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:
1. You may know these lectures as Christ the Center but we worked from the new translation in DBWE 12.
2. DeJonge, Bonhoeffer's Reception of Luther
3. See Dad's "Luther's Anti-Docetism in the Disputatio de divinitate et humanitate Christi (1540)," pp. 139-185 in Creator est creatura
4. Luther, "Confession Concerning Christ's Supper," in LW 37
5. Sarah mentioned her novel A-Tumblin' Down
6. 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:
1. Related episodes: How To Be a Congregation, Baptism: Infant and Otherwise
2. Davids, The First Epistle of Peter
3. Harink, 1 & 2 Peter
4. My sermon on the "elect exiles" of I Peter 1
5. And my book To Baptize or Not to Baptize: A Practical Guide to Clergy
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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:
1. Melanchthon, Loci Communes (1521 edition) and Loci Communes (1559 edition) (there are lots of other editions in-between)
2. Quere, Melanchthon's Christum Cognoscere
3. Sarah's To Baptize or Not to Baptize and Small Catechism: Memorizing Edition
4. Related episodes: Bondage of the Will, Before Auschwitz
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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:
1. Luther, Bondage of the Will, in LW 33
2. Kolb, Bound Choice, Election, and Wittenberg Theological Method
3. Vestrucci, Theology as Freedom
4. 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:
1. We read this edition of Augustine's Enchiridion
2. 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!

What happened after I posted the protest to the suppression of our episode.

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:
1. 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
2. Agamben, Where Are We Now?
3. Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler
4. This is my only other public statement related to covid: "Churches During Lockdown: Near Disaster"
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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:
1. Of course you know "Turn, Turn, Turn" by the Byrds
2. 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
3. Lohfink, Qoheleth
4. Scott, Proverbs–Ecclesiastes
5. Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament
6. Treier, Ecclesiastes (Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible)
7. Adams, Christ and Horrors
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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:
1. Anselm, Monologion
2. Rogers, The Neoplatonic Metaphysics and Epistemology of Anselm of Canterbury
3. 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:
1. See my issue of Theology & a Recipe on Basil the Great entitled "The Trinity Is Not an Egg"
2. 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
3. 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:
1. Quotes from Cyril of Alexandria and the christological formula of the Council of Chalcedon come from Christology of the Later Fathers
2. See also the discussion of Theotokos in Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition, and also his book Mary through the Centuries
3. 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:
1. If you read no other book by Dad, be sure to read this one: Before Auschwitz
2. 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:
1. 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?
2. 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
3. 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:
1. Wright and Borg, The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions
2. Weiss, Jesus' Proclamation of the Kingdom of God
3. 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:
1. Kant, Conflict of the Faculties and Religion within the Limits of Mere Reason
2. Schleiermacher, The Life of Jesus
3. Strauss, The Christ of Faith and the Jesus of History
4. Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus
5. Heschel, The Aryan Jesus
6. Bornkamm, Jesus of Nazareth
7. Troftgruben, "How Not to Fall for the Next Big Jesus Exposé," Lutheran Forum 52/4 (2018): 45–50.
8. 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:
1. The Essential Martin Luther King Jr.
2. King, A Gift of Love
3. Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain (I listened to this audiobook edition—it's excellent)
4. Carson, Martin's Dream
5. Lischer, The Preacher King
6. West, The Radical King
7. 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:
1. Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited
2. 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:
1. A Declaration on the "Russian World" (Ruskii Mir) Teaching
2. Hovorun, Is the "Russian World" Condemnable?
3. 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:
1. 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
2. Check out my book Sermon on the Mount: A Poetic Paraphrase
3. Albright, Anchor Bible commentary on Matthew
4. See Dad's review of Peter Ochs's "Another Reformation" in The Journal of Scriptural Reasoning 13/2 (December 2014).
5. 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:
1. Graeber, Bullshit Jobs
2. The short story "Gold" in my collection Protons and Fleurons is a skewed look at vocation, but not as skewed as Graeber's.
3. The classic study of Luther on vocation is Gustav Wingren's appropriately titled Luther on Vocation
4. 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:
1. Wright, Surprised by Hope
2. Zahl, The Holy Spirit and Christian Experience
3. Becker, Denial of Death
4. Sarah's Pearly Gates
5. 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:
1. Luther's commentary on Ecclesiastes
2. John Palka's blog Nature's Depths
3. Vainio, Cosmology in Theological Perspective
4. Brooke, Science and Religion
5. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength
6. Russell, The Sparrow
7. Wells, War of the Worlds
8. "Passengers" (2016 film)
9. Le Guin, Worlds of Exile and Illusion, plus see the volume of critical studies edited by Harold Bloom
10. Worthing, God, Creation, and Contemporary Physics
11. Wisnefske, Could God Fail?
12. 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:
1. Wirzba, Agrarian Spirit
2. Davis, Scripture, Culture, And Agriculture
3. 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:
1. Dad's commentary on Joshua
2. My moonlighting on Fresh Text to talk about Psalm 37
3. Article 17 of the Augsburg Confession
4. Kinzer, Jerusalem Crucified, Jerusalem Risen
5. 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:
1. Related episodes: Theology and Experience 1, Theology and Experience 2, James
2. Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death
3. MacLuhan, The Medium Is the Message (beats me why this is spelled everywhere on Amazon, even the book covers, as "Massage" instead of "Message")
4. Weiss, "Hurts So Good"
5. Coakley, God, Sexuality, and the Self
6. Augustine, Confessions (current favorite translation)
7. Merton, Seven Storey Mountain
8. 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!

