of Israel's faith into radically different contexts. More relevant and less existentialist-nihilist than you thought!
Notes:
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Of course you know "Turn, Turn, Turn" by the Byrds
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Check out Dad's article in Word & World (Winter 2023), "Luther on Ecclesiastes: Nature in the Light of Grace" and Luther's commentary in LW 15
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Lohfink, Qoheleth
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Scott, Proverbs–Ecclesiastes
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Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament
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Treier, Ecclesiastes (Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible)
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Adams, Christ and Horrors
What do you think five years of top-quality theology podcasting is worth? Register your vote by joining our highly select band of Patrons. Get some cool swag and support your favorite podcast in remaining stridently independent and advertising-free!
A couple years ago we did an episode entitled "Poor Anselm" because we felt sorry for the vilification of this major medieval theologian's work on the atonement in Cur Deus Homo, which we thought deserved better. So we thought, why not give his first treatise, Monologion, a try? Um. Well... In this episode, we go from defending Anselm to rebuking him for his account of the Trinity by reason alone, which just plain doesn't work and has caused trouble in western Christianity ever since. And yet, somehow, Anselm's version seems to be what people even today think is the correct way of talking about the Trinity. Join us for some trinitarian therapy.
Notes:
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Anselm, Monologion
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Rogers, The Neoplatonic Metaphysics and Epistemology of Anselm of Canterbury
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Luy, Dominus Mortis
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Among the many remarkable Gregories of the early church, the one from Nazianzus stands out to such an extent that he has earned the simple epithet: "The Theologian." In this episode, we explore why! In particular, Gregory's five famous theological orations (plus two letters to neighborhood priest Cledonius) present one of the best and most formative accounts of the doctrine of Trinity, emphasizing the priority of Person over Nature and the distinction among the Persons residing in their relationships, not their being. If you've ever felt defeated by the doctrine of the Trinity, this episode is for you.
Notes:
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See my issue of Theology & a Recipe on Basil the Great entitled "The Trinity Is Not an Egg"
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A nice little compendium of Gregory's writings can be found in the charming Popular Patristic series under the (unfortunately awful) title On God and Christ
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Hall,Philip Melanchthon and the Cappadocians
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Sarah talks with Jason Micheli of the very excellent Crackers and Grape Juice podcast... and a little foreshadowing at the end that Dad might just get an episode of his own, too!
Mariology is both Christology and Israelology—or should be, anyway. In this episode Dad and I work through the biblical witness about Mary, patristic affirmations of her as the God-bearer, what the doctrine of the virgin birth does and, perhaps more importantly, doesn't mean, and conclude with some suggestions for expanding and developing Mary's theological significance as not only birth mother of God but also adoptive mother of the church of both Jews and Gentiles.
Notes:
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Quotes from Cyril of Alexandria and the christological formula of the Council of Chalcedon come from Christology of the Later Fathers
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See also the discussion of Theotokos in Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition, and also his book Mary through the Centuries
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Check out my article "Maria Adoptrix"
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Sarah's talk at the 2023 Mockingbird conference in New York, brought to you via the Talkingbird podcast. Check out the Mockingcast too!
It's easy, too easy, to blame the past for not knowing what we know now. Much more useful is to examine how the past arrived at its conclusions, and see if we can discern what led in fruitful directions and what led to disaster. In this episode, Dad and I review the contents of his book, also called Before Auschwitz, examining what led Christian theologians to support, denounce, or try to avoid taking a stand on the rise of Nazism. It's a master class in theological method when the stakes were never higher—and a small step toward the long process of repentance for Christian anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism.
Notes:
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If you read no other book by Dad, be sure to read this one: Before Auschwitz
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Related episodes: Luther and the Jews, The Relationship between the Old and New Testaments
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Never pass by a nice round anniversary! On this 100th full and regular episode of the podcast, Dad and I reminisce about the origins of Queen of the Sciences, reveal the secrets of how we prep and record, share statistics and fan reviews, tell which are our favorite episodes (and yours!), and look onward to many more episodes to come.
Notes:
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Ten most downloaded QotS episodes, from #10 down to #1: Bonus episode on Law and Gospel Part 1, Hannah Arendt, Luke Part 1, Critical Social Theory, Bonhoeffer's "Life Together," Learning to Love Leviticus, Holy Communion: Discipline, Powers and Principalities, The 8th Commandment in Cancel Culture, What Is Theology and Who Needs It?
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Sarah's favorites: Theology & Experience Part 2, James Epistle of Straw?, Private Public and Propagandistic, How to Hack the Law, Pastoral Authority, Poor Anselm, Illness and Healing, An Unlikely Marriage, What is a Person?, The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas
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Dad's favorites: Abraham Lincoln Theologian, Postmodernism for the Perplexed, The Land, The Earth, Outer Space, Nietzsche Is Peachy, Sermon on the Mount, Athanasius Against the World, Jonah
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Dad talks to Chad Kim of the History of Christian Theology podcast about his book, Divine Complexity.
Continuing our quest for the quest for the historical Jesus, in this episode we take a look at the Jesus Seminar, and in particular representative scholar Marcus Borg. Dad as usual is the very picture of responsible scholarship. I manage to be not quite as snarky as in the last episode, but given the choice between Borg's milquetoast mystic and Schweitzer's apocalyptic nut, I'm with the latter. Fortunately, it is not a choice we need to make, which should be your takeaway from these two episodes!
Notes:
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Wright and Borg, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions
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Weiss, Jesus' Proclamation of the Kingdom of God
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Related episodes: Quest for the Historical Jesus, Resurrection
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Modern techniques and approaches to the discipline of history were inevitably turned on Jesus. But you may be surprised to learn that, at the origin, the desire was not to deconstruct but to shore up belief in Jesus, if not all the subsequent doctrinal accretions around him. In this episode, Dad walks us through the early history of the quest for the historical Jesus, its findings, what it gave and what it took away, and what any of it has to do with classic christology. Meanwhile, I essentially play the role of Waldorf and Statler, the grumpy guys up in the balcony of "The Muppet Show."
Notes:
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Kant, Conflict of the Faculties and Religion within the Limits of Mere Reason
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Schleiermacher, The Life of Jesus
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Strauss, The Christ of Faith and the Jesus of History
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Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus
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Heschel, The Aryan Jesus
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Bornkamm, Jesus of Nazareth
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Troftgruben, "How Not to Fall for the Next Big Jesus Exposé," Lutheran Forum 52/4 (2018): 45–50.
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Related episodes: Martin Luther King, Howard Thurman, Miracles, Elisabeth Behr-Sigel
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John Drury of the Fresh Text podcast and I (i.e. Sarah) discuss John 11 at great and enthusiastic length!
If you enjoyed this episode, by all means subscribe to Fresh Text! John discusses a lectionary passage each week with a great array of scholars and preachers. Highly recommended!
Martin Luther King is revered. But is he revered for the right reasons? In this episode we counter the domestication of King as only an advocate of civil rights, and instead encounter him as the prophet and preacher who called America to be born again in costly love toward the racially other. We also survey his range of theological convictions and insights, connecting him with his famous namesake, in pursuit of a Beloved Community for our time.
Notes:
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The Essential Martin Luther King Jr.
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King, A Gift of Love
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Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain (I listened to this audiobook edition—it's excellent)
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Carson, Martin's Dream
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Lischer, The Preacher King
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West, The Radical King
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Related episodes: Thurman, Niebuhr
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Martin Luther King is the famous preacher of the civil rights movement (and indeed, we'll be getting to him in the next episode). But behind King, and crucial to him, is pastor and theologian Howard Thurman. In this episode, Dad and I immerse ourselves in Thurman's great work of spiritual theology, Jesus and the Disinherited, its portrait of Christ, and the challenge to all believers to take up the cross of radical love.
Notes:
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Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited
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Related episodes: Jefferson, Lincoln, The Land, What Is a Person?, Propaganda
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On the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Dad and I turn to the insightful critical comments of Orthodox theologians around the world, and share our own takes on the situation.
Notes:
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A Declaration on the "Russian World" (Ruskii Mir) Teaching
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Hovorun, Is the "Russian World" Condemnable?
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Bintsarovskyi, On Some Misconceptions about Russia's War against Ukraine
After the broad overview last time, in this episode we dive into some Matthew-specific detail, from the genealogy to parables to the zombie apocalypse, I mean resurrection of the saints of Jerusalem.
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Save the best for last? In this episode, Dad and I finally get around to the First Gospel, as it is sometimes called. We talk over our previous prejudices against Matthew and how on this read we came to a new and fresh appreciate of just what this evangelist is up to.
Notes:
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Related episodes: Mark 1, Mark 2, Luke 1, Luke 2, John 1, John 2, Sermon on the Mount, Sarah's Sermon on the Mount, Sarah's talk on the Sermon on the Mount for CCET
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Check out my book Sermon on the Mount: A Poetic Paraphrase
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Albright, Anchor Bible commentary on Matthew
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See Dad's review of Peter Ochs's "Another Reformation" in The Journal of Scriptural Reasoning 13/2 (December 2014).
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See the Luz essay in ed. Stanton, The Interpretation of Matthew
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Get the audiobook of my first novel, A-Tumblin' Down, direct from Thornbush Press, or from Audible, or pretty much any audiobook retailer of your choice!
Not quite convinced yet? Then listen to these excerpts introducing you to the Abney family: Kitty, Donald, Carmichael, Saul and Asher.
Prefer to read rather than listen to your novels? No problem! Jump here to find links to the book in paperback, hardcover, and ebook.
Welcome to season 5 of the Queen of the Sciences podcast! Vocation is a topic near and dear to me and Dad, both as a central theological focus of the Lutheran Reformation and also because we just plain take a lot of pleasure in our work. But David Graeber's astonishing book Bullshit Jobs came as a serious wake-up call to us both. In this episode, we review Graeber's case for the precipitous shift from meaningful to meaningless and even actively harmful paid work in the world today, and what it means for an ongoing commitment to the doctrine of vocation.
Notes:
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Graeber, Bullshit Jobs
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The short story "Gold" in my collection Protons and Fleurons is a skewed look at vocation, but not as skewed as Graeber's.
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The classic study of Luther on vocation is Gustav Wingren's appropriately titled Luther on Vocation
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Related episodes: Hannah Arendt, Cybertech and Personhood
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Dad's second talk for the NALC Atlantic Mission Region's theological conference, "Stand Fast and Be of Good Courage: The Lord Will Fight for You."
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Dad's first talk at the NALC Atlantic Mission Region's Theological Conference, "Stand Fast and Be of Good Courage: The Lord Will Fight for You."
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Sarah's lecture at Johannelund Theological School in Uppsala, Sweden, at a daylong conference on Sanctification in Lutheran Perspective.
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Dad's talk at Roanoke College reflecting on his 22 years of service there as a professor of theology.
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What's beyond the land, the earth, and outer space? Heaven and hell. Unless, that is, we don't exit the created cosmos to get to them, but they come to us (preferably the former and not the latter). In this episode, guided by a book from N. T. Wright, Dad and I explore the unexplored and unexplorable territory of the life to come, speculating mildly, not wildly. And that's a wrap for Season 4 of Queen of the Sciences. Thanks for being with us! Bonus episodes coming your way till we resume with Season 5 in January 2023. Meanwhile, brag to your friends about how you listen to the best theology podcast in the known universe!
Notes:
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Wright, Surprised by Hope
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Zahl, The Holy Spirit and Christian Experience
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Becker, Denial of Death
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Sarah's Pearly Gates
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Past episodes that relate to this one: Triple Predestination, Resurrection, Cybertech and Personhood
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From the land, to the earth, to infinity and beyond! In this episode Dad and I contemplate the vastness of the universe and the itty-bittiness of subatomic particles, the astonishing rareness of life in any form and the likelihood of meeting aliens, what this cosmos-view does to our God-view, and what it means to be an Earthling, i.e., an "Adam," assisted along the way by science fiction novels, shows, and movies. But most importantly, I finally get to indulge my decades-long desire to crack a joke about "alien righteousness."
Notes:
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Luther's commentary on Ecclesiastes
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John Palka's blog Nature's Depths
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Vainio, Cosmology in Theological Perspective
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Brooke, Science and Religion
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Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength
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Russell, The Sparrow
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Wells, War of the Worlds
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"Passengers" (2016 film)
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Le Guin, Worlds of Exile and Illusion, plus see the volume of critical studies edited by Harold Bloom
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Worthing, God, Creation, and Contemporary Physics
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Wisnefske, Could God Fail?
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Check out this episode of the fantastic Enter the Bible podcast talking to Alan Padgett about protological and eschatological science
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The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof! We start off this episode with some appreciative words for the agrarian background of the Bible, though also some cautionary words against modern industrial people cheaply romanticizing the agrarian past. But most of this episode is Farmer Paul's personal testimony to his own hands-on care for a neglected and degraded patch of earth, now flourishing under his care. Sleeping flounder, Swiss bears, and runaway honeybees all make an appearance. Plus you get to hear me sing the opening lines of "I've Been Picking These Darn Peas," the "spiritual" that my brother Will and I composed during our childhood bondage to the family garden.
Notes:
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Wirzba, Agrarian Spirit
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Davis, Scripture, Culture, And Agriculture
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Shellenberger, Apocalypse Never
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The meek shall inherit the earth... or maybe the land. And if the land, which land—the land of Israel, to be exact? In this episode Dad and I admit to lacking anything like a robust theology of the land of Israel for today, despite being rather more theologically robust on this topic when it comes to the biblical writings, as well as having some political convictions about the current state of secular affairs. But do we need to have an active theology of the land of Israel today? To guide us through, we turn to studies by, on the one hand, a Messianic Jewish theologian, and, on the other, a Palestinian Lutheran theologian, and wrestle our way to a conclusion that is guaranteed to satisfy nobody. That's what we're here for.
Notes:
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Dad's commentary on Joshua
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My moonlighting on Fresh Text to talk about Psalm 37
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Article 17 of the Augsburg Confession
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Kinzer, Jerusalem Crucified, Jerusalem Risen
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Isaac, From Land to Lands, from Eden to the Renewed Earth
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This episode started out as an experimental bonus: I asked Dad to think through with me what it can mean to bear witness in these days when a) everything sounds like propaganda, b) public and private are endlessly confused but I'm unwilling to expose to public scrutiny matters that are relevant to public discourse yet intrinisically private, and c) rebuttal and critique automatically vault the rebutted into martyr status. In other words, is it even possible to say truthful things in public anymore? Listen in for our provisional answers.
Notes:
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Related episodes: Theology and Experience 1, Theology and Experience 2, James
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Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death
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MacLuhan, The Medium Is the Message (beats me why this is spelled everywhere on Amazon, even the book covers, as "Massage" instead of "Message")
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Weiss, "Hurts So Good"
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Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self
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Augustine, Confessions (current favorite translation)
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Merton, Seven Storey Mountain
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My "apocalyptic parables": Pearly Gates and Protons and Fleurons
And by the way, if you'd like to support our efforts at truthful public speech, please consider joining our Patreon supporters. Or just tell a friend about podcast. Thanks!
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If everything's postmodern, then nothing's postmodern. In fact, according to Dad, postmodernism is actually just modernism continued by other means. Perplexed yet? No worries, that's part of the plan. If you can't conquer the body, then conquer the soul, and the rest will follow. In this episode we sort out postmodernism and its doppelgänger, then explore ways to keep sane and whole amidst the insanity. Surprisingly, I give words of hope, encouragement, and peace. So listen in just for that surprising development!
Notes:
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Related episodes: Critical Social Theory, Pragmatism, Hannah Arendt, What Is a Person?, Cybertech and Personhood, Bonhoeffer's Life Together, Powers and Principalities
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Nelson, "The Convening Power of the Pastor," Lutheran Forum 51/1 (2017): 50–51.
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ed. Helmer, Truth-Telling and Other Ecclesial Practices of Resistance, including Dad's "Complicity and the Christological Path of Ecclesial Resistance"
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eds. Stjerna and Thompson, On the Apocalyptic and Human Agency: Conversations with Augustine of Hippo and Martin Luther, with Dad's “Augustine, Luther and the Critique of the Sovereign Self”
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Click this link to fill out our listener survey!
Hello listeners! Just Sarah here. Dad and I are hoping you’ll help us out—it’ll only take a few minutes of your time. Podcasts are one of the least traceable forms of media, and if you remember our episode on Cybertech and Personhood, this makes us very happy.
But since we can’t covertly collect data on you, we have to ask for it outright. So here goes: Please click the link above and fill out six short questions. We don’t need your name, email address, denomination, country, credit card number, social security number, or anything like that! We’d just like to know your reactions to our podcast.
However, as an extra incentive, we’ll gladly email you one free ebook or audiobook of your choice from Thornbush Press in thanks for doing this… but of course, to get it to you, we will need your email address. There’s a place to fill it in on the form if you so desire. We promise not to do anything nefarious with it.
