Doth Protest

We were excited to have Todd Brewer, New Testament scholar and Managing Editor of Mockingbird, join us for a great talk that covered a lot of important ground. So great that Andrew could not even come up with a name other than the various things we talked about! Enjoy!

Visit here to read more of Todd's work at Mockingbird. (We mention his MBird articles "Comforting the Comfortable", "How Revolutionary was Paul?", and "A View from the Ivory Tower", all accessible through that link.)

The quotation referenced by Andrew is found on p. 157 of Paul and the Power of Grace by John Barclay

Info on the controversy of the Catholic priest whose baptisms were ruled invalid

Dr. Suzanne Bray joins James and Andrew on this episode for an often unexplored but fascinating aspect of C.S. Lewis: his views on politics. Tune in for a great discussion! Dr. Bray is Professor of British Literature and Civilization at Lille Catholic University in the North of France. She has written extensively both in English and in French on C.S. Lewis and other modern Anglican authors. 

Check out some of her work at: https://univ-catholille.academia.edu/SuzanneBray 

Shownotes: 

*The articles by her that we reference in this episode are "C.S. Lewis and Politics" from An Anglo-American Literary Review and "C.S. Lewis as an Anglican" from the book Persona and Paradox: Issues of Identity for C.S. Lewis, his Friends and Associates. 

*Both articles are available to access at the site above. 

*The animated film adaptation of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP5uXoNf7Nc

*The title for this may give away one of the hymns we discuss.* Drew, Stephen, James, and Charlie get together to go further down (or up?) their list of favorite hymns. 

The article from Musical Times about the tune that Drew talked about can be found here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/904112

We recommend www.hymnary.org as a helpful resource and database in researching your own favorite hymns.

On Dec. 31st, 2022, the Rev. Dr. James Nestingen went to be with our Lord. Nestingen was a leading scholar and authority on Martin Luther in North America. However, he was much more a pastor before anything else. Many have been blessed to know him, to study under him, and to drink scotch with him- including our (returning) guest today: the Rev. Kyle Tomlin. Kyle was with us before for our episode on theology and comic books. Kyle was a student of Dr. Nestingen and shares some great memories about him on this episode.

In this episode we referenced the books:

Free to Be (which Nestingen co-authored with Gerhard Forde), https://www.augsburgfortress.org/store/product/5230/Free-to-Be-Student-Book

Martin Luther: A Life, https://www.amazon.com/Martin-Luther-Life-James-Nestingen/dp/0800697146

Martin Luther: His Life and Teachings, https://www.amazon.com/Martin-Luther-His-Life-Teachings/dp/1592446728

Also, to access the discussions and interviews of Nestingen from both Thinking Fellows podcast and Around the Table, as well as articles that Jim wrote, go to https://www.1517.org/contributors/jim-nestingen

The sermon on 'Faith vs. Piety': https://mbird.com/theology/jim-nestingen-on-faith-vs-piety/

The episode picture is taken from https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/name/james-nestingen-obituary?id=38527675

Zac Neubauer joins the podcast again with Andrew to go over books we read over 2022- not necessarily books that were published in 2022 but books that we read over the course of that year. Tune in to hear our recommendations and opinions, and feel free to disagree!

Rev. Zac Neubauer is the President of EFAC-USA (Evangelical Fellowship in the Anglican Communion). This is his third time on the podcast (which means we owe him a t-shirt.) Zac serves as Interim Priest-in-Charge at St. Clement's Episcopal Church in Rancho Cordova, CA and is a graduate of Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, PA. Zac writes over at Confessing Anglicans. Find his work here: https://confessinganglicans.com/author/zneubauer/

"With any kind of history, there's a lot of empathy that has to be involved. You have to try to understand that there are objective issues but there's also the subjective: why people get caught up in this sort of thing, and any good history tries to deal with both."

The video recordings of the entire course that Dr. Herrmann taught (along with his colleague Dr. Gerhard Bode) on Seminex "Controversy in the LCMS" can be accessed here: https://scholar.csl.edu/controversylcms/

The article that Andrew referenced by Robert Benne near the beginning of the episode:

Frederick Danker's book No Room in the Brotherhood

Paul Zimmermann's book A Seminary in Crisis: The Inside Story of the Preus Fact Finding Committee

James Burkee's book Power, Politics, and the Missouri-Synod: A Conflict That Changed American Christianity

A primary source: Exodus from Concordia: A Report on the 1974 Walkout

James E. Adams' book Preus of Missouri and the Great Lutheran Civil War

John Tietjen's book Memoirs in Exile: Confessional Hope and Institutional Conflict

The early article from Martin Scharlemann on Scriptural inerrancy that Charlie referred to can be read here:

A related article on this topic written by the Concordia theology professor Arthur Carl Piepkorn (mentioned by Andrew) can be found here: https://scholar.csl.edu/ctm/vol36/iss1/48/

The title for the episode comes from our discussion on Charlie's hymn today. Andrew, James, and Charlie gather to go further down the list of their favorite hymns (or further up?). We did just two today as James and Andrew shared one. Stephen was unfortunately unable to join us but will be back with a double feature on the next part of this series.

Andrew made a reference to Jack Kilcrease's recent book Justification by the Word: Restoring Sola Fide in connection to Charlie's hymn. This book aims to restore the true Protestant sense of 'the faith' where we find our certainty rather than 'my faith'- the latter which has become so characteristic (and sometimes toxic) in later forms of Protestantism especially in pietism and North American revivalism/Great Awakening (and as James and Andrew get into, also takes form in mainline Protestantism and modern Catholicism).

We give special thanks to Aaron Shows for providing all the music for this episode.

Without trying to give spoilers, here are two links to versions/renditions of Andrew and James' hymn that they enjoy. (Give them a listen after you listen to the episode).

James' favorite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reGoqWBs30o

Andrew's favorite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsVnvN3EVxY

"an antidote to all the self-help nonsense that weighs down our bookshelves and our self-regard" -These words from Nadia Bolz-Weber are about David Zahl's new book Low Anthropology: The Unlikely Key to a Gracious View of Others (and Yourself). 

David Zahl joins Andrew, Stephen, and James on this episode of Doth Protest Too Much for a great discussion about where our true hope lies: not in the illusion that people are "infinitely improvable", which Zahl argues only leads to despair, burnout, and the feeling of "not enoughness", but in an acknowledgement of a low anthropology (which we define and discuss at length on the podcast). We also have fun discussion about David’s favorite member from a certain band, his favorite Funko Pop figure that he owns, and more... *Andrew apologizes for his mic. He tried out a new set of headphones for this episode and apparently the mic isn't that great.* 

David Zahl is the founder and editor of Mockingbird Ministries, and the editor-in-chief of the Mockingbird website. He is based in Charlotesville, NC and has served since 2010 as the College and Adult Education Minister and Lay Preacher at Christ Episcopal Church in Charlottesville, NC. He is the author of numerous books including A Mess of Help: The Crucified Soul of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Seculosity: How Career, Parenting, Technology, Food, Politics, and Romance Became Our New Religion (And What to do about it),  Law and Gospel: A Theology for Sinners (and Saints), and his latest book which we will be discussing today Low Anthopology: The Unlikely Key to a Gracious View of Others published this year through Brazos Press. 

Shownotes: 

*the word 'kiss' when referring to the band KISS, does not stand for Kids in Satan's Service, neither does it stand (as Andrew joked) for Keep it Simple and Stupid (although that is an acronym Andrew remembers from his military days). 

Dave's podcast on music 'Well of Sound' that he co-hosts can be found here.