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Today is the first time I’ve wondered if the movie title “Free Willy” was actually a hidden joke.
…probably not. Nonetheless, the question of just how “free” our wills may be is no longer a conversation restricted to theologians. That said, this conversation is from a theological vantage point. In it, Nathan Adams (who is currently a PhD student @ McGill University) runs us through the paper he recently presented at the Wesleyan Theological Society. Wanna find out more? Either listen to the pod or comb through the guides below.
Hey, if you’ve gotten this far… maybe either leave a comment here (👇) or leave a quick review on your podcast provider of choice… if you’re inclined, that is!
Chapters:
04:04 Intro & "Wesleyan Theological Society"
09:12 What do we mean when we say "Wesleyan"?
13:05 Introduction to Melanchthon and Wesleyan Theological Society Conference
24:44 Luther and Melanchthon's Views on Free Will and Salvation
28:49 Calvin's Denouncement of Melanchthon
32:17 Melanchthon's Understanding of Grace and Human Agency
35:15 The Windmill Analogy: Human Will and God's Initiative
39:04 Faith Arising in the Process of Salvation
45:28 The Preached Word and the Transformation of Hearts
48:23 Looking to Christ and the Assurance of Salvation
50:05 Prevenient Grace and the Urgency of Responding to God's Call
56:11 Similarities Between Catholic and Protestant Perspectives on Salvation
59:38 The Ongoing Reformation Within the Catholic Church
(AI-generated) Conversation Summary:
Nathan Adams presented a paper on Proto Wesleyan Arminian at the Wesleyan Theological Society conference. The paper explores the relationship between God's will and human will in salvation. Adams delves into the theology of Luther, Melanchthon, and Calvin to understand their perspectives on free will and predestination. He highlights the unique position of Wesleyan Arminians, who believe in the involvement of free will in salvation. Adams focuses on Melanchthon's theology, which emphasizes the external action of God upon humans and the role of conviction and faith in salvation. He argues that salvation is not about human striving, but about recognizing our powerlessness and relying on Christ's resources. The conversation explores the concept of salvation and the role of human agency in the process. It discusses the prevailing approach of presenting salvation as a cost-benefit analysis and contrasts it with the views of Melanchthon, Luther, and Wesley. Melanchthon's view is that everything in salvation is from God, and human will is best pictured as a windmill that desires the wind of the Spirit to move it. The conversation also touches on the significance of the preached word in initiating salvation and the assurance of salvation. It concludes by discussing the modern implications of these theological perspectives.
(AI-generated) Sound Bites:
* "One of the perennial problems of theology, any theology, is the relation between God's will and human will in salvation."
* "Salvation is something that God's doing. It starts outside of us. We're not the initiators. None of the resources for this are coming from within us."
* "You don't have a free will to do good things in regards to God. The standard's too high, you're too selfish. It's really just a will that could say no to God, but any yes that your will says, it's not even you saying yes, it's really God saying yes."
* "We all do it in a very semi-Pelagian way. We basically present Christ like a cost benefit analysis."
* "The human will is best pictured as a windmill... The windmill can't make it happen. It's only as the wind blows on the windmill, the wind of the spirit, that the windmill will move."
* "If I think that the only way that anything's gonna happen is if God is moving and present in that moment, then I'm preaching for a miracle."
Keywords: Proto Wesleyan Arminian, Wesleyan Theological Society conference, God's will, human will, salvation, Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, free will, predestination, Wesleyan Arminians, conviction, faith, powerlessness, Christ's resources, salvation, human agency, cost-benefit analysis, Melanchthon, Luther, Wesley, preached word, assurance of salvation
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Tim Perry has some strong feelings about the state of the Church at large, and he’s not afraid to lay them out for open & honest dialogue. In this wide-ranging conversation we discuss:
* the unique place of Mary in Christian Theology throughout history, and how that intersects with today
* the potential dangers of “dismissing” Mary
* the latent worth of the Old Testament in the Church today
* the value of embracing a whole-person, embodied worship experience
We get into some nitty gritty weeds a few times in this conversation, and I walked away with some areas of potential disagreement, but I deeply valued Tim’s time and his expertise, and hope you’ll enjoy this conversation. You can find some of Tim’s books at Lexham Press, but might need to hunt / bid for some of the others.