The survey will be up and active until October 15, 2022. And that’s it! Thanks, and till next time…
Miracles seem like straightforward things to define, if rare to experience, until you start to think about the topic more deeply. In this episode, Dad and I discuss C. S. Lewis's book Miracles, the danger of accepting the definition of miracle as "violation of natural processes," what the Creator has to do with the Redeemer, how prayer affects providence, and biblical ambivalence about miracles.
Notes:
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Lewis, Miracles
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Related episodes: Illness and Healing, Revival and Renewal with the Blumhardts, Nenilava Prophetess of Madagascar
Do you rejoice every other Tuesday to see a new Queen of the Sciences episode appear? Then consider supporting us on Patreon. You can start at just $2 a month; more gets you swag. Or just pay us a visit at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
Already in our first year of podcasting we expressed sympathy with Bonhoeffer's view that the time was coming when faith would need to come to the aid of reason. Three and a half years later, it seems even more acute than that: faith to the aid of science! In this episode we discuss scientific reasoning as an extremely valuable form of reason that nevertheless, like all human forms of reasoning, is subject to both limitations and distortions, not to mention exploitation in the service of authoritarianism. Then Dad walks us through the difference between a worldview and a Godview, why a change in the former makes people feel that they're losing the latter, and what is resilient about a Godview as science continues its necessary task of questioning and challenging received knowledge.
Notes:
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Have a listen to our previous episodes Faith to the Aid of Reason and The Empiricists Strike Back
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Knoll, A Brief History of the Earth
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In Dad's Beloved Community, see the discussion of "creation faith and the scientific understanding of nature" (pp. 735–640), and see also his article "Retrieving Luther on Prayer: Spirituality in the Production of Christian Doctrine" in The T&T Clark Handbook of Christian Prayer
Do you rejoice every other Tuesday to see a new Queen of the Sciences episode appear? Then consider supporting us on Patreon. You can start at just $2 a month; more gets you swag. Or just pay us a visit at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
Already in our first year of podcasting we expressed sympathy with Bonhoeffer's view that the time was coming when faith would need to come to the aid of reason. Three and a half years later, it seems even more acute than that: faith to the aid of science! In this episode we discuss scientific reasoning as an extremely valuable form of reason that nevertheless, like all human forms of reasoning, is subject to both limitations and distortions, not to mention exploitation in the service of authoritarianism. Then Dad walks us through the difference between a worldview and a Godview, why a change in the former makes people feel that they're losing the latter, and what is resilient about a Godview as science continues its necessary task of questioning and challenging received knowledge.
Notes:
-
Have a listen to our previous episodes Faith to the Aid of Reason and The Empiricists Strike Back
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Knoll, A Brief History of the Earth
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In Dad's Beloved Community, see the discussion of "creation faith and the scientific understanding of nature" (pp. 735–640), and see also his article "Retrieving Luther on Prayer: Spirituality in the Production of Christian Doctrine" in The T&T Clark Handbook of Christian Prayer
Do you rejoice every other Tuesday to see a new Queen of the Sciences episode appear? Then consider supporting us on Patreon. You can start at just $2 a month; more gets you swag. Or just pay us a visit at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
Hegel was our first family dog, which probably tells you all you need to know about our family. Before that, Hegel was a German philosopher, famously one of the most impenetrable, and yet weirdly influential for all that. In this episode, Dad shines a light in the fog. Don't worry if you come to this topic with nothing but Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis. I didn't either, but it all made sense in the end. Kind of.
Notes:
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Related Episodes: St. Paul Among the Philosophers, Critical Social Theory
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See Dad’s Divine Simplicity and Divine Complexity; plus, with his colleague Adkins, Rethinking Philosophy and Theology with Deleuze
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Adkins, Death and Desire in Hegel, Heidegger and Deleuze
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Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion
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Kojeve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel
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O’Regan, The Heterodox Hegel
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Moltmann, The Crucified God
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Agamben, The Time That Remains
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Žižek and Milbank, The Monstrosity of Christ
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Ayres, Nicaea and its Legacy
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Małysz, "Hegel's Conception of God and its Application by Isaak Dorner to the Problem of Divine Immutability," Pro Ecclesia XV:4 (2006): 448-471
Hegel was our first family dog, which probably tells you all you need to know about our family. Before that, Hegel was a German philosopher, famously one of the most impenetrable, and yet weirdly influential for all that. In this episode, Dad shines a light in the fog. Don't worry if you come to this topic with nothing but Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis. I didn't either, but it all made sense in the end. Kind of.
Notes:
-
Related Episodes: St. Paul Among the Philosophers, Critical Social Theory
-
See Dad’s Divine Simplicity and Divine Complexity; plus, with his colleague Adkins, Rethinking Philosophy and Theology with Deleuze
-
Adkins, Death and Desire in Hegel, Heidegger and Deleuze
-
Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion
-
Kojeve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel
-
O’Regan, The Heterodox Hegel
-
Moltmann, The Crucified God
-
Agamben, The Time That Remains
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Žižek and Milbank, The Monstrosity of Christ
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Ayres, Nicaea and its Legacy
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Małysz, "Hegel's Conception of God and its Application by Isaak Dorner to the Problem of Divine Immutability," Pro Ecclesia XV:4 (2006): 448-471
Yikes. You know the end is nigh when a couple of Lutheran theologians produce an episode on James longer than the one they did on Romans. In this episode, we first sort out what Luther did and didn't say about James, "epistle of straw," clearing up a lot of misapprehensions and faulty inferences, but either way we strongly suggest that the rest of the history of interpretation of James need not be controlled by a few remarks of the reformer early in his career.
From there, we discuss at length why there is so little plainly said about Jesus in this five-chapter letter—though there is a lot about God the Father, and there's no Father without a Son! We also argue that Paul and James really were addressing different errors in their respective discussions of faith and works, so pitting them against each other is neither exegetically nor spiritually illuminating.
All right, let's just admit it: we both like this book. You should, too.
Notes:
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If you insist on making Luther's comments continue to determine the course of James interpretation, you can find them in Luther's Works vol. 35.
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The other podcasts I mentioned are Fresh Text and The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill.
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Other relevant episodes from us are: How to Hack the Law, Justification by Faith, Faith to the Aid of Reason, The Certainty of Faith, Justification by Faith Revisited, and Faith. Just Faith.
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L. T. Johnson, The Letter of James
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If you enjoy Woe-itudes, check this out
Do you rejoice every other Tuesday to see a new Queen of the Sciences episode appear? Then consider supporting us on Patreon. You can start at just $2 a month; more gets you cool stuff. Or just pay us a visit at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
After three and a half years of dropping not-so-subtle hints, Dad finally persuaded me to read Reinhold Niebuhr's The Nature and Destiny of Man... though in this episode we cover only vol. 1, the "Nature" part. (Stick around with us in Season 5 and you might just get vol. 2!) In this episode we examine Niebuhr's sweeping summation of Western intellectual history and whether it holds up to scrutiny, how the divorce of Renaissance and Reformation gave us all the intractable problems of modernity, the difference between universal sin and unequal guilt, and zero in on the one place where Niebuhr talks more about God than man.
Notes:
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Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man; see also his Moral Man and Immoral Society
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James, Varieties of Religious Experience
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Related episodes: Hannah Arendt, On Putin's Invasion of Ukraine
Do you rejoice every other Tuesday to see a new Queen of the Sciences episode appear? Then consider supporting us on Patreon. You can start at just $2 a month; more gets you swag. Or just pay us a visit at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
Robots are not people, information does not want to be free, and the internet has no consciousness of its own. Meanwhile, human society trades on outrage and no one can tell what is true and what is false. Among the many enduring themes of human experience is how we create tools that in turn re-create us, and the past couple decades are only an accelerated and amplified version of that. With the help of tech critic Jaron Lanier, in this episode Dad and I explore the roots of how the whole world has gone mad, what it means to be and remain a person in the midst of it, and the urgency of doing so. Otherwise, "those who make them become like them," as Psalm 135 puts it.
Notes:
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All of Lanier's books are highly recommended: You Are Not a Gadget, Who Owns the Future?, and Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now.
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Scott, Seeing Like a State
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Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
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Asimov, "Robbie," in I, Robot
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For more on this topic, see my blog post "Quitting Facebook... Again," our previous QotS episodes What Is a Person? and How to Hack the Law, and my new podcast with my husband Andrew, The Disentanglement Podcast, with explanations of digital tech and practical tips for getting free of its tentacles.
Do you rejoice every other Tuesday to see a new Queen of the Sciences episode appear? Then consider supporting us on Patreon. You can start at just $2 a month; more gets you swag. Or just pay us a visit at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
Lincoln observed that both slaveholders and abolitionists appealed to the Bible to make their case—but who was right, and why? Slaves appear throughout the Old Testament, yet the core story is the Exodus from slavery in Egypt. The Pauline and Petrine letters exhort peace and fair treatment between masters and slaves, but do not openly advocate for manumission. In Paul's shortest letter, a personal address to Philemon, he sends home a (runaway?) slave, Onesimus, not making it clear what Philemon ought to do with him—and yet, at the same exact time, Paul radically transforms the relationship between Philemon and Onesimus, and between the two of them and Paul, too. Joyful exchanges abound in these twenty-five verses, which proved to be a leaven in the lump of toxic human social systems.
Notes:
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Saarinen, The Pastoral Epistles with Philemon and Jude
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Fitzmyer, The Letter to Philemon
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Ruden, Paul among the People
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Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church
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Here's a few of me moonlight on Fresh Text podcast (highly recommended if you're a lectionary preacher): Psalm 37, 2 Corinthians 5, James 5.
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Zahl, The Holy Spirit and Christian Experience
Do you rejoice every other Tuesday to see a new Queen of the Sciences episode appear? Then consider supporting us on Patreon. You can start at just $2 a month; more gets you swag. Or just pay us a visit at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
In this episode we turn to the great emancipator—not that he started out with that intention. From the covenant between the States in one Union to the painful perception of necessary bloodshed for the North as well as the South on account of its collusion, Lincoln out-Jeffersoned Jefferson, invoking the equality of all human beings according to the Declaration over against the evasion of the slavery issue in the Constitution. And yet, young Lincoln has about as much regard for orthodox Christianity as Jefferson did. What was that brought about such different results in conscience and action? What did Lincoln perceive of God that others could not, as he expressed so powerfully in the Second Inaugural?
Notes:
-
Lincoln, Speeches and Writings (Library of America). See in particular: 1860 Speech at the Cooper Institute, 1861 First Inaugural, 1862 Annual Message to Congress, 1862 Emancipation Proclamation, 1863 Proclamation Appointing a National Fast Day, 1863 Gettysburg Address, 1865 Second Inaugural
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See Dad’s essay, “Lincoln’s Theology of the Republic According to the Second Inaugural Address,” The Cresset (May 2002: LXV/6) 7-14
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Guelzo, Mr. Lincoln and Redeemer President
Do you rejoice every other Tuesday to see a new Queen of the Sciences episode appear? Then consider supporting us on Patreon. You can start at just $2 a month; more gets you swag. Or just pay us a visit at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
One last bonus episode! Dad and I talk about his impressions so far of A-Tumblin' Down, six chapters in and just through the devastating tragedy that scared me off of writing the book for nearly 15 years. Also, what is it exactly that has caused the book of Joshua to haunt our lives for so long?!
Subscribe now to the serialization of the novel—it starts next week!
Last chance to subscribe to the serialization of my novel A-Tumblin' Down about the lives, tragedies, and triumphs of a Lutheran pastor and his family in the late 1980s. The story begins on June 6, so don't delay! On today's bonus episode, meet Carmichael Abney, English professor, pastor's wife, and mother of three, content with her life--that is, until alternate versions of herself appear and demand her dissatisfaction...
Another installment for Queen of the Sciences listeners! Subscribe to the serialization of my novel A-Tumblin' Down about the lives, tragedies, and triumphs of a Lutheran pastor and his family in the late 1980s. On today's bonus episode, meet Saul and Asher Abney, brothers born within a year of each other but with diametrically opposed personalities...
Another sneak preview--or rather prehear--for Queen of the Sciences listeners! Subscribe to the serialization of my novel A-Tumblin' Down about the lives, tragedies, and triumphs of a Lutheran pastor and his family in the late 1980s. On today's bonus episode, meet Donald Abney, gentle grandson of a fiery revivalist, afflicted by the one and only appearance of the Book of Joshua in the Common Lectionary...
Being great afficionados of great thinkers who are impossible contradictions, we turn our attention to American founding father Thomas Jefferson: the man who penned the stirring words of the Declaration of Independence that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" ... and yet, in his lifetime, owned over 600 slaves including a (for lack of a better term) concubine, Sally Hemings (who also happened to be his deceased wife's half-sister...!!), manumitted only two of those slaves and none of them his own children by Sally until after his death according to his will, and made at best lackluster gestures toward the injustice of it all, not to mention its moral corruption of slaveholders. In this episode, we try to make sense of this "American sphinx" and especially his revisionist attitude toward Christianity, producing a variation on the faith with no power to set slaves free—or Jefferson himself.
Notes:
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Ellis, American Sphinx
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Meacham, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power
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Jefferson, Writings (Library of America).See in particular the following: Notes on the State of Virginia, 1787 letter to Peter Carr, 1803 letter to Joseph Priestley, 1803 letter to Benjamin Rush, 1813 letter to John Adams, 1816 letter to Charles Thomson, 1819 and 1820 letters to William Short, 1822 letter to Benjamin Waterhouse, 1826 letter to James Heaton.
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Locke, Second Treatise of Government and Letter concerning Toleration
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Havel, “The Power of the Powerless”
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Manseau, The Jefferson Bible
Do you rejoice every other Tuesday to see a new Queen of the Sciences episode appear? Then consider supporting us on Patreon. You can start at just $2 a month; more gets you swag. Or just pay us a visit at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
Sneak preview--or rather prehear--for Queen of the Sciences listeners! Subscribe to the serialization of my novel A-Tumblin' Down about the lives, tragedies, and triumphs of a Lutheran pastor and his family in the late 1980s. On today's bonus episode, meet Kitty Abney, an 11-year-old about to learn some shocking news concerning her grandparents. And there is more yet to come...
Experience of God is all very well and good... until your experience is being afflicted by an evil spirit from the Lord. Especially after first being called to be the first king of Israel, and then having that calling revoked. And yet still being king while a new king has been anointed, this new king respecting your former kingship more than the Lord God Almighty. Yikes! In this episode, we explore the saga of King Saul, ask whether his story is one of tragedy or just deserts or something else, and whether and how to read the Old Testament's Saul in conversation with the New Testament Saul-also-known-as-Paul.
Notes:
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Here is the series of sermons on I Samuel that I preached last year
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Murphy, I Samuel
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Brueggemann, First and Second Samuel
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Sign up here for Theology & a Recipe—I’ll do an issue on the two Sauls later in 2022! (plus, you get all the other great issues in the meanwhile)
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Continuing on in a loose sequence of explorations of our experience of church, this time we turn to Dietrich Bonhoeffer's record as well as recommendation for Christian life together as he experienced (and very much formed) it at the illegal seminary of Finkenwalde. Heartening words for hard times!
Just one note: we worked from the edition in the collected Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 5: Life Together and Prayerbook of the Bible.
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After losing our way and tangling ourselves up last time, in this second episode on theology and experience we once again get off to an inauspicious start with a serious attack of the giggles (and if you've never heard Dad giggle, well, you're in for a treat). Having gotten that out of our systems, we sketch out some of the reasons in Western intellectual history for the problematic place of reason and then explore some rubrics for interpreting "incorrigible experience" (Cornell West) fruitfully for life and faith alike. Also: do theologians actually believe what they teach?
Related episodes: American Revivalism, Pragmatism, The Empiricists Strike Back, Critical Social Theory, Faith to the Aid of Reason.
Notes:
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DescarTTTTTes [sic], Meditations on First Philosophy
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Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding
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Havel, "The Power of the Powerless"
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Wolterstorff, John Locke and the Ethics of Belief
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Gadamer, Truth and Method
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Mother Theresa, Come Be My Light
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Warnock, The Divided Mind of the Black Church
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We mentioned my fiction several times: here's a book of parables, Pearly Gates, and my recent book of short stories, Protons and Fleurons, and keep an eye out for a novel later this year!
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Experience is everything, so talking about experience is impossible. Nevertheless in this episode Dad and I attempt to do so, with the result of tangling ourselves in knots and occasionally losing our composure. If you ever wondered why experience was the most contentious of sources, methods, and goals for theology, well, here it is, case in point.
Notes:
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Methodist Quadrilateral
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Driver, Patterns of Grace
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Theologia Germanica
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Kolb, Bound Choice, Election, and Wittenberg Theological Method
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Bayer, Martin Luther's Theology
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Charry, "Experience"
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Zahl, The Holy Spirit and Christian Experience
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See also our previous episodes on Athanasius, the Blumhardts, Nenilava, and American Revivalism
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Dad and I discuss Putin's invasion of Ukraine in two kingdoms perspective.
