Gospel Conversations podcast

Tony builds on his recent talk on the new covenant in Jeremiah by exploring how the Epistle of Hebrews uses this new covenant promise in the NT. Hebrews 8 quotes the Jeremiah passage in full – the longest OT quotation in the NT. What is interesting is how the writer uses the Jeremiah passage and takes it further by explaining how the contract based law of Moses failed to deliver what God wanted. G...

Leisa finishes the year off for GC with a profound summary of her doctorate on ‘hope’. It is full of gems and very relevant for an anxious and despairing world.  Her doctorate was targeted at the secular world of clinical psychology, but in this talk we get a ‘Christian’ version of this important work where Leisa can be explicit about the theological grounds for her ideas. She aligns her work with...

This is the second of three short talks from Gospel Conversations supporters as a response to Esther Meek's Covenant Epistemology. Mark Ridgeway explores the thought of Esther Meek in the context of Discipleship. He follows the contours of Covenant Epistemology, explores the practice of inviting the real and concludes with some practical recommendations for the Church. Get full access to Gospel Co...

This is the first of three short talks from Gospel Conversations supporters as a response to Esther Meek's Covenant Epistemology.   In this talk Ron Winestock addresses the big questions of the universe and how Covenant Epistemology can help us see clearly through the two levels of knowing. Ron argues that since Isaac Newton we have emphasised the focal and discredited the subsidiary. Get full acc...

In this closing section of the conference Esther Meek finishes with the question, how does the Real Invite Us? Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

In this talk Tony explores the extraordinary declaration of the ‘new covenant’ in Jeremiah 31 and asks “What is ‘new’ about this new covenant?” He argues that is far more ‘new’ than most Christians assume:  it is a paradigm shift that overturns the very nature of contract and conditions. Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

Esther Meek opens the afternoon session by addressing how Love invites the Real. Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

In this third and final section on Subsidiary Focal Integration Esther introduces Love as key component of her Covenant Epistemology. Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

This is the continuation of Esther's second talk where she continues to explain the practice of Subsidiary Focal Integration with an emphasis on how the concept of Integration works. At the end of the session participants are asked to share their examples of Subsidiary Focal Integration in operation. Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

This is the first half of Esther's second talk where she introduces the concept of subsidiary focal integration. Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

This is the first lecture given by Prof Esther Meek at the Gospel Conversations conference in 2022. The talk is titled "The Crisis of Meaning". Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe

Lots of Christian preaching frames ‘forgiveness of sins’ as the big offer of the gospel.  But this does not lead us far enough. It also implies holiness and wrath as the key attributes of God. Jeremiah 9 takes us somewhere else – the knowledge of God and his work on the earth is the end game of the gospel.  Tony unpacks these epic verses in this latest Breakfast with Jesus talk.     Get full acces...

Where do we put Jesus into our philosophy of knowledge?  This talk by Mark is a compacted, brilliant answer to this question. He takes Jesus out of the religious box (which limits his Lordship to morality and ritual) and positions him as Lord of the cosmos – including politics and history. To make this real for us, he takes us on a whirlwind tour of Paul and his apprehension of how Jesus had turne...

Tony argues that the word ‘hell’ is not only a mistranslation – which nobody can deny – but he goes on to explain how the medieval choice of this word has distorted the gospel and its impact. He takes us to Jeremiah to get closer to the real meanings of what Jesus may have meant by his use of the original word (Gehenna) that was mistranslated as ‘hell’.  Get full access to Gospel Conversations at...

In this latest BWJ talk Tony looks at an intriguing mistranslation by the NIV of a key verse in Jeremiah 7 – and unpacks how that ‘mistranslation’ actually shines a light on the big current debate over the ‘holiness’ of God versus the ‘mercy of God’.  He puts forward this controversial claim: “if you start with the ‘holiness’ of God as his primary attribute, you can’t find your way to the true gos...

Tony takes us on an intriguing literary journey in this short talk.  He compares Old Testament literature to Homer and Greek literature and explains how they offer contrasting views of reality.  He then turns this contrast onto Jeremiah and explains how Jeremiah offers the climax and the resolution to much of Kings and the anger of God in the histories. In all of this he uses the great literary te...

In this latest Breakfast with Jesus talk Tony addresses the question of the ‘angry’ God.  No prophet captured God’s wrath quite as eloquently as Jeremiah – so we would expect the themes of retribution and judgment to dominate his views.  But Tony looks closely at the text and finds a very different view to this….  A God made vulnerable by love. Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconv...

This is the third talk in our Habakkuk series, and in it Tony dives into the Exodus as an alternative paradigm on redemption.  He contrasts the very significant differences in emphasis that the Exodus paradigm of redemption introduces when compared to the Penal Substitution model.  Then he opens up the grand cosmic sweep that the Exodus model opens up – and he finishes with a very different pictur...

In this second talk for Breakfast with Jesus Tony summarises the devastating critique by Michael Sandel on the way that Calvinism has laid the groundwork for inequality and a ‘winner/loser’ society in modern America. Tony connects this idea to the prophet Jeremiah – strangely enough – and to the previous talk on the ‘first fruits’ model as an alternative to the included/excluded model implicit in...

This is the first talk on our new ‘Breakfast with Jesus’ channel. We have decided to publish the first few talks on our regular channel so that you can get a feel for what Tony is intending to deliver. In due course we will move these talks to a separate podcast channel and to a separate section of the Gospel Conversations website.   In this very first talk Tony dwells on the significance of the p...

This is our latest talk from Gospel conversations.  it was also our first face to face forum in a couple of years. Tony took us through the great minor prophet Habakkuk whom he calls the ‘Hamlet’ of the Old Testament.  Habakkuk is like Hamlet, because the whole book, all three chapters, is an extended inner dialogue between the prophet and God. It is thus not so much a book about prophecies, but a...

Why did the wrong guy win? The Disastrous results of the rivalry between two visions of God Gospel Conversations  welcomes you to the third talk on Gregory of Nyssa between Tony Golsby-Smith and David Bentley Hart. The towering genius of Augustine casts a long and too often dark shadow over western Christianity. What would Christianity have looked like if the equal genius of Gregory had achieved s...

Welcome to the second conversation between David and Tony on Gregory of Nyssa. ‘Gregory and his Sister on the Resurrection of all Humanity’ How a woman’s mind framed the gospel around the resurrection. In a sense that is the topic of David and Tony’s second conversation on Gregory of Nyssa. In this chat they discuss Gregory’s epic “On the Soul and the Resurrection’ which is structured as a dialogu...

People all over the world are rediscovering the great 4th century theologian, Gregory of Nyssa.  David Bentley Hart is an unabashed admirer of the great Cappadocian Father calling him the most innovative theologian of the early church. In this first of three interviews on Gregory’s thought and influence, David introduces us to Gregory and explains why he was the so-called ‘pillar of orthodoxy’ and...

Get full access to Gospel Conversations at gospelconversations.substack.com/subscribe