I want to tell a story about how I learned something that changed my life. It was the first Keller Center retreat in 2023. Our inaugural fellows, a couple dozen of them, didn’t know each other well. We had just finished a team-building scavenger hunt crisscrossing Manhattan. We settled into a Sunday school room at Redeemer West Side on W 83rd Street. We were about to do a Zoom call with Tim from his hospital room. It was the last time many of us spoke with him. He would die within weeks. He left us notes on what he wanted to see from the center.

In that exercise before we talked to Tim, I led a discussion on the Great Dechurching, the unprecedented decline in Christian practice in the United States since the year 2000. I’ve led this exercise many times before and since, without incident. The goal is to identify what events and trends really shift culture. In this case, a majority of Americans had the internet in their homes by 2000. Add smartphones and social media and now AI and you can see that the dawn of the information age is perhaps the biggest story of the 21st century so far.
But the exercise didn’t sit well with many of our fellows. We weren’t yet comfortable with each other. Some wanted to dig a lot deeper with ideas and a lot further back in history. Others saw the internet more as a vehicle rather than the driver of cultural change. Some just misunderstood the exercise altogether.

I’ll never forget Michael Keller’s response. He pulled some of his dad’s notes on how to share the gospel in our current age. He described various overlapping and conflicting cultural narratives that help us make sense of the world, apart from God. And then he showed how Jesus critiques and ultimately completes those narratives. It was brilliant work.

The whole center rallied around this idea. We recorded and wrote the group study Making Sense of Us: Exploring Six Stories that Shape How We Live. Michael Keller wrote the foreword. And we rallied behind a new book, The Stories We Live By: Seven Cultural Myths That Fail Us and the Story That Never Will, published by Zondervan. It’s written by Michael and his father, Tim, based on those notes we saw in 2023. Ever since that day I’ve adapted what I learned into my own teaching, not just about cultural narratives, but about how we think about the various deep levels of cultural change. And I’m eager to talk now about this book with Michael on Gospelbound. We’ll also discuss another new book Michael recently wrote, Talking to Kids About Hard Things: Honest Conversations When Life Gets Complicated. He wrote that book with Rebekah Hannah and published it with New Growth Press.
 

In This Episode:
00:00 – Why the best gospel presentation cannot save your children
00:58 – How an early Keller Center retreat shaped The Stories We Live By
05:02 – How Michael and Tim Keller began the book together
07:11 – The seven cultural stories shaping modern life
09:37 – Why identity may be the defining cultural narrative of our age
11:10 – Cultural narratives as Christian heresies
13:52 – The strengths and failures of expressive individualism
15:58 – What Michael hopes The Stories We Live By changes in the church
18:15 – How cultural narratives shape Christians too
20:27 – What remains in Tim Keller’s unpublished notes
23:06 – How Michael handles ongoing criticism of his father
25:35 – Tim Keller, “third way” criticism, and diagonalization
26:50 – What church planting taught Michael that he could not learn secondhand
29:56 – Redeemer’s transition after Tim Keller
30:49 – Why the best way to honor Tim Keller is not to imitate him
32:28 – Introducing Talking to Kids About Hard Things
35:09 – Why Michael was skeptical of parenting books
36:36 – “Your kids need your repentance more than your perfection”
38:25 – Why apologizing to your children matters
40:14 – The gospel in action through forgiveness and repentance
41:40 – Why technique cannot produce saving faith
44:01 – How to help children feel safe asking hard questions
45:17 – Teaching like Jesus by asking questions
47:53 – How parenting reveals who we really are
49:18 – Control, repentance, and what parenting exposed in Michael
51:52 – How Michael wants his daughters to remember him
53:27 – Collin on integrity between public ministry and private family life
54:58 – Integrity, not perfection
57:29 – Final reflections and recommended books
58:16 – Outro

Resources Mentioned:

• The Stories We Live By by Michael Keller and Timothy Keller
• Talking to Kids About Hard Things by Michael Keller and Rebecca Hannah
• Making Sense of God by Timothy Keller
• The Reason for God by Timothy Keller
• Center Church by Timothy Keller
• Making Sense of Us
• Handing Down the Faith by Christian Smith and Amy Adamczyk
• Gospel in Life
• Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics
• The Gospel Coalition 

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Like many others, generative AI has become a nearly daily part of my life in the last couple years. I’ve found help for home repairs. Diet and exercise plans. Meal preparation. Trip planning. Personal health assessments. Footnote formatting. Even baseball swing and pitching advice for my son. Combine the best of Google and YouTube, tailored to my specific needs and situations from changing windshield wipers to fixing sump pumps, and that’s how I’ve used AI so far. I know I’m not even scratching the surface of what agentic AI can and will eventually do. I’ve seen friends spin up websites it would have taken years and hundreds of thousands of dollars to build just five years ago. 