“I would say to evangelicals, ‘Be very careful in disparaging or getting rid of Mary, because she’ll go (she’s not a bully), but she’ll take her son with her… and you end up with a Jesus who is a motivational speaker, or who’s a politician haranguing you to get on the right or the left side of whatever is the cause du jour, but you don’t have the divine-human Saviour anymore.’” - Tim Perry
Keywords: connections, Christian traditions, denominations, research, Mary, Evangelicals, Catholicism, Orthodox, Protestant churches, Bible, Mary, Christian theology, worship, Scripture, grace, unique place, fully divine, fully human, Old Testament, embodied worship
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A few episodes back I shared my conversation with W David O Taylor, wherein we got nerdy on the question of whether or not Jesus could have been considered an “artist”. I shared part of that conversation during the Sunday morning message attached to Moncton Wesleyan Church’s annual arts fest (Imagine). This podcast is the remainder of that message...
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Imagine ‘24 (an annual Arts Fest that I’m quite involved in) is well in the rearview mirror now. Soon I’ll be posting the message I was pleased to be able to share as part of Moncton Wesleyan’s Sunday morning service (a service that featured live dance, live painting, and some other beautiful artistic expressions), but this episode is actually a panel conversation with visual artist Leanne Prescott and songwriter Aaron Bartlett, both of whom are on Imagine’s Lead Team. We recorded this conversation live & in real-time as part of Imagine ‘24’s Saturday Sessions, and the technology was giving us a little grief, so please bear with some of the glitchiness. I’m grateful for these two folks, and am glad to be able to share this wide-ranging conversation about art, the church, and the space(s) between.
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This episode of the pod is me riffing briefly on the waiting that Holy Saturday interposes into the celebration of Easter, followed by a sermon that was part of Moncton Wesleyan’s “Domino Effect” series.
I’m releasing this episode just a few hours after what amounted to a historic Good Friday service in the city of Moncton. Officially 5 churches (and several others “unofficially”) joined together in remembrance, and it was immensely powerful. Right after the service, I got into a brief conversation with someone I know who’d been participating in Lent this year a little more intentionally than has been their typical practice. He said to me, “It was… less impactful than I thought it was going to be.” Honestly, to me, this was beautiful to hear. I feel we need to be honest with ourselves & with others, honest with our expectations, honest with our gains & with our losses. I acknowledged to this individual that this is often my experience, as well. The kinds of practices I advocate for in this podcast (and that I typically practice, to greater or lesser degrees) occasionally lead me to moments of significant impact. More often than not, though, they seem to lead me nowhere at all.
Sometimes (often, even), Holy Saturday seems to lead us nowhere at all… but we can’t see what’s happening underground.
(In my message I heavily reference Justin Earley’s book The Common Rule.)
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In this episode of the podcast I am overjoyed to be able to share my recent conversation with none other than Dr W David O Taylor (hereinafter merely “David”). David is the associate professor of theology & culture at Fuller Seminary, the author of a ton of books… oh, and he was the guy responsible for pulling Bono & Eugene Peterson together for this magical conversation a few years back. Relevant to this conversation, David was (for a significant period of time) a pastor in a church that consisted almost 25% of artists, and he intentionally pastored these artists for their own apprenticeship to Jesus. He also helped them think through how their vocations served the church and the world. A lot of that wisdom and experience ended up in Glimpses of the New Creation (the book we primarily talk about), as well as his most recent book, A Body of Praise. I was particularly grateful for the opportunity to chat with David so close to the launch of the 4th annual Imagine Arts Fest, which I help lead in my own local context. This was a wide-ranging conversation, to be sure, but we kept circling around questions like:
Was (is?) Jesus an artist? Does God care about “aesthetics”?
