This is an introduction that became a stand alone little talk. Why? Because John’s talk on Gregory at our conference was mind- bending - but hard to follow. No fault of John’s - he was trying to condense two profound thinkers (Plato and Gregory) into a one hour talk! So I worked hard to crystallise the main themes in ‘simple Plain English’ terms - so that it can provide a runway for you into John’s actual talk which we will publish shortly.

First up I explain simply just why Gregory used Plato as a platform to communicate the ‘imago dei’ gospel - and what we can learn from that. He and his colleagues had very open minds and were able to recognise the ‘eternity’ in the hearts of ‘pagan’ philosophers like Plato, much like Paul did on Mars Hill in Acts 17. I think that is a big lesson for the church today.

Then I dive into the major theme of Gregory’s work according to John. Gregory’s question is the profound Psalm 8 question - ‘What is a human being?’ His answer takes up the whole of his majestic work, ‘On the Making of Man’, and John’s talk unpacks that answer. It is an answer, according to both John and David Hart, that is ‘mind-blowing’ and that offered the world a new conception of humanity ‘in the image of God’. I try to give you the big picture of that answer in this talk.

I finish off with a summary of the flow of John’s talk - how he has arranged the talk and the sequence he follows. John is an old finished ‘literature’ teacher so he uses the text (which he translated) a lot - and when we publish John’s actual talk in coming days we will also upload a copy of his handouts for everybody to download.

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This is our second talk in John Behr’s series on the Church Fathers. This talk outlines the ‘wild’ world of how Irenaeus of Lyon (around 170 AD) saw the Gospel - not as a rescue mission but as a plan for humanity to share in the ‘uncreated’ life of God. In case you don’t know already, Irenaeus was Bishop of Lyons in France, just after it suffered terrible persecutions. He was a disciple of Polycarp, who was in turn a disciple of John. So that makes Irenaeus a ‘grandson’ of John. Some of my theological friends rate him the greatest theologian of all…. at least he is in the top ten!!

This talk is a bit mind-bending, but then again so is the topic of ‘God’ and ‘creation’ and that is where Irenaeus starts his thinking. He begins with time - and why God created time as a necessary framework for us humans to dwell in. Along the way, he confronts really modern questions such as our title - Why did God not just create us all perfect and skip over the problems of sin and conflict? Why allow all this mess to happen?

The big idea that will organise all of Irenaeus’ theology is GROWTH. And not just any kind of growth but growth on the part of humanity towards participation in the divine and uncreated life of God.

Clearly we are not just getting an academic summary from John here - we are getting a meeting of minds across two thousand years, with John Behr in dialogue with Irenaeus. And John is inviting us to join the dialogue.

As before I have crafted an introduction that gives a short overview of the big ideas as a coat hanger to help you absorb the sheer profundity of these ideas.

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I can remember lots of times when Christians have speculated about whether salvation means returning to the ‘perfect’ state of Adam before the Fall - or do we go one better and somehow improve on the first Adam? This talk by John Behr demolishes that whole worldview….

It is the first in a series of four talks that John Behr gave at our recent Gospel Conversations conference. In this talk John introduces us to the radical way the Church Fathers thought about the gospel - and how they read the Scriptures. Of course for them, the ‘Scriptures’ meant what we call the Old Testament.

John’s stuff is paradigm shifting - that means it is clearly explained but conceptually challenging. He is inviting us to stand on the shoulders of these early church fathers and think like them. So I have added a short ten minute introduction to this talk to give you an overview of the big idea in summary. I think that will help you absorb the guts of what John has to say.

As you know, John and David Bentley Hart, admire each other’s thinking - and they are both very innovative. But they have something else in common - both of them have had their OWN paradigms shifted by the deep translation work they have done on early Christian literature. David translated the New Testament, and John has translated the Church Fathers. Both of them have told me how that task has changed the way they think, because they had to get inside the minds and paradigms of the early church writers. And in so doing they found that they thought rather differently to how we do about the gospel. And, unsurprisingly, they thought in rather larger terms than we do about the gospel. All of that makes these talks very expansionary of both our faith and our understanding.

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As promised here is the concluding section of my conversation with David exploring the meaning of the word ‘sin’. In this conclusion we do a deep dive into the text of Romans 5:12 - a pivotal verse for the concept of ‘original sin’ - and David explains how his completely different translation changes the traditional meaning significantly. The traditional meaning is that we all sinned ‘in Adam’ and as a result of that death followed. David’s translation turns that around and implies that it was death that initiated the contagion of sin.

It is a good idea to have the text open as you listen, as the discussion is detailed and grammatical. It is not really that difficult as it all hinges on how you translate the Greek preposition ‘epi’ in this context. Talk about a pivot! David explains how the Latin text misled people for centuries, and cemented a distorted interpretation of original sin.

Along the way I ask David about one of my bugbears with most translations - including the NIV - which is the gratuitous translation ‘wrath of God’ a few verses earlier. Some of you may know that there is NO ‘of God’ in the Greek - it was just stuffed in to make the point clear!?! It is a crystal clear case of retro-fitting a modern theology back onto the original text. Simply indefensible as far as I am concerned - so I was interested to hear David’s view.