But do you know the most common use? It’s not one I’ve employed myself. And it’s not one I’d recommend. But according to Harvard Business Review, it’s remained perched on the top from 2025 to 2026 even as other common uses have wildly fluctuated up and down the charts.

It’s therapy and companionship.

If you’re like me, you’re probably wondering about how AI chatbots could be the reasons companies like OpenAI have been valued at $852 billion. Or why AI has become the widely and quickly adopted new technology in human history. Isn’t AI supposed to revolutionize business? Upend every profession and transform entire economies? 

Perhaps.

The trend is clear. It looks like many others have been turning to AI for help in fixing their toilets. (Claude was wrong in my situation, by the way.) More commonly, AI is less of a computer interface and more of a, well, human face. A friend to share jokes and silly pictures. An imaginative storyteller. A trusty counselor to assess your new relationship. A medium who can predict your future. And a wise confidant who promises not to lead you astray (or tell you what you don’t want to hear). 

Given the wild predictions about AI’s unparalleled value, how can these cases be the most common ways we employ the technology? Is your daily horoscope worth $852 billion? 

Now, what if I told you this is exactly what the builders of AI expected us to do? 

That’s the vision behind a new book, The AI Apocalypse: A Survival Guide for Humanity, which I edited along with Skyler Flowers and The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. I spoke on my introduction from the book at a recent TGC regional chapter meeting in Nashville. 

Thank you to TGC Nashville and Edgefield Church for hosting and recording this podcast in front of a lively and engaged audience. You could have heard a pin drop when I talked to these (mostly) pastors about why AI will write their next sermon. Now is the time to work through the ethical implications together and decide where to draw the line.

In This Episode:
0:00 AI's Unexpected Role as a Human Companion and Counselor
7:21 AI, Love, and the Lessons from Her
13:37 The Role of AI in Defining Human Purpose
20:17 The Impact of AI on Literacy and Human Creativity
28:51 The Irreplaceable Human Touch in Preaching Amid AI Advancements
38:39 Navigating AI Ethics in Church, Family, and Education
40:41 The Impacts of AI on Society and Economy

Resources Mentioned:

• AI Apocalypse edited by Collin Hansen
• Empire of AI by Karen Hao
• The Odyssey by Homer
• Social Acceleration by Hartmut Rosa
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
• Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics
• The Gospel Coalition
• Recorded (Podcast) by The Gospel Coalition

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The patron saint of cultural apologetics is Augustine of Hippo, author most famously of City of God and Confessions. Second place is up for debate. But you’ll get a lot of votes for a 17th-century disciple of Augustine, the Frenchman Blaise Pascal.

Graham Tomlin describes Pascal as the “man who made the modern world” in a new biography. Tomlin is the director of the Centre for Cultural Witness in Oxford, England. He writes of Pascal that “it is hard to think of anyone who has impacted so many fields of human endeavour in such a short time.” 

Here’s a taste from Tomlin about Pascal’s accomplishments: he basically invented probability theory; proved the existence of the vacuum; laid the foundations of integral calculus; conducted the first modern scientific experiment; developed theory that made possible the hydraulic press; demonstrated that air has weight; designed and built the first mechanical calculating machine, which led to what we know as the computer; set the trend of wearing wrist watches; and built the first public urban transportation system in Europe. 

And did I already mention he was one of the most effective and enduring cultural apologists of all time, perhaps second only to Augustine? Tomlin writes, “His was a Christianity founded in a profound experience of God, an intense devotional life and a form of faith that offered a radical alternative to the comfortable assimilation to culture that the Church of his day often seemed to promote.”

Let’s talk to Graham Tomlin about this remarkable man, who lamented man’s inability to sit quietly by himself, who observed, “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.”

