Today in our fourth and final part of our series on postmodernism Pastor Jacob Ballard explains four key guidelines for cross-cultural ministry.

1. Always change the language, but never change the message
2. Exchange meta-narrative for personal narrative or community narrative
3. Exchange certainty for humility, clues, hints, and mysteries
4. Exchange absolutist morality for personal accountability and communal action

—— Links ——

• Find out more about Jacob Ballard at the Timberland Bible Church website
• Books mentioned: They Like Jesus but Not the Church by Dan Kimball and Who's Afraid of Postmodernism by James K. A. Smith
• Check out our episode about Gender in Bible Translation
• If you’d like to support Restitutio, you can donate here.
• Leave a voice message via SpeakPipe with questions or comments
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Today, in part three of our series on postmodernism we ask the question, "How is postmodernism affecting our world today?" Pastor Jacob Ballard explains how narrative, experience, community, and subjective truth are key ways that postmodern-minded people go about making sense of reality. Then he shows how movements like Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ+ rights draw strength from these postmodern ways of thinking.

—— Links ——

• Find out more about Jacob Ballard at the Timberland Bible Church website
• check out episode 358 A Christian Perspective on BLM (Russell Brown) and 292 A Change of Affection (Becket Cook), which was recorded just after Cook lost his job for no longer agreeing with the gay lifestyle
• If you’d like to support Restitutio, you can donate here.
• Leave a voice message via SpeakPipe with questions or comments
• Intro music: Good Vibes by MBB Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Free Download / Stream: Music promoted by Audio Library

In our last episode, Pastor Jacob Ballard explained what worldviews are. Today he covers the two major worldviews: modernism and postmodernism. Although many today still approach life from a modernist mindset, postmodernism is here in increasing force. What are we as bible-believing Christians to do about this? The first step is to become aware of what's going on and how it both fits with and challenges the biblical worldview.

—— Links ——

• Find out more about Jacob Ballard at the Timberland Bible Church website
• If you’d like to support Restitutio, you can donate here.
• Leave a voice message via SpeakPipe with questions or comments
• Intro music: Good Vibes by MBB Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Free Download / Stream: Music promoted by Audio Library

Have you noticed the shifts happening all around us in our culture? Skepticism of traditional institutions from the government to the media to churches is at an all time high, while increasingly we're told to discover our authentic self and live it out courageously. Universal truth claims sound like power grabs while individual personal truths are celebrated no matter how patently false they seem. Corrosive deconstructionism has decimated traditional virtues, traditional ethics, and traditional ways of making sense of the world. The only hero that remains is the triumphant victim who boldly stands against the majority, shouting "This is who I am, you must accept me or we will take you down."

Ok, so I hammed it up a little there. Not all expressions of postmodernism are so strident. Even so, what is going on?

Pastor Jacob Ballard from Timberland Bible Church in Indiana will help us understand and engage with this incredible worldview shift that has occurred over the last few decades. Over the next four weeks, Ballard is going to share key insights from a class taught at the Atlanta Bible College designed to help students understand and minister to our changing society.

—— Links ——

• Find out more about Jacob Ballard at the Timberland Bible Church website
• Check out Dan Kimball's They Like Jesus but Not the Church
• If you’d like to support Restitutio, you can donate here.
• Leave a voice message via SpeakPipe with questions or comments
• Intro music: Good Vibes by MBB Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Free Download / Stream: Music promoted by Audio Library

Have you noticed the shrill tone that permeates public discourse in our time? It seems like everyone is on a hairpin trigger ready to rage and vent at their ideological enemies. What is a Christian to do? Should we stand up for our beliefs, morals, and politics? Should we disengage from conversation about controversial issues? Is there another way? Peter Miano, my guest for today, shares how respect, courtesy, and love can navigate us through these stormy waters. After earning degrees from Boston University, Union Theological Seminary, and Harvard Divinity School and becoming an ordained United Methodist Minister, Miano founded the Society for Biblical Studies, which coordinates trips to the Holy Land and other interesting places where conflict abounds.

—— Links ——

• Learn more about Peter Miano and get in contact with him at The Society for Biblical Studies of which he is the executive director.
• You may also like to read this article: "The Power of Unity in a Polarized Time"
• If you’d like to support Restitutio, you can donate here.
• Leave a voice message via SpeakPipe with questions or comments
• Intro music: Good Vibes by MBB Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Free Download / Stream: Music promoted by Audio Library

Did you know the Unitarian Christian Alliance just launched a podcast? In this interview, Mark Cain explains what he aims to do with this newest addition to one God podcasts and how the UCA podcast is different from the others. Ultimately, he wants to see unitarian Christians carry ourselves with confidence, knowing that our faith is firmly rooted in the scriptures.

