Theology for the Curious

Click here to text us your thoughts and questions!Does God know exactly what will happen tomorrow? Can He prevent every tragedy? Does prayer actually change God? And when the Bible tells us that God grieves, regrets or changes His mind, are we witnessing genuine changes within God Himself? These questions lie at the heart of process theism, one of the most radical challenges to the traditional Christian understanding of God. What if God isn’t the unchanging, all-powerful Creator described by classical Christianity, but a God who develops alongside His creation, is genuinely affected by our experiences and cannot always prevent suffering? For some, this offers a more compassionate and relatable understanding of God. For others, it threatens to undermine everything Christianity has historically believed about His sovereignty, perfection and power.In this fascinating episode the Curious team trace the development of process theism through influential thinkers including Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne, exploring why their ideas have attracted theologians seeking answers to the problems of evil, suffering and divine love. We also examine Timothy George’s provocative criticism of what he called a “transcendence-starved deity”. Does God’s ability to love require Him to change? Can a God who cannot guarantee the future truly offer us hope? And have Christians misunderstood what it means for God to be immutable and impassible? Join us as we explore a debate that reaches far beyond academic theology to the very heart of prayer, suffering, providence and worship, asking one fundamental question: Is God part of the unfolding process of reality, or is He the eternal Creator upon whom all reality depends?Further ReadingHere’s a bit of homework for you….we’ve included a few articles, for and against, that compliment this episode….https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/process-theism/https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/the-attributes-of-god/https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/process-theology/What we’re reading?As a feature to our notes, we are adding the book or books that we’ve browsed related to this episode…enjoy! James E. Dolezal—All That Is in God: Evangelical Theology and the Challenge of Classical Christian TheismRob Lister— God Is Impassible and Impassioned Toward Us: Toward a Theology of Divine EmotionSend your questions or thoughts to: [email protected] us on Instagram @theologyforthecuriousFind us on TikTok: @theologyforthecurious

Click here to text us your thoughts and questions!What if hell isn’t the end of the story? What if God’s final victory is not simply the defeat of evil, but the restoration of every person who has ever lived? Is it possible that even the most rebellious heart will one day bow willingly before Christ? Or does such a belief undermine the very warnings Jesus gave about judgment, destruction and eternal punishment?Christian universalism: ancient heresy, legitimate Christian hope, or the logical conclusion of the gospel? It’s a question that has divided some of Christianity’s greatest thinkers for centuries. From the early Church Fathers to contemporary theologians, the arguments are far more compelling, and the objections far more serious, than many imagine. Join Theology for the Curious as they engage a fascinating episode exploring the question carrying eternal consequences: Will God ultimately save everyone?Further ReadingHere’s a bit of homework for you….we’ve included a few articles, for and against, that compliment this episode….https://www.mercyonall.org/posts/7-myths-about-universalismhttps://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/universalism-will-everyone-finally-be-saved/What we’re reading?As a feature to our notes, we are adding the book or books that we’ve browsed related to this episode…enjoy! Robin Parry (writing as Gregory MacDonald)—The Evangelical UniversalistEd. Christopher W. Morgan & Robert A Peterson— Hell Under Fire: Modern Scholarship Reinvents Eternal PunishmentSend your questions or thoughts to: [email protected] us on Instagram @theologyforthecuriousFind us on TikTok: @theologyforthecurious