The conversation may get a little highfalutin’ at times, but (surprisingly) these esoteric questions keep getting grounded back down to earth… earthiness… the ground of being, the ground beneath our feet, and the ground of which we are composed.
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Guys, this was a suuuuuper fun convo for me!!! Nostalgia + philosophizing = a great day. In this convo, Leah Payne and I take a peek at her forthcoming book (God God Rock & Roll To You), geek out a little about her fabulous Weird Religion podcast (before her equally fabulous Rock That Doesn't Roll podcast was even a thing), and reminisce about the bookcase credibility trend which is no more. In actual fact, for the most part, we spend our time asking questions about the rise & fall of a juggernaut industry; Contemporary Christian Music (CCM).
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God is a merciful judge.
God has granted us mercy.
God calls us to grant mercy to others.
A few weeks ago I was blessed to have been able to preach in our church’s 2023 advent series, “The God I Want”. I spoke primarily from Matthew 18:
“For this reason, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his slaves. As he began settling his accounts, a man who owed 10,000 talents was brought to him. Because he was not able to repay it, the lord ordered him to be sold, along with his wife, children, and whatever he possessed, and repayment to be made. Then the slave threw himself to the ground before him, saying, ‘Be patient with me, and I will repay you everything.’ The lord had compassion on that slave and released him, and forgave him the debt. After he went out, that same slave found one of his fellow slaves who owed him 100 silver coins. So he grabbed him by the throat and started to choke him, saying, ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ Then his fellow slave threw himself down and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will repay you.’ But he refused. Instead, he went out and threw him in prison until he repaid the debt. When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were very upset and went and told their lord everything that had taken place. Then his lord called the first slave and said to him, ‘Evil slave! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me! Should you not have shown mercy to your fellow slave, just as I showed it to you?’ And in anger his lord turned him over to the prison guards to torture him until he repaid all he owed. So also my heavenly Father will do to you, if each of you does not forgive your brother from your heart.”
(Matthew 18:23-35, NET)
With everything going on in the world feeling (at times) overwhelming, and not knowing how we as individuals can make much of a difference at all, I find solace & purpose in understanding that God calls us to follow after Him by helping to preserve the world and granting mercy freely to those in our lives, regardless of their deserving it. We didn’t (and don’t) “deserve” the Christ Child, but thanks be, He shows up in our mangerly-hearts anyway.
May 2023 finish with His Kingdom being clearer than it has been, and may 2024 bring more of His Heavenly peace on His earth.
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“In the incarnation, God has deemed the female body - the impure, bleeding female body - worthy to handle the most sacred of all things, the very body of God. “
(Amy Peeler, pg 61, Women & the Gender of God)
In this episode (released oh-so-close to Christmas 2023), I am beyond pleased to be able to share with you a conversation with the Rev Dr Amy Peeler. Amy is a professor at Wheaton College, an associate rector at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, and the author of (the book we primarily discuss) Women and Gender of God. This book is an important exploration of the way our understandings about both God and humanity flow in both directions… and how we ought to be careful about that.
**At the beginning of the conversation I mention that Amy just got back from “SBL” (which is the Society for Biblical Literature), and we also drop the term “ETS” (which is the Evangelical Theological Society). **
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On this episode of the podcast, we go deeeeeep with Dr Ekaputra Tupamahu about his 2022 book Contesting Languages: Heteroglossia & the Politics of Language in the Early Church. This book is a highly detailed and technical revisitation of the phenomenon typically shorthanded in today’s church as “tongues”, primarily viewed through the lens of 1 Corinthians 14.
Eka was very generous with his time & expertise, and put up no defensive barriers when I probed him pretty deeply about his thesis. I hope you’ll find this an enlightening conversation, even if you disagree with some of the premises!
