Gospel Conversations podcast

This is the third talk in our Habakkuk series, and in it Tony dives into the Exodus as an alternative paradigm on redemption.  He contrasts the very significant differences in emphasis that the Exodus paradigm of redemption introduces when compared to the Penal Substitution model.  Then he opens up the grand cosmic sweep that the Exodus model opens up – and he finishes with a very different picture of God’s wrath that Habakkuk leaves with us. In the contemporary debate over the meaning of the cross, this topic is timely and quite exciting.

In this second talk for Breakfast with Jesus Tony summarises the devastating critique by Michael Sandel on the way that Calvinism has laid the groundwork for inequality and a ‘winner/loser’ society in modern America.

Tony connects this idea to the prophet Jeremiah – strangely enough – and to the previous talk on the ‘first fruits’ model as an alternative to the included/excluded model implicit in Calvinism.

In Tony’s second talk on Habakkuk he opens up the topic of ‘penal substitution’ which is increasingly controversial today.  For many it is the bedrock of the gospel but for a growing number it is an uneasy doctrine that suggests a nasty picture of God. Where do we go with this?  And why on earth is Habakkuk in any way relevant to the issue?  In this talk Tony pursues a multi-perspectival approach to the topic.  He explains how it is based on a metaphor, and begins by diagnosing some of the metaphor’s strengths and weaknesses.  He then suggests a different metaphor – one that dominated the Old Testament far more than the ‘penal substitution’ model and one that is described in Habakkuk in richly poetic terms. This talk aims to begin a journey for us so like any good inquiry it opens up the topic rather than trying to package a neat answer. Whatever the case, we need to think this topic through far more deeply.

This is the first talk on our new ‘Breakfast with Jesus’ channel. We have decided to publish the first few talks on our regular channel so that you can get a feel for what Tony is intending to deliver. In due course we will move these talks to a separate podcast channel and to a separate section of the Gospel Conversations website.

In this very first talk Tony dwells on the significance of the phrase "firstfruits of his harvest" in Jeremiah.

This is our latest talk from Gospel conversations.  it was also our first face to face forum in a couple of years. Tony took us through the great minor prophet Habakkuk whom he calls the ‘Hamlet’ of the Old Testament.  Habakkuk is like Hamlet, because the whole book, all three chapters, is an extended inner dialogue between the prophet and God. It is thus not so much a book about prophecies, but a book about the mind of the prophet.  In particular it is a book about hope – and hope in dark times since Habakkuk was commenting in the dark last days of the Jewish experiment. Tony shows how the literary structure of the book, can teach us a lot about how to meditate, and how to reflect on our version of ‘dark times’, whatever they may be for us as individuals. 

Why did the wrong guy win? The Disastrous results of the rivalry between two visions of God

Gospel Conversations welcomes you to the third talk on Gregory of Nyssa between Tony Golsby-Smith and David Bentley Hart. The towering genius of Augustine casts a long and too often dark shadow over western Christianity. What would Christianity have looked like if the equal genius of Gregory had achieved such dominance? Why did the wrong guy win? Tony and David rove over these questions in a riveting conversation.

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Welcome to the second conversation between David and Tony on Gregory of Nyssa. ‘Gregory and his Sister on the Resurrection of all Humanity’ How a woman’s mind framed the gospel around the resurrection. In a sense that is the topic of David and Tony’s second conversation on Gregory of Nyssa. In this chat they discuss Gregory’s epic “On the Soul and the Resurrection’ which is structured as a dialogue between Gregory and his influential sister Macrina. In this dialogue Macrina is the teacher and Gregory is the dull and doubting learner. The context is poignant and personal as it is set in the immediate shadows of the death of their brother Basil, and in the imminent death of Macrina herself. Gregory is despondent in the face of this shadow of death. But Macrina leads him on a grand sweep from the beginning of all things in the mind of God to the end of all things in the ‘feast of the tabernacles’ when all mankind will be welcomed into the holy of holies. David explains why this is his favourite work on Gregory’s and how it builds an eschatological framework around the gospel unlike any others have since achieved.

People all over the world are rediscovering the great 4th century theologian, Gregory of Nyssa.  David Bentley Hart is an unabashed admirer of the great Cappadocian Father calling him the most innovative theologian of the early church. In this first of three interviews on Gregory’s thought and influence, David introduces us to Gregory and explains why he was the so-called ‘pillar of orthodoxy’ and yet was also a thinker who took the gospel into the widest realm of any of the church fathers.  Along the way, Tony and David compare Gregory with Coleridge, and explore the poetic eloquence which distinguished Gregory. They dive in some detail into Gregory’s masterpiece, “On the Making of Humanity” and David explains just how Gregory did nothing more profound than invent a new Christ centred anthropology – and cosmology – that rocked the ancient world.

In this third talk Mark and Tony continue to explore the theme that true knowledge must be framed by faith, hope and love.  In this talk, Mark applies the new framework to 1 Corinthians, and explains how the topic of ‘knowledge’ shapes the whole book – and how the incarnation reframed knowledge around the transcendent qualities of ‘faith, hope and love’.  But this reframing challenged both the Jews and the Greeks and was in fact offensive to them both (although in different ways). Furthermore, applying this framework to practical situations, (which Paul does throughout the book) demands innovative thinking – innovative thinking that does not look for cookie-cutter answers but rather looks to Christ and the new gospel to supply the code that unlocks wisdom.