Notes:
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Related episodes: Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague; The 8th Commandment in Cancel Culture; Two Kingdoms 16th-Century Edition; Two Kingdoms 20th and 21st-Century Edition; Samuel Stefan Osusky (Dad’s Slovakia book); I Am a Brave Bridge (Sarah’s Slovakia book); Athanasius Against the World
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Check out Dad’s book Before Auschwitz: What Christian Theology Must Learn from the Rise of Nazism
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The Wolfhart Pannenberg quote comes from his Systematic Theology, vol. 2
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What we’re calling the Orthodox Barmen Declaration: “A Declaration on the Russian World Teaching”
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Aleksandr Dugin
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Reinhold Niebuhr, Why the Christian Church Is Not Pacifist
From the sublimity of the Blumhardts and Nenilava to the ridiculousness of American revivalism. Let's face it, a revival is never honored in its own country. In this episode, these two American theologians trace the irritating history of how Heinrich Bullinger of Zurich (where else?) corrupted Luther's doctrine of the new birth, setting off a chain reaction that bounced from stark Puritan double predestination to the hysterical self-determination of American revival religion, and pretty much everything else American, too. Like it or not, we're all revivalists now.
Notes:
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Dad's article "The Doctrine of the New Birth from Bullinger to Edwards" explains all
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Check out The Book of Concord and do a word search on "regeneration"... prepare to be amazed
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Gritsch, Born Againism
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Phil Cary, Good News for Anxious Christians
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Sealed—if you haven't yet, go back and listen to our bonus episode on this amazing memoir from (as of last month) the Rev. Katie Langston!
And hey! If you've made it this far in the show notes, you're probably a super fan, and should consider declaring yourself as one on Patreon. You can start at just $2 a month (which is basically a buck an episode). Give more monthly and you get swag. Or just pay us a visit at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
And you thought the Blumhardts would push the limits of your Lutheranism! Have we ever got a prophetess for you. In this episode, we recount the wondrous life and ministry of Nenilava, a lay evangelist, exorcist, and eventually crowned prophetess of the Malagasy Lutheran Church. Along the way we discuss what it means for Western Christians to encounter, understand, absorb, and critique such models of mission from newer Christian churches, how to think about evil spirits, and what emergent offices of ministry in the mission field might offer to tired-out Christendom.
Notes:
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In addition to the Blumhardt episode, check out Perpetua and Felicitas for some surprising overlap between them and Nenilava, and also the episode on Gudina Tumsa, the Ethiopian Bonhoeffer
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Now in print! (and ebook too) Nenilava, Prophetess of Madagascar, edited by Sarah Hinlicky Wilson and James B. Vigen
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For more about the Royová sisters of Slovakia whom Dad mentioned on the show, see here
And hey! If you've made it this far in the show notes, you're probably a super fan, and should consider declaring yourself as one on Patreon. You can start at just $2 a month (which is basically a buck an episode). Give more monthly and you get swag. Or just pay us a visit at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
After our overview of Luke and the conception/birth stories in Part 1, now in Part 2 we dig deeper into Luke's unique parables (Good Samaritan, Lost Sheep-Coin-Son(s), Rich Man and Lazarus, Dishonest Steward etc), teachings (inviting those who cannot pay you back, Pilate's bloodletting of Galileans and the tower of Siloam), and narrative episodes (boy Jesus in the temple, the many women, Zaccheus, Emmaus, distinctive Ascension story). We wrap up noting commonalities between Luke and John, and also Luke and Paul.
No special notes for this one, but see the notes for the last episode.
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Following on our previous two-parters covering the Gospels of Mark (part one, part two) and John (part one, part two), in this episode we finally get around to covering the prequel to the Book of Acts (also covered in two parts), namely the Gospel of Luke. We discuss whether Luke was a Jew or a Gentile and what difference that would make, what he left out of Mark and why, what he took from Matthew or possibly Q, how not to read the bits about purity and Pharisees anti-Judaically, and the unique Lukan portrait of John's and Jesus' conception and birth, starring Elizabeth and Mary. Plus, I try to pin Dad down on the Virgin Birth.
Notes:
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Levine and Witherington III, The Gospel of Luke
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Thiessen, Jesus and the Forces of Death
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Kinzer, Jerusalem Crucified, Jerusalem Risen
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Here's an article I wrote years ago reflecting on the infertility and adoption stories of the Bible
And hey! If you've made it this far in the show notes, you're probably a super fan, and should consider declaring yourself as one on Patreon. You can start at just $2 a month (which is basically a buck an episode). Give more monthly and you get swag. Or just pay us a visit at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
So apparently we're all still the Puritans that The Scarlet Letter taught us to revile: eager to shun, vilify, condemn, and label. Is this an American thing, a Christian thing, or a human thing? Is social condemnation the best bulwark against political condemnation or the gateway to it? How do we assess the difference between false witness and accurate witness to unhappy truths? Does "putting the best construction on everything" make suckers of us, easily manipulated and gaslit? And if we oppose cancellation, should we then cancel the cancellers?
Notes:
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Luther gives his explanation of the 8th Commandment in the Small Catechism
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Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago and "Live Not by Lies"
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Havel, "The Power of the Powerless"
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Bonhoeffer, Ethics
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See Dad on MLK in Beloved Community, pp. 348–54, and also this exposition of "the Hinlicky rule"
And hey! If you've made it this far in the show notes, you're probably a super fan, and should consider declaring yourself as one on Patreon. You can start at just $2 a month (which is basically a buck an episode). Give more monthly and you get swag. Or just pay us a visit at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
In which I tell you a bit about my new short story collection, Protons and Fleurons: Twenty-Two Elements of Fiction, and then read you one of them, "Cobalt: A Mystery," which features among other delights Henry Melchior Muhlenberg as the detective, and me doing a German accent.
Read more about mystagogical realism here.
Season 4 of Queen of the Sciences starts next week with an episode on The Eighth Commandment in Cancel Culture!
One last bonus episode for 2021! Katie Langston is a convert from Mormonism to Christianity. She tells her story in Sealed, published this year by Thornbush Press. An amazing story for all fans of amazing grace!
Support us on Patreon!
Dad gives a Bible study on Hebrews (as you may have surmised from the episode title). Many thanks to Pastor David Drebes of College Lutheran Church in Salem, Virginia, for arranging and assisting in the production of this bonus episode!
Support us on Patreon!
Michael Chan of the outstanding Gospel Beautiful Podcast talks with Dad and me about Dad's long-awaited commentary on the book of Joshua. If you like Queen of the Sciences, you'll like Gospel Beautiful, so be sure to add it to your podcast feed!
Support us on Patreon!
Sarah's talk for the 2020/2021 conference of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology.
Check out Sarah's "poetic paraphrase" of the Sermon on the Mount.
Support us on Patreon!
Dad gives a Bible study on Galatians (as you may have surmised from the episode title). Many thanks to Pastor David Drebes of College Lutheran Church in Salem, Virginia, for arranging and assisting in the production of this bonus episode!
Support us on Patreon!
We're ending the third season of the Queen of the Sciences with an apocalyptic bang! Whether you're a fanatical dispensationalist stockpiling canned goods against a rapture that might just leave you behind, or a sniffily disapproving enlightened sort with your own fanatical visions of making the world a better place, we have good news for you: Jesus. History is in his hands, not yours, and you can trust him to bring all things to a place where death and Hades are no more. In the meanwhile, dive into Revelation (no -s at the end, please) for tonic christology, stereoscopic vision, a lament for lost civilizations, and a cure for lukewarmness.
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and talk to you in 2022! (But don't worry—there will be a number of bonus episodes between now and then.)
Notes:
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All this and more in my Theology & a Recipe issue on "Radical Amillennialism: Or, an Open Letter to the Book of Revelation." And while you're there, sign up for Theology & a Recipe!
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Check out Dad's Joshua commentary, his book on Slovak theologian Osusky entitled Between Humanist Philosophy and Apocalyptic Theology (and our episode about Osusky, too), and his detailed discussion of demythologization vs. deliteralization in Beloved Community pp. 34–36 and elsewhere.
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Top picks for commentaries on Revelation are those by Mangina and Koester.
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I read out from the Second and Third Petitions of the Lord's Prayer in my "Memorizing Edition" of the Small Catechism.
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My book of "parables at the final threshold" was inspired by the vision of the 12 gates of the New Jerusalem standing permanently open: see the book Pearly Gates or listen to our episode about it.
And hey! If you've made it this far in the show notes, you're probably a super fan, and should consider declaring yourself as one on Patreon. You can start at just $2 a month (which is basically a buck an episode). Give more monthly and you get swag. Or just pay us a visit at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
Of course we could have covered the two (or three) Uses of the Law, but what fun would that be? Instead, in this episode, we explore the patterned consistency of all law-based systems—scientific, psychological, jurisprudential, and religious—and why we not only need them, but can't even function without them; yet also, how that exact patterned consistency makes all laws hackable, gameable, and manipulable. How then to have an honorable relationship to the law, especially if the law—and others who ought to be obeying it—don't always deal honorably with you? Hint: Jesus has something to do with it.
Notes:
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Check out Dad's article, “Antinomianism—The Lutheran 'Heresy',” in On Secular Governance
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For some case law in action, as well as how to cope with attempts to hack the gospel as offered in the sacraments, see my new book To Baptize or Not to Baptize
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Bonhoeffer's critique of Kant on lying can be found in Ethics, pp. 279–80.
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Plato's dialogue Euthyphro
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Related episodes: Law and Gospel 1, Law and Gospel 2, Learning to Love Leviticus, An Unlikely Marriage
And hey! If you've made it this far in the show notes, you're probably a super fan, and should consider declaring yourself as one on Patreon. You can start at just $2 a month (which is basically a buck an episode). Give more monthly and you get swag. Or just pay us a visit at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
We are not fighting against flesh and blood. No, really, NOT flesh and blood! But if not that, then what? In this episode, Dad and I establish what the "powers and principalities" of Ephesians 6 (and other passages) are not and circle around what possibly they are—but, more importantly, what it means to arm ourselves with the gospel to identify and resist them, confident in the victory of Christ over all. Plus, a side dish of atonement theory.
Notes:
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Moberly, The God of the Old Testament
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Pannenberg, Introduction to Systematic Theology and the three volumes of Systematic Theology
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Witherington, Isaiah Old and New
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Wink, Naming the Powers and Engaging the Powers
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Wright, “Paul and Caesar: A New Reading of Romans” in A Royal Priesthood
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Barclay, Pauline Churches and Diaspora Jews
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See Dad's article "The 'Powers and Principalities': Problems and Prospects for Christian Doctrine Today" in Life amid the Principalities and, in his Beloved Community, pp. 783–806.
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In case you weren't otherwise sold on my memoir I Am a Brave Bridge about being a foolish teenager in emergent Slovakia, let me reassure you there's a stiff dose of nationalism, empire, communism, capitalism, Nazism... in, around, and between the adolescent foolishness.
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The current prime minister of Hungary is Viktor Orbán, but the admirable Hungarian Lutheran pastor persecuted under communism was Lajos Ordass.
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Related episodes: Galatians 1, Galatians 2, Two Kingdoms 16th Century Edition, Two Kingdoms 20th and 21st Century Edition, Joshua, Isaiah, Hannah Arendt.
And hey! If you've made it this far in the show notes, you're probably a super fan and should consider declaring yourself as one on Patreon. You can start at just $2 a month (which is basically a buck an episode). Give more monthly and you get swag. Or just pay us a visit at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
There I was, living my tidy little mainstream Protestant life, when Karl Barth sprung the Blumhardts on me. Took a few years (or decades) to follow up, but now I (and even Dad) have become fans of these indigenous German Lutheran revivalists. In this episode we discuss the difference between revivals stemming from European Pietist roots and from American roots, cover the lives of Johann Christoph Blumhardt (who proclaimed Christ's victory over the devil) and his son Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt (who proclaimed Christ's victory over the Christian), reflect on the complementary roles and mutual need of church and revival for one another, and speculate that "renewal" might after all be a better term than revival, in more ways than one.
Notes:
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Ising, Johann Christoph Blumhardt, Life and Work
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Zahl, Pneumatology and Theology of the Cross in the Preaching of Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt (and by all means check out his newer book, The Holy Spirit and Christian Experience)
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Winn, Jesus Is Victor! The Significance of the Blumhardts for the Theology of Karl Barth
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Weiss, Jesus' Proclamation of the Kingdom of God
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Among my writings on these topics, see: A Guide to Pentecostal Movements for Lutherans; "How Is Your Revival Going?"; blog posts in my Lutheran saint series on Johann Christoph Blumhardt and Gottlieben Dittus, and Christoph Friedrich; and keep your eyes open for a forthcoming book on Nenilava, the prophetess of Madagascar!
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Related episodes: Revival and Church; Illness and Healing; All About Prayer
And hey! If you've made it this far in the show notes, you're probably a super fan, and should consider declaring yourself as one on Patreon. You can start at just $2 a month (which is basically a buck an episode). Give more monthly and you get swag. Or just pay us a visit at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
Hagiography happens. Even if you're Protestant. In this episode, we review the history of the saints as both products of the gospel and pathways to the modern practices of science and biography, make the case for why Lutherans and other Protestants should embrace hagiography in an evangelical key, disambiguate veneration from invocation, and, of course, we mention Bonhoeffer.
Notes:
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Among the things I've written on this topic, see "Saints for Sinners," "Luther's Hagiographical Reformation of the Doctrine of Sanctification in His Lectures on Genesis," and my Lutheran Saints series.
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See also Dad's inadvertent hagiography, Between Humanist Philosophy and Apocalyptic Theology: The Twentieth Century Sojourn of Samuel Stefan Osusky
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Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things?
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Brown, The Body and Society
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The One Mediator, the Saints, and Mary (Lutheran-Catholic dialogue statement)
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Haynes, The Bonhoeffer Phenomenon
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Hendrix, The Faithful Spy
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Melanchthon, Augsburg Confession and Apology Article XXI on the saints
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Delehaye, The Legends of the Saints
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Mattox, Defender of the Most Holy Matriarchs
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For All the Saints (evangelical Lutheran breviary)
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I didn't mention it but also see Kolb's study For All the Saints
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Related episodes: Perpetua and Felicitas, Athanasius against the World, Faith Just Faith, Justification by Faith Revisited, Faith to the Aid of Reason, The Empiricists Strike Back, Slovak Theologian Samuel Stefan Osusky
And hey! If you've made it this far in the show notes, you're probably a super fan and should consider declaring yourself as one on Patreon. You can start at just $2 a month (which is basically a buck an episode). Give more monthly and you get swag. Or just pay us a visit at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
Why cover justification by faith once when you can do it twice? In this episode we look at the "faith(fulness) of Christ" controversy, how much it's rooted in a faulty understanding of what Luther meant by "faith," what Luther really did mean by "faith," and how that pretty much solves the problem. Whew. Also, why good works don't justify but also why love doesn't justify, either.
Notes:
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Bird and Sprinkle eds., The Faith of Jesus Christ
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Vainio, Justification and Participation in Christ
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From the Book of Concord: Augsburg Confession, Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Formula of Concord
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From Luther: Galatians commentary, Preface to Romans, Freedom of a Christian, Small Catechism-Apostles' Creed-Third Article (all easy to find online)
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From Barth's Church Dogmatics: II/2 and IV/1
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Thanks a lot Pope Leo for your lousy semi-Nestorian Tome
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More again this time from Morgan, Roman Faith and Christian Faith
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Stendahl, "The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West"
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From Dad: Paths Not Taken, Luther for Evangelicals
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Previous episodes related to this one: Justification by Faith, Romans, Galatians
And hey! If you've made it this far in the show notes, you're probably a super fan, and should consider declaring yourself as one on Patreon. You can start at just $2 a month (which is basically a buck an episode). Give more monthly and you get swag. Or just pay us a visit at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
The distinguishing quality of Christians is that they believe in Christ... a point that seems almost too obvious to make. But in fact, having belief as the central and distinguishing feature of a religion is so rare and weird that religious scholars have pushed back against the study of other religions through the lens of faith—to the point of not even wanting to study Christianity through that lens. What gives? In this episode, we walk through the findings of a new study on how exactly faith functioned in the Greco-Roman setting of early Christinaity and why it is rightly the defining feature of Christianity, with implications for the life of the church today.
Notes:
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The key book we discuss here is Morgan, Roman Faith and Christian Faith
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Very relevant to the discussion at hand is Dad's Divine Complexity
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Other episodes related to this one: Justification by Faith, Augustine's City of God
And hey! If you've made it this far in the show notes, you're probably a super fan, and should consider declaring yourself as one on Patreon. You can start at just $2 a month (which is basically a buck an episode). Give more monthly and you get swag. Or just pay us a visit at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
The story of a prophet wherein the cows get the last word! Dad and I enthuse over this simultaneously hilarious and deep little book, ranging from hyperomnipresence to mutable immutability to the self-defeating prophecy and the spiritual dangers of resenting God's mercy.