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Folks, I am over-the-moon excited to be able to share this conversation with Dr Lester Ruth about his most recent book (co-authored with Lim Swee Hong), A History Of Contemporary Praise & Worship. This pair did a shorter history on this topic a few years back (Lovin’ On Jesus), and in this conversation we get not only the broadstrokes of their findings but also a little bit of the behind-the-scenes work (spoiler alert: there was a LOT of it) that led to their very reasoned and very helpful conclusions in this most recent output. We do our best to give you an overview of the two major streams (one commonly known as “Praise & Worship” and the other commonly known as “Contemporary Worship”) that spring up in the earlier parts of the 20th century, and how those streams become raging rivers that eventually converge into a titanic flood that helps rewrite much of modern Christian worship practice in North America… and, indeed, the world.
We also talk about Psalty the Singing Psalm Book, Colby the Singing Computer, and John Piper’s view on sipping coffee in church. Oh, and Lester mentions this one book (Doing Our Own Thing) as being quite important, FYI.
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Ladies & gentlemen, it is with great pleasure (and a touch of trepidation) that I share with you my first podcast conversation with not one but TWO guests at a time! Don’t worry; it’s double the fun!
Sarah Kathleen Johnson and Anneli Loepp Thiessen are the co-authors of a recently-published journal article in Worship called “Contemporary Worship Music As An Ecumenical Liturgical Movement”, which we use as a launchpad to be able to discuss things like the Taizé worshiping community, their work on the Voices Together hymnal, the challenges of being a successful songwriter and a “housewife”, and moooooore.
I learned a lot from this conversation, and I hope you will too!
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The apostle Paul. Other than Jesus, arguably the most famous / notorious figure in the Christian scriptures. His name has authorial responsibility for a huge chunk of the New Testament. Statues of the man litter modern day Italy. There are fields of study dedicated exclusively to trying to understand his thought. In a word, Paul’s influence is massive.
But… Paul himself may not have been massive. Might he have actually been more minuscule?
Could the apostle Paul have been significantly shorter than average? Could the ritual circumcision he’d experienced as a child have been viewed as a disability in his adult context? Most shocking of all, could the man who urged others to follow his example as he followed the example of Christ have been “demonized”?
In this conversation with Dr Isaac Soon, we take an overview look at his forthcoming book A Disabled Apostle. We also chat a bit about his exciting new forays into worship music under the name Yeung. My head was spinning after this one, but… it was a good spin!
Isaac is the Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Crandall University, if you’re looking to find out how you could get deeper access to his streams of thought.
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In this conversation, Mitchell Eithun and I pick away at the challenging ways that Christian worship has represented people with disabilities, and how we might want to consider doing so in the future. If you’d like to follow Mitchell online, his Facebook page is likely the best spot to do so.
If you, like me, did not know what a carillon was, be sure to check it out!
If you, like me, had never heard the term “presbycostal” before, maybe Eugene Peterson says it best:
“Pentecostalism and Presbyterianism were for me both irreplaceable gifts, polarities that made a continuum, not opposites in tension.” (The Pastor: A Memoir, p. 217)
Here are a handful of books Mitchell recommends, if you’d like to dive in further:
My Body Is Not A Prayer Request by Amy Kenny
The Disabled God by Nancy L. Eiesland
A Healing Homiletic by Kathy Black
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This summer has been pretty typical for me. A lot of camping, a lot of complaining about the heat, a lot of searching for cool water to dip into. A lot of walking the dog. A lot of trying to keep the dog from being overly social. A lot of trying to encourage opportunities for my kids to be IRL social. A lot of wishing I was sleeping just a liiiiiiiittle bit more than I am. A lot of being thankful.
This summer has also been pretty atypical for me. A lot of trying to get my head wrapped around teaching courses at Kingswood University. A lot of me wrestling over the results of Phase Two from our Worship Leader Research work (including spending a few days repping the team in Montreal at the Hymn Society’s 2023 conference). And, in the midst of it all, a lot of me wrestling with one of my favourite biblical texts: The Book Of Jonah.
