We put the cart ahead of the horse in this one: after a good start in I Corinthians, we gallop off into matters of eucharistic discipline, but not to worry, we decide to keep going in the next episode, in which we'll back up and deal with the doctrine. In the meanwhile, if you get really exercised about questions of who's in and who's out, you're either going to love this episode... or unsubscribe. Either way, enjoy! Support us on Patreon! Notes: 1. Dennis Di Mauro, "For You, For Many, For All P...
May 19, 2020•57 min•Season 2Ep. 10
Christianity has had a 1900+ year bad history with (rabbinic) Judaism, with devastating consequences for the lives of Jews and theological bankruptcy for Christians. We hone in on the problem within our own tradition by looking at Luther's contorted and confusing attitude to Jews—from being the first person in about 1000 years to propose toleration and speak well of them, to his famously horrific suggestions to drive them out, steal their books, and burn their synagogues. Yet Luther proves to be...
May 05, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Season 2Ep. 9
Following hot on the heels of our last episode about St. Paul among the Philosophers, in this episode we take up his magnum opus, the Epistle to the Romans. Positioned first in the New Testament, it is actually the last extant letter he wrote. Hugely influential, it is densely packed, tightly argued, and generally impenetrable to a casual reading. So with the excellent aid of the brilliant interpreter Ernst Käsemann we walk through most of Romans (leaving chs. 9–11 for next time) to discover the...
Apr 21, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Season 2Ep. 8
There we were, calmly recording our regularly scheduled episodes during our pandemic-imposed quiet, including a couple on holy communion for later this spring... when a good old-fashioned theological controversy erupted under our feet. We weigh in on the question of whether holy communion can be consecrated via the internet (spoiler alert: no) and why we think so; but we also lift up the great things that can be done to foster and uplift the Christian community by digital means during this time ...
Apr 09, 2020•32 min
The apostle Paul gets a bad rap as the repressive, restrictive jerk who turned the hippie religion of Jesus into a metaphysical mess of religion about Jesus. Strangely enough, Christians seem to be the primary exponents of this misleading interpretation. But across the way in the realms of secular and socialist philosophy, Paul is enjoying a revival of sorts; and in some cases is even the object of envious longing. What gives? In this episode we offer a brief introduction to Paul (apostle, not D...
Apr 07, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Once again Luther proves his surprising relevance with his treatise "Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague." In light of the metastasizing coronavirus pandemic, Dad and I talk about the treatise and then offer our own reflections on how believers can and should respond. Support us on Patreon! Notes: 1. Luther's treatise is published in Luther's Works vol. 43 and you can also read it here . 2. Bonhoeffer discusses "natural life" in his Ethics 3. We refer in this episode to a previous episode ...
Mar 27, 2020•26 min
Following on our last two episodes exploring the Lutheran doctrine of the "two kingdoms," in this one we dive deeply into the life of two extraordinary Ethiopian Lutherans. Gudina Tumsa was a pastor and the General Secretary of the Evangelical Church Mekane Yesus until his assassination by the communist Derg regime in 1979. His wife Tsehay Tolessa, an active evangelist, was arrested after his death, tortured, and imprisoned without trial or sentence for ten years. Only after the fall of the regi...
Mar 24, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Season 2Ep. 6
Can a distinction between the religious and governmental realms hashed out in the sixteenth century be remotely useful for us today? Well, we give it an honest try. If in the past the danger was religion invading the realm of the state and making use of violent coercion to advance its ultimate goals, today the danger (at least in the parts of the world we've lived in) is the other way around: the state attempting to assert itself in realms of conscience, mind, and ultimate salvation. We explore ...
Mar 10, 2020•59 min•Season 2Ep. 5
You think it's obvious to keep religion and government separate—but for nearly all of human history, it's been anything but that! In this episode Dad and I sort through the landscape of 16th century Europe to scout out the source of Luther's distinction between the "two kingdoms": the lefthand kingdom where God rules by law, coercion, and public authority, and the righthand kingdom where God rules by the gospel of Jesus Christ through word and sacrament. There are so many ways to do church-and-s...
Feb 25, 2020•55 min•Season 2Ep. 4
And you thought Joshua was bad! In this episode I undertake to persuade Dad that the other-least-popular book of the Old Testament is not just an arcane collection of burnt offerings and sin offerings and wave offerings but in fact is the metaphysical substrate of the gospel itself. (Spoiler alert: he is won over.) Have a listen for a new perspective on "detestable" animals, mixed fibers, death on account of blasphemy, liver lobes, and so much more! Support us on Patreon! Notes: 1. As mentioned ...
