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.

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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!

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!

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:

1. Related episodes: Critical Social Theory, Pragmatism, Hannah Arendt, What Is a Person?, Cybertech and Personhood, Bonhoeffer's Life Together, Powers and Principalities

2. Nelson, "The Convening Power of the Pastor," Lutheran Forum 51/1 (2017): 50–51.

3. ed. Helmer, Truth-Telling and Other Ecclesial Practices of Resistance, including Dad's "Complicity and the Christological Path of Ecclesial Resistance"

4. 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”

Hey, have you ever noticed how awesome it is that we don't advertise? I mean, for anything other than ourselves. A major reason that's possible is our equally awesome, highly select band of Patrons. That kind of elitism is really OK, we promise. Join their ranks and support your favorite podcast in remaining stridently independent and advertising-free!

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:

1. Lewis, Miracles

2. Related episodes: Illness and Healing, Revival and Renewal with the Blumhardts, Nenilava Prophetess of Madagascar

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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:

1. Have a listen to our previous episodes Faith to the Aid of Reason and The Empiricists Strike Back

2. Knoll, A Brief History of the Earth

3. 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

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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:

1. Related Episodes: St. Paul Among the Philosophers, Critical Social Theory

2. See Dad’s Divine Simplicity and Divine Complexity; plus, with his colleague Adkins, Rethinking Philosophy and Theology with Deleuze

3. Adkins, Death and Desire in Hegel, Heidegger and Deleuze

4. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion

5. Kojeve, Introduction to the Reading of Hegel

6. O’Regan, The Heterodox Hegel

7. Moltmann, The Crucified God

8. Agamben, The Time That Remains

9. Žižek and Milbank, The Monstrosity of Christ

10. Ayres, Nicaea and its Legacy

11. 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:

1. 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.

2. The other podcasts I mentioned are Fresh Text and The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill.

3. 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.

4. L. T. Johnson, The Letter of James

5. If you enjoy Woe-itudes, check this out

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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:

1. Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man; see also his Moral Man and Immoral Society

2. James, Varieties of Religious Experience

3. Related episodes: Hannah Arendt, On Putin's Invasion of Ukraine

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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:

1. 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.

2. Scott, Seeing Like a State

3. Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

4. Asimov, "Robbie," in I, Robot

5. 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.

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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:

1. Saarinen, The Pastoral Epistles with Philemon and Jude

2. Fitzmyer, The Letter to Philemon

3. Ruden, Paul among the People

4. Kreider, The Patient Ferment of the Early Church

5. 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.

6. Zahl, The Holy Spirit and Christian Experience

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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:

1. 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

2. See Dad’s essay, “Lincoln’s Theology of the Republic According to the Second Inaugural Address,” The Cresset (May 2002: LXV/6) 7-14

3. Guelzo, Mr. Lincoln and Redeemer President

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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!

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.

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Notes:

1. 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

2. Augustine, Confessions (specifically, the second half on time that you always skip over)

3. Hinlicky, Luther and the Beloved Community

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:

1. Ellis, American Sphinx

2. Meacham, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

3. 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.

4. Locke, Second Treatise of Government and Letter concerning Toleration

5. Havel, “The Power of the Powerless”

6. Manseau, The Jefferson Bible

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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:

1. Here is the series of sermons on I Samuel that I preached last year

2. Murphy, I Samuel

3. Brueggemann, First and Second Samuel

4. 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:

1. DescarTTTTTes [sic], Meditations on First Philosophy

2. Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding

3. Havel, "The Power of the Powerless"

4. Wolterstorff, John Locke and the Ethics of Belief

5. Gadamer, Truth and Method

6. Mother Theresa, Come Be My Light

7. Warnock, The Divided Mind of the Black Church

8. 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:

1. Methodist Quadrilateral

2. Driver, Patterns of Grace

3. Theologia Germanica

4. Kolb, Bound Choice, Election, and Wittenberg Theological Method

5. Bayer, Martin Luther's Theology

6. Charry, "Experience"

7. Zahl, The Holy Spirit and Christian Experience

8. 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:

1. 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

2. Check out Dad’s book Before Auschwitz: What Christian Theology Must Learn from the Rise of Nazism

3. The Wolfhart Pannenberg quote comes from his Systematic Theology, vol. 2

4. What we’re calling the Orthodox Barmen Declaration: “A Declaration on the Russian World Teaching”

5. Aleksandr Dugin

6. Reinhold Niebuhr, Why the Christian Church Is Not Pacifist

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.

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Notes:

1. Related episodes: Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Howard Thurman, Martin Luther King Jr, Two Kingdoms 16th Century Edition, Two Kingdoms 20th and 21st Century Edition

2. Tocqueville, Democracy in America

3. Heise, The Gates of Hell (on the elimination of the Russian Lutheran Church during the Soviet period)

4. Bonhoeffer, Ethics and Letters and Papers from Prison, plus DeJonge's Bonhoeffer on Resistance

5. Hofstadter, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics"

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:

1. Dad's article "The Doctrine of the New Birth from Bullinger to Edwards" explains all

2. Check out The Book of Concord and do a word search on "regeneration"... prepare to be amazed

3. Gritsch, Born Againism

4. Phil Cary, Good News for Anxious Christians

5. 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:

1. 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

2. Now in print! (and ebook too) Nenilava, Prophetess of Madagascar, edited by Sarah Hinlicky Wilson and James B. Vigen

3. 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:

1. Levine and Witherington III, The Gospel of Luke

2. Thiessen, Jesus and the Forces of Death

3. Kinzer, Jerusalem Crucified, Jerusalem Risen

4. 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:

1. Luther gives his explanation of the 8th Commandment in the Small Catechism

2. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago and "Live Not by Lies"

3. Havel, "The Power of the Powerless"

4. Bonhoeffer, Ethics

5. 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!

