Queen of the Sciences

Preachers should preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other, so we are told. Maybe Karl Barth told us so. Maybe someone in your church with an axe to grind. Or a sensitive conscience eager to be compassionate and relevant. Should we? In this episode, we continue our explorations of technique and propaganda with the help of Jacques Ellul, pressing the question: how can we possibly propagate the gospel with integrity in a media landscape polluted with propaganda?

Notes:

1. Related episodes: Technique and Propaganda with Jacques Ellul, The Image of God, Powers and Principalities, Howard Thurman

2. And speaking of propaganda... I actually have yet another podcast, The Disentanglement Podcast, in which my husband Andrew and I try to figure out loud and in the midst and mess of life how to extricate ourselves from all the digital systems that entangle and ensnare us. It's half practical and half philosophical. Oh, and a whole lot shorter per episode than Queen of the Sciences. If that sort of thing matters to you.

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Nearly everyone thinks the world has gone off the rails, and nearly everyone has a theory why, from kids these days to the moral breakdown of the West to the internet. We return to the conversation started by French Protestant philosopher Jacques Ellul more than 80 years ago, and find him startlingly, alarmingly prescient. In this episode we consider his proposal that technique, in the sense of efficient means by technological instruments, has become our all-defining reality, and answer the question that haunted us some time back: is it propaganda all the way up and all the way down? (Yes.)

Notes:

1. Ellul, Presence in the Modern World and Propaganda

2. Plekon, Hidden Holiness, Saints As They Really Are, Living Icons

3. Related episodes: Private Public and Propagandistic, Cybertech and Personhood, Postmodernism for the Perplexed, Hannah Arendt

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Popularly considered the last of the church fathers, John of Damascus gathered up the fruit of early church reflection on the Trinity and the person of Christ in his learned tome, The Orthodox Faith. But in addition to the usual wrangling with the Greek philosophical heritage and the monotheistic challenge of Judaism, John had a new adversary to consider: the even more radically monotheistic Islam. In this episode, Dad and I sort through John's record of Chalcedonian orthodoxy from the 8th century, his "double-mindedness," and what pressures led to the enormous internal doctrinal tensions that he passed on to the generations to follow. Such that, in this episode, Sarah admits defeat.

Notes:

1. Can't get enough of Trinity and christology, especially with respect to Greek metaphysics? Then by all means rush right out and get yourself a copy of Dad's Divine Complexity and also Divine Simplicity

2. John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith (and generally speaking checking out the great selection in the Popular Patristics series)

3. Related episodes: Atonement, Image of God, Melanchthon's Loci Communes, Oh, Anselm!!!, Gregory of Nazianzus, Irenaeus, Athanasius

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The Council of Chalcedon (451) gave us the famous christological formula that Jesus Christ is one person in two natures, without change, division, separation, or confusion. It also gave us a lot of conundrums, enough to cause the first major split of the church between the Syriacs and the Greeks. Among others trying to sort out the perplexities of Chalcedon was Martin Luther himself, whose own christological formulations might just run afoul of Chalcedonian orthodoxy. So in today's episode we entertain the question: was Martin Luther a Chalcedonian heretic? Or should we possibly say, was Chalcedon a Lutheran heretic?

Notes:

1. Zachhuber, Luther's Christological Legacy

2. Cross, Communicatio Idiomatum

3. McCormack, The Humility of the Eternal Son

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What's worse, being bound by the Law or untethered from it entirely? It probably depends on where you're standing. In this episode, Dad and I trace out two kinds of challenges Christians have had to work out with respect to the Law—whether the Law given to Israel applies also to Gentile believers in Jesus Christ, and whether the Law in any respect contributes to justification. Then, we explore working definitions of legalism and antinomianism as misconstruals of the Christian's relationship to the Law, leading to the ultimate question: are legalism and antinomianism really, at root, the same thing after all?

Related episodes: Galatians 1, Galatians 2, Romans, Luther and the Jews, Sermon on the Mount, Atonement

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My second appearance on the All About Agatha podcast, talking to host Kemper Donovan about Agatha Christie's speculative-mariology-fanfiction story, "The Island"!

Here's a link to my previous All About Agatha appearance: Star over Bethlehem

And if that still isn't enough Agatha Christie for you, check out my article in the new issue of the fabulous magazine The Mockingbird, "Agatha Christie, a Very Elusive Christian."

Death! Disaster! Panic in the streets! In this episode Dad and I try to understand how fear and fear-mongering have come to grip our wealthy and (historically speaking) unprecedentedly free societies. Toward that end, we also explore the metastasis of the psychiatric diagnosis of debilitating phobias to a biopolitical strategy for accusing and shutting down anyone who doesn't agree with or approve of certain things. But above all, it's a call to the courage of conscience for anyone tired of having the bullies run the show. Fear not! The Lord is with you.

Notes:

1. Related episodes: Transfiguration, Perpetua and Felicitas, Private Public and Propagandistic

2. Read, mark, and inwardly digest Luther's commentary on the First Commandment in the Small Catechism to "fear, love, and trust in God above all things"!

3. Horn, People Love Dead Jews

4. The Scriptural Reasoning inter-faith dialogue project

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The prayer our Lord Jesus taught his disciples, in address to his and their heavenly Father, by the power of the Holy Spirit! And probably the most-prayed prayer of all time. (Well, except maybe "HELP!") In this episode Dad and I pore over each petition, with a great deal of help from Luther's Catechisms, discuss why it is we should pray, and the greater truth that we can and are invited to pray.

Notes:

1. Related episodes: All About Prayer, Sermon on the Mount, Revival and Renewal with the Blumhardts

2. Sarah's Sermon on the Mount: A Poetic Paraphrase

3. Luther's Small Catechism (and Sarah's Memorizing Edition therof) and also his Large Catechism

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Sarah sits down to chat with Roger Lowther of the Art Life Faith podcast!

Also, in the unlikely event you missed it, the Transfiguration book Kickstarter mentioned in this episode has already ended (after exceeding all expectations!). But you can preorder the ebook on Amazon, where it will be published on August 6, 2024.

In remembrance of an event that took place 50 years + 1 week ago, Dad tells the story of the internal schism in the Missouri Synod, the "walkout" of professors and students from Concordia Seminary St. Louis, and the founding of a seminary in exile, popularly known as Seminex. It is the founding story of why American Lutheranism looks the way it does today and mirrors the wider cultural polarization, yet with uniquely theological elements all its own. Triumphalists on either side beware; this is a tragedy.

Notes:

1. Todd, Authority Vested

2. Burkee, Power, Politics, and the Missouri Synod

3. Tietjen, Memoirs in Exile

4. A Statement of Scriptural and Confessional Principles (LCMS)

5. See more on Dad's new blog with a number of essays on this history, Theological Ramblings,

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