Click here to text us your thoughts and questions!John Calvin has become one of the most famous — and most caricatured — figures in Christian history. To some he is the towering theologian of the Reformation; to others, the grim dictator of Geneva, obsessed with predestination and intolerant of anyone who stood in his way. But who was the real Calvin? In this first of two episodes on Calvinism, the Curious team are joined by leading Reformation historian Bruce Gordon to move beyond both the admiration and the mythology and uncover the man himself — brilliant and difficult, fiercely driven yet deeply wounded, capable of extraordinary loyalty and equally extraordinary conflictFrom his early years in France and reluctant arrival in Geneva, through failure, exile and the formative years in Strasbourg, we follow the experiences that turned a gifted young scholar into one of the most influential pastors and theologians in Christian history. We explore his friendships, marriage, grief, preaching, battles with Geneva, the controversy surrounding Michael Servetus, and the question of how much power Calvin really possessed. Was he the cold, joyless tyrant of popular imagination, or does the historical Calvin turn out to be a far more human, contradictory and fascinating figure? Before we ask what Calvinism teaches, perhaps we first need to ask: who exactly was the Calvin in Calvinism?Further ReadingHere’s a bit of homework for you….we’ve included a few articles that compliment this episode….https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/who-was-john-calvin-and-why-was-he-important/https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/article/the-spiritual-utility-of-calvins-correspondence-during-the-strasbourg-years/What we’re reading?As a feature to our notes, we are adding the book or books that we’ve browsed related to this episode…enjoy! Bruce Gordon—Calvin  Bruce Gordon—John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion: A BiographySend your questions or thoughts to: [email protected] us on Instagram @theologyforthecuriousFind us on TikTok: @theologyforthecurious

Click here to text us your thoughts and questions!Have you ever stood beneath a sky full of stars, gazed across a breathtaking landscape, or listened to the crashing waves of the ocean and felt that God was somehow present? But what if we took that experience one step further? What if nature doesn’t simply reveal God, but actually is God? What if everything in existence, including you and me, belongs to one great divine reality? This is the fascinating claim of pantheism, an ancient idea that continues to influence modern spirituality, philosophy and even the language we use about God.In this episode of Theology for the Curious, the Curious team explore why pantheism is so attractive, what thinkers such as Baruch Spinoza believed, and how its understanding of God challenges some of Christianity’s most fundamental convictions. If everything is God, what happens to evil, prayer, salvation and the uniqueness of Jesus Christ? And could the popularity of pantheism reveal something that Christians themselves have forgotten about God’s presence in the world? Join us as we wrestle with a deceptively simple question that has enormous implications: Is God the Creator of everything, or is God everything?Further ReadingHere’s a bit of homework for you….we’ve included a few articles, for and against, that compliment this episode….https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pantheism/https://www.monergism.com/pantheismWhat we’re reading?As a feature to our notes, we are adding the book or books that we’ve browsed related to this episode…enjoy! John W. Cooper—Panentheism: The Other God of the Philosophers: From Plato To The Present David K. Clark & Norman L. Geisler— Apologetics in the New Age: A Christian Critique of Pantheism Send your questions or thoughts to: [email protected] us on Instagram @theologyforthecuriousFind us on TikTok: @theologyforthecurious

Click here to text us your thoughts and questions!Imagine What happens when belief in God is removed — and what takes its place?In this second part of our series on atheism, the Curious team invite us to meet some of the thinkers who profoundly shaped modern unbelief: Feuerbach, Marx, Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud and Russell. Their challenges to Christianity went far beyond simply saying, “God does not exist.” Was God a projection of human longing? Was religion a tool of oppression? Could evolution remove the need for a Creator? And when Nietzsche announced that “God is dead”, was he celebrating the disappearance of Christianity — or warning the West about what might happen when the foundations beneath morality, meaning and purpose were removed?The episode then turns its attention to the extraordinary rise — and subsequent fragmentation — of the New Atheism of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett. Why did their books capture the imagination of so many people after 9/11, and why did a movement united by opposition to religion later find itself divided over morality, identity and what atheism actually stood for? Along the way the team ask an even more basic question: what does it actually mean to be an atheist? From strong atheism and agnostic atheism to apatheism, misotheism and John Gray’s “seven types”, this episode asks whether atheism is simply the absence of belief — or whether every account of reality ultimately has to answer the deeper questions of meaning, morality, dignity, purpose and hope.Further ReadingHere’s a bit of homework for you….we’ve included a few articles, for and against, that compliment this episode….https://sharedveracity.net/2021/12/11/how-believers-become-unbelievers-a-review-of-alec-ryries-emotional-history-of-doubt/https://learn.ligonier.org/podcasts/5-minutes-in-church-history-with-stephen-nichols/history-of-atheismWhat we’re reading?As a feature to our notes, we are adding the book or books that we’ve browsed related to this episode…enjoy! John Gray—Seven Types of AtheismAlec Ryri— Unbelievers: An Emotional History of DoubtAlister McGrath— The Twilight of AtheismSend your questions or thoughts to: [email protected] us on Instagram @theologyforthecuriousFind us on TikTok: @theologyforthecurious