In This Episode:
00:00 – Pascal’s wager and living as if Christianity is true
00:49 – Introducing Blaise Pascal, the cultural apologist who helped make the modern world
02:36 – Pascal’s remarkable inventions, including public transportation and the Pascaline
05:42 – Augustine’s influence on Pascal’s theology of desire, fallenness, and grace
08:11 – Why Pascal trusted reason in science but not as the starting point for faith
10:46 – Pascal’s “Night of Fire” and encounter with the living God
16:43 – Why Pascal went to war with the Jesuits
20:20 – Jansenism, Calvinism, and Pascal’s understanding of grace
25:51 – The hiddenness of God as an argument for faith
32:38 – How human misery points toward human greatness
39:46 – What Pascal’s Wager actually means
48:45 – Pascal, Jonathan Haidt, and the psychology of belief
49:05 – “Make it attractive”: Pascal’s enduring strategy for cultural apologetics
51:59 – How Pascal anticipated both the modern and postmodern worlds
59:22 – What Pascal would say about modern science and scientism
1:01:43 – Why Pascal’s faith speaks to people who have looked into the abyss
1:03:21 – Outro

Resources Mentioned:

• Blaise Pascal by Graham Tomlin 
• Pensées by Blaise Pascal 
• The Provincial Letters by Blaise Pascal 
• Confessions by Augustine 
• City of God by Augustine 
• The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt 
• The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt 
• The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics 
   

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Back in 2024 Kevin Vanhoozer’s book Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically won the Christianity Today book award in the academic theology category and also won The Gospel Coalition book award in biblical studies. I couldn’t even begin to account for all the other awards he’s won for earlier works. 

I had the blessing of studying under Dr. Vanhoozer at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. And I was challenged in this book just as I was challenged and encouraged in his courses. Mere Christian Hermeneutics helps all of us who live on the far side of the “demise of biblical civilization.” When Westerners want to tell the story of the world, we no longer open the Bible. Vanhoozer aims to reconnect us with Scripture as our means of enjoying “covenant fellowship with the triune God.” I loved this summary in the book: “How an unholy people can come into the presence of a holy God is the chief complication in the biblical narrative to which the gospel is the solution.”

So let’s get into mere Christian hermeneutics, reading the Bible spiritually, the Transfiguration, and much more.

In This Episode:
00:00 – The transfiguration of Jesus and the way Christians read Scripture
00:39 – Introducing Mere Christian Hermeneutics
01:58 – What makes this approach to hermeneutics “mere”?
03:26 – How different reading cultures divide Christians
05:01 – Polarization among Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox Christians
06:52 – The loss of Christianity’s cultural influence in the West
07:46 – Does Catholic authority solve Protestant interpretive pluralism?
10:43 – What does it mean to interpret the Bible spiritually?
13:23 – How the transfiguration guides Christian interpretation
16:08 – Why Christians should not separate Jesus from the Bible
18:24 – Johannes Oecolampadius and Scripture’s Christ-centered scope
21:57 – Bridging the divide between biblical scholars and theologians
25:05 – Kant, critical thinking, and the rise of biblical criticism
27:34 – The hidden assumptions modern readers bring to Scripture
30:14 – Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and teaching systematic theology
32:37 – Cultural hermeneutics and the formative power of culture
36:24 – The current state of theological interpretation of Scripture
39:29 – Potential dangers in theological retrieval
41:40 – Protestant catholicity and unity amid secondary disagreements
42:02 – Vanhoozer’s work with the Alexandrian Institute
44:35 – His four-volume systematic theology project
46:19 – Brahms, young theologians, and reasons for hope
47:13 – What pastors can learn from Henry James
48:54 – Outro

Resources Mentioned:

• Mere Christian Hermeneutics by Kevin Vanhoozer
• Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis
• Meditation in a Toolshed by C. S. Lewis
• The Bible Made Impossible by Christian Smith
• The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies by Michael C. Legaspi
• The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
• The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics

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Only a couple years out of college, I told my coworkers that I looked forward to being old. They weren’t just dismissive of that comment. They were indignant. On one level, I know why. I understood little to nothing at age 23 about the hardships of aging and caring for the dying. I hadn’t yet suffered many of life’s inevitable pains.

At the same time, I looked forward to greater wisdom, maybe even defeat of some sins and temptations. I was excited about all I could learn if the Lord granted me years. Maybe I even had a couple Bible verses in my head, like Proverbs 16:31: “Gray hair is a crown of

glory; it is gained in a righteous life.” Or Job 12:12: “Wisdom is with the aged, and understanding in length of days.”

