Theology Made Podcast

In the twelfth century, a nun with no formal authority, no official platform, and no institutional power began writing down what she saw. Kings wrote back. Emperors wrote back. The pope read her work aloud to a room full of bishops and told her to keep going. Hildegard of Bingen shouldn’t have had the influence she had. By every rule her world recognized, she was outside the circle of people who g...

Five hundred years ago, Europe told a story about a man who sold his soul for unlimited knowledge, unlimited power, and a life without limits. We turned him into a hero. This episode traces the Faust legend from its historical roots in the Holy Roman Empire to Christopher Marlowe’s stage, to Goethe’s radical reinvention of the character — and then straight into the present. Because the Faustian ba...

You think you’d never fall for a cult. Most people do. But the truth is, cults don’t prey on stupidity, they rely on something far more dangerous: intelligence, commitment, and the human need for certainty. This piece explores why smart people aren’t immune to manipulation, how belief systems become self-sealing, and why the real threat isn’t deception from the outside; but the stories we learn to...

In 1859, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species—and many believed it marked the end of faith. Science had won. Religion had lost. But that story isn’t history. It’s a myth. In this episode, we break down the real relationship between science and Christianity—unpacking the famous Darwin debate, the origins of the “science vs religion” narrative, and why historians now reject it. You’ll d...

The first Christians lived under the most powerful political system the world had ever seen. They didn’t lobby it, campaign against it, or try to capture it. They fed the poor, buried the dead, and built a community so stubbornly different that three centuries later, the empire couldn’t explain what had happened. This episode looks at how the earliest church related to power, not by ignoring it, b...

Theology Made is a listener/reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. For most of Christian history, almost no one read the Bible alone. Scripture was heard and read aloud in packed rooms, interpreted together, argued over in real time by people who shared a life, not just a reading plan. This episode traces how the Bible m...

For the first 300 years of Christianity… there were no church buildings. No services. No “going to church” the way we think of it today. So what were the first Christians actually doing? In this episode, we step into the world of the early church and uncover how something that started in homes and shared meals eventually became something very different. Because the real surprise isn’t that church...

Theology Made is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. What if security isn’t safety? What if accumulation isn’t freedom? What he found on the other side of that question became one of the most disruptive spiritual movements in church history. And it still has something to say to anyone building a life they’re not ent...

Jesus never wrote a single word. No letters. No books. No firsthand account. And yet, billions of people trust what was written about Him. So why? In this episode, we explore one of the most overlooked questions in Christianity—and why the answer challenges how modern people think about truth, history, and credibility. Because the real issue isn’t that Jesus didn’t write anything. It’s why no one...

You probably think your beliefs are your own. That you’ve weighed the evidence, thought it through, and arrived at your conclusions honestly. But what if most of what you believe… was installed? In this piece, we explore the unsettling reality that your worldview may be less independent than you think—and why your brain is wired to defend beliefs you never actually chose. Drawing from psychology,...

Thomas Aquinas spent forty years building the most ambitious intellectual project in Western history, a single unified framework to explain God, creation, evil, the soul, and everything in between. Thousands of pages. Hundreds of arguments. A system so rigorous that the Catholic Church made it their official theology for seven centuries. Then, on December 6th, 1273, he stopped writing. Mid-sentenc...

In 1004 AD, a Byzantine princess arrived in Venice with a scandalous piece of gold luggage: a two-pronged fork. To the local clergy, this wasn’t high fashion—it was a theological rebellion. How did a simple tool for eating become “The Devil’s Pitchfork”? This week, we explore the “Trial of the Fork,” a forgotten war between human innovation and Divine design. We’ll follow the fork from the scathin...

In the Roman Empire, the first Christians weren’t persecuted for believing too much. They were persecuted for believing too little. When we hear the word “atheist” today, we think of someone who denies the existence of the divine. But to a 2nd-century Roman, an atheist wasn’t someone who lacked an inner belief—it was someone who lacked a public practice. In this episode, we dismantle our modern as...

