Queen of the Sciences

You think it's obvious to keep religion and government separate—but for nearly all of human history, it's been anything but that! In this episode Dad and I sort through the landscape of 16th century Europe to scout out the source of Luther's distinction between the "two kingdoms": the lefthand kingdom where God rules by law, coercion, and public authority, and the righthand kingdom where God rules by the gospel of Jesus Christ through word and sacrament. There are so many ways to do church-and-state wrong that we barely scratch the surface! So stay tuned for the next episode, when we'll bring the two kingdoms into the 20th and 21st centuries to see what mischief (to say the least) has come about by failing to distinguish them properly closer to our time.

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Notes

1. Ulrich Duchrow, Christenheit und Weltverantwortung

2. Augustine, The City of God

3. Martin Luther's writings on this topic include: On Temporal Authority; Admonition to Peace; Whether Soldiers, Too, Can Be Saved; On War against the Turk. See also his eight Invocavit sermons on returning to Karlstadt's violent reforms in Wittenberg while Luther was impounded in the Wartburg. All available in the Luther's Works series.

4. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "Heritage and Decay," in Ethics

5. Paul R. Hinlicky, Luther vs. Pope Leo

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And you thought Joshua was bad! In this episode I undertake to persuade Dad that the other-least-popular book of the Old Testament is not just an arcane collection of burnt offerings and sin offerings and wave offerings but in fact is the metaphysical substrate of the gospel itself. (Spoiler alert: he is won over.) Have a listen for a new perspective on "detestable" animals, mixed fibers, death on account of blasphemy, liver lobes, and so much more!

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Notes:

1. As mentioned before, Dad has a forthcoming commentary in the Brazos series on the book of Joshua.

2. Dad mentions the stroke he had two years ago in this episode; in case you missed it, a bonus episode from last year recounts that experience

3. Ephraim Radner, Leviticus

4. Luther’s commentary on Deuteronomy (specifically ch. 7) deals with the question of who exactly the commands in the Bible are addressed to

5. The only two appearances of Leviticus in the Revised Common Lectionary are Epiphany 7 and Proper 25, both in Year A, both from ch. 19

6. Mary Douglas, Leviticus as Literature

7. The hymn is indeed “There is a Fountain Filled with Blood” but the author is William Cowper, not Isaac Watts.

8. More enthusing from me about Leviticus: “Learning to Love Leviticus” (yup, I loved the alliteration so much I stole it from myself to give this episode the same title); a brief review of Douglas’s Leviticus as Literature (scroll to the bottom of the page); commentary on the intra-Pentateuchal discussion between Jesus and the scribe in Mark 12:28–34; and an issue of my e-newsletter Theology & a Recipe devoted to “Discerning Walls with Leviticus” (plus an awesome pair of recipes for Hot Quiche and Cold Tomato Soup!).

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Poor Anselm, the favorite medieval-scholastic whipping boy of apparently enlightened moderns. Outraged at the attack on Anselm's honor, Dad and I endeavor to make satisfaction for his slandered reputation, give the best and most charitable account of his atonement theory, make some slight tweaks to it in a Lutheran-ish direction while taking serious issue with Gustaf Aulén's attempt to do the same, and overall make the case that the Anselmian concern for justice and recompense is not nearly as foreign to our sensibilities nowadays as his cultured despisers like to claim.

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Notes:

1. Anselm of Canterbury’s Cur Deus Homo can be found in A Scholastic Miscellany

2. Gustaf Aulén, Christus Victor

3. Karl Barth, Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum

4. The Nominalists, from the Latin nomen (“name”), were a school of late medieval philosophers who held that concepts do not exist in reality (opposing the position of the “realists”) but are only names that human beings create to categorize or classify really existing things or persons. As Dad explains to students: “To me, the tree stump along the Appalachian Trail is a chair, but to a termite, it’s a meal.” While we’re at it, Dad—who once described himself as anti-Kantian par excellence, has co-authored a book arguing that Kant is just Plato continued by other means, and has written another book on the confrontation between biblical and philosophical monotheism in the Arian controversy (Divine Complexity)—discusses the various atonement “theories” in chapter 3 of Luther and the Beloved Community.