—— Links ——

• Contact Mark Cain: [email protected] or by calling 615-581-1158 and leaving a message
• Check out the UCA podcast webpage or subscribe on Spotify
• More about Cain's church: Church of the Open Bible in Bedford, OH
• More about Cain's denomination: Church of God General Conference
• If you’d like to support Restitutio, you can donate here.
• Leave a voice message via SpeakPipe with questions or comments
• Intro music: Good Vibes by MBB Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Free Download / Stream: Music promoted by Audio

Sam who asked me not to use his last name for fear that he will get kicked out of his current church, tells his story of navigating evangelical Christianity as a biblical unitarian. He shares two sad stories of excommunication from a college ministry and a local church. As you might suspect, this harsh treatment drove Sam to question his non-trinitarian beliefs. Even though he had every reason to abandon his unorthodox convictions, his research into bible, theology, and history strengthened his faith that the Father of Jesus is the only true God. Now he has a YouTube channel where he interviews theologians and recently he debated Chris Date on Preston Sprinkle's Theology in the Raw podcast.

—— Links ——

Pastor Jeff Deuble of the Churches of Christ in Sydney, Australia shares his journey to uncover the genuine Jesus from scripture alone. After his brother Greg challenged him to understand Christ from a Jewish perspective, Jeff set out on a quest, reading through all of scripture to see what it really said about the Messiah. What he found upended his life, bringing both delight at his clearer understanding of Christ and heartbreak over losing the church he planted and pastored for 19 years. This is his story.

Here are some of the questions that caused Deuble to doubt the "traditional" understanding of Christ taught in the creeds:

• How can you have a singular God who is also plural?  How can you explain three “persons”, who constitute one “being”?
• How can Jesus be both “fully human” and “fully God”?  How does that work?
• How can Jesus be eternal, yet “begotten” by God? 
• The Bible says that “God cannot be tempted” but Jesus was tempted – in fact “in every way, just as we are” (Hebrews 4 says)
• We know “God alone is immortal” and therefore unable to die (Rom 1:23; 1Tim 6:16) yet Jesus was died, and was raised to life again by the Father. 
• We read that “no one has seen, or can see” God (1Tim 6:16) - that “no one has ever seen God” (Jn 1:18; 1Jn 4:12) yet Jesus was seen.
• God “knows everything” (1 Jn 3:26) yet Jesus himself admitted there were things that his Father knew that he himself did not (Mt 24:36; Mk 13:32).
• Why would “all authority in heaven and on earth” have to be given to him (Mt 28:18)?  Wouldn’t this already be his by virtue of him being God?
• If Jesus is God, how can he have a God over him (Which Paul clearly states is the case on many occasions, especially in 1 Cor 15)

—— Links ——

• Leave a voice message via SpeakPipe with questions or comments
• Get in touch with Jeff Deuble via email: [email protected]
• Check out the interview with Greg Deuble (Jeff's brother) They Never Told Me This in Church
• More interviews with those who studied their way out of the Trinity
• If you’d like to support Restitutio, you can donate here.
• Intro music: Good Vibes by MBB Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Free Download / Stream: Music promoted by Audio

This is the second part of a conversation where Jerry Wierwille challenges Brandon Duke's soul-making theodicy. In particular, Wierwille raises the following questions:

1. Why is hiddenness and epistemic distance considered a necessity for moral development considering the biblical examples where people experienced God and still retained their ability to make real moral choices either to obey or reject him?
2. How can the four Ds (death, decay, deprivation, and damage) be considered good when scripture calls death itself God's enemy?
3. Considering that evil and suffering are not 100% effective in bringing about moral development and are in some cases even deleterious to that end, how can soul-making work as a thoroughgoing theodicy?

—— Links ——

• Leave a voice message via SpeakPipe with questions or comments
• Get in touch with Brandon Duke on his website: TruthBorn
• See other episodes with Jerry Wierwille
• Get in touch with Wierwille at his website
• More episodes and posts about the problem of evil and suffering
• If you’d like to support Restitutio, you can donate here.
• Intro music: Good Vibes by MBB Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Free Download / Stream: Music promoted by Audio

In our last two episodes, Brandon Duke laid out his way of answering the question of why God allows so much suffering in our world. He did so by putting forward a modified version of the late John Hick's soul-making theodicy. In this episode, Jerry Wierwille pushes back on a few issues with soul-making, preferring instead a classic free will theodicy. First we'll see how Duke's version of soul-making differs from John Hick's then we'll examine how soul-making lines up with the four major elements of the biblical meta-narrative: creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. Lastly we'll discuss whether moral improvement necessitates suffering.

—— Links ——

• Leave a voice message via SpeakPipe with questions or comments
• Michael Murray vs. Phil Harper on Unbelievable, discussing "Animal Suffering and God"
• Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on John Hick
• See Sean Finnegan's atonement research, outlining seven major views Christians have taken over the centuries
• Get in touch with Brandon Duke on his website: TruthBorn
• See other episodes with Jerry Wierwille
• Get in touch with Wierwille at his website
• More episodes and posts about the problem of evil and suffering
• If you’d like to support Restitutio, you can donate here.
• Intro music: Good Vibes by MBB Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Free Download / Stream: Music promoted by Audio