Feb 11, 2020•1 hr 7 min•Season 2Ep. 3
Poor Anselm, the favorite medieval-scholastic whipping boy of apparently enlightened moderns. Outraged at the attack on Anselm's honor, Dad and I endeavor to make satisfaction for his slandered reputation, give the best and most charitable account of his atonement theory, make some slight tweaks to it in a Lutheran-ish direction while taking serious issue with Gustaf Aulén's attempt to do the same, and overall make the case that the Anselmian concern for justice and recompense is not nearly as f...
Jan 28, 2020•1 hr 6 min•Season 2Ep. 2
Welcome to the second season of Queen of the Sciences! We begin our conversations in 2020 with a deep dive into the foolishness and stumbling block that is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Overfamiliar today as a religious symbol, the cross was once the supreme declaration that the person thereon was trash, subhuman, and beyond redemption—certainly not capable of redeeming others. We try to imagine ourselves back into the shame of crucifixion, examine its uses in Roman political control, and exp...
Jan 14, 2020•1 hr•Season 2Ep. 1
This is a talk I gave to the ministry team at United Church in Malmö, Sweden—a congregation of the Swedish Evangelical Mission within the Church of Sweden —about the interrelationship of revival and church, some cases studies in charismatic movements in Lutheranism, and rubrics for discerning true, God-given revival. More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com !...
Dec 30, 2019•50 min•Season 1Ep. 25
Here's the second of two lectures on the distinction between law and gospel that I gave at the Johannelund School of Theology in Uppsala, Sweden, in October 2019. More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com !
Dec 16, 2019•58 min•Season 1Ep. 24
Here's the first part of a two-part lecture on the distinction between law and gospel that I gave at the Johannelund School of Theology in Uppsala, Sweden, in October 2019. Don't forget to listen to the second part ! More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com !...
Dec 02, 2019•51 min•Season 1Ep. 23
Paul R. Hinlicky (aka Dad) presents "How the Holy Spirit Disappeared in Lutheranism" at the Braaten-Benne Lectures in Theology in Indianapolis on August 6, 2019.
Nov 19, 2019•1 hr 10 min•Season 1Ep. 22
Dad gave this talk, "Struck Down But Not Destroyed," at the 2019 conference of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology on the theme "What's the Good of Humanity?" More about us at sarahhinlickywilson.com and paulhinlicky.com !
Nov 05, 2019•23 min
The Sermon on the Mount is the address by which Jesus makes us children of God, and tells us what that means for our words, bodies, and relationships... or does it? Can anyone actually live this way? Maybe it's just for the experts and the aspirational. Or maybe it's a clever rhetorical ploy to make us see our sin but doesn't actually place any claims on us. Any maybe it doesn't matter one way or another because the words are so familiar we can hardly even hear them anymore. Tune in for a refres...
Oct 22, 2019•59 min•Season 1Ep. 20
In this episode we revisit the early church, earlier even than Athanasius in fact, to gaze upon the martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas... only to discover Perpetua gazing right back at us, with an unbearable intensity. This early martyr story is extraordinary and powerful in its own right, but it also touches on a lot of neuralgic issues for our society today, and ultimately confounds all our attempts to claim any identity for ourselves than the one Perpetua claimed: christiana. In other news, ...
Oct 08, 2019•1 hr 11 min•Season 1Ep. 19
Usually, when a person asks what or who makes for a person, it's to dehumanize some person or group of persons. Our intention in this episode is to head in the opposite direction. Dad takes us on a worldwind tour of Western civilization (which, frankly, he often does) to see that what counts as personhood or humanity has been under dispute from the get-go and continues to be disputed up to this very day. Meanwhile, I explore the striking fact that, in the doctrine of the Trinity, Father, Son, an...
Sep 24, 2019•1 hr 12 min•Season 1Ep. 18
Following up our last episode on "Faith to the Aid of Reason," here we take a look at a case study of someone who did just that. Samuel Štefan Osuský was the leading theologian of the Slovak Lutheran Church in the first half of the twentieth century, serving for periods as the bishop of the western district and as seminary professor as well as being a renowned preacher. Over the course of his life he oscillated between two poles: a humanist working to build the kingdom of God here and now with a...