5. The divine dei in Greek means “it is necessary”

6. Anselm’s definition of God as “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” is found in his work the Proslogion

7. Brandt Jean’s victim-impact statement

8. Friedrich Nietzsche talks about the “evil genius” of God dying for His debtors in Beyond Good and Evil

9. A major source for Luther’s christology is his Confession Concerning Christ’s Supper

10. The Tome of Leo is a patristic document supporting the two natures of Christ but at the cost of assigning very different duties to each nature in a hermetically sealed kind of way

11. admirabile commercium = joyful exchange (in Latin)

12. Peter Abelard gave his version of “atonement” theology in his commentary on Romans, an excerpt of which is also in A Scholastic Miscellany

13. Gerhard O. Forde, “The Work of Christ: Atonement as Actual Event,” in Christian Dogmatics vol. 2

14. Hans Urs von Balthasar writes about Luther’s doctrine of atonement in Theo-Drama vol. 4

15. Gustaf Aulén’s later book is The Faith of the Christian Church

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Welcome to the second season of Queen of the Sciences! We begin our conversations in 2020 with a deep dive into the foolishness and stumbling block that is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Overfamiliar today as a religious symbol, the cross was once the supreme declaration that the person thereon was trash, subhuman, and beyond redemption—certainly not capable of redeeming others. We try to imagine ourselves back into the shame of crucifixion, examine its uses in Roman political control, and explore how the death of God upon it can possibly become the source of eternal life.

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Notes:

1. Ernst Käsemann, “The Saving Significance of the Death of Jesus,” in Perspectives on Paul

2. Martin Hengel, Crucifixion

3. Philip Freeman, Julius Caesar (both the quote from Cicero and the description of Caesar’s use of crucifixions)

4. Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion

5. Maasai Creed (“the hyenas did not touch him”)

6. Ferdinand Schlingensiepen, Dietrich Bonhoeffer 1906–1945

7. Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

8. Plato, The Phaedo

9. “Alexamenos worships his god”

10. Deuteronomy 21:22–23, “And if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.”

11. Galatians 3:13, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree.’”

12. “Propitiation” = reconciliation to God by satisfying his wrath. “Expiation” = reconciliation to God by removal of the cause of offense, namely sin.

13. Gerhard O. Forde, “The Work of Christ: Atonement as Actual Event,” in Christian Dogmatics vol. 2

14. Philip Melanchthon, Apology to the Augsburg Confession, Art. 4 on “why Christ is necessary”

15. Calvin, Institutes vol. 1, Book One, Chapter I: “The Knowledge of God and That of Ourselves Are Connected. How They Are Interrelated”

16. Luther, Galatians commentary, Luther’s Works vol. 26, pp. 276–291, on Christ’s taking the world’s sin into himself

17. Romans 3:25b, “This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.”

18. John Newton, “Amazing Grace”

19. Nietzsche, “God on a cross is the transvaluation of all values,” in The Antichrist

20. George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine

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This is a talk I gave to the ministry team at United Church in Malmö, Sweden—a congregation of the Swedish Evangelical Mission within the Church of Sweden—about the interrelationship of revival and church, some cases studies in charismatic movements in Lutheranism, and rubrics for discerning true, God-given revival.

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Here's the second of two lectures on the distinction between law and gospel that I gave at the Johannelund School of Theology in Uppsala, Sweden, in October 2019.

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Here's the first part of a two-part lecture on the distinction between law and gospel that I gave at the Johannelund School of Theology in Uppsala, Sweden, in October 2019.

Don't forget to listen to the second part!

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Paul R. Hinlicky (aka Dad) presents "How the Holy Spirit Disappeared in Lutheranism" at the Braaten-Benne Lectures in Theology in Indianapolis on August 6, 2019.

Dad gave this talk, "Struck Down But Not Destroyed," at the 2019 conference of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology on the theme "What's the Good of Humanity?"

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The Sermon on the Mount is the address by which Jesus makes us children of God, and tells us what that means for our words, bodies, and relationships... or does it? Can anyone actually live this way? Maybe it's just for the experts and the aspirational. Or maybe it's a clever rhetorical ploy to make us see our sin but doesn't actually place any claims on us. Any maybe it doesn't matter one way or another because the words are so familiar we can hardly even hear them anymore. Tune in for a refresher course on the most famous and influential sermon in all of human history.

In other news, we're nearing the end of our first season! But don't worry, there will be some bonus episodes between now and when we resume in January 2020. In the meanwhile, drop us a line at our respective websites (see below) or leave a comment here to let us know what you liked and what you didn't, questions or follow-up, and suggestions for next season's topics. Also, don't forget to leave us a review on iTunes (or Apple Podcasts as I guess we're supposed to call in now) and tell a friend about the show!

Notes:

1. The Sermon on the Mount appears in Matthew 5–7; see also the Sermon on the Boat in Mark 4:1–34 and the Sermon on the Plain in Luke 6:17–49.

2. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship

3. Thomas Jefferson, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth

4. Some Anabaptist interpretations in Christianity and Revolution: Radical Christian Testimonies, 1520–1650

5. Martin Luther, Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount

6. I'll be giving a talk on the Sermon on the Mount at the June 2020 conference of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology.

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