Click here to text us your thoughts and questions!Atheism can look like the obvious alternative to belief in God, but its story is far more complex than simply “science replaced religion.” In this episode, the Curious team trace the development of unbelief from the ancient world through the Enlightenment and into the modern West, asking why atheism remained a minority position for so long — and what changed. From Diagoras, Democritus and Epicurus to Hume, Voltaire and the intellectual revolutions that followed, we explore the different ideas that slowly reshaped the way Western culture thought about God, reason, morality and human freedom.Along the way, the team challenge the idea that atheism is one single worldview. Marx, Nietzsche, Russell and Dawkins do not all mean the same thing when they reject God, and even the word atheism has had a fascinating history — Christians themselves were once accused by the Romans of being “atheists” because they rejected the pagan gods. So how did a marginal philosophical position become one of the dominant stories of modern Western culture? And what assumptions does atheism itself bring to the table? This week’s Theology for the Curious is an invitation to look beyond slogans and understand the deeper history behind one of the most influential intellectual movements of our age.Further ReadingHere’s a bit of homework for you….we’ve included a few articles, for and against, that compliment this episode….https://sharedveracity.net/2021/12/11/how-believers-become-unbelievers-a-review-of-alec-ryries-emotional-history-of-doubt/https://learn.ligonier.org/podcasts/5-minutes-in-church-history-with-stephen-nichols/history-of-atheismWhat we’re reading?As a feature to our notes, we are adding the book or books that we’ve browsed related to this episode…enjoy! John Gray—Seven Types of AtheismAlec Ryri— Unbelievers: An Emotional History of DoubtAlister McGrath— The Twilight of AtheismSend your questions or thoughts to: [email protected] us on Instagram @theologyforthecuriousFind us on TikTok: @theologyforthecurious

Click here to text us your thoughts and questions!For seven months, theologians gathered through a bitter Dutch winter to answer questions that had already spilled far beyond the walls of the church. A professor was dead. His followers were fighting for their theological inheritance. A powerful statesman awaited his fate. And delegates had travelled from across Europe to a small Dutch city to decide what Christians could — and could not — say about grace, freedom, election and the saving purposes of God.Four centuries later, the arguments have survived almost everything else about the controversy. Why does one person believe while another does not? Does God choose us because we believe, or do we believe because God has chosen us? Did Christ die in precisely the same sense for everyone? Can saving grace finally be resisted — and can somebody genuinely united to Christ ultimately walk away? Behind the familiar labels Calvinism and Arminianism lies a much more complicated and human story. This week the Curious team continue their exploration of the impact and reach of the teaching of Jacob Arminius as they enter the Synod of Dort and discover how five disputed articles helped shape a theological conversation that Christians are still having today.Further ReadingHere’s a bit of homework for you….we’ve included a few articles that compliment this episode….https://www.crcna.org/welcome/beliefs/confessions/canons-dorthttps://www.crcna.org/news-and-events/news/digging-history-synod-dorthttps://seedbed.com/a-primer-on-prevenient-grace/What we’re reading?As a feature to our notes, we are adding the book or books that we’ve browsed related to this episode…enjoy! W. Robert Godfrey—Saving The Reformation: The Pastoral Theology of the Canons of Dort Send your questions or thoughts to: [email protected] us on Instagram @theologyforthecuriousFind us on TikTok: @theologyforthecurious

