As between the Septuagint (LXX) and the rabbinic text (MT), there are significant differences in many verses that deal with Christology. The MT is not always ‘less Christological’, for that would have been a poor-quality trap, but the proper hermeneutic for determining the text of Scripture is not ‘more Christology’; rather, the right hermeneutic is quite simply: What is Scripture and what does it say? Christ, the Apostles, and the early Church all unanimously held that the Septuagint is, indeed...
Jun 11, 2025•2 hr 10 min•Season 2Ep. 102
The story of how Hebrew was smuggled into the Western Church is long and complicated; it spans centuries and involves hundreds of men. In this episode, we have narrowed down the story to a handful of key figures who played pivotal roles. At many points in this timeline, Christian men could have stood up and defended the inspired Greek of the Septuagint, but essentially none did so. At any point in this timeline, Christian men could have stood up and repudiated the wicked use of the Hebrew, but o...
May 07, 2025•3 hr 18 min•Season 2Ep. 101
The Word of God has been preserved — miraculously — down through the ages, faithfully transmitted forward from past generations to us. This is according to God’s promises, and yet God nowhere (in the Old Testament) says which language He will use to accomplish this. Many have long claimed that God used Hebrew to do this, but the Hebrew language was never a true written language until the 20th century and, above and beyond this, the Hebrew language was dead for more than two thousand years. How, ...
Apr 23, 2025•2 hr 51 min•Season 2Ep. 100
All men have limitations — be they physical, intellectual, or something else. One such limitation is a thing we call, in the technology fields, a “context window”. In essence, a context window is the amount of relevant information that a man can hold in his mind at a given moment. In a conversation, it is the history of the conversation (along with any previous history from prior conversations, et cetera); in a relationship, it is the entire history of that relationship. In all cases, only to th...
Apr 02, 2025•1 hr 27 min•Season 2Ep. 99
Man is an animal, created on the sixth day with all the other land creatures. And yet man is more than an animal, for man has not only body, but also mind and soul. To ignore the soul is to fall into Materialism; to ignore the body is to fall into Gnosticism. We must endeavor to fall off of neither side of the horse. This tripartite nature of man plays out in many things and in many ways; one of those things is addiction. When a man (or a woman) becomes addicted to something — whether it is a su...
Mar 26, 2025•1 hr 28 min•Season 2Ep. 98
A true confession is not simply a matter of speaking a truth; rather, it is a matter of speaking the truth that is demanded under the circumstances. In fact, it is entirely possible to lie or to deceive with the truth. To say that it was the Romans who crucified Christ is entirely true, but to advance that particular truth in order to deny the truth that the Jews murdered the Lord Christ would be to lie with a truth. This is a tactic that Satan has employed from the very beginning. Today, we mos...
Mar 12, 2025•1 hr 28 min•Season 2Ep. 97
In every endeavor, there is an excellence. A man can be excellent in his field, regardless or what it may be, or excellent at his undertaking, also regardless of what it may be. There are excellent paintings, excellent poems, excellent plays, excellent athletic performances, excellent shoes, and a whole host of other things that one could only begin to list. A part of the Christian life is recognizing the existence of excellence and then aiming for it. Not all men can achieve the same level of e...
Feb 26, 2025•1 hr 37 min•Season 2Ep. 96
For the moral man, duty forms the core of life, but duty must be translated into purpose before a man can act upon it. And purpose, standing alone, benefits man not at all, for one must also have the motivation to pursue one’s purposes. In this episode, we cover the relationship and nature of purpose and motivation and how they form the backbone of a life well lived. Show Notes See Also Further Reading Parental Warnings None.
Feb 19, 2025•1 hr 11 min•Season 2Ep. 95
There is no blanket Christian duty to submit to wrongful authority; in fact, under certain circumstances, the Christian may even have an affirmative duty to resist the tyrant — even the tyrant who may claim to be a Christian himself. The Magdeburg Confession serves as a foundational document (arguably second only to Scripture) on the Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate and Christian resistance to tyranny. For the Christian, the question is twofold: When is it moral to resist the higher authority? ...
Jan 29, 2025•1 hr 37 min•Season 2Ep. 94
Men do not need to be told that they have friends and they have enemies, and yet many modern Christians have been so propagandized by eisegesis and so misled by false teachers that they no longer believe that a Christian can have enemies, and yet Scripture clearly states that men will not only have enemies, but that some of those enemies will be in their own households. In this life, you will have friends and you will have enemies, some will be weak and some will be strong, some will abandon you...