Both those verses are cited by Jen Wilkin in her excellent new book, Dust to Dust: Aging Wisely in an Anti-Aging World, published by Crossway. If you take my youthful naiveté at its best, I was recognizing what Jen distinguishes in her book: the world says to age is to diminish. But the Bible says to age is to deepen. Now in middle age, however, I experience the good and bad: the invisibility because no one would possibly notice my appearance. But also the freedom: because I have that middle-age dad’s superpower of not caring what other people think of my appearance. 

I didn’t realize how much I needed Jen’s book, and I’m eager to ask a whole bunch of questions now on Gospelbound.

In This Episode:
00:00:00 – Jen Wilkin reflects on her mother’s death and the symmetry of life
00:00:49 – Why Collin has long looked forward to old age
00:01:20 – Introducing Dust to Dust and the contrast between cultural decline and biblical deepening
00:02:31 – Why modern culture values youth over old age
00:03:55 – Jen’s first moments of realizing she was aging
00:05:46 – How aging feels different for men and women
00:07:49 – Why many people fear becoming a burden
00:10:08 – Assisted suicide, dependency, and surprising cultural opposition
00:14:47 – The “chiasm of life” and how beginning and end mirror each other
00:21:02 – Why midlife offers a unique vantage point for perspective and wisdom
00:24:50 – Caring simultaneously for children and aging parents
00:29:12 – Why caregiving is not a season but a default setting of life
00:32:10 – How modern longevity has changed the experience of family and aging
00:36:25 – “You will not surely die”: the anti-gospel of age denial
00:37:52 – How suffering narrows our priorities
00:40:34 – Honoring parents and the fuller meaning of the fifth commandment
00:45:44 – Retirement, crystallized knowledge, and later-life vocation
00:50:46 – A theology of aging before a debate about anti-aging practices
00:55:33 – Jen’s regrets, sanctification, and learning to honor parents well
01:00:26 – Final reflections on aging, family, and hope
01:01:07 – Outro

Resources Mentioned:

• Dust to Dust by Jen Wilkin
• From Strength to Strength by Arthur Brooks
• The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis
   

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You might think AI is the most exciting technological development of all time, and you’ve been vibe coding before the rest of us had ever heard the term. 

Or maybe you think AI is the most dangerous technological development of all time, and you’re desperately hoping someone will step up to stop autonomous weapons and programs powerful enough to thwart any existing security system. 

Or maybe you’re somewhere in the middle. Maybe you still don’t know what all the fuss is about. 

No matter where you are, I know I can recommend a new single-season TGC podcast called Silicon Spiritualities, hosted by Christopher Watkin, a fellow at The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. My friend Chris also contributed two chapters to the forthcoming book I edited with Skyler Flowers, titled The AI Apocalypse: A Survival Guide for Humanity. I love hearing Chris teach on just about anything. But his reflections on AI have been especially insightful for me, and I’m eager to welcome him back to Gospelbound to discuss these two new projects.

In This Episode:
00:00 – The hidden human cost of AI training
00:36 – Introducing Christopher Watkin, Silicon Spiritualities, and The AI Apocalypse
01:48 – The gospel story Silicon Valley tells about AI
06:01 – Investor hype, idolatry, and AI religions
08:09 – Data workers, exploitation, water use, and the wider AI industry
12:03 – Avoiding both AI doom and AI hype
14:26 – Is AI more like the internet, electricity, or agriculture?
17:20 – Why Christian anthropology is not threatened by AI intelligence
21:01 – Why a frictionless life can become passive rather than free
25:30 – Using AI with integrity in writing and creative work
27:16 – Watkin’s practical uses of AI at home and in his work
29:34 – AI companionship and the desire to be known and loved
34:10 – Mutuality, reciprocity, and what AI cannot share with us
39:19 – Consciousness, imitation, and participation
41:51 – Transhumanism and the temptation to outgrow humanity
45:22 – Why studying AI has made Watkin more excited about God
48:29 – AI, existential risk, and the problem of the human heart
54:31 – Alignment, sycophancy, Her, and the imitation game
59:37 – Closing remarks

Resources Mentioned:

• Silicon Spiritualities | TGC podcast hosted by Christopher Watkin 
• Deep Work by Cal Newport
• “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” / “The Imitation Game” by Alan Turing 
   

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Andrew Wilson is one of the happiest guys I know. So it only makes sense that he would write a book called Happiness: What It Is, Where to Find It, and How to Make It Last Forever, published by Crossway. He’s the expert. I’m delighted when I see Andrew at a TGC conference, or a retreat for The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. I look forward to every chance to spend time with him. He writes in this book, “Nothing is more honoring to a friend, a child, or a spouse than saying they make you happy. Nothing is more demeaning to them than telling them they don’t.” I can say, with no reservation, Andrew makes me happy when we’re together.