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Notes:
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Luther's commentary on Jonah in LW 19
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Steiger, Jonas Propheta
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Sonderegger, Systematic Theology vol. 1
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For a good example of putting your money where your prophetic mouth is, see the Simon-Ehrlich wager
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Check out our previous episode on Athanasius dealing with God's dilemma
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Here are my sermons on Jonah 1, Jonah 2, Jonah 3, and Jonah 4, plus scroll down this page to #6 to see my cartoony take on the Jonah story
More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
The pastoral ministry doesn't have the social clout it used to, but it's hardly alone. "Vocations of judgment," as we term them in this episode, are under siege everywhere, as the understandable suspicion of human fallibility leads more and more to an outsourcing of human judgment to regulations, bureaucracy, and AI. We hope you'll agree that this is hardly an improvement. In this episode, we try to get a handle on the problem across the vocations, then zero in on what exactly does (and does not) constitute pastoral authority, hoping in the process to encourage and embolden besieged pastors with the true strength of their calling.
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Notes:
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Related episodes are: What Is (Not) the Job of a Pastor?; How to Be a Congregation; Hannah Arendt
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My new book, which also discusses pastoral authority, is To Baptize or Not to Baptize: A Practical Guide for Clergy, new from Thornbush Press!
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Kant, Critique of Judgement
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Critical fiction of the bureaucratic and machine era: just about anything by Kafka, the film "Brazil," and the Matrix trilogy.
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Dad's essay "Complicity and the Christological Path of Ecclesial Resistance: Summons to a New Catechesis for a Time of Despair" appears in Truth-Telling and Other Ecclesial Practices of Resistance, ed. Christine Helmer
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Vaclav Havel, "The Power of the Powerless"
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A particularly good read on pastoral ministry is Eugene Peterson's The Pastor
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And if you by chance are on Twitter, see if you can make #judiciousness go viral!
More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
Dad and I talk over my new book, To Baptize or Not to Baptize: A Practical Guide for Clergy.
Pick it up at the vendor of your choice!
And here I was wondering if anything could beat justification for being a great idea hidden behind a lousy word. Well, pragmatism, you win. Dad renders this unpromising term lively and insightful, shows how its approach avoids the extremes of both rationalism and empiricism, and can prove to be a helpful handmaiden to theology (but, of course, not a foundation. Heavens no). Also, how to cope with the hell of the irrevocable.
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Notes:
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West, Prophecy Deliverance!
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Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
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Niebuhr, The Irony of American History
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James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
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Thiemann, Revelation and Theology
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Peirce, How to Make Our Ideas Clear
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Royce, The Problem of Christianity
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Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests
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Hinlicky, Luther and the Beloved Community and Beloved Community
More about us on sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
You can't get too much of a good thing! Picking up where we left off in the last episode, we discuss why "rectification" may be preferable to "justification," what human faith has to do with the faith(fulness) of Jesus, forgiveness vs. the defeat of the dominating power of sin, what on earth Paul is talking about with the "powers," and whether he is in fact suggesting an undoing of all the distinctions that make up the creation according to Genesis 1.
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Notes:
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Check out these other related episodes: Justification by Faith, Romans, The First Two-Thirds of Acts, and The Last Third of Acts.
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Dad's Luther vs. Pope Leo brings John Wesley to the rescue (whom we discuss also in this episode).
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Luther's "How Christians Should Regard Moses" talks about the use of OT law in Gentile and Christian settings—and is not nearly as hostile as you might expect.
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We both got the number of Jewish mitzvot wrong. It's 613.
More about us on sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
In this episode we only begin to tackle the myriad of issues in this searing, white-hot, impassioned blast from our favorite apostle early in his career. Who were these Galatians, and more importantly, who weren't they? Who were the interloping Teachers, and why does it turn out that sola gratia isn't specific enough? If the law is so treacherous in Paul's reading, why can he turn around and talk about "the law of Christ"? This and many more enigmas, plus ways of interpreting Galatians for good and for ill from Paul's own epistle to the Romans to more recent commentators.
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Notes:
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Martyn, Galatians
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Luther, Lectures on Galatians 1–4 and Lectures on Galatians 5–6
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See in particular our previous episodes on John Part 1 and John Part 2, Romans, and Law and Gospel Part 1 and Part 2.
More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
What to do when there is no longer common faith or common facts? Reversing the tide of history is not an option, but the church recentering itself on its task of being conformed to Christ and learning to speak in the new language of the Spirit is. In this episode, we review what we've covered in the past two, why they run aground, and how Christian speech in the public square can aid civil discourse without illegitimately demanding assent to Christian faith.
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Notes:
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More from Dad on this topic: "Luther's Anti-Docetism in the Disputatio de divinitate et humanitate Christi (1540)," in Creator est creatura; "Metaphorical Truth and the Language of Christian Theology," in Indicative of Grace–Imperative of Freedom; and Beloved Community, pp. 72–84.
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Relevant to this topic from me: "Martin Luther, Pacifist?"
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Pannenberg discusses the "disputability" of the Christian claim in vol. 1 of his Systematic Theology
More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
In matters civic, we have great sympathies with empiricist and classical-liberal critics of the recent woke madness induced by Critical Social Theory. And yet...
In this episode we distinguish among the many children of the Enlightenment, point out the strengths of the empiricist/liberal tradition but also its corresponding weaknesses that CST exploits, and exhort secular empiricists to reconsider the moral, spiritual, and theological roots of the intellectual tradition that they rightly see as critically endangered. So have a listen, and then share this episode with an empiricist near you!
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Notes:
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Pluckrose and Lindsay, Cynical Theories
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Spinoza, Principles of Cartesian Philosophy
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Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy
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Sharp, Spinoza and the Politics of Renaturalization
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Locke, Second Treatise of Government
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Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea
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Rectenwald, Springtime for Snowflakes
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Also check out our episode on Faith to the Aid of Reason
More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
Hot diggity dog! Here we go, investigating the obscure Marxist theory beloved of academics that has gone viral in the past year... in both senses of the word. In this episode you'll get an effective innoculation, for the good health of your own mind as well as the polis at large.
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Notes:
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Hedges, "Cancel Culture: Where Liberalism Goes to Die"
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Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach,” in Karl Marx on Religion
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Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment
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Tillich, The Socialist Decision
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Simpson, Critical Social Theory
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Marcuse, Eros and Civilization
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Derrida, The Gift of Death
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Brown, Undoing the Demos
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Foucault, The History of Sexuality
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Orwell, 1984
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Carter, Race
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Mitchell, American Awakening
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Other episodes you might like related to this one: The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas, What Is a Person?, Two Kingdoms: Sixteenth Century Edition, and Two Kingdoms: Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Edition.
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For my further reflections on Marxism and its impact, see these blog posts on The Bitter Price of Making the World a Better Place and Three Memoirs of Slovak Communism, as well as my book I Am a Brave Bridge (the January and February chapters in particular).
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Dad on these topics: “Luther and Heidegger,” Lutheran Quarterly (Spring 2008); “The Spirit of Christ amid the Spirits of the Post-Modern World” Lutheran Quarterly (Winter 2000); “Sin, Death, and Derrida,” Lutheran Forum (Summer 2010).
More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
Second-century bishop and theologian Irenaeus of Lyon is famous for his teaching on recapitulation—how Christ our head redoes everything Adam and the rest of us did wrong—and so, in our worst pun yet, in this episode we recapitulate his teaching. Also, why heresy is not so much a deviation as a dead-end, how redemption is not getting airlifted out of creation, and how my dogma outran your karma.
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Notes:
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Irenaeus's work is the five books of Against Heresies, but as Dad advises in this episode, you're best off focusing on books 2, 3, and 4.
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Related episodes to this one you might enjoy are Ignatius in Chains, Poor Anselm, and Athanasius Against the World.
More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
Five years in the writing, and more than a quarter-century after the fact, I Am a Brave Bridge: An American Girl's Hilarious and Heartbreaking Year in the Fledgling Republic of Slovakia recounts the first year that the Hinlicky family spent as missionaries in Slovakia in 1993 (the year of Slovakia's independence) and 1994. In this bonus episode, Dad and I talk about the theological themes embedded among the hijinks of cross-cultural romance, the difference between omnipotence and totalitarianism, how to talk about sexuality and love from the perspective of faith without being creepy or cheesy, and the experience of relearning the faith from those who have counted the cost and willingly paid it.
Read the complete prologue on my website or jump right in and get a copy of your own!
Among a certain kind of Lutheran theologian, liking Barth just isn't done. We are not that kind. In this episode, Dad walks us through the theological development of the great Swiss Reformed theologian, why Lutherans made it difficult for Barth to receive Luther and what Barth nevertheless gained from Luther, and highlights of Barth's massive theological oeuvre. And we once again discuss the distinction between law and gospel, because what else would we do?
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Notes:
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Barth is not the easiest read, but if you're feeling inspired to try, here are some suggestions. For absolute beginners, Evangelical Theology and Prayer. Next step up, try his Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum. When you're ready to tackle the Church Dogmatics, any of these three: volume I/1 on the Word of God, volume II/2 on election, or volume IV/1 on reconciliation.
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Excellent secondary studies on Barth: McCormack, Barth's Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology; Hunsinger, Disruptive Grace; and Jenson, God after God.
More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
All memoirs are meditations on providence—so I learned from writing one of my own (see Note #1 below!). I used to think that all Christian memoirs went back to Augustine, but it turns out he had a biblical precedent: Nehemiah, who most unusually in the canon of Scripture reported his own acts and motives in the first person. In this episode, Dad and I consider the advantages of drama over concepts in depicting the interplay of divine and human agency, how to think about Nehemiah's prohibition on intermarriage and the challenges to minority communities, and what good walls and buildings do for the community of faith, despite all their inherent problems.
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Notes:
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The long-awaited memoir! I Am a Brave Bridge: An American Girl's Hilarious and Heartbreaking Year in the Fledgling Republic of Slovakia is pretty much what it sounds like. Also, you can find out how Dad parented a teenage girl, why God is omnipotent but not totalitarian, and how to always be homesick for somewhere else. Plus, there are recipes. Order print from Amazon, an ebook from pretty much any provider, or an ebook direct from Thornbush Press!
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The two commentaries I studied in preparation for this episode are Throntveit, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Myers, Ezra-Nehemiah.
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Relevant previous episodes: Is Scripture Holy?, Law & Gospel Part 1, Law & Gospel Part 2, Learning to Love Leviticus, Joshua.
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See Dad's Beloved Community on conscience, pp. 613–630, and for the Christian revision of metaphysics, see his Divine Complexity and Divine Simplicity.
More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
Now is the winter of our discontent... or is it the winter of our ecumenism? Either way, the mission-motivated drive to reconcile bitterly divided Christians has succeeded so well that all the frisson has vanished right out of it, but hasn't succeeded enough to actually make us one as Jesus and his Father are one. So in this episode, Dad and I talk through our own interest in and commitment to the search for Christian unity, what unity is not, how an ecumenical document differs from a confessional document, and the lively but relatively unknown history of this 110-year-old movement. Also, a few unguarded opinions.
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Notes:
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Tons of resources about ecumenism at the Institute for Ecumenical Research.
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Some of the ecumenical documents we mention in this episode: Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, Healing Memories, Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry, Unto the Churches of Christ Everywhere, Mortalium Animos, Unitatis Redintegratio.
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Not mentioned by name but highly relevant are the document Lutherans and Pentecostals in Dialogue and the new ecumenical outfit Global Christian Forum.
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Dad on ecumenism: “Staying Lutheran in the Changing Church(es)” in Changing Churches; Luther vs. Pope Leo; “Scripture as Matrix, Christ as Content” in Luther Refracted; Luther for Evangelicals; “Theological Anthropology: Towards Integrating Theosis and Justification by Faith," Journal of Ecumenical Studies 34/1 (1997): 38–73; and “Process, Convergence, Declaration: Reflections on Doctrinal Dialogue,” The Cresset 64/6 (2001): 13-18.
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Me on ecumenism: "Reflections Five Years into Ecumenism," "Six Ways Ecumenical Progress Is Possible" Concordia Journal 39/4 (2013): 310–32, entries on "Ecumenical Movement" and "Pentecostalism, Global" in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Martin Luther, and A Guide to Pentecostal Movements for Lutherans.
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And heck, let's get the whole family in on the fun: check out my husband Andrew's book Here I Walk: A Thousand Miles on Foot to Rome with Luther tracing our pilgrimage on the 500th anniversary of Luther's. (Except it was the 499th... we found out too late.)
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If you want to take up the catechetical call at the end of the episode, why not try the Small Catechism: Memorizing Edition?
More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
After a recent dive into the theological, philosophical, and political writings of Hannah Arendt, I found her so disturbingly prescient that I wanted to talk her ideas over with Dad—only to discover that Arendt was one of his earliest and most formative influences, and still is now, in ways that he only realized as we talked. So, in this episode, much about her writings and why Eichmann in Jerusalem elicited such a firestorm, why you should never say "it can't happen here," and that, contrary to popular belief, the most troublesome of all pronouns is "we."
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Notes:
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Books by Hannah Arendt discussed in this episode: Love and Saint Augustine, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Eichmann in Jerusalem, On Violence
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Two movies: Hannah Arendt and Vita Activa
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See Dad's Before Auschwitz and his recent article "Hitler's Theology: A Cautionary Tale for Today's Peril"
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Kušnieriková, Acting for Others: Trinitarian Communion and Christological Agency
More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
After setting the stage in our last episode with the distinctives and circumstances of John's Gospel, here we turn to its message: being born again (or is it from above?), how the Father and the Son can be one and yet the Father greater than the Son, whether John's commendation of love of friends is a retrogression from Paul's enemy-love, and how the confrontation with Pilate and the powers functions as the mega-exorcism consolidating the individual exorcism accounts in the Synoptics.
And if every one of things that Jesus did were recorded, the internet itself could not contain the podcasts that would be published.
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Notes:
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Bultmann, "Eschatology of the Gospel of John" (1928) in Faith and Understanding, 165-183
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Käsemann, The Testament of Jesus
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Hill, Paul and the Trinity
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Twelftree, In the Name of Jesus
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For Dad on John, see Divine Complexity, 69–96
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For me on John, see "Law and Gospel (With Some Help from St. John)," a sermon on "Doubting Thomas," and the Winter 2020 issue of Theology & a Recipe, "Latkes for Jesus"
More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
One of these kids is not like the other... and among the New Testament Gospels, that weirdo kid is John. He drops the parables and the Sermon on the Mount and the exorcisms, shifts the cleansing of the temple from the end to the beginning, turns poor Lazarus in Abraham's bosom into a dead man walking out of a tomb, and is totally unfazed by Gentiles but levels constants accusations against "the Jews"... even though most of his heroes are Jews, too. What gives? In this episode, Dad and I talk through the Johannine distinctives and the theories as to why this Gospel turned out so different, in the process voting for our favorite. No spoilers here... you gotta listen all the way through to find out.
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Notes:
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Brown, An Introduction to the Gospel of John (among others)
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Bultmann, The Gospel of John
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Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel
More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
In which Sarah unloads a jeremiad on the Revised Common Lectionary and Dad mostly stands at the side of the road and watches. Also, ways to work around lectionary limitations, and whether you should preach "with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other."
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Notes:
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Revelant previous episodes of ours include What Is (Not) the Job of a Pastor?, Learning to Love Leviticus, The Relationship between the Old and New Testaments, and Is Scripture Holy?
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This jeremiad pretty much follows the course of the jeremiah I wrote for Mockingbird, "The Top Ten Reasons the Lectionary Sucks and Five Half-Assed Solutions." Lots of relevant links in the notes there.
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A good podcast for lectionary preachers, hosted my old friend John Drury, is Fresh Text. I'll be in an upcoming episode (where I manage to restrain my RCL disdain reasonably well).
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Strawn, The Old Testament Is Dying
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Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man
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You can find my sermon series on Romans on my YouTube channel.
More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
Welcome to Season 3 of Queen of the Sciences!
To kick off the most welcome new year in recent memory, we tackle the question of the certainty of faith. What does it even mean to be "certain" where something like "faith" is concerned? Can we have the same certainty as, say, apostles and early Christians, or as folks before various revolutions in science and historical study? Where does doubt fit in, or hard questions? Is faith something that you have or something that has you? All this and more!
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Notes:
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Relevant previous episodes include Justification by Faith, Faith to the Aid of Reason, and The Freedom of a Christian.
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Here's the Council of Trent criticizing what it took to be the Reformation doctrine of faith.
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For Tillich on faith as being grasped by ultimate concern, since his Systematic Theology, vol. 3, pp. 129-134
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For Barth on prayer, see the Church Dogmatics III/4:87-115 and Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts
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See Dad's Beloved Community for an example of "critical dogmatics" in action, and also his forthcoming article "Retrieving Luther on Prayer" in The T&T Clark Companion to Christian Prayer
More about us on sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
In which Dad and I read aloud a series of questions I put to him in a notebook on Christmas 1990, and discover that the more things change the more they stay the same. You can read the transcript on my website. Merry Christmas!
