Extra Credit Podcast

The Garden of the Heart Ep. 4 After letting C.S. Lewis take us on a tour of the glories and dangers of friendship, we look at the heart of the scandalous nature of the gospel—in Christ we are friends of God. In antiquity the three elements of true friendship were thought to be unity, mutuality/reciprocity, and equality. How is it that God can share these things with us? Can we be in a mutual and r...

The Garden of the Heart Ep. 3 This week we discuss both the glories and the dangers of storgē —or the familial affections—ending with Jesus’ odd teaching that we must “hate” our family if we would be one of his disciples. “So people called by Jesus learn that they had lived an illusion in their relationship to the world. The illusion is immediacy. It has blocked faith and obedience. Now they know...

The Garden of the Heart Ep. 2— 1 John tells us that God is love. But does he really mean that literally? Or is this hyperbolic speech? This week we discuss the grounding reality of the Trinity, God’s divine love, and his divine humility which is his glory. Here is the wonderful quote from Gordon Fee on his experience of writing his commentary on 1 Corinthians 13 (as shared by his daughter, Cherith...

The Garden of the Heart Ep. 1— This week we begin a new study on the heart and mapping out the terrain of its loves. Our tour guides include C.S. Lewis (and his excellent little book The Four Loves ), Chris Green (and his TheoCon lectures on “ The Theology of the Heart ”), St. Augustine ( Confessions ), St. Maximus the Confessor ( Four Hundred Chapters on Love ). This week we take a look at why so...

Summenary Ep. 8 Robert Jenson on the church… Theological reflection about the church is in many ways a modern development. For most of history, Christian theologians simply took the church as a presupposition rather than as something specific to be talked about. It was the fragmentation in the Western Church at the time of the Reformation that sparked the church’s reelection on what it means to be...

Summenary Ep. 7 Robert Jenson on the doctrine of the atonement… By a “doctrine of atonement” we conventionally understand an account of why Jesus’ death on a Cross is important to us, and specifically for our relation to God. Notoriously, “atonement” is a deliberate coinage - though an old one, documented to 1513 - meaning the act of putting things at one, particularly where a previous unity has b...

Summenary Ep. 6 Robert Jenson on the Image of God… Theology has used the word “freedom” as a slogan for this distinction between humankind and nature. That distinction, by the way, comes from the Greeks. Freedom, for Aristotle, was rather limited in its scope. Women stayed home having babies and caring for them because they were thought to be a part of nature. Servants, too, were bound by nature i...

Summenary Ep. 5 Genesis 1:3-4 A nd God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good… The Hebrew word “ tov” is like our English word good. It suggests that if something is “good” it must be “ good for something .” There is purpose. Over and over again in Genesis 1 we read that God saw what he had made and that he saw it as good / tov . So, God finds his cr...

Summenary Ep. 4 Jenson on the doctrine of the Trinity… [This] is the root and substance and heart of the so-called doctrine of the Trinity. God has a history with his people and the personages of this history are the Father of Jesus who is the author of the story, Jesus Christ, and the Spirit. It—the doctrine of the Trinity, I mean—is moreover the root and substance of the prayer that Jesus taught...

Summenary Ep. 3. NOTE: If you want to read along in this series on Robert Jenson’s A Theology in Outline , you can find the PDF of next week’s reading below: Don’t forget to register for TheoCon with Chris Green if you haven’t yet! He will be teaching on Song of Songs and our union with Christ. You can register to attend in person or to watch the livestream by clicking the buttons below: Who is Je...

Summenary Ep. 2. NOTE: If you want to read along in this series on Robert Jenson’s A Theology in Outline , you can find the PDF of next week’s reading below: We take up chapter 2 in Robert Jenson’s A Theology In Outline: Can These Bones Live ? discussing the story of Israel with her unusual, timely God. Here are a few quick quotes from Jenson on God and time: “The gods of the great myths are ‘eter...

Summenary Ep. 1. NOTE: If you want to read along in this series on Robert Jenson’s A Theology in Outline , you can find the PDF of next week’s reading below: Making our way through Robert Jenson’s, A Theology in Outline: Can These Bones Live we begin with the question: “What is theology?” “Theology,” says Jenson, “is thinking what to say to be saying the gospel.” The gospel can not simply be parro...