Sep 10, 2019•57 min•Season 1Ep. 17
In this episode I give voice to my cri de coeur that argumentation, debate, and even discussion have been ruled out of court by the present cultural currents, which reduce us to disputing sources instead of drawing out implications of facts, and in which every witness reads as either will-to-power or advertising. Who shall rescue us from this mind of death and how? Does reason need faith's help nowadays? If so, how can we bring it to bear in civil contexts where we cannot presume, much less impo...
Aug 27, 2019•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 16
As theologian Alfred Loisy once quipped, "Jesus came proclaiming the Kingdom, and what arrived was the Church." If nothing else gets people excited about theology, talk about the church usually does—though not always in a good way. The Nicene Creed's description of the church as "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic" seems more an exercise in wishful thinking than anything else. Is the church a betrayal of Christianity or its proper expression? If the latter, what is the right expression of that e...
Aug 13, 2019•1 hr 1 min•Season 1Ep. 15
Oh, wait, there's a third member of the Trinity! In this episode we shower a little love on the much-neglected Holy Spirit, following the story of how the Christian doctrine of the Trinity parted company from the Neoplatonic Triad, and why the issue at stake is not just the Spirit's divinity but the Spirit's personhood. But this personal divine Spirit is also holy—suggesting that there are spirits that are unholy. Who and what are they, how should we think about them, and what does that mean for...
Jul 30, 2019•1 hr 2 min•Season 1Ep. 14
Who can or should get baptized, at what age, and how? Is baptism our work or God's work? How can you remember your baptism when you don't remember getting baptized—or how should you think about a baptism you do remember when you've fallen away from the faith and then returned? In this episode Dad and I try to move the conversation beyond petty legalisms of all kinds toward a strong teaching and practice of baptism with some real heft to it and prospects for ecumenical agreement to boot. No one c...
Jul 16, 2019•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 13
Why only two-thirds? In this episode we look at a specific aspect of the immensely complex literary work known as the Acts of the Apostles: namely, the Holy Spirit’s gathering in of all human communities that have been estranged from God. The story begins with the Spirit’s gathering of the Jews, moves on to Samaritans and proselytes, then Gentiles in the form of Cornelius the centurion… at which point you might think all the possibilities have been covered. But wait! There’s one more group. Any ...
Jul 02, 2019•1 hr 13 min•Season 1Ep. 12
It's the championship fight! Just kidding. It's just the opposite, in fact—an exhortation to the warm embrace of both Testaments by Christians and how they mutually illuminate one another. In this episode we look at all the ways Christians have done the Old Testament wrong—and man, they are legion—en route to commending a more excellent way. We tackle outright rejection of the OT, artificially forcing the OT to say things Christians want it to say, and even piously keeping hands off out of respe...
Jun 18, 2019•58 min•Season 1Ep. 11
In which Dad and I confess our very different kinds of struggles with prayer, explore how Jesus' prayer can become our prayer, and then tackle a bunch of questions that arise: Does prayer change God or change us? Or both or neither? Can our prayers be pure? What does God do with our mixed motives in prayer? Why does God sometimes answer no even when we ask for the sort of things He Himself seems to favor? And who are we to be advising God on how to run the universe? Notes: 1. Paul R. Hinlicky, L...
Jun 04, 2019•57 min•Season 1Ep. 10
Is Joshua both the most horrifying and the most boring book in the whole biblical canon? Is it divine sanction for genocide and colonialism? Heck, did any of the events recorded therein even happen?! In this episode we sort through the enormous textual, historical, and above all theological challenges in the interpretation of Joshua and explore the ways in which Christians can affirm this difficult book as holy Scripture. 1. Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible 2. Hannah Arendt, On Violenc...
May 21, 2019•1 hr 8 min•Season 1Ep. 9
In this episode we discuss Japanese theologian Kazoh Kitamori’s book, Theology of the Pain of God. Kitamori focuses attention on God’s willing love of the unlovable and of His own enemies through Christ—an embrace that, following Jeremiah 31:20 and Isaiah 63:15, causes God pain. But what exactly does it mean to talk about God “in pain”? Is it sheer anthropomorphism or worse yet patripassianism? Does it make God into a sentimental figure, suffering helplessly by our side? Or are we seeing here a ...
May 07, 2019•1 hr 9 min•Season 1Ep. 8
