On the Journey

Ken Hensley turns the tables on Matt Swaim to ask him about the process that led him to the Catholic Faith. There is a lot of discussion among those who grew up Evangelical, especially in the 80's and 90's, about "deconstructing" their Evangelicalism. Matt shares how that process took place for him through his experience of Christian music subcultures, scandals in church leadership, and the Christ...

Matt Swaim and Ken Hensley conclude their series looking into ways to reframe conversations about faith with people who doubt or deny the existence of God. Having looked at various implications of a purely scientific materialist world view on the questions of consciousness, morality, human dignity and free will, Matt and Ken discuss how that kind of worldview, which intends to be based solely on r...

Matt Swaim and Ken Hensley continue their series looking into ways to reframe conversations about faith with people who doubt or deny the existence of God. If a purely materialist worldview means free will is an illusion, consciousness is an illusion, morality and human dignity and knowledge itself are illusions, then what's the point of anything? The atheist worldview, which often begins by asser...

Matt Swaim and Ken Hensley continue their series looking into ways to reframe conversations about faith with people who doubt or deny the existence of God. In a purely material universe, facts most certainly exist. But can our knowledge of them exist, if knowledge is not made of matter? And if our very thoughts are nothing more than deterministic processes taking place in the brain, by what measur...

Matt Swaim and Ken Hensley continue their series looking into ways to reframe conversations about faith with people who doubt or deny the existence of God. If our universe is governed purely by the laws of physics and biology and chemistry, and actions producing reactions in a world without meaning, does free will even exist? Is our perceived ability to make free choices only an illusion that we'v...

Matt Swaim and Ken Hensley continue their series looking into ways to reframe conversations about faith with people who doubt or deny the existence of God. Does consciousness exist, or is it merely an illusion? If scientific materialism is true, then how do we account for not just conscience, but consciousness? Is the idea that we are aware of our own sense of self something that scientific materi...

Matt Swaim and Ken Hensley continue their series looking into ways to reframe conversations about faith with people who doubt or deny the existence of God. If God is dead, as some atheist materialists claim, or if at the very least, our idea of Him is dead, then what next? If there is no God, then what is the basis for attaching meaning to anything at all? Or are we left with Neitszche, asking, "H...

Matt Swaim and Ken Hensley continue their series looking into ways to reframe conversations about faith with people who doubt or deny the existence of God. In a purely scientific materialist view of the world, how can anyone assert that human beings have any more value than any other species? And in a worldview that only takes evolutionary priorities into account, how can an argument be made for d...

Matt Swaim and Ken Hensley continue their series looking into ways to reframe conversations about faith with people who doubt or deny the existence of God. Atheism that relies on pure scientific materialism has a morality problem. That's not to say that atheists have a problem being moral; in fact, many atheists have an extremely well developed moral sense and care deeply about right and wrong. Th...

Matt Swaim and Ken Hensley continue their series looking into ways to reframe conversations about faith with people who doubt or deny the existence of God. If there is no God, and there are no moral absolutes, then any attempt to say that one take on morality is better than another take is more of a statement of preference than a statement of value. Matt and Ken look at how, though it might seem a...

Matt Swaim and Ken Hensley continue their series looking into ways to reframe conversations about faith with people who doubt or deny the existence of God. Atheists and Theists alike believe that some moral sense should govern the way we interact with one another. But if humans are no different than any other species on the planet, then who's to say that the needs of humans in any area of life sho...

Matt Swaim and Ken Hensley begin a new series looking into ways to reframe conversations about faith with people who doubt or deny the existence of God.  There are plenty of people who hold various philosophical perspectives that deny the supernatural, or the existence of purpose or meaning in the universe, and argue that human beings are merely biological machines living out deterministic evoluti...

