The little-known story of expatriate German theologian Paul Tillich's radio addresses from America to the German people in the depths of World War II, exhorting them to name and reject the false idol that was holding them hostage and driving millions of people to death. In this episode Dad and I explore how Tillich drew on the depths of the Bible's prophetic speech to analyze the Third Reich and the Germans' own complicity with it, the uniqueness of that situation, and what we might be able to learn from it.

Notes:

1. Tillich, Against the Third Reich

2. If you read no other book by Dad, be sure to read this one: Before Auschwitz

3. Related episode: Before Auschwitz, Hannah Arendt, Reinhold Niebuhr

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Sarah discusses premillennialism, postmillennialism, amillennialism, and Revelation 20 with Katie Langston and Kathryn Schifferdecker of the Enter the Bible podcast. Check out Katie's memoir of leaving Mormonism and becoming a Christian, Sealed: An Unexpected Journey into the Heart of Grace, and listen to Dad's and my discussion of it on a bonus episode of Queen of the Sciences!

Christ the center, Christ for me, Christ for us, Christ as church, Christ the humiliated and exalted one, Christ the Lord who is nothing like der Führer who reigned over Berlin at the time a young Dietrich Bonhoeffer gave these university lectures. In this episode we sift through Bonhoeffer's appropriation of Luther's christology, lightly inflected by Karl Barth, as well as his own corrections and innovations, in the service of a community centered on Christ... and no one else.

Notes:

1. You may know these lectures as Christ the Center but we worked from the new translation in DBWE 12.

2. DeJonge, Bonhoeffer's Reception of Luther

3. See Dad's "Luther's Anti-Docetism in the Disputatio de divinitate et humanitate Christi (1540)," pp. 139-185 in Creator est creatura

4. Luther, "Confession Concerning Christ's Supper," in LW 37

5. Sarah mentioned her novel A-Tumblin' Down

6. Related episode: Bonhoeffer's "Life Together"

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Sarah discusses why God heals infections and cancers, but doesn't regrow amputated limbs, on this episode of Enter the Bible with Kathryn Schifferdecker and Katie Langston! Check out related episodes Illness and Healing and Miracles (with Some Help from C. S. Lewis).

Elect exiles, spirits in prison, slaves, wives, the devil qua prowling lion, but above all lots and lots of the risen Lord Jesus... the First Epistle of Peter has it all! Dad and I get so carried away with this brief letter than we sort of rush to finish at the end, and even so have an outsized episode. But don't worry, we get into that bit about Christ preaching to the dead. Plus, Dad mispronounces French again, and Sarah goes off on Bible-believin' Christians who deny that baptism saves, when it says so right here.

Notes:

1. Related episodes: How To Be a Congregation, Baptism: Infant and Otherwise

2. Davids, The First Epistle of Peter

3. Harink, 1 & 2 Peter

4. My sermon on the "elect exiles" of I Peter 1

5. And my book To Baptize or Not to Baptize: A Practical Guide to Clergy

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Dad discusses just what the phrase "faith of Christ" in St. Paul's letters means on this episode of Enter the Bible with Kathryn Schifferdecker and Katie Langston!

Or, the one in which Sarah at long last reads the first work of Protestant dogmatics, and has an existential/vocational crisis as a result. Dad talks her off the ledge.

Notes:

1. Melanchthon, Loci Communes (1521 edition) and Loci Communes (1559 edition) (there are lots of other editions in-between)

2. Quere, Melanchthon's Christum Cognoscere

3. Sarah's To Baptize or Not to Baptize and Small Catechism: Memorizing Edition

4. Related episodes: Bondage of the Will, Before Auschwitz

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Dad discusses how the 12 tribes of Israel entered the promised land on this episode of Enter the Bible with Kathryn Schifferdecker and Katie Langston!

The famous, no, infamous, no, notorious treatise by the reformer at his most white-hot passionate. Mild-mannered Erasmus didn't stand a chance. And neither do you. Which turns out to be good news!

In this episode Dad and I sort out what The Bondage of the Will is actually about, what it isn't about, how it is true freedom even for religiously-minded people (maybe especially for them...?), and the delights of a theology you can't possibly programitize.

Notes:

1. Luther, Bondage of the Will, in LW 33

2. Kolb, Bound Choice, Election, and Wittenberg Theological Method

3. Vestrucci, Theology as Freedom

4. Ruokanen, Trinitarian Grace in Martin Luther's The Bondage of the Will

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Late in life, after penning thousands of pages, Augustine received a request from an admiring but understandably intimidated friend for something a little shorter. This "handbook" is the result—a veritable greatest-hits compilation for this most influential of Western fathers. Everything from evil as privation to predestination, when and whether to lie and how to grow in love, justifying faith and almsgiving to oneself (!).

Notes:

1. We read this edition of Augustine's Enchiridion

2. See also our episode on Augustine's City of God

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