In this episode, Scot McKnight and Cody Matchett talk with Dr. Matthew Bates about his recent book, Beyond The Salvation Wars.

Matthew W. Bates (PhD, Notre Dame) is Professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary with expertise on the gospel and salvation. His book Why the Gospel? (Eerdmans, 2024) won the Christianity Today award in popular theology and was Outreach magazine’s “Resource of the Year” in theology and Bible. His acclaimed academic titles include Salvation by Allegiance Alone (Baker Academic, 2017) and The Birth of the Trinity (Oxford University Press, 2015). He also co-founded and co-hosts the popular OnScript podcast.

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In this episode, Scot McKnight and Cody Matchett talk about Dietrich Bonhoeffer with Dr. Mark Theissen Nation.

Mark grew up in a non-Christian home, the son of a World War II veteran. At age seventeen he became a Christian in a General Baptist church; within a year he became a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. Since then, he has had many vocations: as evangelist, a youth minister, a social worker, the founder and director of a Christian peace and justice organization, a pastor, and the director of The London Mennonite Centre, London, England. For sixteen years he was professor of theology at Eastern Mennonite Seminary. He has written or edited eleven books, two about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The first, published by Baker Academic Books in 2013, is Bonhoeffer the Assassin?: Challenging the Myth, Recovering His Call to Peacemaking. In 2022 his book, Discipleship in a World Full of Nazis: Recovering the True Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was published by Cascade Books. His first writing on Christians in Nazi Germany was in 1980. Mark has two adult children and four grandchildren and is married to Mary. He is currently (interim) co-pastor of a Mennonite Church in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

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In this episode Scot McKnight and Cody Matchett reimagine the original Christmas story by talking about the stories of Mary and Joseph.

Ethereal Vistas by Denis Brodovskyi

In this episode Scot McKnight and Cody Matchett talk with Dr. Jesse P. Nickel about his recent book, A Revolutionary Jesus: Violence and Peacemaking in the Kingdom of God.

Jesse Nickel (PhD, University of St Andrews) is on the faculty of Columbia Bible College in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada, where he teaches in the biblical studies program. He is the author of The Things that Make for Peace: Jesus and Eschatological Violence (de Grutyer, 2021) and co-editor of It’s About Life: The Formative Power of Scripture (Regent College Publishing, 2023). Jesse is passionate about continuing to get to know Jesus more deeply with both his mind and heart, and teaching others about the already/not-yet, shalom-centred kingdom of God.

Forthcoming publications

• “Eschatological Violence,” in The Oxford Handbook of Bible and Violence, edited by Paul Middleton and Matthew Collins (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

In this episode Scot McKnight and Cody Matchett talk with Dr. Drew J. Strait about his recent book, Strange Worship: Six Steps for Challenging Christian Nationalism.

Drew J. Strait was baptized Catholic, raised United Methodist, discipled as an Evangelical through Young Life, Reformed through Whitworth College, and became a convinced Anabaptist after a transformative re-reading of the Gospels after the Iraq war. This ecumenical background energizes Strait’s passion to bring together diverse coalitions of Christians to bear witness to God’s mission of reconciliation—to reconcile humans to God and humans to one another. Perpetually overwhelmed by how much he doesn’t know, Strait loves to cultivate engaging spaces to learn alongside his students and listeners.

Forthcoming Publications

• Drew J. Strait, “Dominionism in the Trumpocene: Toward a Biblical Hermeneutic of Resistance.” In On Christian Nationalism: Critical and Theological Perspectives. Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right. Edited by Joan Braune and David M. Gides. New York: Routledge, projected 2025.
• Human Animalization and Fascist Politics: Toward a Homiletic of Resistance against the Dehumanization of Immigrants (this is an essay I wrote during my sabbatical on the Canaanite woman in Matt 15, animal metaphors in the Trumpocene, and animal metaphors for dehumanizing people in Greco-Roman antiquity).
• Next book project will focus on biblical interpretation and human security–reclaiming biblical interpretation as a site for peacebuilding through the church.

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In this episode Scot McKnight and Cody Matchett talk with Dr. Beverly Roberts Gaventa about her new commentary on Romans (WJK).

Beverly Roberts Gaventa is Helen H.P. Manson Professor of New Testament Literature and Exegesis Emerita at Princeton Theological Seminary. Her publications include 

When in Romans: An Invitation to Linger with the Gospel according to Paul (Baker Press, 2016), Our Mother Saint Paul (Westminster John Knox, 2007), The Acts of the Apostles (Abingdon, 2003), I and II Thessalonians (Westminster John Knox, 1998), Mary: Glimpses of the Mother of Jesus (University of South Carolina, 1995; Fortress, 1999), and From Darkness to Light: Aspects of Conversion in the New Testament (Fortress, 1986). 

Romans: A Commentary (Westminster John Knox, 2024).

In 2020, Gaventa received the Burkitt Medal by the British Society for Arts and Humanities, she was president of the Society of Biblical Literature. She has lectured widely in the U.S. as well as in Canada, Europe, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.  Dr. Gaventa is a ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. and a member of the University Presbyterian Church, Austin, Texas.

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In this episode Scot McKnight and Cody Matchett talk with Dr. Matthew Novenson about his new book, Paul and Judaism at the End of History.

Matthew Novenson is the Helen H.P. Manson Professor of New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary. He is also an honorary fellow at the University of Edinburgh, where previously he held the Chair of Biblical Criticism and Biblical Antiquities. He is the author of Christ among the Messiahs (Oxford University Press, 2012), The Grammar of Messianism (Oxford University Press, 2017), Paul, Then and Now (Eerdmans, 2022), and Paul and Judaism at the End of History (Cambridge University Press, 2024), among other works. 

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In this episode Scot McKnight and Cody Matchett talk with Dr. James F. McGrath about his recent book Christmaker.

James F. McGrath is Clarence L. Goodwin Chair in New Testament Language and Literature at Butler University.

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In this episode Scot McKnight and Cody Matchett talk with Dr. A. Andrew Das about his recent book, Remarriage in Early Christianity.

A. Andrew Das is the Niebuhr Distinguished Chair and professor of religious studies at Elmhurst University. He is the author or editor of over ten books in biblical studies, including Scriptures, Texts, and Tracings in 2 Corinthians and Philippians and Paul and the Stories of Israel: The Grand Thematic Narratives of Galatians.

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In this episode Scot McKnight and Cody Matchett talk with Dr. Paul T. Sloan

Paul Sloan earned his PhD in New Testament under Drs. Grant Macaskill and David Moffitt from the University of St Andrews in 2016. He currently serves as the Chair of Theology and is Associate Professor of Early Christianity at Houston Christian University. He lives in Houston, TX with his wife, Meg, and three kids. 

Twitter/X @paulthomasloan

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