Matt Swaim and Ken Hensley conclude their series on the Reformation by looking at how the movements and ideas that took root then have influenced the way the modern world looks today. In many ways, the factors that drove the Reformation -- technology, individualism, a plurality of ideas -- are the same factors that characterize contemporary culture. For more episodes, visit chnetwork.org/onthejour...

As Matt Swaim and Ken Hensley have been discussing in this series, there were many historical and cultural factors that caused the Reformation to happen when it did. But it is impossible to overstate the impact that the hypocrisy, greed, and arrogance of Catholic leaders at every level had on the revolution that Christianity underwent in the 16th century. The rot in the Church was so bad that even...

Matt Swaim and Ken Hensley continue their series exploring the causes of and reasons for the Continental Reformation by considering three major elements that played into it: the invention of the printing press, the proliferation of new theological ideas, and the rise of humanism as an educational philosophy. Exploring these three factors helps make sense of why the Reformation happened when it did...

Matt Swaim and Ken Hensley begin a new series on the Continental Reformation, which is often understood as having started with Martin Luther before expanding rapidly across Europe and beyond. As Evangelical Protestants, Matt and Ken had both done historical studies of the issues at stake in the Reformation. But the deeper they both dove into the theology, the cultural conditions of the time, and t...

After several weeks discussing Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium, Matt Swaim and Ken Hensley conclude their discussion of how they wrestled with the question of Christian authority on their way into the Catholic Church. Infallibility is one of the most misunderstood concepts in all of Catholic teaching, and to both Matt and Ken as Protestants, it sounded completely insane and unbiblical. T...

Having spent several weeks looking at how they began to rethink Christian authority as Evangelical Christians, Matt Swaim and Ken Hensley begin to unpack the three-legged stool of Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium that function as the guiding authority for the Catholic Church. The three cannot be separated. Sacred Scripture is preserved and interpreted through Sacred Traditio...

Matt Swaim and Ken Hensley continue their discussion of how they wrestled with the question of Christian authority on their way into the Catholic Church. This time, they take a closer look at the way the papacy developed in the early Church. The Catholic claim is that the bishop of Rome, the successor of St. Peter, is the head of the Church. But how that came to be involves a process of developmen...

Matt Swaim and Ken Hensley continue to discuss how they went from Evangelical Christian understandings of authority to embracing what the Catholic faith teaches about the relationship between Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium. In this episode, Matt and Ken dig into some of the early Christian sources that point to Rome as the "headquarters" of the Church, and how it came to b...

Before moving on to a discussion of Christian authority from a historical perspective in the next episode, Matt Swaim and Ken Hensley bring together some of the most important points about what Scripture tells us in regard to authority, and discuss how those pieces fit together to give us a picture of how the early Church thought about itself. For both Matt and Ken in their Protestant backgrounds,...

Matt Swaim and Ken Hensley continue to discuss how they went from Evangelical Christian understandings of authority to embracing what the Catholic faith teaches about the relationship between Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium. In Matthew 16, when Jesus changes Simon's name to Peter, what is the significance of that moment and what are its implications? Matt and Ken look at ho...

Matt Swaim and Ken Hensley continue their discussion of how they wrestled with the question of Christian authority on their way into the Catholic Church. Moving on from Peter's role in the Gospels, Matt and Ken look at his role in the early Church as detailed especially in the first chapters of the Book of Acts. From his role preaching at Pentecost, to his testifying before Jewish authorities, to...

Matt Swaim and Ken Hensley continue to discuss how they went from Evangelical Christian understandings of authority to embracing what the Catholic faith teaches about the relationship between Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium. What does the Bible tell us about Peter's role among the apostles, not only during the time of Jesus' public ministry, but after His ascension? Even se...

Matt Swaim and Ken Hensley continue their discussion of how they wrestled with the question of Christian authority on their way into the Catholic Church. Why is it reasonable to believe that the early Church continued to guard and keep the deposit of faith handed down by the apostles, even after the death of the apostles? Matt and Ken look at a number of reasons why it makes sense that the Church...