This is Dad's talk for the Virginia Synod's annual Power in the Spirit conference, from July 2020. You can also watch the video version with questions and answers from Pr. David Drebes on YouTube.
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To wrap up season 2 of Queen of the Sciences, not to mention wrapping up an exceptionally fraught election year (at least for those of you in the U.S.), we tackle St. Augustine's magnum opus, The City of God against the Pagans. Turns out there isn't actually very much about the two cities at all, but we range with Augustine across a wide assortment of issues: theodicy, providence, human community, the uses of history, and the nature of evil.
Fun fact: the Roman empire never actually fell, and certainly not due to barbarian invasions. It just sort of petered out due to its own stupid infighting. Food for thought, eh?
By the way, we had a technical glitch, so my audio track is pretty muffled, but Dad's is fine, and fortunately he did more of the talking on this one anyway.
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Notes:
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I quote from Dyson's translation of The City of God; this is the abridged one Dad mentioned; you may want to check out newer translations by New City Press; and this is the audiobook version I listened to, which was pretty well narrated except for the occasional pronunciation error, as in "the tropical interpretation of Scripture." Pretty sure he meant "tropological."
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For a mind-blowing take on what really happened to the Roman empire under Christianity, check out Peter Brown's The Rise of Western Christendom.
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Dad discusses the nature of evil in his Beloved Community, pp. 783–790. See also his forthcoming Joshua commentary on the nature of human community.
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The accounts of evil that aim not only to harm the body but to destroy the soul that I mention toward the end of the episode are Endo's Silence, Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, and Orwell's 1984.
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Earlier in 2020 I did an issue of Theology & a Recipe on Augustine, called "Late Have I Loved Thee," imagining a late-in-life encounter between Augustine and his concubine. I didn't realize at the time John Updike had already done this; if I may so, I think my version is a lot more faithful to the principals and ultimately the more compelling. Judge for yourself, and then sign up for Theology & a Recipe on my website!
More about us on sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
The eponymous unlikely marriage is that of marriage—with Christianity. After assembling an impressive number of reasons why we should have expected the Christian faith to want nothing whatsoever to do with exclusive sexual pairing, we then change directions and show why, after all, Christianity opted for marriage, and in so doing once again engaged in a doctrinal revision of inherited notions of God. In light of which, we then engage a contemporary Catholic theologian's take on Christian marriage. Spoiler alert: we don't even go near the usual hot-button topics. If you feel the need for outrage, Twitter is waiting for you.
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Notes:
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Some relevant stuff I've written: "Marriage Matters," "Blessed Are the Barren," and "Luther's Hagiographical Reformation of the Doctrine of Sanctification in His Lectures on Genesis"
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See also Dad's Luther and the Beloved Community, ch. 8 on "The Redemption of the Body: Luther on Marriage"
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Kant ruined Christian ethics with The Critique of Practical Reason
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For the range of Luther's take on the nature of divine and Christian love, see the Heidelberg Disputation (esp. #28) and his explanations of the Fourth and Sixth Commandments in the Large Catechism
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Sarah Ruden, Paul among the People
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Matthew Levering, Engaging the Doctrine of Marriage
More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
From a Tokyo street parade advertising the services of a shady prosperity church to the global pandemic, with pit stops in pain, death, suffering, and theodicy, this episode is sure to be a real crowd pleaser. Also, why you should go to the emergency room for a broken bone or infected wound but try Jesus for chronic conditions, death being the most chronic condition of all.
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Notes:
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Here's a short article I wrote on the International Lutheran-Pentecostal dialogue's meeting in Madagascar in 2019, where we discussed the topic of healing and deliverance. God willing and the creek don't rise, the final report will be released in 2021. You may also like the chapter on "Prosperity" in my book A Guide to Pentecostal Movements for Lutherans
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A whole slew of OT studies by Claus Westermann
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Becker, The Denial of Death
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The first of Luther's 95 Theses issues a call to lifelong repentance
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Dad takes up the theme of "purgatory now!" in Luther vs. Pope Leo
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On the Blumhardts, father and son, see respectively Ising's Johann Christoph Blumhardt: Life and Work and Zahl's Pneumatology and Theology of the Cross in the Preaching of Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt
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Not a whole lot on Nenilava just yet, but I'm working on it—look for the first-ever full-length work on her next year. Meanwhile, check out the entry on the fabulous online Dictionary of African Christian Biography.
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Dad refers to the "service of the word for healing" in the Lutheran Book of Worship—it's actually in the companion to that hymnal, called Occasional Services
More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
After a lonnnnng delay, we finally finish up the Acts of the Apostles! Check out our previous episode on the First Two-Thirds of Acts, then dive in to this one for the riveting topic of... wait for it... rule of law and due process. No, really, it's good stuff. Plus, why Paul appeals to Caesar but never actually meets him, or, how to avoid soteriological confusion.
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Notes:
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Ferdinand Christian Baur on Acts
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This is my favorite map of the missionary journeys of Paul
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We refer to this excellent article by my friend the NT scholar Troy Troftgruben, "Slow Sailing in Acts: Suspense in the Final Sea Journey (Acts 27:1–28:15)” JBL 136/4 (2017). See also James R. Edwards, “Parallels and Patterns between Luke and Acts,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 27/4 (2017).
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I double-dipped on this topic... it was the subject of my e-newsletter Theology & a Recipe earlier this year. Check it out (and then subscribe!).
More about us on sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
Dad talks to Sarah about the inspiration for and design of her new translation of Luther's Small Catechism, specifically intended for memorization.
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Friedrich Nietzsche demolished the traditional foundations of religious belief. Does that make him a foe—or possibly a friend? One way or another, we can't get away from him. In this episode Dad walks us through Nietzsche's tirades against all forms of fake religious assurances and insidious social control to find, surprisingly, compelling reasons to embrace the crucified and risen one.
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Notes:
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You can find translations of everything Nietzsche wrote without any trouble online. In this episode we talked in particular about The Birth of Tragedy, Beyond Good and Evil, The Genealogy of Morals, and The Antichrist.
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Dad and his co-author Brendt Adkins engage with Nietzsche's philosophy in their book Rethinking Philosophy and Theology with Deleuze.
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The book about saints and their radical will to power that I mentioned is E. M. Cioran's Tears and Saints.
More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
Dad talks to me about my "weird little stories" in Pearly Gates: Parables from the Final Threshold.
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Possibly the best thing Luther ever wrote (for my money only the Large Catechism offers the best competition for that claim), "The Freedom of a Christian" turns 500 this year and accordingly merits even more attention than usual. In this episode Dad and I explore the two halves of the treatise, one each for "A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none" and "A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all," drawing out the powers of faith and joyful exchanges that illuminate the apparent contradiction—and how to live as both a lord and a servant half a millennium later.
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Notes:
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You can find older public domain translations of "The Freedom of a Christian" online (often under the title "On Christian Liberty"). In print, try the Luther's Works translation (which is what we read from in this episode) or the newer translation by Mark Tranvik. We also discuss in passing the Large Catechism, Small Catechism, and 1519 Galatians commentary.
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This is the Luther seminar I teach every November in Wittenberg
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Dad's one and only work of fiction: Luther vs. Pope Leo (I admit I was skeptical at first, but it's actually really good—and if we have any Methodist listeners out there, you'll be amused to learn that John Wesley saves the day... sort of)
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I talk to Dad about his book Luther for Evangelicals: A Reintroduction. (Non-Evangelicals warmly invited to eavesdrop.)
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Last time we talked about the job of the pastor, so this time we're discussing the job of the congregation, which is a bit like the old Atari video game Pitfall—look out for those alligators, especially if you're one of Jesus' sheep. But most of the time it's just the sheep learning to bear with one another, and bear one another's burdens: a whole zooful of grace, evidently. Also, what to think about the roof, and how to navigate the inevitable requirement these days of being a church shopper.
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Notes:
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Hari, Lost Connections
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For background on this episode, have a (re-)listen to One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church: The Worst Thing in the Best Words.
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Dad has been talking about beloved community for a long time now: see Luther and the Beloved Community and plain ol' Beloved Community
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Luther, without a trace of irony, calls the church "a little holy group and congregation of pure saints, under one head, even Christ, called together by the Holy Ghost in one faith, one mind, and understanding, with manifold gifts, yet agreeing in love, without sects or schisms" in the Large Catechism.
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H. R. Niebuhr, The Social Sources of Denominationalism
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Not discussed here but relevant: The Church Has Left the Building; Rebuilt; Christianity Rediscovered
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Dad talks to me about my "poetic paraphrase" of the Sermon on the Mount.
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Less obvious than you might think! The pastoral office functions like a magnet, attracting an infinity of valuable tasks without knowing how to shed them when it gets to be too much. In this episode we address the distinction between lay and ordained ministries, attempt to clear away some of the aforementioned well-intentioned clutter, and chart out a triage approach to the pastor's true calling. Hopefully helpful to burned-out and compassion-fatigued pastors, lay folks may also appreciate this reminder of what their pastors are actually for.
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Dobbs, “The Coming Pastoral Crash”
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Stephen Ministries
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Forde, Theology Is for Proclamation
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Heinrich Heine, not Voltaire, said: “of course God will forgive me; that’s His job”
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Jan-Olav Henriksen, Christianity as Distinct Practices: A Complicated Relationship
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Check out what our gifted friend Pastor Natalie Hall is doing at St. Mary Magadalene Lutheran Episcopal Church as well as her excellent confirmation curriculum.
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See Dad’s book of sermons, Preaching God's Word according to Luther's Doctrine in America Today, and his discussion of issues surrounding the pastoral ministry in Beloved Community pp. 355–382
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You might be interested in my essay on “Sources of Authority according to the Lutheran Confessions” and a rather melancholic rumination on my first call in The Church Has Left the Building. My sermons for Tokyo Lutheran Church are on YouTube.
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We didn’t get around to discussing these, but two of my favorite books for re-envisioning a faithful pastoral ministry in the midst of hugely different cultural settings are Vincent Donovan’s Christianity Rediscovered (lousy title: it should be more like Church Reimagined) and Michael White and Tom Corcoran’s Rebuilt, both by Catholic clergy.
More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
How could anyone possibly feel "meh" about Isaiah? Well, that was me, before digging in deep to prepare for this episode. I have since come around (whew) and, if not quite as excited as about Leviticus, I'm still pretty jazzed now about both the prophet Isaiah and the book named for him. In this episode Dad and I discuss both the text in its own time and the text in the hands of Jesus and the apostles, and wrap up with ruminations on how not to exploit Isaiah and other prophets as a soapbox for a preacher's pet concerns.
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Notes:
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Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho
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Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews
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Dad on Divine Simplicity
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Hays, Reading Backwards
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Sawyer, The Fifth Gospel
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Dahl, Jesus the Christ
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Juel, Messianic Exegesis
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Witherington, Isaiah Old and New
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Childs, The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture
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The Septuagint (LXX) is the Greek translation(s) of the Old Testament, which took its final form in the first century after Christ’s birth. Here is one common English translation.
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Stuhlmacher, The Suffering Servant
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I recently did a short sermon series on: Isaiah 6, 9, and 25; Isaiah 43, 52–53, and 55; and Isaiah 56, 61, and 66.
More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
I get Dad to talk about his new book, Lutheran Theology: A Critical Introduction. Fact: Lutheran theology is NOT the same as Luther's theology! Shocker, right?
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Generally you should run screaming in the opposite direction when someone starts talking about her dissertation, but we promise this is a good one. French Orthodox theologian Elisabeth Behr-Sigel (1907–2005) knew pretty much every important Orthodox theologian of the 20th century, pioneered Russian hagiography, co-edited a journal, was active in the ecumenical movement, and supported the possibility of the ordination of women in the Orthodox church. Wait, what? Yes—but not until she was 75! And she kept at it until her death at the age of 98. We review her atypical support for women in ministry (atypical in many ways) and draw out some larger lessons for thinking about sex and gender in light of the Christian faith today.
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Notes:
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Some useful background to this episode was already covered in our earlier episode on What Is a Person?
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Among the books by Elisabeth Behr-Sigel, check out: The Ministry of Women in the Church, The Place of the Heart, Discerning the Signs of the Times, The Ordination of Women in the Orthodox Church (with Kallistos Ware), and Lev Gillet: A Monk of the Eastern Church.
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Olga Lossky has written a wonderful biography of Behr-Sigel entitled Toward the Endless Day, which I reviewed here.
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My book is entitled Woman, Women, and the Priesthood in the Trinitarian Theology of Elisabeth Behr-Sigel; there’s an interview with me about it here. I co-edited a collection of essays about Behr-Sigel entitled A Communion in Faith and Love, which includes Elisabeth Parmentier’s essay about Behr-Sigel’s education at the University of Strasbourg and one from me on “Behr-Sigel’s ‘New’ Hagiography and Its Ecumenical Potential.” I’ve more recently contributed to Women and Ordination in the Orthodox Church with the essay “Elisabeth Behr-Sigel’s Trinitarian Case for the Ordination of Women.” I created an archive of my collection of Behr-Sigel’s books and articles at the Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg, France.
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Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (5 vols)
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Among the other Orthodox theologians mentioned in this episode are Alexander Schmemann, Kallistos Ware, John Meyendorff, and John Behr.
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Our friend Michael Plekon is the author of (among other things): Living Icons, Uncommon Prayer, Saints as They Really Are, The World as Sacrament, and Hidden Holiness
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Paul Evdokimov’s main books on women are Woman and the Salvation of the World and The Sacrament of Love
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See Dad’s essay “Whose Church? Which Ministry?” in Lutheran Forum 42/4 (Winter 2008): 48–53
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For further detail on some of the topics discussed here, see my contribution to the Lutherjahrbuch 2017 and also the Lutheran Forum essays “The Epistle of Eutyche,” “The Face of Jesus, Part One” and “The Face of Jesus, Part Two,” and “Where Have All the Women Gone?”
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The party never stops at the Queen of the Sciences podcast! Coasting on the generally optimistic, cheerful, and devil-may-care attitude of a world gripped by pandemic and the various cultural and political responses to it, we break out our kazoos and streamers for the wrath of God. In this episode we talk about what it is, why it matters still to talk about it, and why (gasp) it may even be a good thing.
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Notes:
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Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America
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The hymn I mentioned is “He Is Arisen, Glorious Word”
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Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God
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If you haven’t already listened to them, you'll find our episodes on Anselm and Kazoh Kitamori deal with some of these same issues.
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Lactantius, De Ira Dei
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See in Dad’s Divine Complexity the subsection entitled, “Theology of Redemption,” chapter 6, pp. 212–222, and in Beloved Community the subsection entitled “God is the Eschaton of Judgment” in the Conclusion pp. 865–878, which take up these topics further
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See also my final sermon on the Sermon on the Mount and essay “Peace, Peace, Where There Is No Peace”
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Oswald Bayer talks about God’s Umsturz in Martin Luther’s Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation, p. 215
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No, not a glam metal band, but a martyr of the second century and one of the first post-New Testament writers whose works survive. In the episode we take a look at the first heresies to erupt in Christianity—first analyzing just what counts as a "heresy" and why the concept remains a useful one—namely, Ebionitism and Docetism. Ignatius en route to Rome as a prisoner elucidates for us just why it matter so much that God really took flesh in Jesus Christ, and that his flesh was really crucified, and that his crucified flesh was really raised... just as Ignatius himself was really in chains and was really going to be devoured by the wild beasts.
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Notes:
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You can read the seven extant letters of Ignatius here. Note that only the shorter version of each paragraph is authentic—the longer version is probably an expansion by later authors/editors.
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Dad's Divine Complexity, ch. 2, discusses the formation of the New Testament canon in light of the martyrological witness, not least of all Ignatius's. If you've been interested in picking up one of Dad's books but don't know where to start (or are nervous about committing to 900 pages), start with this one—it'll give you a great overall read on the development of Christian theology and how it completely remade the way we think about God.
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For a little taste of my learning about the nature of the church from being a missionary in Japan, take a look at this short piece, "Dispatch from a Bewildered Missionary in Japan."
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Here's some info on the exchange between Pliny the Younger and Emperor Trajan about the wacky sect of Christians.
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We talked more about martyrdom's "agency" in the face of suffering in the episode on Perpetua and Felicitas. See also the Martyrdom of Polycarp.
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William R. Farmer and Denis M. Farkasfalvy, The Formation of the New Testament Canon
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The terrible killing of George Floyd and the resulting protests and riots around the country have prompted us to record this bonus episode, in which we reflect on our experiences and theological interpretations of being "white," American, and Christian.