I think this series is David at his best. Taken together it is a very coherent and biblical picture of what ‘sin’ means - how to take it seriously but also how to position the specifics of the Christian argument. ‘Sin’ is a crucial aspect of the Christian worldview - and a very necessary one - as it addresses the problem of evil in the world which everyone is concerned about. So it is vital that we get our thinking clear on this matter and not let stereotypes overtake our thoughts.

“Original sin” is - apparently - one of the bedrock doctrines of Christianity. But what exactly does it mean? This is how I began this discussion with David. Our main focus was Romans 5 and in particular verse 12 - the main ‘proof text’ for the doctrine of original sin. But before we got down into the details of that verse - we started with the big picture. What does ‘original sin’ mean? And in particular in what ways has it veered off into a rather dark and guilt-ridden picture of the human condition?

This discussion is so important that I decided to split the discussion in two. This one is the first half and covers the big picture. The next one will dive down into the radically different translation that David has offered of this verse - a translation that shifts the game significantly.

Frankly most Christians have no real ‘theory’ of sin and instead just rely on murky ideas that make them susceptible to manipulation and fears. This talk really clears the ground of this murkiness. David lays out two competing ideas of ‘original sin’ - and we discuss how the 'dark’ view prevailed to become the dominant - but wrong - view.

A couple of points that we mention in this discussion that you might want to look up. At one point we mention some of our favourite Thomas Hardy poems but we both struggled to remember their titles. One was ‘The Man He Killed’ and the other was the group of poignant poems Hardy wrote in memory of his dead wife Emma. They are called simply ‘Poems 1912-1913; Veteris Vestigia flammae’ or vestiges of an old flame. She died suddenly and they were slightly estranged when she died - so he had had no opportunity to say goodbye - hence he said goodbye in these heart wrenching poems. We also reference the esteemed Greek classical dictionary by Liddell and Scott - but I got confused for a moment with the epic histories of the First and Second World Wars by Sir Basil Liddel Hart…. and finally we both confessed our admiration for George Eliot’s Middlemarch - surely a candidate for greatest English language novel of all time - and in particular the agonising scene where the idealist young doctor, Lydgate, sells his soul and votes for the dark forces of commerce that he has spent his life contesting. All part of our discussion of the ‘system of sin and death’ in which we are all encumbered.

As you will find in this talk, David and I focus on ‘death’ as the great enemy of humanity not just ‘sin’. Hardy’s poems on the death of his wife, capture the emptiness of death and how it robs us of relationship. If you have never read them, try this poignant opening verse from ‘The Going’…

“Why did you give no hint that nightThat quickly after the morrow’s dawn,And calmly, as if indifferent quite,You would close your term here, up and be goneWhere I could not followWith wing of swallowTo gain one glimpse of you ever anon!”

_

 In a few days time, we'll post the second half of this interview. We'll dive down into the text of Romans five, verse 12 in particular.

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One of the critiques of Christian theology is that it has been largely framed by men - and thus is susceptible to masculine views of God and humanity. I can only speculate on this, but I have often privately thought that behind the Cappadocian Fathers’ generous theology lay the influence of women. It began with their grandmother, who was a martyr and continued through their wealthy but pious parents.

Macrina was the elder sister and she never married. She was apparently beautiful and intelligent but her betrothed died young and she remained ‘married to Christ’ for the rest of her life. She based her celibacy on her faith in the resurrection - arguing that her betrothed was ‘not dead but alive in God’ and so it would be a sin to marry another.

She was clearly a brilliant and strong minded woman, who influenced her younger brothers to pursue faith in Christ. She converted the family’s estate into a monastic community. Her younger brother Gregory of Nyssa noted that ‘such parts as you would think incomprehensible to young children where the subject of her studies’ - thus highlighting his respect for her precocious intellect.

In this talk I dive into the dense dialogue between Gregory and his sister in the epic work entitled ‘On the Soul and the Resurrection’. They are talking about the passions - rather than sin per se - and the model that Macrina builds up is very rich and very different from what we are used to. Frankly I find her model much more helpful in trying to live a good life, than the traditional morality based approaches to discipleship that we used to today. She bases her model of good living on a very deep model of humanity made in the image of God. So rather than seeing holiness as defined by a moral code, she sees it defined by the vocation of humanity to channel creation upwards towards the knowledge of God. Thus she leaves us with a discipleship model that is positive not just negative.

I take time to read out some her passages at length so you can get a sense of the power of her thinking. The actual book is short but pretty condensed so I am trying to put its arguments in accessible Plain English. I hope you enjoy it.

Fr John Behr’s visit to Australia is just over a month away. I interviewed him recently to get a foretaste of what he will be talking to us about.

John is clearly a major thought leader in modern theology. I got a taste of this recently from a post I read by Brad Jersak. Brad had just been to a retreat on the remote Scottish island of Iona led by Rowan Williams and John Behr (made me jealous!!). He recounts how a conversation with John (and Chris Green) was very significant for him - and helped him unravel some questions that had blocked him for years. This just confirms what a treasure John is.