The Will of God Ep. 7. NOTE: We will be starting a new study next week through a short book by Robert Jenson called A Theology in Outline: Can These Bones Live? Each week we will take a chapter of the book for our class. I’m encouraging everyone to read along. You can find a PDF of the first chapter below. Bonhoeffer on becoming guilty for Christ’s sake… By turning our focus back to the origin of...

The Will of God Ep. 6. This week we try to think through the reasons for the anxiety that seems constituent of modern life and seeking to do the will of God. Here is the passage from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethics that we finished with: All that we have said thus far implies that we have abandoned the abstract notion, largely dominant in ethical thought, of an isolated individual who has available a...

The Will of God Ep. 5 “Whoever accuses or judges a brother or sister, accuses the law and judges the law; but if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge.” -James 4:11 Bonhoeffer commenting on James 4 writes, Judging stands in absolute opposition to doing…There are two types of behavior with regard to the law, judging and doing; they are mutually exclusive. Those who judge unde...

The Will of God Ep. 4. This week we discuss how we can hear the voice of God. Bonhoeffer is convinced that the primary and the orienting way God speaks directly to us is through preaching. He writes: Proclamation is the specific mandate given to the church. God wants a place at which, until the end of the world, God’s word is again and again spoken, pronounced, delivered, expounded, and spread. Th...

The Will of God Ep. 3. This week we discuss knowing the will of God for our lives. God’s will is not a secret. God has revealed it and wants us to know it and do it. We discuss the difference between abstract, universal moral principles and the concrete commandment of God and we looked at the life of Bonhoeffer as an example. Here are a few quotes that cut to the quick of the class: Bonhoeffer on...

The Will of God Ep. 2. A catena on the birth of God in each person: Meister Eckhart: Here, in time, we are celebrating the eternal birth which God the Father bore and bears unceasingly in eternity, because this same birth is now born in time, in human nature. St. Augustine says, “What does it avail me that this birth is always happening, if it does not happen in me? That it should happen in me is...

The Will of God Ep. 1 Here is an excerpt from Chris Green’s Surprised by God that not only cuts to the heart of what we discussed in class, but is the genesis for all my thoughts on the matter: “In many ways, our move toward a mature grasp of the truth begins in the recognition that God is not in control of what happens in the world, and that all that we experience in this world is at best an inco...

The Joseph Story Ep. 7. In lieu of a write-up of the class I’ll leave you with a couple of quotations. The first, from St. Maximus the Confessor, which framed our discussion. The second, from Chris Green’s Sanctifying Interpretation , which was the primary source for the entire class. St. Maximus the Confessor: “In consequence, it is necessary for him who seeks God piously not to latch on to a phr...

The Joseph Story Ep. 6. Jewish scholar Yair Zakovitch says that the book of Genesis is the Table of Contents for the Bible. Everything is contained Genesis in embryonic form, it is the genetic code of the Bible. The more I study Genesis the more I’m convinced he’s right. I don’t think it’s much of an exaggeration to say that most every point Paul makes in his letters can be made on the basis of te...

The Joseph Story Ep. 5 The Roaring Lion At the end of the Joseph story the elderly patriarch Jacob gathers his sons around him to deliver last words to each of them. It is Judah (along with Joseph) that receives the most positive (and lengthiest) words. This helps us to pay closer attention to the important role that Judah plays in the Joseph narrative. He is one of the heroes of the story. Jacob’...

The Joseph Story Ep. 4 This week we take a close look at Joseph’s scheme (dissembling) that he puts his brothers through. The scheme serves the purpose of forcing the brothers to experience the suffering they caused Joseph in an “eye-for-an-eye” type justice. But it also forces them to relive their original crime, which unearths their feelings of guilt. In other words, Joseph scheme causes his bro...

The Joseph Story Ep. 3 A preliminary remark: One of the gifts of Scripture is that its stories allow us to process our deep-seated personal pain in a safe way. I can talk about my own pain a lot easier by talking about Joseph’s pain. The topic of trauma is a sensitive one, but perhaps the Joseph narrative can give us enough distance from our own circumstances—even for a moment—to think about the n...

A Sermon for Good Friday 2026 A Good Friday sermon on Psalm 22 9 Yet it was you who took me from the womb; you kept me safe on my mother’s breast. 10 On you I was cast from my birth, and since my mother bore me you have been my God. Johannes Tauler (1300-1361) on Mary at the foot of Jesus’ cross: “For if any creature could have brought comfort to our Lord as He hung upon the Cross, none would have...