Ok. But where does that leave the rest of us? If we’re not naturally happy? If we’re not feeling happy right now? If we’re not hanging out with Andrew? The Declaration of Independence, 250 years ago, put happiness at the center of life’s aim: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Andrew covered that statement in his excellent earlier book, Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West. Given the anniversary, I plan in this interview to sneak in a question or two about that fateful year. And we’ll discuss much more, including the difference between joy and happiness, whether God promises happiness, and why millennials grew up to be sad.

In This Episode:
00:00 – What makes us genuinely happier
00:40 – Why Andrew Wilson wrote a book about happiness
04:29 – Happiness, sorrow, and biblical examples of deep joy
07:26 – Is joy different from happiness?
11:53 – Does God promise happiness to Christians?
13:35 – Why millennials became less happy as adults
19:41 – Freedom, responsibility, and the limits of liberation
23:21 – The “problem of superfluous happiness”
26:01 – How pursuing happiness helps us fight sin
29:23 – Why virtue, gratitude, and humility make us happier
32:53 – Compassion versus empathy
34:15 – Turning delights into disciplines
37:06 – Remaking the World and America’s 250th anniversary
39:48 – What makes the United States unique?
47:08 – Discovery, defense, temperament, and optimism
48:55 – Closing and book recommendations

Resources Mentioned:

• Happiness by Andrew Wilson
• Remaking the World by Andrew Wilson
• Generations by Jean M. Twenge
• The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt
• The Expulsive Power of a New Affection by Thomas Chalmers

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Different preachers get excited about different aspects of the sermon. Some collect and deploy excellent illustrations. Others just nail the application week after week. Others can really reach your heart. 

What really fires me up are the connections between the Old and New Testaments, the way God’s plan of redemption unfolds in familiar and new ways from Genesis to Revelation. So you know I’d be excited about an excellent new resource, the CSB Connecting Scripture New Testament, edited by G. K. Beale and Benjamin Gladd. This study Bible includes a robust cross reference system that will help you see Old Testament quotations, allusions, and parallels within the New Testament so you can see all 66 books as a unified story from God. You’ll also find book introductions, study note commentary, articles, charts, and infographics.

In This Episode:
00:00:00 – Why continuity between Old and New Testament wording matters
00:00:41 – Introducing the CSB Connecting Scripture New Testament
00:01:53 – Ben Gladd and the mission of the Carson Center
00:04:06 – Why another study Bible?
00:07:06 – Green and blue fonts: changing the reading experience
00:08:24 – Quotations, allusions, and the “connective tissue” of Scripture
00:11:06 – Why Old Testament allusions matter for Bible study
00:12:46 – John 6, grumbling, and Israel in the wilderness
00:13:46 – Mark 1, John the Baptist, and the burning bush
00:15:41 – “Fishers of men” and Jeremiah 16
00:18:55 – Reading Revelation through Old Testament “emojis”
00:22:07 – John 1:1, Genesis 1:1, and Christology
00:27:47 – How the apostles read the Old Testament
00:31:19 – Guardrails for identifying legitimate allusions
00:35:36 – Do English translations obscure biblical connections?
00:42:27 – How pastors can use the study Bible in sermon preparation
00:44:19 – Why pastors should use the Old Testament for illustrations
00:48:31 – The Carson Center’s Concise Bible Commentary
00:53:44 – Learning from Don Carson and G. K. Beale
01:00:11 – Dictionary of the New Testament Use of the Old Testament
01:00:44 – Biblical Theology Briefing podcast
01:02:34 – A future Connecting Scripture Old Testament
01:05:19 – Closing

Resources Mentioned:

• CSB Connecting Scripture New Testament edited by G. K. Beale and Benjamin L. Gladd
• Keep Watch for Biblical Allusions by Ben Gladd
• ESV Study Bible
• CSB Study Bible
• NIV Study Bible
• Concise Bible Commentary from the Carson Center and Crossway
• Dictionary of the New Testament Use of the Old Testament edited by G. K. Beale, D. A. Carson, Benjamin L. Gladd, and Andrew David Naselli
• New Studies in Biblical Theology series
• Pillar New Testament Commentary series
• Biblical Theology Briefing Podcast with Ben Gladd and Matthew Harmon

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Alister McGrath remembers life as an atheist back in the late 1960s. He believed only what could be proven to be true. And he judged religious believers for trusting in an irrational fantasy.

