A vibrant conversation between Luke, Scott and several of our more engaged listeners generated a lot of heat and light

Several listeners wrote in over the past few weeks in response to the new Christology/theology that Luke unpacked in the 8-part mini-series we concluded last week.  This week, we unpack some of the questions and answers that went back and forth between us and three new listeners who wrote in plus two listeners who have been with us from the beginning. Luke asked all five the following questions:

(1) did they think Luke went too far, or not far enough?

(2) what was your own personal journey through Christianity?

            Does this sound like any podcast hosts you know?

(3) what were your biggest and/or most persistent fears/concerns in that journey?

(4) what were the benefits of having proceeded down “the slippery slope”?

(5) after giving up so much of Christianity, why are you still picking away at it, and why are you listening to our podcast?

In unpacking those five questions, they challenged/questioned back at Luke:

Then we drew comparisons between Religion/Christianity and a meme / mind-virus:

Finally, Luke and Scott described a new direction for a new target audience of this podcast!

Needless to say, it was a lively and practical discussion!

As always, tell us what you think.

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After completely deconstructing the Christian faith he grew up with, Luke answers the question: “what do I still believe about Jesus?”

This week’s episode is the cap-stone on the archway we’ve built up in this 8-part mini-series over the past two months, as well as many other episodes over the past five years that gave deep-dives into some of the main issues that needed to be considered before answering the fundamental question that every deconstructing Exvangelical will eventually need to answer: “what do I believe now about Jesus?”

I won’t summarize here my (Luke’s) answer to that question, nor the ways in which I got to that new Christology …. it’s just too complicated and nuanced. You really need to listen to this episode.

And to help you dig deeper as you make your way through this episode, I’ve listed here the links to some of the episodes we refer to, and which form the base of that Christology, so the interested listener can do their own homework and deep-dive:

If you’re deconstructing your own Christian faith and want a thoughtful, informed pathway towards reconstructing something new, then you’ve gotta’ listen to this episode!

As always, tell us what you think.

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John’s Gospel is so different from the other three Gospel accounts, one might have to wonder …..

This week, we talk to a New Testament scholar with particular expertise on the writing of the Gospels. His most recent book focuses squarely on the Gospel of John.

After asking some basic background information on that Gospel account, we dove head-first into the biggest problem that Luke has with the Gospel of John: how/why it’s SO VERY different from the other three Gospel accounts:

After our guest admitted that “John might have made it up”, we discussed the impact that this kind of bombshell might have on laypeople in the church pews.

There’s a lot of food for thought in this episode, folks!

And …… we highly recommend this book.

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find out more about Dr. Mark Goodacre and this book at his website and his YouTube channel.

If you enjoyed this episode, you might also enjoy several of our previous episodes collected thematically under “The Bible.”

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Literary scholars such as JR Tolkien and CS Lewis see Christianity as not only the fulfillment of ancient Hebrew prophecies, but also the deep-seated yearnings of the human heart, expressed through a multitude of myths and religions.

[this is a re-release from our Archive; Scott was not part of the team at that time]

In previous episodes, we looked at hominids a few hundred thousand years ago acquiring cognitive abilities which equipped them to think abstractly, symbolically, and religiously (episodes #75, #76, #77, and #78 ), which they [we] used to create a long list of religions. We also looked specifically at the evolution of two particular world religions: Judaism (episode #80) and Christianity (episodes #81, #82, and #83).

That sequence of episodes might have misled some listeners to conclude (or think that we ourselves have concluded) that Judaism and Christianity are no different from the many other religions that humans have concocted from large collections of myths. However, some modern literary scholars — including JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis — have concluded that Christianity is separate from all those other myths: in fact, they described it as “True Myth” which not only fulfills ancient Hebrew prophecies, but also the inner yearnings of humans going back tens of millennia, expressed through mythic tales that go back to the dawn of recorded history.

In this episode, we talked to Dr. Louis Markos about what myths are, and how we modern humans in the 21st century are no less prolific in myth-making than our ancient ancestors, and that all those myths draw on common themes expressed through archetypal characters.

We also looked at the possibility that our evolving ancient brains contained key ideas/impulses which we’ve been processing over millennia into mythic tales, which in turn pointed us and drew us toward the Divine in a driven-search for truth … somewhat like migrating birds and butterflies being born with an innate navigational sense and a comparable subconscious drive to fly thousands of miles to a particular destination every year.