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”
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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!

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

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!
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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
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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"
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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!
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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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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.
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:
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.
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:
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
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:
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
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:
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
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:
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
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:
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
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:
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!
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:
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.
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:
1. Martyn, Galatians
2. Luther, Lectures on Galatians 1–4 and Lectures on Galatians 5–6
3. 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:
1. 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.
2. Relevant to this topic from me: "Martin Luther, Pacifist?"
3. 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:
1. Pluckrose and Lindsay, Cynical Theories
2. Spinoza, Principles of Cartesian Philosophy
3. Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy
4. Sharp, Spinoza and the Politics of Renaturalization
5. Locke, Second Treatise of Government
6. Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea
7. Rectenwald, Springtime for Snowflakes
8. 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:
1. Hedges, "Cancel Culture: Where Liberalism Goes to Die"
2. Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach,” in Karl Marx on Religion
3. Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment
4. Tillich, The Socialist Decision
5. Simpson, Critical Social Theory
6. Marcuse, Eros and Civilization
7. Derrida, The Gift of Death
8. Brown, Undoing the Demos
9. Foucault, The History of Sexuality
10. Orwell, 1984
11. Carter, Race
12. Mitchell, American Awakening
13. 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.
14. 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).
15. 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).
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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:
1. 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.
2. 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:
1. 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.
2. 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:
1. 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!
2. The two commentaries I studied in preparation for this episode are Throntveit, Ezra-Nehemiah, and Myers, Ezra-Nehemiah.
3. Relevant previous episodes: Is Scripture Holy?, Law & Gospel Part 1, Law & Gospel Part 2, Learning to Love Leviticus, Joshua.
4. 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:
1. Tons of resources about ecumenism at the Institute for Ecumenical Research.
2. 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.
3. Not mentioned by name but highly relevant are the document Lutherans and Pentecostals in Dialogue and the new ecumenical outfit Global Christian Forum.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.)
7. 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:
1. Books by Hannah Arendt discussed in this episode: Love and Saint Augustine, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Eichmann in Jerusalem, On Violence
2. Two movies: Hannah Arendt and Vita Activa
3. See Dad's Before Auschwitz and his recent article "Hitler's Theology: A Cautionary Tale for Today's Peril"
4. Kušnieriková, Acting for Others: Trinitarian Communion and Christological Agency
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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:
1. Bultmann, "Eschatology of the Gospel of John" (1928) in Faith and Understanding, 165-183
2. Käsemann, The Testament of Jesus
3. Hill, Paul and the Trinity
4. Twelftree, In the Name of Jesus
5. For Dad on John, see Divine Complexity, 69–96
6. 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:
1. Brown, An Introduction to the Gospel of John (among others)
2. Bultmann, The Gospel of John
3. Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel
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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:
1. 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?
2. 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.
3. 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).
4. Strawn, The Old Testament Is Dying
5. Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man
6. 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:
1. Relevant previous episodes include Justification by Faith, Faith to the Aid of Reason, and The Freedom of a Christian.
2. Here's the Council of Trent criticizing what it took to be the Reformation doctrine of faith.
3. For Tillich on faith as being grasped by ultimate concern, since his Systematic Theology, vol. 3, pp. 129-134
4. For Barth on prayer, see the Church Dogmatics III/4:87-115 and Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts
5. 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
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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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