Looking back, though, he can see an emotional basis for what he thought were purely rational conclusions. He didn’t want God to exist, because God would threaten his freedom. As an atheist he could do whatever he wanted. He could be the center of the universe. 

Now as a Christian and one of the most well-known apologists in the world, McGrath sees how much desire determines what we believe about the universe. He says, “The human desire for unaccountability leads to the metaphysical conclusion that there should not be a God.”

Last summer McGrath and I caught up when he was the keynote speaker at a Beeson Divinity School conference on Persuasive Preaching. I was invited to engage and respond to his presentation. Alister is a theologian and Christian apologist with a particular interest in the relation of science and faith. In fact he recently retired as a professor of science and religion at Oxford University. 

I know him as a godly encourager and kind interlocutor. I’ve learned a lot from him on various subjects, especially C. S. Lewis. In fact, I was listening to him at Lanier Library in Houston when he inspired me to begin work on a book about Lewis and Winston Churchill. So I’m excited to talk with him again about atheism and apologetics and a heavy dose of Lewis.

In This Episode:
00:00 – Why belief cannot always be proven
00:37 – Collin introduces Alister McGrath, atheism, desire, and C. S. Lewis
02:19 – McGrath’s move from atheism to Christianity in 1971
03:58 – Conversion as a process rather than an instant transformation
05:07 – C. S. Lewis’s “Is Theology Poetry?” and Christianity as a big picture of reality
06:30 – Christianity as aligning with the deep truths of the universe
08:01 – The New Atheists and the power of rhetorical certainty
11:06 – Why the New Atheist movement faded
13:26 – How apologetics has changed over the decades
16:29 – Tim Keller’s apologetic influence
20:25 – Integrating apologetics into preaching
23:22 – Faith versus fact—or faith versus faith?
24:28 – Enlightenment assumptions and the limits of proof
26:33 – Morality, Christianity, and secularized Christian values
28:31 – Truth, meaning, and transformative belief
30:07 – “Bleakness is not an indicator of truth”
31:53 – C. S. Lewis, Winston Churchill, and wartime apologetics
35:03 – Lewis, The Problem of Pain, and the BBC broadcasts
36:52 – Lewis’s faith, academic career, and public apologetics
39:53 – The Weight of Glory and spiritual flourishing in wartime
42:39 – Lewis on marriage, forgiveness, and the Holocaust context
45:29 – The Guardian, archives, and The Screwtape Letters
48:44 – McGrath’s storytelling apologetics and closing reflections
49:38 – Gospelbound outro

Resources Mentioned:

• Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis
• The Problem of Pain by C. S. Lewis
• The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis
• The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis
• The Weight of Glory by C. S. Lewis
• The Air We Breathe by Glen Scrivener
• Dominion by Tom Holland
• The Dawkins Delusion? by Alister McGrath
• Making Sense of Us by TGC and The Keller Center
• The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics

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Is there a fate worse than condemnation? 

Yes, say Allen Guelzo and James Hankins in their new textbook, The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition: Volume II: The Modern and Contemporary West. Worse than everyone hating you is no one remembering you.  

Right now for Western civilization, the former is leading to the latter. Having been widely condemned as oppressive, imperialist, colonizing, and appropriating, Western civilization is sometimes not even taught, let alone celebrated for producing the moral, technological, political, economic, and lifestyle achievements that give shape to our world. The Golden Thread helps in remembering and teaching without ignoring the failures and shortcomings of Western civilization.

The textbook collaborators Guelzo and Hankins have been acquainted for more than 50 years. Hankins wrote volume one, and Guelzo has written volume two. Guelzo is the Thomas W. Smith Distinguished Research Scholar and director of the James Madison Program’s Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship at Princeton University. Guelzo is a long-time favorite writer of mine, not least for his work on the American Civil War and Abraham Lincoln, for which he last appeared on Gospelbound in 2024. I’m honored to host him again as we commemorate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, one of the hinge points in Western civilization in that memorable year of 1776.