And we explored some intriguing questions, like:

As always, tell us what you think …

To find more about Dr. Louis Markos, go to his faculty webpage, his Amazon author page, or his Youtube channel.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also enjoy several of our previous previous episodes that looked at the origin and evolution of the software in our brains that lead to or produce a religious streak, symbolism, and morality, which can be found at our thematic page “Human Evolution.”

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They were written by GrecoRoman elites in the 2nd century, and Paul radically influenced their writing!?

Christians sitting in the pews have long had the idea that the Gospels were written by four individuals, at least of three of whom were Jews (Luke may not have been), and two of whom were part of Jesus’s inner circle (the other two got their information from an apostle). And those modern people in the pews read the Gospels as if they were written at the time that the events happened: as if those accounts were a transcript of a reporter on the TV news, telling us what happened earlier that day.

Scholars over the past couple centuries, on the other hand, have recognized that many people (authors; editors, copyists) were involved in putting together each of those Gospel accounts, and that the writing took place many decades after the events happened.

Today we talk to a scholar who is part of a growing awareness (consensus?) in the scholarly community that there was a much longer time-line and a greater degree of cultural separation between the events that happened and the authors that wrote them: that the Gospels were not written by blue-collar Jews in the first century, but instead by highly-educated GrecoRoman elites in the second century.  Our guest is Dr. Robyn Faith Walsh, and her book is The Origins of Early Christian Literature: Contextualizing the New Testament within Greco-Roman Literary Culture..

Questions that we put to her included:

As always, tell us your own thoughts on this topic …

Find out more about Dr. Walsh and this book at her web-site.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also enjoy several of our previous episodes collected thematically under “the Bible“

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Paul and John (and modern Evangelicals) seem to paint a different portrait of Jesus than all the others who actually walked and talked with him.

Jesus of Nazareth as … the Logos? [image created by Andrew … thanks Andrew!]

Last week, we looked at the first half of that paradoxical Christian expression: Jesus was “fully human and yet fully divine.” We learned that the people who walked and talked with him found him to be a fully human, Jewish Messiah who would redeem Israel. But the Apostle Paul and the author(s) of the Gospel of John paint a very different portrait. John refers to Jesus as “the Logos” (a universal, impersonal, cosmic force of reason) and as a universal Savior of all mankind (“the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world”). Likewise, Paul also refers to him as something much more than human.

We asked a New Testament scholar — Dr. Christopher Zoccali — to help us reconcile these two different perspectives. We picked away at some unsettling questions:

We ended with a thought-provoking scenario of Paul essentially acting like a time-traveller, in the sense that:

Is this the kind of paradox that always comes up in movies that involve time-travel: someone goes backward through time to influence earlier events, so that now the outcome of the story is changed (sometimes radically!?).

As always, tell us what you think …

To find more about Dr. Christopher Zoccali, go to his personal web-page.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also enjoy several of our previous episodes collected thematically under “the Bible.”

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The people reported as having walked and talked with Jesus in the first century all saw him primarily as a Jewish Messiah.

Jesus and his disorganized, unarmed group of disciples re-imagined as a conquering hero leading an armed resistance against the Roman Empire [image created by Andrew … thanks Andrew!]

One particular Christian tenet that has been the hardest to wrap my brain around is the idea that Jesus was “fully human, and yet fully divine”. This week, we look at what the people who walked and talked with him thought, and whether that thinking changed over the course of his time on earth. So we grouped them into five different categories:

(1) before he was born: Mary and Joseph (his parents), Zechariah (temple priest), and the wise men from the east talked about this baby being the king of the Jews, being given the throne of David to reign over Jacob’s descendants forever, and restoring the covenant with Abraham. Note the very heavy emphasis on him coming to Jews and doing what a Jewish Messiah would do, rather than a cosmic, universal Savior sent to take away the sins of the world.

(2) at his birth: the shepherds were told he was the Messiah … Simeon, who had been waiting for “the consolation of Israel”, saw this baby as the Lord’s Messiah … and the prophetess Anna said the baby would bring the redemption of Jerusalem. Again, I’m hearing “Jewish Messiah”.

