Queen of the Sciences

Is it a brain? Is it a mind? Is it a soul? What hath neuroscience to do with theology? In this episode Dad and I discuss recent work on the function of the brain and especially its hemispheric differences, and what this has to do with rationality, bodiliness, and faith. Notes: 1. Kandel, There Is Life after the Nobel Prize 2. Doidge, The Brain That Changes Itself 3. McGilchrist, The Master and His...

The brand-newest of any theological writing Dad and I have ever covered on the podcast! We discuss "The Spirit of the Lord Is Upon Me," the recently released statement of the International Lutheran-Pentecostal Dialogue, following discussions that took place from 2016 to 2022. Full disclosure: Sarah worked as a consultant to the dialogue on behalf of the Institute for Ecumenical Research, an indepe...

Dad discusses the upcoming lectionary reading from Joshua 24 with Rachel Wrenn and Tim McNinch of the First Reading podcast !

After giving Tillich his due in the last episode, in this one Sarah goes off, more or less blaming Tillich and his book The Courage to Be for everything that has gone wrong in American Lutheranism for the past 75 years. Overwrought and unjust? Probably. Dad makes the case for Tillich at least asking the right questions, and not accepting certain false solutions. But we both agree there is a more e...

Dad and I respond to the Hamas terror attack on Israel. Notes: 1. Related episodes: Good Tillich , Before Auschwitz , Luther and the Jews 2. Please read Dad's Before Auschwitz ; I also commend Dara Horn's People Love Dead Jews 3. Statement from Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton of the ELCA

The little-known story of expatriate German theologian Paul Tillich's radio addresses from America to the German people in the depths of World War II, exhorting them to name and reject the false idol that was holding them hostage and driving millions of people to death. In this episode Dad and I explore how Tillich drew on the depths of the Bible's prophetic speech to analyze the Third Reich and t...

Sarah discusses premillennialism, postmillennialism, amillennialism, and Revelation 20 with Katie Langston and Kathryn Schifferdecker of the Enter the Bible podcast. Check out Katie's memoir of leaving Mormonism and becoming a Christian, Sealed: An Unexpected Journey into the Heart of Grace , and listen to Dad's and my discussion of it on a bonus episode of Queen of the Sciences!

Christ the center, Christ for me, Christ for us, Christ as church, Christ the humiliated and exalted one, Christ the Lord who is nothing like der Führer who reigned over Berlin at the time a young Dietrich Bonhoeffer gave these university lectures. In this episode we sift through Bonhoeffer's appropriation of Luther's christology, lightly inflected by Karl Barth, as well as his own corrections and...

Sarah discusses why God heals infections and cancers, but doesn't regrow amputated limbs, on this episode of Enter the Bible with Kathryn Schifferdecker and Katie Langston! Check out related episodes Illness and Healing and Miracles (with Some Help from C. S. Lewis) .

Elect exiles, spirits in prison, slaves, wives, the devil qua prowling lion, but above all lots and lots of the risen Lord Jesus... the First Epistle of Peter has it all! Dad and I get so carried away with this brief letter than we sort of rush to finish at the end, and even so have an outsized episode. But don't worry, we get into that bit about Christ preaching to the dead. Plus, Dad mispronounc...

Dad discusses just what the phrase "faith of Christ" in St. Paul's letters means on this episode of Enter the Bible with Kathryn Schifferdecker and Katie Langston!

Or, the one in which Sarah at long last reads the first work of Protestant dogmatics, and has an existential/vocational crisis as a result. Dad talks her off the ledge. Notes: 1. Melanchthon, Loci Communes (1521 edition) and Loci Communes (1559 edition) (there are lots of other editions in-between) 2. Quere, Melanchthon's Christum Cognoscere 3. Sarah's To Baptize or Not to Baptize and Small Catech...

Dad discusses how the 12 tribes of Israel entered the promised land on this episode of Enter the Bible with Kathryn Schifferdecker and Katie Langston!

The famous, no, infamous, no, notorious treatise by the reformer at his most white-hot passionate. Mild-mannered Erasmus didn't stand a chance. And neither do you. Which turns out to be good news! In this episode Dad and I sort out what The Bondage of the Will is actually about, what it isn't about, how it is true freedom even for religiously-minded people (maybe especially for them...?), and the...

Late in life, after penning thousands of pages, Augustine received a request from an admiring but understandably intimidated friend for something a little shorter. This "handbook" is the result—a veritable greatest-hits compilation for this most influential of Western fathers. Everything from evil as privation to predestination, when and whether to lie and how to grow in love, justifying faith and...

Sarah talks with Kelsi Klembara of the Outside Ourselves podcast about A-Tumblin' Down , and a few other things besides! Plus, here's the link to my new podcast: Sarah Hinlicky Wilson Stories . Or just search for it in whatever app you're using right now!

What happened after I posted the protest to the suppression of our episode.

Why our last regular episode didn't show up in your podcast app. Please, please listen to this message. Update: Literally within five minutes of my uploading this short protest, both Apple and Spotify let the episode on "The Inhumanity of Lockdown" through. Take the lesson and protest censorship! They back down. At least for now.

We break our habitual reserve on what's been inflicted on the body politic over the past three years with this extended discussion of lockdown—and its essential inhumanity cloaked in the garb of science and righteousness. Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben with his concept of biopolitics is our guide. We realize that this has been an incredibly painful set of issues for many of you to even attemp...

Not your usual Queen of the Sciences crossover! Sarah talks with Kemper Donovan of the All About Agatha (Christie) podcast to parse the great detective novelist's short story "Star over Bethlehem," and more generally Agatha's little known but deeply felt Christian faith.

To everything there is a season... even a season for gaining an appreciation of the odd little book of Ecclesiastes. Maybe middle age is precisely that season. Overcoming our own initial biases against Ecclesiastes, which is the ultimate inkblot test within the canon of Scripture, we place the Preacher in historical context as a template for taking the ancient wisdom of Israel's faith into radical...

A couple years ago we did an episode entitled " Poor Anselm " because we felt sorry for the vilification of this major medieval theologian's work on the atonement in Cur Deus Homo, which we thought deserved better. So we thought, why not give his first treatise, Monologion, a try? Um. Well... In this episode, we go from defending Anselm to rebuking him for his account of the Trinity by reason alon...

Among the many remarkable Gregories of the early church, the one from Nazianzus stands out to such an extent that he has earned the simple epithet: "The Theologian." In this episode, we explore why! In particular, Gregory's five famous theological orations (plus two letters to neighborhood priest Cledonius) present one of the best and most formative accounts of the doctrine of Trinity, emphasizing...

Sarah talks with Jason Micheli of the very excellent Crackers and Grape Juice podcast... and a little foreshadowing at the end that Dad might just get an episode of his own, too!

Mariology is both Christology and Israelology—or should be, anyway. In this episode Dad and I work through the biblical witness about Mary, patristic affirmations of her as the God-bearer, what the doctrine of the virgin birth does and, perhaps more importantly, doesn't mean, and conclude with some suggestions for expanding and developing Mary's theological significance as not only birth mother of...