In This Episode:
00:00 – Why Western civilization slips away when taken for granted
00:25 – Introducing Allen Guelzo and The Golden Thread
02:24 – How should we define Western civilization?
08:02 – The fall of communism and the West’s crisis of confidence
11:23 – China, radical Islam, Russia, and civilizational conflict
12:47 – Self-criticism as the West’s strength and danger
15:38 – World wars, Darwin, Freud, communism, and lost confidence
19:49 – The atomic age and the misuse of scientific achievement
22:09 – Defending the West without triumphalism
25:38 – Winston Churchill, trauma, and Christian civilization
30:15 – Adenauer, de Gaulle, and rebuilding Europe after 1945
32:38 – Strange defeat, German memory, and Russia’s missed moment
38:37 – C. S. Lewis, John Paul II, and Christianity in a skeptical age
39:28 – Contingency, crisis, and the decisions that shape history
42:24 – Christianity, Greece, Rome, and the “layer cake” of the West
51:33 – Technology, memory, and the future of civilization
53:39 – Lincoln, King, Augustine, and recovering the tradition
58:17 – Could artificial intelligence revive classical education?
59:37 – Closing encouragement

Resources Mentioned:

• The Golden Thread Volume I by Allen C. Guelzo & James Hankins
• The Golden Thread Volume II by Allen C. Guelzo & James Hankins
• The Golden Thread Substack
• The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
• The End of History and the Last Man by Francis Fukuyama
• The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Samuel P. Huntington
• Strange Defeat by Marc Bloch
• Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich
• The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis
• God in the Dock by C. S. Lewis
• Dominion by Tom Holland
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding

— — —

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You will find many books on the biblical and practical importance of the local church. I wrote one myself a few years ago with Jonathan Leeman called Rediscover Church: Why the Body of Christ Is Essential. But few books can match the way Brad Edwards shows us the need for the church amid rampant anxiety, division, and individualism. Not only our churches but even whole societies would be transformed by implementing the wisdom found in this book, called The Reason for Church. 

Brad is the church planter of The Table Church in Lafayette, Colorado. His debut book has been justly acclaimed. He won the 2025 Christianity Today Book of the Year Award and also finished first in the Church and Pastoral Leadership category. He was the winner of The Gospel Coalition's award for First-Time Author that year as well. I’m grateful that he joins me now to talk about everything from authority and institutions to anxiety and whether unity should be the goal for a church.

In This Episode:
00:00 – Opening: power, trust, and the temptation toward conformity
00:26 – Introducing Brad Edwards and The Reason for Church
01:41 – Ranking the causes behind declining trust in church authority
04:05 – Accountability, social media, and the limits of online justice
08:25 – Churches, institutions, platforms, and marketplace logic
11:17 – What changes people’s minds about the need for church?
13:27 – Church planting in Boulder County and Colorado’s anti-institutional culture
17:01 – Therapy culture, spiritual abuse, and what the book could not fully address
22:19 – Institution building, movements, and building a remnant
26:30 – Technology, schedules, and the challenge of spiritual formation
29:09 – Individuality versus individualism
34:39 – Should unity be the goal of a church?
37:49 – What surprised Brad most about becoming a pastor
39:21 – AI, agency, and the future of formation
43:07 – Hartmut Rosa, resonance, gambling, and the desire for control
46:55 – AI, education, responsibility, and authorship
52:05 – The church as remnant and refuge in a changing world
53:19 – What pastors want their congregations to know
56:41 – Closing and Gospelbound outro

Resources Mentioned:

• The Reason for Church by Brad Edwards
• Rediscover Church by Collin Hansen and Jonathan Leeman
• Bowling Alone by Robert D. Putnam
• Yuval Levin’s work on institutions
• Bully Pulpit by Michael J. Kruger
• GIRLS® by Freya India
• The Reason for God by Tim Keller
• Center Church by Tim Keller
• Dominion by Tom Holland
• Habits of the Heart by Robert Bellah
• The Uncontrollability of the World by Hartmut Rosa
• PostEverything, Brad Edwards’s podcast with John Homsher
• Harper’s Magazine article on young AI founders

— — —

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Learn more at downlinememphis.com/virtual-institute or email [email protected] for group pricing and discounts.

Check out The Pour Over Podcast — politically neutral news for people who want the facts without the spin, and with a brief biblical perspective

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