Jan 15, 2025•1 hr 55 min•Season 2Ep. 93
Every man has a collection of interests. A man has an interest in his family; a man has an interest in his job; a man has an interest in his financial positions; a man has an interest in his city; a man has an interest in his nation. These interests can sometimes come into conflict. To have a conflict of interests does not mean that the man in question is necessarily compromised or untrustworthy, but it does mean that he is in a position where he will have to make a choice between those competin...
Jan 08, 2025•2 hr 6 min•Season 2Ep. 92
Hosts Corey J. Mahlercoreyjmahler.com@CoreyJMahler Woeaka Eschatologuy@treblewoe Retribution is the debt that man owes to justice. Modern society would attempt to mislead you into thinking that rehabilitation or distribution or restoration or mercy are part of justice, but they are not. God is clear in His Word that justice is a matter of punishment of those who do wrong. The prince does not wield the sword in vain, and he will be judged by his faithful or for his faithless execution of his offi...
Dec 04, 2024•1 hr 56 min•Season 2Ep. 91
We often think of persecution as a matter external to the church, as something inflicted on the church; however, persecution is often — and these days most often — a matter within the church — the persecutors, the goats and the wolves, claim outward fellowship with the sheep. Persecution has almost always been a part of the Christian life, even if it has waxed and waned over the centuries (and some who lived under Christendom enjoyed relative peace). Today, we are faced with a period of increasi...
Nov 20, 2024•2 hr 14 min•Season 2Ep. 90
Honor and loyalty are closely related concepts — even nearly, but not quite, identical. In this third (and final) part of our series on honor, we address the matter of loyalty — what it is, what it is not, when it is due, and, perhaps most importantly, when it is not due. To God and nation, a man owes absolute and unconditional loyalty; to family and country, man owes a high degree of loyalty; to all else, man owes only a conditional loyalty (if any at all). Further, a teacher, particularly a te...
Nov 13, 2024•1 hr 1 min•Season 2Ep. 89
Honor was once something that was taken deadly seriously in the West. It was not a matter about which one joked. A man would go to great lengths to maintain his honor, and a woman would go to great lengths to defend hers. In our modern culture, honor has been all but forgotten by the bulk of the population — it has become something so foreign, so alien that most men no longer even know what the word means. But honor is necessary to maintain civilization, and so are shame and guilt. Unto the one ...
Nov 06, 2024•1 hr 46 min•Season 2Ep. 88
All men are made in the image of God. Not all men are in the image of God. These two statements may seem contradictory, but they are not, because they reference different aspects of what it means to be an image of God — and what it means to be regenerate (i.e., to be on the path we call Sanctification). The regenerate man is in the image of God in a way that the unregenerate man is not, because the regenerate man is justified and is being sanctified. This distinction is key, and is often conflat...
Oct 23, 2024•1 hr 38 min•Season 2Ep. 87
Man was made in the image of God. This certainly sounds good — even impressive —, and it is frequently used by modern (supposedly) Christian commentators to justify all sorts of things. But what even is an image? If you do not know what an image is, how can you expect to even begin to understand an image of God? In this episode, we lay the groundwork for understanding what precisely it means for man to be the image of God, what it means for us, and what we should do with it. Show Notes Hurricane...
Oct 16, 2024•1 hr 51 min•Season 2Ep. 86
When Christ says that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the word used for “truth” is ἀλήθεια, which includes within its lexical scope ‘uncovering’ or ‘revelation’ (it is a negating word, like “innocence” in English). That which covers, distorts, or perverts the truth is contrary to God, for God is Truth. As Christians, it is our duty not only to believe and speak the truth about matters written in God’s Word, but also to believe and speak the truth about matters written in God’s Creation. ...
Sep 25, 2024•1 hr 41 min•Season 2Ep. 85
The connection of mankind to the earth, to the soil is not accidental. It was from the dust that God formed the first man, Adam, and it is to dust that we shall all one day return. We must not treat the earth as accidental or incidental. We were each born in a place — on a particular piece of land. A nation cannot exist without a territory over which it exercises exclusive dominion. We cannot be fully human without connections to places developed over the course of our lives. It is God Who sets ...
Sep 18, 2024•1 hr 46 min•Season 2Ep. 84
Honor and loyalty serve as the foundation of any civilization worthy of the name and any culture worthy of respect. As these have faded from our culture, we have seen a rise of treacherous — and even treasonous — behavior and a concomitant decline in Christianity. If we are to rebuild what has been permitted to decay or has been maliciously destroyed, then we must re-inculcate honor and loyalty, and we must comport ourselves accordingly. The Christian, first and foremost among men, should be a m...