This interview is a foretaste - it gives us the overall sweep of John’s ‘image of God’ theology and his wondrous vision of Christ as the ultimate ‘human being’. So if you have not registered for the conference, get onto it now. The Saturday conference is one of three events we are hosting (together with Alpha Crucis and the St James Institute).

What I liked most about my chat with John was how excited he is by this vision. It is not merely academic for him but as he says ‘it blows your mind’.

PS here is a link to Brad’s post.

Register here:

What exactly does the word ‘harmatia’ (usually translated as ‘sin’) mean in the New Testament? This is where my conversation with David begins in this podcast. I asked him this question because when he was in Australia, David told me that he was uncomfortable using the modern word ‘sin’ to translate ‘harmatia’. This is obviously pretty important as the idea of ‘sin’ is at the foundation of the. gospel.

What was going to be a limited conversation about translation soon developed into a fascinating tour through the thinking of the early church about the ‘gospel’ and what it means - all built on a very different understanding of the what ‘sin’ means.

This conversation with David charts out a radical landscape for the word ‘sin’ as it is used in the New Testament and the early church. In the modern world we have a view of sin as a kind of transgression of a moral code. And the corollary of this is ‘original sin’ - the view that we are somehow infected by the Fall with a natural propensity for doing evil not good. So like a lot of ‘big’ concepts words, the word ‘sin’ sits in a large mental landscape for us - and David explains how far this modern landscape for ‘sin’ differs from the world of the early church.

That is where we began, but it turned into a launching pad for a far ranging coverage of the conceptual landscape behind ‘sin’ and redemption in the early church. This is clearly very significant for us Christians to understand well because our gospel is framed as a redemption and ‘sin’ is normally presented as the ‘problem’ that the gospel solves. So we need to be clear and scriptural about exactly what that ‘problem’ space is. And this is the landscape that David maps out for us.

As I look back on this conversation, it reminded me of my talks about a year ago, on the Exodus story as a framework for the gospel. My Exodus talks followed the series that Andrew Baartz led for us on the weaknesses of the Penal Substitution model of atonement. In essence, I explained how the Exodus story positions the ‘problem space’ the gospel confronts as slavery not judicial guilt. So David’s talk confirms this ‘Exodus’ orientation for the gospel. I will repost one of these talks soon.

Ben’s talks on the Patristic model of atonement led to the obvious question - what about their views on growth? This is the first of two talks by Ben on this topic. In this talk he focuses on the individual and morality and in the next talk he focuses on society and politics and how they viewed Christian contributions there.

Patristic views on growth are built on their views of atonement; and that is where Ben begins - with a reminder of the ground he covered in his early talks. Unlike us, they did not struggle with a model of ‘penal substitution’ and its associated picture of an angry God. Instead they viewed atonement as ‘participation’ in the Godhead. So if ‘atonement’ qualifies humanity to ‘participate’ with God - then growth is all about making that participation real by our decisions and character development.

That means that the Church Fathers did NOT have a moral code as their model - with lists of behaviours and do’s and don’ts. For them ‘growth’ is defined entirely by Christ. He is the model and thus all growth is growing into the PERSON of Christ. In the most amazing and memorable part of the talk for me, Ben made this real by explaining the term ‘Christian’ literally means ‘little Christs’ - and that is what we are. So for the Patristics we are to be as Christ on the earth - in miniature for sure but still following the same pattern our Lord has set.

To make this tangible, he centres on an essay by Gregory of Nyssa where he lays out this pathway of development in concrete examples. This is very liberating stuff. It leaps over our typical concepts of morality and virtue and instead declares that all ‘virtue’ is shaped and defined by a Person - THE human being who defined in flesh and blood what it means to be human.

As always Ben is so lucid on these complex topics - and he is helping us make a paradigm shift from a concept of growth as behaviour defined, to a concept of growth as Christ defined - so the we may be ‘as Christ’ in the world.

Well … this interview was unexpected. David Artman runs a podcast (Grace Saves All) dedicated to the topic of universal salvation. But he is very disturbed by the rise of Trump and what he sees as the ‘first stage of facism’ taking root in his country. So he wanted to interview me - to get an international comment and also a ‘systems’ perspective on what is going on.

I am not an expert in US politics but like all of us I am fascinated (horrified) by what is going on - and in particular the role of white evangelicals in supporting Trump. (David Hart has stressed that it is white evangelicals not African American evangelicals). So my perspective - one that has occupied my mind - is how did Christians get sucked in to this demagogue and is there anything intrinsic in the way evangelicals frame the gospel that made them susceptible to a manipulator like Trump. Frankly what has happened has made me question evangelicalism (whatever that means) deeply.

As you might imagine this interview was quite a journey. It became a discussion about power, patriarchy and the cross. And I framed it within the overarching theme of ‘rule’ - which I see as the divine mandate for humanity on the earth - a mandate confirmed and affirmed in Christ and the cross/new creation.

If you are interested in other views on this same topic, David interviewed Douglas Campbell the episode before me and Brian Zanhd the week after me. Both were really good according to my wife Anne who listened to them all.