Gospel Conversations podcast

Tony looks at the prayers of the church in Revelation and compares them to the prayers of the angels. The difference shines the light on a radical humanism—because the church (i.e. humanity) sees so much more than the angels do, and is closer to the heart of God. This opens the door to a radical humanism based on the incarnation of Jesus.

In this breathtaking overview, Rikk Watts zooms across the landscape of the four gospels and puts them all in a historical and biographical context. He argues that their narrative structure is their most defining feature—and that in fact, the narrative structure implies a breakthrough new theology. His climactic point is that this structure was the brainwave of Jesus himself.

This talk finishes our study of Hebrews by fitting the famous chapter on Faith—chapter 11—into the overall argument of the book. This humanises faith and takes it out of its religious connotations. We finish the talk with a grand architecture of the entire book as a massive chiastic structure. This structure helps uphold the entire argument in the palm of our hand—and it reinforces the epic superiority of Jesus to all of law and religion.

Tony keeps exploring how 'resurrection' reframes 'judgment'. In this talk, he focuses on 'inheritance' as the dominant motif for the latter part of Hebrews and develops the theme that this is a double-edged sword. It expands our vision of God's plans for us, but it also sobers us as God is trusting us with an awesome responsibility.

In our previous talks on Hebrews, we revealed the strong foundation built by Apollos through Melchizedek and the resurrection, a foundation that renders the law obsolete. Now the question is, how does he build on that? How does he build accountability, how does he build responsibility, on top of all this wondrous talk of the resurrection?

In this talk, we open a door to an expansive new paradigm, something we will continue exploring in future talks. The key to this new paradigm can be found in his extraordinary use of “the word being made perfect”. It’s a very strong theme in Hebrews, and it’s applied first to Jesus, and then to us. Just as the resurrection was first applied to Jesus, and then applies to us. He was there creating the universe, sustaining the universe.

So what mental model does Hebrews have around this claim that the divine Logos, the Christ, went through some kind of process of perfection? Being made perfect? What does this mean? If we can crack that, if we can get inside that, we’ll open a door to what our trajectory and pathway is. Because the whole argument of Hebrews is that we should fix our eyes on the Logos, on the Divine, on the Christ. As we do that the implications for our lives will become clear.

That’s the bundle of ideas in this talk. God bless you. And enjoy it.

Drawing on Nietzsche, Professor Volf will explore two pervasive and mutually reinforcing nihilisms of our time—our misplaced search for meaning, and our wrongheaded pursuit of pleasure—and counter common critiques of religion by arguing that faith in God intensifies and deepens the enjoyment of the world, uniting both meaning and pleasure.

Professor Volf will tie this in with his personal story, his speech at the UN at the time of 9/11, and his participation in the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Councils.

Drawing on Nietzsche, Professor Volf will explore two pervasive and mutually reinforcing nihilisms of our time—our misplaced search for meaning, and our wrongheaded pursuit of pleasure—and counter common critiques of religion by arguing that faith in God intensifies and deepens the enjoyment of the world, uniting both meaning and pleasure.

Professor Volf will tie this in with his personal story, his speech at the UN at the time of 9/11, and his participation in the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Councils.

Drawing on Nietzsche, Professor Volf will explore two pervasive and mutually reinforcing nihilisms of our time—our misplaced search for meaning, and our wrongheaded pursuit of pleasure—and counter common critiques of religion by arguing that faith in God intensifies and deepens the enjoyment of the world, uniting both meaning and pleasure.

Professor Volf will tie this in with his personal story, his speech at the UN at the time of 9/11, and his participation in the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Councils.

In this fourth talk Tony explores Hebrews 7-10 where Apollos brushes aside Moses' law as 'useless' and in its place paints an epic picture of Christ's grand entrance to the heaven of heavens after his ascension and his establishment of a new covenant between God and humanity, and his building of a true eternal tabernacle—a new created order in which matter and physicality can finally contain glory and thus commune with God freely.

In this talk we move past the grand opening of Hebrews into the guts of the argument; how Jesus is superior to the entire religious system of the law but not only that—how he has totally eclipsed the religious system of law and Moses with the 'system of the resurrection'. All of these grand themes are crystallised in the strange governing theme of 'Melchizedek'. We unpack all of that in this talk—and we also confront the scariest passage in the NT along the way! May this bless you and help transform your minds.