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Notes:
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Much of what we say in this episode presumes topics we've covered already; you may want to check out What Is a Person?, Faith to the Aid of Reason, Two Kingdoms: 16th-Century Edition & Two Kingdoms: 20th- and 21st-Century Edition, and The First Two-Thirds of Acts.
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See Dad's Mission to the Catskills: A History of Immanuel Lutheran Church of Delhi, New York and his discussion of Martin Luther King Jr in Luther and the Beloved Community, informed by teaching a course on MLK for many years at Roanoke College.
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A little info about my forthcoming memoir here
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Review of Albion's Seed
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This is a thoughtful reflection from a Christian in the South coming to terms with his ancestors and their history.
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Bonhoeffer talks about the ultimate and penultimate in Ethics
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Cornel West, Race Matters
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James Cone, God of the Oppressed
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We bet you still have a hangover from the crucifixion episode with which we opened this season. Well, you had to wait longer than three days, but here it is at last: the counterpart episode on the resurrection. For we consider the sufferings of the crucifixion episode are not worth comparing to the glory that is this resurrection episode.
We cover a range of questions here, from what is even meant by resurrection (and just as importantly what is not) to what an event like this means in the stream of creaturely history to the ultimate question of what the resurrection of the crucified one means within the life of God.
Plus, some fun verbs.
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Notes:
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Jesus Christ Superstar. I wouldn't go as far as to call it a "timeless" work as the advertising fluff on the homepage says—it's pretty obviously the product of its time—but still well worth the listen. Pilate gets to me every time.
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Two essays by N. T. Wright addressing the meaning of "resurrection" and considerations for its historicity: "Christian Origins and the Resurrection of Jesus" and "Jesus' Resurrection and Christian Origins."
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Bodily boundedness is discussed at greater length in our Leviticus episode
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Pannenberg, Jesus: God and Man
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My article on "The Verbs of the Resurrection"
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Käsemann, Commentary on Romans
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Theissen, The Miracle Stories of the Early Christian Tradition
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For Dad vs. Bultmann, see: Divine Complexity ch. 2 for an extensive discussion of the resurrection and its metaphysical implications for God; Beloved Community on the difference between demythologization and deliteralization (easiest thing here is just to look at the index for all listings); the forthcoming Joshua commentary from Brazos, which will also deal extensively with this topic; and finally "The Theology of the Martyrs," in Martyrdom and the Suffering of the Righteous, 87–110.
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Following on our last episode about eucharistic discipline, in this one we actually dig into the doctrine, discussing what and who it is in, with, and under the Lord's Supper and what it even means to talk about Christ's presence therein. Lots of fun terminology (see below). Then some liturgical advisories on bread vs. wafers, I momentarily lose it over how people approach their shot glasses, and we (perhaps a bit disappointingly) argue less about the eucharistic prayer than either of us anticipated.
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Notes:
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Luther's writings referred to in this episode are: The Small Catechism, Confession Concerning Christ's Supper, the Jonah commentary, and (obliquely) the Babylonian Captivity of the Church.
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Some of us because theologians because we're enchanted by the vocabulary. Here are some good ones that were or weren't mentioned in this episode pertaining to the Lord's Supper that you can have fun googling: alleosis, capernaitism, epiclesis, ubivolipraesens, transubstantiation, consubstantiation (just so long as you promise not to use it to describe the Lutheran doctrine of the the Lord's Supper), and extracalvinisticum (N.B. I first fell in love with my husband because of a prank involving the extracalvinisticum, so, you know, there's more than one reason to master theological vocabulary).
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I talk more about gospel imperatives in this bonus episode, and reflect on unusual sacramental circumstances in "The Sacraments in Time, Space, and Matter."
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Dad discusses the Lord's Supper in detail in Beloved Community, pp. 476–509.
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Sacramentine sisters
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For a good survey of early church practice and Reformation response on the eucharistic prayer and the words of institution, see Dorothea Wendebourg, "Traveled the Full Extent of Rome's Erroneous Path?" Lutheran Forum 44/4 (2010): 18–33.
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We put the cart ahead of the horse in this one: after a good start in I Corinthians, we gallop off into matters of eucharistic discipline, but not to worry, we decide to keep going in the next episode, in which we'll back up and deal with the doctrine. In the meanwhile, if you get really exercised about questions of who's in and who's out, you're either going to love this episode... or unsubscribe. Either way, enjoy!
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Notes:
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Dennis Di Mauro, "For You, For Many, For All People?" Lutheran Forum 50/4 (2016): 20–23.
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We never did get around to infant communion, but here's an article I wrote on the topic called "Mildly Opposed to Infant Communion." A bit off topic but related to something that came up in this episode, I critique C. S. Lewis's doctrine of purgatory in "A Lutheran Reflection on C. S. Lewis."
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For a study of early liturgical history that doesn't annoy me, see Paul F. Bradshaw and Maxwell E. Johnson's The Origin of Feasts, Fasts, and Seasons in Early Christianity
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The Vatican II statement on ecumenism is Unitatis Redintegratio; see especially section 3 on "Churches and Ecclesial Communities Separated from the Roman Apostolic See."
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Christianity has had a 1900+ year bad history with (rabbinic) Judaism, with devastating consequences for the lives of Jews and theological bankruptcy for Christians. We hone in on the problem within our own tradition by looking at Luther's contorted and confusing attitude to Jews—from being the first person in about 1000 years to propose toleration and speak well of them, to his famously horrific suggestions to drive them out, steal their books, and burn their synagogues. Yet Luther proves to be not unique but representative in his anti-Judaism, so we also address wider concerns such as the not-always-tenable difference between anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism, and to what extent the roots of Christian anti-Judaism lie in our Scripture, Old and New Testament alike. Romans chs. 9–11 guide us through this mare's nest of issues.
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Notes:
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David Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition
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The chief texts of Luther relevant to his Janus-like relationship with the Jews are: “That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew” (1523; Luther’s Works vol. 45), “Against the Sabbatarians” (1539; Luther’s Works vol. 47), and “On the Jews and Their Lies” (1543; Luther’s Works vol. 47)
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The book that popularly made the case in America for the direct lineage between Hitler and Luther was William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Uwe Siemon-Netto wrote a rebuttal to this claim in his The Fabricated Luther: Refuting Nazi Connections and Other Modern Myths.
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My choice for the best place to examine this issue is in Thomas Kaufmann’s Luther’s Jews: A Journey into Anti-Semitism. Here's a review I wrote of it.
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See Dad’s review of the excellent book by Peter Ochs, Another Reformation: Postliberal Christianity and the Jews in The Journal of Scriptural Reasoning 13/2 (2014) and in his book Beloved Community the “Excursus: on Jewish perplexity as a principle internal to Christology” on pp. 416–428. Also, check out his book Before Auschwitz, which analyzes various Christian theological positions regarding Jews and Judaism and how they were able to resist Nazi ideology or, conversely, fell right in step with it.
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A few things I’ve written dealing with these issues: “Still Reckoning with Luther” in The Christian Century; commentary on Mark 12:28–34 for Working Preacher; my chapter “Tradition: A Lutheran Perspective” in the collection The Idea of Tradition in the Late Modern World; and a chapter in my ebook Luther, Thrice, available by signing up for the Theology & a Recipe newsletter on my website.
More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
Following hot on the heels of our last episode about St. Paul among the Philosophers, in this episode we take up his magnum opus, the Epistle to the Romans. Positioned first in the New Testament, it is actually the last extant letter he wrote. Hugely influential, it is densely packed, tightly argued, and generally impenetrable to a casual reading. So with the excellent aid of the brilliant interpreter Ernst Käsemann we walk through most of Romans (leaving chs. 9–11 for next time) to discover the power of the gospel, the ungodliness of the godly, and God's justification of precisely those ungodly people by His Son and Spirit.
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Notes:
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Käsemann, Commentary on Romans
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Melanchthon, Loci Communes
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Paulson, Lutheran Theology
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J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words
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Dad talks about baptism extensively in Beloved Community
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Epp, Junia: The First Woman Apostle; I wrote a review of it for the late great Books & Culture
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There we were, calmly recording our regularly scheduled episodes during our pandemic-imposed quiet, including a couple on holy communion for later this spring... when a good old-fashioned theological controversy erupted under our feet. We weigh in on the question of whether holy communion can be consecrated via the internet (spoiler alert: no) and why we think so; but we also lift up the great things that can be done to foster and uplift the Christian community by digital means during this time of distancing and eucharistic fasting. Just in time for Maundy Thursday 2020!
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Notes:
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Dad's statement, "Why Virtual Communion Is Not Nearly Radical Enough"
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Yeago, "Word, Sacrament, and Quarantine"
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Lange, "Digital Worship and Sacramental Life in a Time of Pandemic" on the Lutheran World Federation website
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Formula of Concord, Solid Declaration 7
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Kleinhans, Schroeder, and Peterson, "Concerning Online Communion"
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Thompson, "Christ Is Really Present Virtually: A Proposal for Virtual Communion." See also her book The Virtual Body of Christ in a Suffering World
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Jorgenson, "Corona and Communion"
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If you aren't already deluged with online options for worship and sermons, you can check out my YouTube sermon channel
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The apostle Paul gets a bad rap as the repressive, restrictive jerk who turned the hippie religion of Jesus into a metaphysical mess of religion about Jesus. Strangely enough, Christians seem to be the primary exponents of this misleading interpretation. But across the way in the realms of secular and socialist philosophy, Paul is enjoying a revival of sorts; and in some cases is even the object of envious longing. What gives? In this episode we offer a brief introduction to Paul (apostle, not Dad) and then Paul (Dad, not apostle) walks us through three contemporary philosophers' takes on this figure so important to the Christian faith.
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Notes:
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Nietzsche, The Antichrist
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Stuhlmacher, Reconciliation, Law, Righteousness: Essays in Biblical Theology and Revisting Paul’s Doctrine of Justification: A Challenge to the New Perspective
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Bultmann’s existentalist interpretation of the resurrection is found in Theology of the New Testament and draws on Heidegger’s Being and Time
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Käsemann, Commentary on Romans
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Stendahl, Paul among Jews and Gentiles
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Dunn, “The New Perspective on Paul,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 65 (1983): 95–122
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J. Louis Martyn, Galatians
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N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology
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Žižek and Millbank, The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic?
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Badiou, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism
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Dad co-authored a book with Brent Adkins called Rethinking Theology and Philosophy with Deleuze which deals with some of these thinkers
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Agamben, The Time That Remains
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Benjamin and Agamben, Towards the Critique of Violence
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Once again Luther proves his surprising relevance with his treatise "Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague." In light of the metastasizing coronavirus pandemic, Dad and I talk about the treatise and then offer our own reflections on how believers can and should respond.
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Notes:
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Luther's treatise is published in Luther's Works vol. 43 and you can also read it here.
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Bonhoeffer discusses "natural life" in his Ethics
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We refer in this episode to a previous episode we did on Faith to the Aid of Reason
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I discussed at length what I learned about dealing with uncertainty and non-knowledge from the Book of Revelation in my latest issue of Theology & a Recipe (which includes recipes for Seven Bowls of Snacks)
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Following on our last two episodes exploring the Lutheran doctrine of the "two kingdoms," in this one we dive deeply into the life of two extraordinary Ethiopian Lutherans. Gudina Tumsa was a pastor and the General Secretary of the Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus until his assassination by the communist Derg regime in 1979. His wife Tsehay Tolessa, an active evangelist, was arrested after his death, tortured, and imprisoned without trial or sentence for ten years. Only after the fall of the regime was Gudina's death confirmed and his body identified, exhumed, and given a Christian burial.
In addition to discussing their remarkable life stories and witness to Christ, we delve into Gudina's writings during his time of leadership in the ECMY, including his reflections on ecclesiology, wholistic mission, and the role of a Christian in public life, especially when faced with a hostile government. The parallels to Dietrich Bonhoeffer's life and witness earned Gudina the moniker "the Ethiopian Bonhoeffer," and he and Tsehay alike deserve wider renown.
One other item: we hit a milestone in the life of every podcast with this episode, namely, the Technical Glitch. As a result, the sound quality is poorer than usual. We apologize and have exorcised the relevant demons from the equipment, and expect that from now on the sound will be up to its usual standards.
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Notes:
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The book mentioned in the episode is The Life, Works, and Witness of Tsehay Tolessa and Gudina Tumsa, the Ethiopian Bonhoeffer, edited by me (Sarah) and my friend Samuel Yonas Deressa.
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You can also read some of the papers of the Journal of the Gudina Tumsa Forum here and here (I have a paper in the latter).
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Gudina Tumsa Foundation on Facebook and US branch of the Gudina Tumsa Foundation
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Original English translation of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's The Cost of Discipleship
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Dad wrote an entry on "Martin Luther in Karl Marx" for The Oxford Encyclopedia of Martin Luther
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Can a distinction between the religious and governmental realms hashed out in the sixteenth century be remotely useful for us today? Well, we give it an honest try. If in the past the danger was religion invading the realm of the state and making use of violent coercion to advance its ultimate goals, today the danger (at least in the parts of the world we've lived in) is the other way around: the state attempting to assert itself in realms of conscience, mind, and ultimate salvation. We explore totalizing ideologies and share our insights on how to keep on distinguishing the two kingdoms for the good of all people, whatever their religion or politics.
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Notes:
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes about secularism and the French vs. American revolutions in “Inheritance and Decay” in Ethics
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Alasdair MacIntyre observes how “we’re all liberals now” in Whose Justice? Which Rationality?
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John Locke’s political essays mentioned in this episode are the Second Treatise on Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration
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Dad calls Robert Benne a liberal in his essay “Luther and Liberalism” in A Report from the Front Lines: Conversations on Public Theology, A Festschrift in Honor of Robert Benne
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John Witte Jr. discusses early Lutheran political theology in Law and Protestantism: The Legal Teachings of the Lutheran Reformation
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Robert P. Ericksen, Theologians under Hitler
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Martin Luther reminds us that the kingdom of God will come regardless of our efforts or obstructions in the Small Catechism
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The excerpt of the song goes “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss,” and it’s from “Won’t Get Fooled Again” by The Who. If you didn’t already know that, you should probably drop everything and go listen to the album Who’s Next
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Here’s a link to info about the memoir I mentioned (still forthcoming, but if you sign up for my Theology & a Recipe e-newsletter you’ll be notified about publication details… plus, of course, you’ll get Theology & a Recipe), as well as an article I wrote called “A Primer on Luther’s Politics”
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You think it's obvious to keep religion and government separate—but for nearly all of human history, it's been anything but that! In this episode Dad and I sort through the landscape of 16th century Europe to scout out the source of Luther's distinction between the "two kingdoms": the lefthand kingdom where God rules by law, coercion, and public authority, and the righthand kingdom where God rules by the gospel of Jesus Christ through word and sacrament. There are so many ways to do church-and-state wrong that we barely scratch the surface! So stay tuned for the next episode, when we'll bring the two kingdoms into the 20th and 21st centuries to see what mischief (to say the least) has come about by failing to distinguish them properly closer to our time.
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Notes
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Ulrich Duchrow, Christenheit und Weltverantwortung
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Augustine, The City of God
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Martin Luther's writings on this topic include: On Temporal Authority; Admonition to Peace; Whether Soldiers, Too, Can Be Saved; On War against the Turk. See also his eight Invocavit sermons on returning to Karlstadt's violent reforms in Wittenberg while Luther was impounded in the Wartburg. All available in the Luther's Works series.
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "Heritage and Decay," in Ethics
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Paul R. Hinlicky, Luther vs. Pope Leo
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And you thought Joshua was bad! In this episode I undertake to persuade Dad that the other-least-popular book of the Old Testament is not just an arcane collection of burnt offerings and sin offerings and wave offerings but in fact is the metaphysical substrate of the gospel itself. (Spoiler alert: he is won over.) Have a listen for a new perspective on "detestable" animals, mixed fibers, death on account of blasphemy, liver lobes, and so much more!
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Notes:
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As mentioned before, Dad has a forthcoming commentary in the Brazos series on the book of Joshua.
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Dad mentions the stroke he had two years ago in this episode; in case you missed it, a bonus episode from last year recounts that experience
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Ephraim Radner, Leviticus
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Luther’s commentary on Deuteronomy (specifically ch. 7) deals with the question of who exactly the commands in the Bible are addressed to
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The only two appearances of Leviticus in the Revised Common Lectionary are Epiphany 7 and Proper 25, both in Year A, both from ch. 19
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Mary Douglas, Leviticus as Literature
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The hymn is indeed “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood” but the author is William Cowper, not Isaac Watts.
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More enthusing from me about Leviticus: “Learning to Love Leviticus” (yup, I loved the alliteration so much I stole it from myself to give this episode the same title); a brief review of Douglas’s Leviticus as Literature (scroll to the bottom of the page); commentary on the intra-Pentateuchal discussion between Jesus and the scribe in Mark 12:28–34; and an issue of my e-newsletter Theology & a Recipe devoted to “Discerning Walls with Leviticus” (plus an awesome pair of recipes for Hot Quiche and Cold Tomato Soup!).