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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!

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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!

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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.

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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.

Notes:

1. 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

2. Nostra Aetate

3. Cohen, Everyman's Talmud

4. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son

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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!

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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:

1. 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!

2. 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.

3. Top picks for commentaries on Revelation are those by Mangina and Koester.

4. I read out from the Second and Third Petitions of the Lord's Prayer in my "Memorizing Edition" of the Small Catechism.

5. 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.

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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:

1. Check out Dad's article, “Antinomianism—The Lutheran 'Heresy',” in On Secular Governance

2. 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

3. Bonhoeffer's critique of Kant on lying can be found in Ethics, pp. 279–80.

4. Plato's dialogue Euthyphro

5. Related episodes: Law and Gospel 1, Law and Gospel 2, Learning to Love Leviticus, An Unlikely Marriage

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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:

1. Moberly, The God of the Old Testament

2. Pannenberg, Introduction to Systematic Theology and the three volumes of Systematic Theology

3. Witherington, Isaiah Old and New

4. Wink, Naming the Powers and Engaging the Powers

5. Wright, “Paul and Caesar: A New Reading of Romans” in A Royal Priesthood

6. Barclay, Pauline Churches and Diaspora Jews

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. The current prime minister of Hungary is Viktor Orbán, but the admirable Hungarian Lutheran pastor persecuted under communism was Lajos Ordass.

10. Related episodes: Galatians 1, Galatians 2, Two Kingdoms 16th Century Edition, Two Kingdoms 20th and 21st Century Edition, Joshua, Isaiah, Hannah Arendt.

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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:

1. Ising, Johann Christoph Blumhardt, Life and Work

2. 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)

3. Winn, Jesus Is Victor! The Significance of the Blumhardts for the Theology of Karl Barth

4. Weiss, Jesus' Proclamation of the Kingdom of God

5. 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!

6. Related episodes: Revival and Church; Illness and Healing; All About Prayer

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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:

1. 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.

2. See also Dad's inadvertent hagiography, Between Humanist Philosophy and Apocalyptic Theology: The Twentieth Century Sojourn of Samuel Stefan Osusky

3. Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things?

4. Brown, The Body and Society

5. The One Mediator, the Saints, and Mary (Lutheran-Catholic dialogue statement)

6. Haynes, The Bonhoeffer Phenomenon

7. Hendrix, The Faithful Spy

8. Melanchthon, Augsburg Confession and Apology Article XXI on the saints

9. Delehaye, The Legends of the Saints

10. Mattox, Defender of the Most Holy Matriarchs

11. For All the Saints (evangelical Lutheran breviary)

12. I didn't mention it but also see Kolb's study For All the Saints

13. 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

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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:

1. Bird and Sprinkle eds., The Faith of Jesus Christ

2. Vainio, Justification and Participation in Christ

3. From the Book of Concord: Augsburg Confession, Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Formula of Concord

4. From Luther: Galatians commentary, Preface to Romans, Freedom of a Christian, Small Catechism-Apostles' Creed-Third Article (all easy to find online)

5. From Barth's Church Dogmatics: II/2 and IV/1

6. Thanks a lot Pope Leo for your lousy semi-Nestorian Tome

7. More again this time from Morgan, Roman Faith and Christian Faith

8. Stendahl, "The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West"

9. From Dad: Paths Not Taken, Luther for Evangelicals

10. Previous episodes related to this one: Justification by Faith, Romans, Galatians

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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:

1. The key book we discuss here is Morgan, Roman Faith and Christian Faith

2. Very relevant to the discussion at hand is Dad's Divine Complexity

3. Other episodes related to this one: Justification by Faith, Augustine's City of God

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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:

1. Luther's commentary on Jonah in LW 19

2. Steiger, Jonas Propheta

3. Sonderegger, Systematic Theology vol. 1

4. For a good example of putting your money where your prophetic mouth is, see the Simon-Ehrlich wager

5. Check out our previous episode on Athanasius dealing with God's dilemma

6. 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

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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:

1. Related episodes are: What Is (Not) the Job of a Pastor?; How to Be a Congregation; Hannah Arendt

2. My new book, which also discusses pastoral authority, is To Baptize or Not to Baptize: A Practical Guide for Clergy, new from Thornbush Press!

3. Kant, Critique of Judgement

4. Critical fiction of the bureaucratic and machine era: just about anything by Kafka, the film "Brazil," and the Matrix trilogy.

5. 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

6. Vaclav Havel, "The Power of the Powerless"

7. A particularly good read on pastoral ministry is Eugene Peterson's The Pastor

8. And if you by chance are on Twitter, see if you can make #judiciousness go viral!

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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.

Notes:

1. Related episodes: Islam, World Religions, Justification by Faith, The Certainty of Faith, Justification by Faith Revisited, Faith Just Faith, Japanese Theologian Kazoh Kitamori

2. 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

3. Armstrong, Buddha

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Dad and I talk over my new book, To Baptize or Not to Baptize: A Practical Guide for Clergy.

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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:

1. West, Prophecy Deliverance!

2. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature

3. Niebuhr, The Irony of American History

4. James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

5. Thiemann, Revelation and Theology

6. Peirce, How to Make Our Ideas Clear

7. Royce, The Problem of Christianity

8. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests

9. Hinlicky, Luther and the Beloved Community and Beloved Community

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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:

1. Check out these other related episodes: Justification by Faith, Romans, The First Two-Thirds of Acts, and The Last Third of Acts.

2. Dad's Luther vs. Pope Leo brings John Wesley to the rescue (whom we discuss also in this episode).

3. 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.

4. We both got the number of Jewish mitzvot wrong. It's 613.

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