(3) Jesus himself said he came only to the lost sheep of Israel. How does this fit with him being a cosmic, universal Savior sent to take away the sins of the world? Or did he also see himself as the Jewish Messiah? (note: our guest this week will shed some light on this “false dichotomy”)

(4) during his public ministry: John the Baptist, Andrew, Philip, the Samaritan woman, Peter, the people at “the triumphal entry”, one of the two thieves on the cross, the Roman soldiers, and even unclean spirits … they all specifically referred to him as the Jewish Messiah (aka: king of the Jews … the Chosen One … the Christ).

(5) after the Crucifixion: at the Ascension, his followers asked “is this when you restore the kingdom to Israel?”, something that a Jewish Messiah was expected to do. Their sermons almost always took place in the synagogue (where Jews meet) rather than the city square (where everyone would hear) and regularly used very Messianic language. The writer of Acts sometimes specifically summarizes their speeches by simply saying they “showed how he was the Messiah”.

Clearly, the message that everyone was getting and giving was: Jesus is the Jewish Messiah.

I had thought that the Jewish Messiah was only ever going to be a human. But this Jesus as the Jewish Messiah sounds quite different from the cosmic divine being (the Logos) that we find in the first chapter of the Gospel of John (we learned last week that this was written over half a century after Paul saturated the region with his own cosmic divine view of Jesus), or in the rest of the New Testament (written mostly by Paul). So, what do I do with that?

To answer that question, we talked to Dr. Richard Middleton, a theologian with expertise in Old Testament theology and Christian worldview. He showed me a whole different perspective on what it meant to be a Jewish Messiah … on this idea of a “cosmic, divine Jesus” … and on the idea that Jesus was “fully human, and yet fully divine”.

As always, tell us what you think …

To find more about Dr. Richard Middleton, see his blog-site, profile at Biologos, and his Amazon book page.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also enjoy a previous episode looking at the origin and evolution of Judaism and the nation of Israel.

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We look at some of the common ways that this is [mis]understood, and share some other perspectives on the how’s, who’s and what’s behind it.

Did the Gospel writers receive Divine guidance? Or were they hearing from some part(s) of their inner selves? [image crated by Andrew … thanks Andrew!]

[note: this is a re-release of an episode from our Archive …. Episode #101 … as a foundation for the current on-going mini-series which uses the Gospel accounts to find “the historical Jesus”]

Is the Bible divinely-inspired?

Often the first thing that Evangelicals will do when asked that question  — after voicing a very vigorous “YES!”  — is quote 2 Timothy 3:16-17, which begins with “All scripture is God-breathed …”

The problem is, that’s not the question that was asked.

To begin with, Paul is NOT talking here about the Bible! He’s writing this before the Bible as we know it even existed: before the Gospels or any of the non-Pauline books (from Peter, James, Luke, and one or more Johns) had even been written, and hundreds of years before a number of books were selected out of a large pile of sacred writings circulating at the time and collated into what we call “the Bible”.

He’s probably referring in part to the Old Testament books, but who’s to say he wasn’t also referring to yet other books? He uses a phrase which in the original Greek means “sacred writings” and which is translated in our modern English into “all scripture”. The Old Testament itself endorses many other ancient Hebrew books — “sacred writings” — that are not in our modern Bibles:

Paul would also have been studying from other Hebrew religious books which were available to him. Some of these are collated into what we call the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha: you may have heard of the Book of Enoch, the four Books of Maccabees, and dozens of other ones.

And if modern day Fundamentalists hang their hats on the words “all scripture” — as in “ALL scripture” — then what does one do about other “sacred writings” and “scripture” that Paul would have known about? He would have known about the religious “sacred writings” of the Greeks and Romans (in fact, he quoted from a couple Greek philosophers), and that their slaves and business partners might have had their own “sacred writings” or “scripture” from yet other religions.

And then there’s the strange word that Paul uses: a compound word that literally means “God-breathed”. It’s only used once in the Bible, and only a few times in other Greek literature, so scholars really don’t know what to do with it. Does it mean “dictated”? Most translators and scholars have opted for the translation “inspired by God”. But even that: what does that mean? How does that work? Did God put images in the heads of the writers? Did he actually fire the neurons in their brains? Or were they really hearing from their inner voice?

