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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Sarah talks with Kelsi Klembara of the Outside Ourselves podcast about A-Tumblin' Down, and a few other things besides! Plus, here's the link to my new podcast: Sarah Hinlicky Wilson Stories. Or just search for it in whatever app you're using right now!

What happened after I posted the protest to the suppression of our episode.

Why our last regular episode didn't show up in your podcast app. Please, please listen to this message.

Update: Literally within five minutes of my uploading this short protest, both Apple and Spotify let the episode on "The Inhumanity of Lockdown" through. Take the lesson and protest censorship! They back down. At least for now.

We break our habitual reserve on what's been inflicted on the body politic over the past three years with this extended discussion of lockdown—and its essential inhumanity cloaked in the garb of science and righteousness. Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben with his concept of biopolitics is our guide. We realize that this has been an incredibly painful set of issues for many of you to even attempt to discuss, so we try to model a way of talking about without rancor even while calling it like we see it. But we hope, whatever you thought and however you managed, your conclusion is the same as ours: Never again.

Notes:

1. Related episodes: Before Auschwitz, Illness and Healing, Faith to the Aid of Science, St Paul among the Philosophers, Whether One May Flee from a Deadly Plague, Virtual Communion

2. Agamben, Where Are We Now?

3. Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler

4. This is my only other public statement related to covid: "Churches During Lockdown: Near Disaster"

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