Sep 11, 2024•1 hr 32 min•Season 2Ep. 83
When things are proceeding as they should, when matters are rightly organized, power and authority are virtually synonymous, and they are at least reposed within the same men. But things in this life do not always proceed as they should. A king may lack the power to exercise his authority or he may abuse his power by exceeding his authority, and the same sort of problems may occur in the Church — a teacher or a cleric who was once faithful may turn from the truth and begin to teach falsely. Unli...
Aug 28, 2024•1 hr 29 min•Season 2Ep. 82
Eschatology is the study of the end of all things. Scripture speaks, in many places, about the end times and what will take place leading up to and in those days. However, such matters are not the core of the Christian faith, and no Christian man should dedicate all of his time to investigating such things. Far too many become obsessed with end-times prophecies to the detriment of their faith and those around them. Nevertheless, these prophecies exist in Scripture and the end times are part of t...
Aug 14, 2024•2 hr 12 min•Season 2Ep. 81
Deism posits that God created the world, and then walked away — a sort of clockmaker with the Universe being His clock. To the contrary, Christianity advances a view of God as active in His Creation. Certainly, every single thing that happens in the Universe happens with God’s knowledge of it and permission for it, but, beyond that, God also actively intervenes in time — both to help and to harm. The Book of Job is, perhaps, one of the clearest narratives of Divine (and infernal) intervention, b...
Jul 31, 2024•2 hr 15 min•Season 2Ep. 80
“For unto us a Child is born and unto us a Son is given; dominion shall rest upon His shoulders, and His name shall be called Angel of Great Counsel, for I will bring peace upon the rulers and well-being to Him. Great is His dominion — and there is no end to His peace — upon the Throne of David and over His Kingdom, to establish it and uphold it with justice and righteousness, from now unto eternity. The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will accomplish this.” The Lord is a God of peace, and those who f...
Jul 24, 2024•1 hr 55 min•Season 2Ep. 79
‘The life of man upon the earth is warfare, and he is born to trouble, as surely as the sparks fly upward.’ — Job 5,7 We live in a fallen world. We can speak of a perfect world — and that is assuredly our goal and our destination, as Christians —, but the realities of this world cannot be ignored — Christians are not exempt from living in the world. From the very beginning of our species — when wicked Cain rose up and slew righteous Abel —, violence has never left our shadow. Although it was mos...
Jul 17, 2024•2 hr 21 min•Season 2Ep. 78
This week’s episode is a crossover with the Renaissance of Men podcast from Will Spencer. In a wide-ranging discussion (over more than six hours), we covered everything from the reasons we started the Stone Choir podcast and the state of the LCMS to (in the second part) World War II and conspiracy theories. This will be all you are ever likely to hear. Within hours of publication, Will pulled the content and disavowed us after coming under pressure from within the church. So it goes. Show Notes ...
Jul 10, 2024•2 hr 26 min•Season 2Ep. 77
When confronting sin, the Christian must distinguish between the private and the public. The private or secret sin should generally not be published (and is subject to Matthew 18), but the public sin is generally already published (and is not subject to Matthew 18). The primary goal of confronting private sin is to retain or to regain the erring brother; the primary goal of confronting public sin is to rebuke the false teacher and to protect those who would otherwise be led astray. In these matt...
Jul 03, 2024•2 hr 2 min•Season 2Ep. 76
In any conflict, there are at least two sides. In the life of man upon this earth, there is constant conflict with and against the world, the flesh, and the devil. As Christians, it is incumbent upon us — particularly as Christian men — to know what are our duties in this life; for a soldier, he must know his orders and where to execute them. If we are to oppose Satan and his forces, then we must know where he is attacking or where he plans to attack — this is the issue of target selection. When...
Jun 26, 2024•1 hr 41 min•Season 2Ep. 75
Marriage is fundamental not only to individual men and women, but also to society writ large. Without marriage, there are no families; without families, there are no nations. The first relationship between two human beings was marriage — of Adam and Eve in the Garden. Without marriage there is no future for the human race. And yet we often gloss over the actual nature of marriage — partly in deference to modesty and partly because we have so long employed euphemism that many have simply forgotte...
Jun 05, 2024•2 hr•Season 2Ep. 74
Love and duty are matters of concentric circles — to the closer is the greater duty and the greater love owed. In the previous episode in this series, we covered the facets of self-sacrifice love (agape) and charity (caritas); in this episode, we cover familial and brotherly or fraternal love, emotional (amor) and intellectual (dilectio) love, and piety (the historical, proper sense) and paternal love — three pairs, as it were. We call these facets, because it is not that love can be dissected a...
May 22, 2024•1 hr 49 min•Season 2Ep. 73