Did you know the modern weekend exists because of theology? In this episode, we explore how the Jewish Sabbath, the Christian Lord’s Day, and the Industrial Revolution collided to create the two-day weekend we take for granted today. From Constantine’s 321 AD decree to labor movements and the modern digital economy, this episode uncovers the surprising religious roots of our “time off.” Theology M...

How did a global movement survive without a handbook? We live in a print-first world where authority is “final draft” and footnoted. But the early Church had no chapters, no verses, and no agreed-upon list of books. This week, we’re deconstructing our “90s red-letter” assumptions to look at the oral, lived reality of the first Christians. From Paul’s letters being heard as “events” to the “reversa...

We’ve all heard the story: A small, persecuted sect made a shady deal with Emperor Constantine, traded its soul for power, and took over the world by force. It’s a tidy narrative that fuels modern cynicism, but it has one major problem: It isn’t true. In this episode, we dismantle the myth of the “Christian Conquest.” We explore why the Roman Empire (a world saturated with gods, hierarchy, and pow...

Headline: The Church is dying. (At least, that’s what we’ve said since 100 AD.) It feels like we are living through a unique collapse. Attendance is cratering, trust is fractured, and the cultural influence of the Church seems to be evaporating in real-time. But what if this isn’t the end? What if it’s a pattern? In this episode, we take a long view of history, from the “atheist” accusations of th...

Once a year, St. Patrick becomes a mascot. Green hats. Parades. Beer labels. Snakes chased into the sea. The problem? Almost none of that has anything to do with the real man. In this episode, we strip away the myth and recover the historical St. Patrick—not the cheerful Irish icon, but the traumatized former slave, reluctant missionary, and deeply insecure Christian whose faith was forged under p...

In the red corner, Thomas Jefferson. In the blue corner, Benjamin Franklin. In June 1776, a single editorial change shifted the foundation of American history. Jefferson originally wrote that our rights were “sacred and undeniable,” grounding them in a divine Creator. But Franklin the “Maestro of Reason” crossed them out, opting for the famous phrase we know today: “Self-evident.” In this episode,...

Everyone says it. Politicians, activists, corporations, and even churches. We’re told to stay on “the right side of history,” but we rarely stop to ask: Why does history have a side at all? In this episode of the Theology Made Podcast , we deconstruct one of the most popular secular phrases of our time. Most people assume history is an arrow moving toward progress, but for most of human history, n...

Every time you check the date, you’re stepping into a story you didn’t choose. The year on your phone, the seven-day week, even the emotional rhythm of the seasons all exist because of biblical theology, whether you believe it or not. In this episode, we trace how a sixth-century monk quietly dethroned Roman emperors by dating time from the life of Jesus, why the seven-day week has no scientific r...

For the first 300 years of Christianity, the most recognizable symbol of the faith today was almost entirely absent. No crosses on walls. No crucifixes in worship. No jewelry shaped like Calvary. That wasn’t because early Christians were ashamed of Jesus, it’s because the cross, in the ancient world, was an execution device so brutal and humiliating it was closer to an electric chair than a religi...

Before movies, projectors, or IMAX screens, medieval cathedrals were the most immersive storytelling spaces in the world. In this episode, we explore how Gothic cathedrals used architecture, stained glass, light, and sound to teach Christian theology to a largely illiterate society. Pointed arches, ribbed vaults, and flying buttresses weren’t just engineering breakthroughs, they made space for mas...

A thousand years before Bach, Mozart, Beyoncé, or your Spotify playlist, a Benedictine monk quietly invented the entire system that makes Western music possible. Staff lines, Do–Re–Mi, sight-singing, the logic of melody—none of it exists without Guido of Arezzo. This is the story of how a frustrated choir teacher gave the world modern music… all because he wanted monks to sing on pitch. Theology M...

Step into Oxford in the year 1096: muddy streets, cramped halls, chickens underfoot… and the sound of students shouting Latin at the top of their lungs. It wasn’t polished, but something revolutionary was being born. This episode uncovers the surprising truth: the university is a Christian invention. Before Oxford or Paris ever had quads and lecture halls, the Church built the only places in the w...