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Poor Anselm, the favorite medieval-scholastic whipping boy of apparently enlightened moderns. Outraged at the attack on Anselm's honor, Dad and I endeavor to make satisfaction for his slandered reputation, give the best and most charitable account of his atonement theory, make some slight tweaks to it in a Lutheran-ish direction while taking serious issue with Gustaf Aulén's attempt to do the same, and overall make the case that the Anselmian concern for justice and recompense is not nearly as foreign to our sensibilities nowadays as his cultured despisers like to claim.
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Notes:
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Anselm of Canterbury’s Cur Deus Homo can be found in A Scholastic Miscellany
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Gustaf Aulén, Christus Victor
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Karl Barth, Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum
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The Nominalists, from the Latin nomen (“name”), were a school of late medieval philosophers who held that concepts do not exist in reality (opposing the position of the “realists”) but are only names that human beings create to categorize or classify really existing things or persons. As Dad explains to students: “To me, the tree stump along the Appalachian Trail is a chair, but to a termite, it’s a meal.” While we’re at it, Dad—who once described himself as anti-Kantian par excellence, has co-authored a book arguing that Kant is just Plato continued by other means, and has written another book on the confrontation between biblical and philosophical monotheism in the Arian controversy (Divine Complexity)—discusses the various atonement “theories” in chapter 3 of Luther and the Beloved Community.
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The divine dei in Greek means “it is necessary”
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Anselm’s definition of God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” is found in his work the Proslogion
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Brandt Jean’s victim-impact statement
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Friedrich Nietzsche talks about the “evil genius” of God dying for His debtors in Beyond Good and Evil
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A major source for Luther’s christology is his Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper
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The Tome of Leo is a patristic document supporting the two natures of Christ but at the cost of assigning very different duties to each nature in a hermetically sealed kind of way
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admirabile commercium = joyful exchange (in Latin)
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Peter Abelard gave his version of “atonement” theology in his commentary on Romans, an excerpt of which is also in A Scholastic Miscellany
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Gerhard O. Forde, “The Work of Christ: Atonement as Actual Event,” in Christian Dogmatics vol. 2
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Hans Urs von Balthasar writes about Luther’s doctrine of atonement in Theo-Drama vol. 4
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Gustaf Aulén’s later book is The Faith of the Christian Church
More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
Welcome to the second season of Queen of the Sciences! We begin our conversations in 2020 with a deep dive into the foolishness and stumbling block that is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Overfamiliar today as a religious symbol, the cross was once the supreme declaration that the person thereon was trash, subhuman, and beyond redemption—certainly not capable of redeeming others. We try to imagine ourselves back into the shame of crucifixion, examine its uses in Roman political control, and explore how the death of God upon it can possibly become the source of eternal life.
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Notes:
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Ernst Käsemann, “The Saving Significance of the Death of Jesus,” in Perspectives on Paul
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Martin Hengel, Crucifixion
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Philip Freeman, Julius Caesar (both the quote from Cicero and the description of Caesar’s use of crucifixions)
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Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion
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Maasai Creed (“the hyenas did not touch him”)
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Ferdinand Schlingensiepen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906–1945
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Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer
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Plato, The Phaedo
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“Alexamenos worships his god”
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Deuteronomy 21:22–23, “And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.”
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Galatians 3:13, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.’”
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“Propitiation” = reconciliation to God by satisfying his wrath. “Expiation” = reconciliation to God by removal of the cause of offense, namely sin.
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Gerhard O. Forde, “The Work of Christ: Atonement as Actual Event,” in Christian Dogmatics vol. 2
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Philip Melanchthon, Apology to the Augsburg Confession, Art. 4 on “why Christ is necessary”
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Calvin, Institutes vol. 1, Book One, Chapter I: “The Knowledge of God and That of Ourselves Are Connected. How They Are Interrelated”
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Luther, Galatians commentary, Luther’s Works vol. 26, pp. 276–291, on Christ’s taking the world’s sin into himself
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Romans 3:25b, “This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.”
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John Newton, “Amazing Grace”
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Nietzsche, “God on a cross is the transvaluation of all values,” in The Antichrist
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George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine
More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
This is a talk I gave to the ministry team at United Church in Malmö, Sweden—a congregation of the Swedish Evangelical Mission within the Church of Sweden—about the interrelationship of revival and church, some cases studies in charismatic movements in Lutheranism, and rubrics for discerning true, God-given revival.
More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
Here's the second of two lectures on the distinction between law and gospel that I gave at the Johannelund School of Theology in Uppsala, Sweden, in October 2019.
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Here's the first part of a two-part lecture on the distinction between law and gospel that I gave at the Johannelund School of Theology in Uppsala, Sweden, in October 2019.
Don't forget to listen to the second part!
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Paul R. Hinlicky (aka Dad) presents "How the Holy Spirit Disappeared in Lutheranism" at the Braaten-Benne Lectures in Theology in Indianapolis on August 6, 2019.
Dad gave this talk, "Struck Down But Not Destroyed," at the 2019 conference of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology on the theme "What's the Good of Humanity?"
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The Sermon on the Mount is the address by which Jesus makes us children of God, and tells us what that means for our words, bodies, and relationships... or does it? Can anyone actually live this way? Maybe it's just for the experts and the aspirational. Or maybe it's a clever rhetorical ploy to make us see our sin but doesn't actually place any claims on us. Any maybe it doesn't matter one way or another because the words are so familiar we can hardly even hear them anymore. Tune in for a refresher course on the most famous and influential sermon in all of human history.
In other news, we're nearing the end of our first season! But don't worry, there will be some bonus episodes between now and when we resume in January 2020. In the meanwhile, drop us a line at our respective websites (see below) or leave a comment here to let us know what you liked and what you didn't, questions or follow-up, and suggestions for next season's topics. Also, don't forget to leave us a review on iTunes (or Apple Podcasts as I guess we're supposed to call in now) and tell a friend about the show!
Notes:
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The Sermon on the Mount appears in Matthew 5–7; see also the Sermon on the Boat in Mark 4:1–34 and the Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6:17–49.
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship
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Thomas Jefferson, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth
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Some Anabaptist interpretations in Christianity and Revolution: Radical Christian Testimonies, 1520–1650
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Martin Luther, Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount
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I'll be giving a talk on the Sermon on the Mount at the June 2020 conference of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology.
More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
In this episode we revisit the early church, earlier even than Athanasius in fact, to gaze upon the martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas... only to discover Perpetua gazing right back at us, with an unbearable intensity. This early martyr story is extraordinary and powerful in its own right, but it also touches on a lot of neuralgic issues for our society today, and ultimately confounds all our attempts to claim any identity for ourselves than the one Perpetua claimed: christiana.
In other news, we're nearing the end of our first season! Drop us a line or leave a comment here to let us know what you liked and what you didn't, questions or follow-up, and suggestions for next season's topics. Also, don't forget to leave us a review on iTunes (or Apple Podcasts as I guess we're supposed to call in now) and tell a friend about the show!
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The Passion of the Holy Martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas
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Dad talks about this story in Beloved Community, pp. 87–93
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Karl Barth said Nein! (“no”) originally to natural theology (and Emil Brunner), but you can borrow it whenever heresy rears its ugly head.
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For more on the theological evaluation of Montanism and how Perpetua, Felicitas, and Tertullian fit into the story, see Cecil M. Robeck’s Prophecy in Carthage.
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“He descended into hell” appears in the Apostles’ Creed, the Latin of which is uncertain: either ad infernos (“to hell”) or ad inferos (“to the underworld”). The idea draws on I Peter 3:18–20: “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey.”
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For more on the sacrificed children in Carthage, see Jon D. Levenson’s The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son (highly recommended anyway—a phenomenal book)
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Augustine’s three sermons on the feast day of Perpetua and Felicitas
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You can get a summary by Elizabeth A. Goodine of contemporary academic studies on Perpetua at the World Religions and Spirituality site.
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Sojourner Truth, “Ain’t I a Woman?”
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J. Louis Martyn in his commentary on Galatians 3:28 translates the clause “there is no ‘male and female’” (and rather than or). He argues that the author of the formula (possibly not Paul) drew upon Genesis 1:27, thereby saying that “in baptism the structure of the original creation had been set aside” (p. 376).
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Usually, when a person asks what or who makes for a person, it's to dehumanize some person or group of persons. Our intention in this episode is to head in the opposite direction. Dad takes us on a worldwind tour of Western civilization (which, frankly, he often does) to see that what counts as personhood or humanity has been under dispute from the get-go and continues to be disputed up to this very day. Meanwhile, I explore the striking fact that, in the doctrine of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are called "persons"—coincidence or not? (Not.) What does trinitarian personhood imply about human personhood? And could a robust nature-person distinction actually solve all the besetting problems of the modern world?!
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Locus classicus = classical location or point, namely the verse of Scripture that is the foundation for a doctrine. For imago dei ( = image of God), it’s Genesis 1:26–28; see also Genesis 9:6.
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The Mesopotamian creation epic is Enuma Elish
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Plato records Socrates’ attempt to die without the interference of hysterical women in Phaedo
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The things I’ve written mentioned in this episode are: “Blessed Are the Barren” and Woman, Women, and the Priesthood in the Trinitarian Theology of Elisabeth Behr-Sigel
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Dad discusses Leibniz vs. Voltaire & Spinoza in Paths Not Taken
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John Locke, Second Treatise of Government
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Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence
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Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
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For more on the Lincoln-Douglas debates, see Harry V. Jaffa, A New Birth Of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War
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In this episode we both said that US law granted that enslaved Africans could be counted as 2/3 of a human in the census, but the actual number was 3/5 of a human (which is even less than what we remembered). Let us state for the record that all persons of African descent are 100% human.
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Vladimir Lossky, In the Image and Likeness of God
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Plato discusses the Forms in The Republic
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Aristotle theorizes about “natural slaves” in Politics
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Fritz Oehlschlaeger, Procreative Ethics
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René Descartes ruined everything with his mind/thing distinction in Meditations On First Philosophy
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Luther, Disputation against Scholastic Theology
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Here’s the extraordinary story of the paralyzed man
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"Leiblichkeit ist das Ende der Werke Gottes" (Bodiliness is the goal of the work of God) —Friedrich Christoph Oetinger
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Following up our last episode on "Faith to the Aid of Reason," here we take a look at a case study of someone who did just that. Samuel Štefan Osuský was the leading theologian of the Slovak Lutheran Church in the first half of the twentieth century, serving for periods as the bishop of the western district and as seminary professor as well as being a renowned preacher. Over the course of his life he oscillated between two poles: a humanist working to build the kingdom of God here and now with an outlook of progressive optimism, and a prophet critiquing fantasies of church and state alike needing to hear the startling word of God's self-disclosure in the gospel. Which side he landed on had a lot to do with, for example, whether it was World War I, World War II, or communist tyranny on the one hand, or peacetime with steadily developing democratic institutions on the other. Do the genres fit the times, or do we need to mix things up? How did faith help Osuský in times of reason in crisis, and how did a commitment to reason serve his faith?
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The full story of Osuský can be found in Dad's book: Between Humanist Philosophy and Apocalyptic Theology: The Twentieth-Century Sojourn of Samuel Štefan Osuský
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Osuský's essay "The Philosophy of Bolshevism, Fascism, and Hitlerism" can be found in Lutheran Forum 43/4 (2009): 50–55 and 44/1 (2010): 50–58 or online here.
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H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture
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I've written a memoir of the first year our family spent in Slovakia from 1993 to 1994. No publication information to share just yet, but take a sneak peek here, and if you sign up there for my "Theology & a Recipe" newsletter, you'll be informed when it's on the presses!
More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
In this episode I give voice to my cri de coeur that argumentation, debate, and even discussion have been ruled out of court by the present cultural currents, which reduce us to disputing sources instead of drawing out implications of facts, and in which every witness reads as either will-to-power or advertising. Who shall rescue us from this mind of death and how? Does reason need faith's help nowadays? If so, how can we bring it to bear in civil contexts where we cannot presume, much less impose, convictions of faith? Dad advises epistemological humility and interpersonal charity—easier said than done. Follow our conversation if you too are wondering how on earth to say anything anymore.
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Tertullian is attributed with the expression credo quia absurdum, but on investigation I found out that he didn’t really say it quite like that.
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Anselm did actually say fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding) in his Proslogion. Whew!
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Not quite sure about Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” But a good line, whoever said it first.
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Reinhold Niebuhr discusses the limitation of the social sciences in The Nature and Destiny of Man
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Arnold Kling, The Three Languages of Politics
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Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
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Gilles Deleuze, Nietzsche and Philosophy
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Plato talks about how lousy a form of knowledge pistis (faith) is in The Republic
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For Bonhoeffer's discussion of reason and faith in his Ethics, see pp. 339–341 of this edition, and the opening chapter for more on God’s love for the world.
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Thomas Aquinas’s insistence on treating your opponent’s argument with charity and understanding is exemplified in the formal method of disputation he employs; see pretty much anything in his Summa Theologiae
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“Hinlicky’s Law” paraphrases this into a hermeneutical rule: “You are not permitted to criticize until you can restate an opponent’s position with such sympathy and insight that, were your opponent present, she would exclaim, ‘That’s it! I couldn’t have said it better myself!’ Then and only then may you criticize because then and only then are you dealing with the real thing, not a convenient fiction of your own imagination.”
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Michelle Obama is the first lady who said: “When they go low, we go high.” (See everywhere on the internet.)
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The Martyrdom of Polycarp
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For Luther on pacifism and civil resistance, see my article “Martin Luther, Pacifist?”
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See Dad’s Beloved Community pp. 42–55 for more on the ubiquity of believing in human reason and pp. 82-84 on the tripartite form of knowledge with subject, object, and audience.
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President Lincoln spoke most famously and eloquently about the cost of slavery extracted by the war from white Americans in his Second Inaugural Address.
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Michael Rectenwald, Springtime for Snowflakes
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For Kant on the subject-object split, see Frederick Beiser, The Fate of Reason
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Auguste Comte, Introduction to Positive Philosophy
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Charles Saunders Peirce, "How to Make Our Ideas Clear"
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For more on the denominational competitiveness lurking behind theories of church history, see my article “Beggars All: A Lutheran View of the 2017 Reformation Anniversary,” in Remembering the Reformation
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As theologian Alfred Loisy once quipped, "Jesus came proclaiming the Kingdom, and what arrived was the Church." If nothing else gets people excited about theology, talk about the church usually does—though not always in a good way. The Nicene Creed's description of the church as "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic" seems more an exercise in wishful thinking than anything else.
Is the church a betrayal of Christianity or its proper expression? If the latter, what is the right expression of that expression? Does the church sin or only its members? Can you be a Christian without the church? After wading through a lot of ecclesiological pain, Dad and I conclude this episode with a testimony as to why we continue to "go to church."
Notes:
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Healing Memories: Reconciling in Christ: Report of the Lutheran-Mennonite International Study Commission
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A title so nice Dad used it twice: Luther and the Beloved Community (2010) and Beloved Community (2015)
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Josiah Royce discusses "beloved community" in The Problem of Christianity
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Tillich discusses "spiritual community" in vol. 3 of his Systematic Theology
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Augustine, The City of God
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Andy Crouch talks about singing involving love of God with heart, mind, soul, and strength in The Tech-Wise Family
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Though I didn't mention it on the show, Charles Williams wrote a remarkable novel on the possibility of Christians bearing one another's burdens through time, Descent into Hell.
Oh, wait, there's a third member of the Trinity! In this episode we shower a little love on the much-neglected Holy Spirit, following the story of how the Christian doctrine of the Trinity parted company from the Neoplatonic Triad, and why the issue at stake is not just the Spirit's divinity but the Spirit's personhood. But this personal divine Spirit is also holy—suggesting that there are spirits that are unholy. Who and what are they, how should we think about them, and what does that mean for Christian ministry here and around the world?
Notes:
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Although we say Platonism and Neoplatonism, the really important philosophical figure here is not Plato but Plotinus. Read his Enneads here.
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Our favorite book on Neoplatonism and its persistence in Western culture is Lovejoy's The Great Chain of Being
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For more on the development of trinitarian doctrine regarding the Holy Spirit, see Dad's Beloved Community, ch. 4, and on demonology, see ch. 4 of The Substance of the Faith.
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Basil the Great, On the Holy Spirit
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On Beelzebul and the unforgivable sin, Mark 3:22–30
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Two books to introduce you to exorcism and healing ministry in Madagascar are Rich's The Fifohazana and Bennett's I Am Not Afraid.
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Here's something I've written on prosperity gospel and another piece on preaching the Trinity.
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Luther, Small Catechism, 3rd article of the Creed on the Holy Spirit
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Who can or should get baptized, at what age, and how? Is baptism our work or God's work? How can you remember your baptism when you don't remember getting baptized—or how should you think about a baptism you do remember when you've fallen away from the faith and then returned?