I was blessed to have been able to speak last week at my local church about Jonah’s story, and how it might connect with us in the here and now. The audio is in the podcast, but if you’d prefer the video, that’s available in multiple places, like MW’s Facebook, YouTube, or Vimeo accounts.
As summer carries on, I hope to be able to get back to podcasting a little more by Fall, but we’ll have to see how / where the sun shines.
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“[When considering the presentation of violence in the Old Testament]… I hope that we can nudge the needle further along, not towards resolution, but toward trust in God's ultimate goodness.” - Matthew Lynch, Flood & Fury
This episode of the podcast is with OT scholar and prolific podcaster Matthew J Lynch. Currently teaching at Regent College in Vancouver and releasing content into the world via the evergreen OnScript & Biblical World podcasts, he and I get into a number of topics (not least of which is the tension between being a “legit academic” and a “legit Christian”). Primarily, though, our chat centers around his most recent book, Flood & Fury: Old Testament Violence & The Shalom Of God, which I hiiiiiighly recommend.
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Professor Nancy Pearcey (author of the upcoming book The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes, which you can pre-order NOW) is no stranger to difficult but important subject matter. Her most recently published book (Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality) was a great & thought-provoking read, and though I haven’t had the chance to check out her previous work (like The Soul of Science, Saving Leonardo, Finding Truth, and two ECPA Gold Medallion Award Winners: How Now Shall We Live and Total Truth), I’m sure they’d provoke about as much thought. Her books have been translated into 19 languages! A former agnostic, Pearcey has spoken at universities such as Princeton, Stanford, USC, and Dartmouth. She has been quoted in The New Yorker and Newsweek, highlighted as one of the five top women apologists by Christianity Today, and hailed in The Economist as "America's pre-eminent evangelical Protestant female intellectual." Currently she is professor and scholar in residence at Houston Christian University, which is where I joined her to talk about her forthcoming book, why she wrote it, and why you should care about the state of “men” today.
Agree or disagree, I believe you’ll find this conversation worth a listen.
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Few people (save The Edge himself) have had as great an impact on a generation of church guitarists as sir Stuart Garrard (aka Stu G). From his epoch-making time with Delirious to his second (or third?) life as a roving guitarist (with the likes of Michael W Smith & One Sonic Society) and a songwriter that has helped pen dozens of influential songs over the last decade, as well as his innovative work with guitar amp modelling… Stu has left a giant imprint. On top of all that, he has spent the better part of the last decade working on a multimedia reimagining of the most famous of Jesus’ teachings (the Beatitudes) via a book, album, and documentary.
Believe it or not, we get a chance to talk about most of that in an hour! Oh, and I even pick his glorious brain briefly about the latest research we’ve been releasing over at Worship Leader Research.
I was beyond grateful for Stu’s time, and for his heart. Hope you’ll enjoy this conversation half as much as I did.
If you (like me) want to make sure you can follow along with the digital unarchiving of Delirious footage, here are the various social media links for that journey:
https://bio.to/delirious_bio
https://www.youtube.com/@delirious_band/featured
https://www.instagram.com/delirious_band/
https://www.facebook.com/delirious
https://twitter.com/Delirious
https://www.tiktok.com/@deliriousofficial
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“… it is not a question of if we should engage in work to benefit those around us. It is a question of how broadly we define the ‘us’ who benefits.”
The above quote from Andrew Whitehead’s forthcoming book American Idolatry (in my opinion) sets the tone for the nuanced conversation we try to engage in over these topics that are often portrayed as anything but nuanced.
What do you think?
BONUS: Below is a little walk through Andrew’s & my own musical-memory lane…
“Americanism” by MxPx:
“The Old West” by Five Iron Frenzy:
Five Iron Frenzy’s latest album:
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In this unuuuuuuusual (for me, anyway) episode, I have a chat with Ambrose Andreano about his recently released book, Angels, Archons, & Aliens. It’s a pretty wild ride, and likely not for the faint of heart, but (for many) it could also be an important conversation starter. You’ll have to be the judge of that.
Ambrose is on Substack and Academia.edu, too.
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