We look at a number of the “how’s” that likely played into that inspiration:

We also looked at “who” might have been behind these subtle forms of inspiration: the agent behind that inspiration. It all depends on how you define “God”. We don’t all agree on this!

And finally, we look at the object of that inspiration. Do we have to say that only the Bible is divinely-inspired? That it’s uniquely inspired? Why not also those other ancient Hebrew books that aren’t in the Bible? Why not some of the Greek philosophical writings that were circulating at the time, and which completely re-shaped human thinking and was incorporated into Christian thinking? What about modern authors (I would nominate NT Wright, Philip Yancey, Peter Enns, and Brian MacLaren)? What about certain songs on the radio, poems, classical literature that really get you thinking deeper thoughts, asking existential questions, and re-organizing your life? I even think modern science and medicine are divinely-inspired: God motivating humans to search for truth and to apply that knowledge to the betterment of humanity.

As always, tell us what you think about what we had to say about this …

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also enjoy several of our previous episodes collected thematically under “the Bible.”

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Given that they’re the best source we have on who Jesus is/was, it would be good to know how reliable they are.

After deconstructing nearly every other aspect of the Christian faith that was handed down to me as a child, I thought it was time to do a mini-series on the question: “who is Jesus to me now?”

One way to answer that question is to see what the people who walked and talked with him had to say: his family, friends, disciples, and others at the time.  There are four books available that have long been regarded as the best source for that kind of eye-witness material: the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. 

Some have blindly embraced those books unquestioned.  They’ve seen the Gospel accounts as inerrant, infallible, and absolutely authoritative; distinct in these respects from all other books not found in the Bible.  And to bolster these high claims, they will invoke a quality … a process … an affirmation … which can’t be defined nor tested nor explained: divine inspiration.

Others, on the other hand, who have spent years or even decades closely studying those books, have found many reasons to question the reliability of these “eye-witness” accounts.

So, this will be the starting point for this mini-series.  We’re going to look at: inspiration, versus revelation on the one hand, and dictation on the other; divine inspiration versus human impulses; “apparent” contradictions versus plain-and-simple contradictions; Bibliolatry (treating the Bible itself as a deity to be worshipped); the role of faulty human memory and differing worldviews in shaping the stories that are written; how copyists produce textual variants (copies with different wording), accidentally or intentionally, and how interpreters try to deal with that.

In the end, we see that human influences have indeed shaped the Gospel accounts that we now hold in our hands in the 21st century.  Some willfully choose to ignore that fact, while others use that as their reason to reject the Bible entirely.  We suggest a more nuanced and enlightened approach: read the Gospel accounts knowing how they reflect human flaws, human choices, human insights, human hopes …. the humanity of these artefacts!  And for those who also choose to believe in the Divine, they can calibrate the degree to which the Divine worked around and through that.

If you liked this episode, you may also like several of our previous episodes collected thematically under “The Bible.”

Episode image by Andrew …… thanks Andrew!

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No, humans did not arise out of apes. We arose out of fish! And we bear many scars and souvenirs from that journey.

Yes, again!  We are indeed talking about Young Earth Creationism again, because folks: YECism is alive and well in large swathes of Western society. And they’re building a giant cultural silo — their own school systems (from junior kindergarten to university), publishing houses, media and news networks, TV and radio stations — to perpetuate the continuation of this anti-science / science-denialist worldview.

In this episode, Dr. Janet Kellogg Ray unveils her latest book — her third — which focuses on one of the most forbidden topics for Fundamentalists and YECists: human evolution. In it, she traces the journey that we humans have been on: from fish to us.  And along the way, she pauses to look closely at some of the major tripping points: Concordism … the Cambrian explosion … Intelligent Design … embryology … genetics … endogenous retroviral scars … the image of God … and so much more. We also spend a fair bit of time talking about a variety of aspects of human physiology and dysfunction which can be traced back to our fish-y ancestry:

She left us with lots to think about. We highly recommend this book.

As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic …

Find out more about Dr. Janet Kellogg Ray and her books at her Eerdmans web-page.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also enjoy several of our previous episodes collected thematically under “Human Evolution“, or Luke’s book on Human Evolution.

Episode image created by Andrew …. thanks Andrew!

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