In this episode Dad and I try to move the conversation beyond petty legalisms of all kinds toward a strong teaching and practice of baptism with some real heft to it and prospects for ecumenical agreement to boot. No one can accuse us of aiming too low...
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On liturgical renewal, see Aidan Kavanaugh, The Shape of Baptism.
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For more on the difference between John’s baptism and Christian baptism, see my article “Water Baptism and Spirit Baptism in Luke-Acts: Another Reading of the Evidence.” More generally on the topic of baptism, see my article “Still Life with Baptism.”
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The Greek word that means both “from above” and “again” in John 3:7 is ἄνωθεν (anōthen).
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For Luther on baptism, see “Concerning Rebaptism” in Luther’s Works vol. 40 and the relevant section in the Large Catechism; note also his invocation of Deuteronomy in the Introduction to the Large Catechism: “And if this were not sufficient to admonish us to read the Catechism daily, yet we should feel sufficiently constrained by the command of God alone, who solemnly enjoins in Deut. 6:6ff that we should always meditate upon His precepts, sitting, walking, standing, lying down, and rising, and have them before our eyes and in our hands as a constant mark and sign.”
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For more on worship in Luther’s Wittenberg, see Martin Brecht, Martin Luther: Shaping and Defining the Reformation 1521–1532, chapter 7, pp. 251-292.
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The Latin phrase ordo salutis means “order of salvation” and refers to the various schemas of the precise order in which the various stages of salvation have to take place.
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For Dad on baptism, see Beloved Community, Chapter 3, pp. 19 –292.
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Karl Barth discusses “indiscriminate infant baptism” in Church Dogmatics IV.4 pp. 1–39; see Dad's discussion of it in Beloved Community, 270–281.
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Volkskirche means the “people’s church,” defined primarily by its relationship to the state and, in Nazi Germany, by ethnicity. Bekennende Kirche means “confessing church,” and refers to the protest community that Dietrich Bonhoeffer among others belonged to against a political and racial basis for church.
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For Menno Simons, see Dad's Beloved Community, pp. 260-270.
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Timothy George is the Dean of Beeson Divinity School and has done lots of great work to interpret the Reformation for American Baptists especially; see for example his book Theology of the Reformers.
More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
Why only two-thirds? In this episode we look at a specific aspect of the immensely complex literary work known as the Acts of the Apostles: namely, the Holy Spirit’s gathering in of all human communities that have been estranged from God. The story begins with the Spirit’s gathering of the Jews, moves on to Samaritans and proselytes, then Gentiles in the form of Cornelius the centurion… at which point you might think all the possibilities have been covered. But wait! There’s one more group. Any guesses? You’d have to read Luke-Acts pretty closely to figure it out. Or you could just listen and we’ll give away the answer for free.
Notes:
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Ernst Haenchen, The Acts of the Apostles
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“Wie es eigentlich gewesen ist” (or sometimes "wie es eigentlich geschehen ist"): Dad quoted this bit of German, which means “how it actually was/happened,” as the ideal to which the discipline of history aspires.
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Oscar Cullmann, Christ and Time
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Hans Conzelman, Acts of the Apostles
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Krister Stendahl, Paul among Jews and Gentiles
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Ernst Käsemann, Perspectives on Paul
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Joseph Fitzmyer, The Acts of the Apostles
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Cheryl Peterson, Who Is the Church?
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Paul R. Hinlicky, Beloved Community (see especially pp. 348–355 where he talks about Peterson’s book)
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The Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg undertakes scholarly and dialogue work with other Christian churches on behalf of the world’s Lutherans. I worked there for 7½ years and continue as a Visiting Professor. For resources specifically on Lutheran-Pentecostal dialogue, take a look here, or check out my book, A Guide to Pentecostal Movements for Lutherans.
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We talked briefly about the difference between “apocalyptic” and “salvation history.” For more about this, see Lutheran and the Beloved Community, ch. 7.
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Pentecost = Shavuot in the Jewish tradition.
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Troy Troftgruben is my Acts guru and teaches at Wartburg Theological Seminary. He’s working on a book on Acts… we’ll let you know as soon as it’s out! In the meanwhile, check out his book Rooted and Renewing.
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Sarah Ruden, Paul among the People
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For more on this topic generally, see my articles “The Second Pentecost” and “The Acts of St. Alban’s in Strasbourg.”
More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
It's the championship fight! Just kidding. It's just the opposite, in fact—an exhortation to the warm embrace of both Testaments by Christians and how they mutually illuminate one another. In this episode we look at all the ways Christians have done the Old Testament wrong—and man, they are legion—en route to commending a more excellent way. We tackle outright rejection of the OT, artificially forcing the OT to say things Christians want it to say, and even piously keeping hands off out of respect for Jewish believers. But how to get it right? Have a listen!
Notes
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On gnosticism and docetism, see Dad’s book Divine Complexity, chapters 2 and 3.
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Some of my reflections on the problems in the Christian relationship to the Old Testament are in this article “The Top Ten Reasons the Lectionary Sucks and Five Half-Assed Solutions” and in my review of Luther’s Jews by Thomas Kaufmann.
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Donald H. Juel, Messianic Exegesis.
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For commentary on the New Perspective on Paul, see Dad’s book Luther and the Beloved Community, chapter 7.
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For a critique of 19th-century progressivist history of religions theories, see Dad’s Between Humanist Philosophy and Apocalyptic Theology, chapter 1.
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Harnack, Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God.
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Neusner, Judaism in the Beginning of Christianity.
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Lincoln, Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural.
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Richard Lischer talks about Martin Luther King’s use of Scripture in The Preacher King.
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Deanna Thompson, Deuteronomy.
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Jenson, Ezekiel.
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Ephraim Radner, Time and The Word
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Martin Luther, “How Christians Should Regard Moses” and “A Brief Instruction on What to Look for and Expect in the Gospels,” both in Luther’s Works vol. 35.
More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
In which Dad and I confess our very different kinds of struggles with prayer, explore how Jesus' prayer can become our prayer, and then tackle a bunch of questions that arise: Does prayer change God or change us? Or both or neither? Can our prayers be pure? What does God do with our mixed motives in prayer? Why does God sometimes answer no even when we ask for the sort of things He Himself seems to favor? And who are we to be advising God on how to run the universe?
Notes:
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Paul R. Hinlicky, Luther for Evangelicals: A Reintroduction
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Dad’s remark about my being an “expert” in re: the charismatic gift of tongues was a reference to my book A Guide to Pentecostal Movements for Lutherans.
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Martin Luther, Large Catechism, section on the Lord’s Prayer; Lectures on Romans with Wilhelm Pauck’s introduction
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Nietzsche mocking providence—not exactly a picnic or parking spot, but close: getting the pious believer into the carriage just before the rain starts to fall. The Antichrist, #52.
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Augustine on God’s relation to time in Confessions XI.
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Schleiermacher on prayer in The Christian Faith, I.47,1
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Calvin on providence and “men most miserable,” Institutes I.17,11.
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Karl Barth’s journal Theological Existence Today giving voice to the dialectical theology of the 1920s is discussed in Dad’s book Before Auschwitz, 180–183.
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Is Joshua both the most horrifying and the most boring book in the whole biblical canon? Is it divine sanction for genocide and colonialism? Heck, did any of the events recorded therein even happen?!
In this episode we sort through the enormous textual, historical, and above all theological challenges in the interpretation of Joshua and explore the ways in which Christians can affirm this difficult book as holy Scripture.
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Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible
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Hannah Arendt, On Violence
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Joel Marcus, Mark 1–8 and Mark 8–16
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The Hebrew word we discuss is “herem,” and for what it’s worth here’s the Wikipedia article on it.
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Richard Nelson, Joshua
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Thomas B. Dozeman, Joshua 1–12
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Boyd, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God
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John H. Walton and J. Harvey Walton, The Lost World Of The Israelite Conquest
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In this episode we discuss Japanese theologian Kazoh Kitamori’s book, Theology of the Pain of God. Kitamori focuses attention on God’s willing love of the unlovable and of His own enemies through Christ—an embrace that, following Jeremiah 31:20 and Isaiah 63:15, causes God pain. But what exactly does it mean to talk about God “in pain”? Is it sheer anthropomorphism or worse yet patripassianism? Does it make God into a sentimental figure, suffering helplessly by our side? Or are we seeing here a genuine development in doctrine?
Notes:
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Here’s an essay I wrote some years ago about Kitamori (for an anthology that apparently fell through).
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Tokyo Lutheran Church
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Japan Evangelical Lutheran Church
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Kyodan (United Church of Christ in Japan) Confession of Faith
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Moltmann, The Crucified God.
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Kosuke Koyama was another Japanese theologian, though better known in the U.S. than in Japan because he published mainly in English and spent most of his career stateside. Among his other significant works are Water Buffalo Theology and Mount Fuji and Mount Sinai.
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Dorothee Soelle discusses Kitamori in her book Suffering.
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Vítor Westhelle talks about hybridity in After Heresy: Colonial Practices and Post-Colonial Theologies.
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Adding to Kitamori’s use of Jeremiah 31 and Isaiah 63, Dad mentioned Hosea 11:8, “How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Admah? How can I treat you like Zeboiim? My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender.”
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer talks about costly grace in The Cost of Discipleship and about the suffering of God and time for silence in Letters and Papers from Prison.
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Robert Jenson, Unbaptized God.
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Hegel, The Philosophy of Religion.
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Johannes Rist’s hymn “O Traurigkeit, O Herzeleid” (1641) includes the line Gott selbst liegt tot, “God Himself lies dead.”
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Martin Luther, Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper.
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Tome of Leo (yep, Fourth Council, not Third).
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Dad discusses the concept of patiency throughout Beloved Community.
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Albert Schweizer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle.
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Why is such a great thing trapped in such awful words? We discuss some of the problems with both “justification” and “faith” in contemporary English, then dig into the details of what this perplexing terminology actually refers to, and why Lutherans consider it “the article on which the church stands or falls.”
Notes:
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Scripture verses we discuss include Romans 3 and 4, II Corinthians 5:21, Galatians 2:20, 3:13, and 5:13.
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J. Louis Martyn, Galatians (Anchor Bible Commentary)
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Robert P. Eriksen, Theologians Under Hitler
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Doris L. Bergen, Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich
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Paul R. Hinlicky, Before Auschwitz: What Christian Theology Must Learn from the Rise of Nazism
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Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets
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N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology. For a discussion of this book, see Paul R. Hinlicky, Luther and the Beloved Community, pp. 245–248.
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Some texts by Martin Luther on justification by faith: “The Freedom of a Christian,” “Out of the Depths I Cry to Thee,” “Preface to Romans”
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Philip Melanchthon, “Ausburg Confession IV” and “Apology to the Augsburg Confession IV”
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Paul Tillich: “Not faith but grace is the cause of justification, because God alone is the cause. Faith is the receiving act, and this act is itself a gift of grace. Therefore, one should dispense completely with the phrase ‘justification by faith’ and replace it by the formula ‘justification by grace through faith.’” Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, 3:224. See also “You Are Accepted.”
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Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes about “speaking to life at its center” in both Christ the Center and Letters and Papers from Prison.
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In this episode we talk about Athanasius, the great church father (c. 298–373), nicknamed Athanasius Contra Mundum, Athanasius Against the World, among other things for going into exile five times during his bishopric.
Why does it matter to say, as Athanasius did, that Jesus is truly divine as well as truly human? What does it mean to say Jesus is truly divine as well as truly human? What’s at stake in other christologies (i.e., other ways of describing Jesus’ “being”)? And how does Athanasius’s christology alter our very perception of reality?
Notes:
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Athanasius “On the Incarnation of the Word,” “Festal Letter 39,” and “Life of St. Anthony.”
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Paul R. Hinlicky, Divine Complexity: The Rise of Creedal Christianity
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Jordan Cooper, Christification: A Lutheran Approach to Theosis
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Not single, not double, but triple predestination! Listen to this episode to uncover the meaning of this mysterious formulation. Also, why predestination does not necessarily have to be the worst possible doctrine, contrary to popular belief.
Notes:
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Martin Luther, "The Bondage of the Will," which you can easily find free as well as in published books.
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Paul R. Hinlicky, Paths Not Taken: Fates of Theology from Luther through Leibniz
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Chief biblical texts mentioned are Romans 7, 9–11, Isaiah 53, and John 3:16.
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Robert Kolb, Bound Choice, Election, and Wittenberg Theological Method
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The main source for Karl Barth's take on predestination is in volume II/2 of his Church Dogmatics.
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Philip S. Watson, Let God Be God: An Interpretation of the Theology of Martin Luther
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J. K. S. Reid, "Introduction," in John Calvin, Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, trans. J. K. S. Reid (Louisvile: Westminster John Knox, 1961), 9–44.
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In this episode we cover the Gospel of Mark from the Transfiguration through the curiously inconclusive conslusion.
Show notes:
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Resources for the Gospel of Mark can be found with Part 1 of this two-parter.
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For those of you unfortunates who didn't grow up in the 1980s, this will explain about the Choose Your Own Adventure series.
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Some other stuff I've done on the Gospel of Mark:
a) Story Grid Spreadsheet of the Gospel of Mark, inspired by Shawn Coyne's The Story Grid.
b) “Luther by Means of Mark,” from Lutheran Forum Spring 2016.
c) WorkingPreacher.org Commentary on Mark 10:17–31, 10:35–45, 10:46–52, and 12:28–34.
- And finally, my son Zeke's illustration of the camel through the eye of the needle:
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Since we both love the Gospel of Mark best (even though it's a bit ridiculous to play favorites with the Gospels) we decided to devote a whole show to working through it. We dig into the details of the theological framework and creativity of this Evangelist who created the genre of Gospel, illuminating the parts we find astounding and inspiring. And there was so much to say that we decided to do this one as a two-parter! Second half coming soon.
Show notes:
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To make it easy for you to read all of Mark in one go, without chapter or verse numbers or headings to distract you, here's a complete text in the English Standard Version, from biblegateway.com.
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Here's the complete free text of Albert Schweizer's Quest of the Historical Jesus.
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When we tried to narrow down the exact "Jesus the Salesman" book Dad mentioned, we discovered a truly horrifying number of business books and prosperity promises based on Jesus. No links to such works will be offered here. Please, we beg of you, just don't go there at all.
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Johannes Weiss, Jesus' Proclamation of the Kingdom of God.
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William Wrede, The Messianic Secret.
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Joel Marcus, Anchor Bible Commentary on Mark, 1–8 and 8–16.
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C. Clifton Black, Abingdon New Testament Commentary on Mark.
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Donald H. Juel, A Master of Surprise: Mark Interpreted.
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And, quite different from all the foregoing commentaries on Mark, this is a great tool for analyzing story structure, just as pertinent to Mark as to Pride and Prejudice: Shawn Coyne, The Story Grid.
More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
In today's show we set aside the question of whether we can say the Scriptures are true, reliable, accurate, historically verifiable, false, fake, or toxic, to ask whether they are holy--whether they are in themselves, and whether (and how) they make us holy. Reframing the question this way avoids many of the pitfalls of the past centuries and opens up new possibilities for theological reasoning.
Show Notes:
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The texts we discuss vis-à-vis their being-holy and making-holy qualities are Joshua 8:1–29, Nehemiah 7:7bff, and Mark 9:1. We also refer to Romans 1 and I Timothy 3:16.
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Yes! Paul Hinlicky (i.e. Dad) has a forthcoming commentary on Joshua in the Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible series. Personal favorites of mine are Ephraim Radner on Leviticus, Robert Jenson on Ezekiel, and Joseph Mangina on Revelation.
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Walter Brueggemann's book is Theology of the Old Testament.
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Karl Barth's essay is "The Strange New World within the Bible."
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The texts of Luther's mentioned in this episode are the Large Catechism (Apostles' Creed, Article III, §40) and "The Freedom of a Christian" (sometimes known in English as "Concerning Christian Liberty").
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Heiko Oberman's take on Scripture and tradition can be found in The Dawn of the Reformation.
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Paul Hinlicky's book on God's nature and revelation in light of the gospel is Divine Complexity.
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You can read about half of Origen's homilies on Joshua on Google Books.
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Here is the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification.
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Here's the very first episode of Queen of the Sciences!
In this introductory show we talk about our approach to theology and theology's contested place in our world, but also why Christians need theology--why simply repeating what the Bible says or doing what the church does is insufficient testimony to our faith.
Show Notes:
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Yep, I mistakenly said "hilasterion" instead of "lutron" for "ransom" in Mark's Gospel. It will be corrected and discussed at length in a future episode!
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Dad's New Testament mentor was J. Louis Martyn, who wrote among other things a commentary on Galatians and the study Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul.
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The metaphysical "hornet's nest" to which Dad refers is his book Divine Complexity. More on this in a future episode!
More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com!
Intro/Outro music: "An Orange Groove" by Raphael Pistachio, licensed through Jamendo.