Click here to text us your thoughts and questions!It began with questions in a university lecture room. Before long, ministers were being driven from churches, congregations were splitting, pamphlets were flooding the streets and armed troops were facing one another across Dutch cities. Somewhere along the way, a dispute about predestination had become a struggle over who governed the church, who governed the nation — and perhaps even who governed history itself.At the centre of the storm was a theologian who had once been expected to defend the very doctrine he would later question. Jacob Arminius died before the controversy bearing his name reached its extraordinary climax, but his ideas survived him — carried forward by friends, politicians and theologians until the Dutch Republic stood perilously close to fracture. How did an argument about grace and election lead to soldiers in Utrecht, political prisoners in The Hague and theologians from across Europe gathering at Dordrecht? This week the Curious team begin the first of two parts on the history of Jacob Arminius and his ideas. The road to the Synod of Dort is considerably more dramatic than the five points it eventually produced.Further ReadingHere’s a bit of homework for you….we’ve included a few articles that compliment this episode….https://learn.ligonier.org/articles/arminius-and-remonstrantshttps://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/defender-of-gods-justiceWhat we’re reading?As a feature to our notes, we are adding the book or books that we’ve browsed related to this episode…enjoy! Keith D Stanglin and Thomas H McCall—Jacob Arminius: Theologian Of Grace Roger E Olson—Arminian Theology – Myths and Realities Send your questions or thoughts to: [email protected] us on Instagram @theologyforthecuriousFind us on TikTok: @theologyforthecurious

Click here to text us your thoughts and questions!Imagine that before the first moment of creation, every road history might take lay open before God. Every decision you could make. Every decision you would make if your circumstances were different. Every conversation that never happened, every opportunity never presented, every alternative history never lived. Now imagine that God knew them all — and chose to create this particular world. Suddenly the familiar questions about providence and human freedom become considerably more intriguing.But hidden inside that proposal is a question that is surprisingly difficult to escape. If God knows what a genuinely free person would choose before that person even exists, what makes that knowledge true? Somewhere between God’s sovereignty and our freedom lies one of Christian theology’s most ingenious attempts to hold the two together — and perhaps one of its greatest philosophical puzzles. It’s called Molinism, and once you understand the problem it is trying to solve, you may find yourself looking at providence rather differently. Join the curious Team this week as they take a nose dive into the key players and ideas behind MolinismFurther ReadingHere’s a bit of homework for you….we’ve included a few articles that compliment this episode….https://learn.ligonier.org/articles/molinism-101https://academic.oup.com/mind/article/131/522/459/6382285What we’re reading?As a feature to our notes, we are adding the book or books that we’ve browsed related to this episode…enjoy! James R White—The Potters Freedom William Lane Craig—The Only Wise GodSend your questions or thoughts to: [email protected] us on Instagram @theologyforthecuriousFind us on TikTok: @theologyforthecurious

Click here to text us your thoughts and questions!We trust God with tomorrow. We pray about decisions we haven’t yet made, circumstances we cannot control and dangers we cannot see. We take comfort from the belief that however uncertain the road ahead may appear to us, it is not uncertain to Him. But what if we have misunderstood that? What if some of tomorrow remains genuinely undecided — not simply from our perspective, but from God’s?It is an idea motivated by some deeply human questions about love, freedom, suffering and prayer. Yet follow it far enough and it begins to touch almost everything we believe about God. Can He be surprised? Can He discover something He did not previously know? Can He change His plans? And if the future contains possibilities rather than certainties, what does that mean for prophecy, providence and the promises on which Christians have staked their lives? In this episode, the curious team are joined by theologian Professor Bruce Ware to explore one of the most fascinating — and controversial debates about the nature of God: Open Theism.Further ReadingHere’s a bit of homework for you….we’ve included a few articles, for and against, that compliment this episode….https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/openness-theology-divine-omniscience/https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/open-theism/v-1What we’re reading?As a feature to our notes, we are adding the book or books that we’ve browsed related to this episode…enjoy! Bruce A. Ware—God’s Lesser Glory: The Diminished God of Open TheismGregory A. Boyd — God of the Possible: A Biblical Introduction to the Open View of GodSend your questions or thoughts to: [email protected] us on Instagram @theologyforthecuriousFind us on TikTok: @theologyforthecurious