Jurgen Moltmann is on the podcast!

Moltmann is the most influential theologian from the 2nd half of the 20th century. In this episode, you will get to hear Moltmann answer our questions like a theological champ. His one-liners are inappropriately zesty!

This is the first half of the live HBC podcast from the American Academy of Religion. You will get to hear Tony Jones and I interview the zesty German one – Moltmann! During the podcast, we celebrate the 40th anniversary of Moltmann’s ground-breaking text The Crucified God.

We were also joined by Jennifer McBride and Philip Clayton. Get ready for the excitement!!

Don’t forget to join Tripp & Diana this Lent for an open online class – Jesus De/constructed! Details here.

 Follow the podcast, drop a review, or become a member of the HBC Community.

I just saw Tom Oord’s tweet that Terence Fretheim passed away while I was reading his new book God So Enters into Relationship That… It is always shocking to hear how a live conversation partner you deeply value must shift to the page and these recordings. I can’t exaggerate Frethiem’s role in my own intellectual development. While at Wake Forest University’s Divinity School I took a Biblical Theology seminar with Phyllis Trible (a legend) and she had us each write 25 pg papers and present on a different Biblical theologian. I choose Fretheim and sent him the paper I wrote. He replied with a kind, encouraging, and detailed response, suggesting I consider PhD work given my ability to connect threads in his writing he hadn’t noticed. Dr, Trible gave me a B-, my worst grade in grad school. When I mentioned that Fretheim responded so positively to the paper and encouraged my work she said, “Terry takes the relational nature of love so seriously it may cloud his judgement.” What a compliment!

You can check out all his books here.

Dr. Terence E. Fretheim was the Elva B. Lovell Professor Emeritus of Old Testament at Luther Seminary, Saint Paul, Minn., where he taught for over forty years.

It is getting near the most epic of the HBC online classes. As part of the celebration – and the emails I got saying MORE PODCASTS BECAUSE I AM SELF-DISTANCING – I combined two of my favorite previous visits into this episode. First you hear John Cobb give a theo-philosophical sermon on the materializing trajectory of Christianity. Then liberal Reformed Theologian, Paul Capetz, joins me for the conversation in which we discuss the trinity, Religious Pluralism, The importance of the Incarnation, Discuss fall of the Mainline Churches, Liberalism? Progressive?, and the Mission of the Church. 

Enjoy this episode? Then checkout this book.

Don’t forget to check out Cobb’s recent visit to answer the question “Why Whitehead?”

John Cobb taught theology at the Claremont School of Theology from 1958 to 1990. In 2014 he became the first theologian elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences for his interdisciplinary work in ecology, economics, and biology. He has published over 30 books including the first full length text in eco-philosophy.

In 1973, with David Griffin, he established the Center for Process Studies. In retirement he lives at Pilgrim Place in Claremont, California. Throughout his career he has contributed to Whitehead scholarship and promoted process-relational programs and organizations. Most recently, he helped found the Claremont Institute for Process Studies, and has been heavily involved in supporting work toward the goal of China becoming an ecological civilization.

I lost a very dear mentor and friend – Elgin Frank Tupper. I tried recording the intro over 10 times and just started crying, so I decided to save my thoughts for later and share this gem of an episode.

This also happens to be the most downloaded episode in HBC history.

Frank was a legendary Baptist theologian and the first American student of Wolfhart Pannenberg. He was a founding faculty member of the Wake Forest University School of Divinity where he retired in 2016 as Distinguished Professor of Divinity Emeritus.  You can read Frank’s Obituary here.

A Scandalous Providence is framed in a type of narrative theology, but not just the narrative of Jesus, or his own personal narrative, but the narratives of other people. It was born out of a desire to develop an understanding of providence on the basis of the key and crucial narratives in the synoptic portrayals of the story of Jesus – not just for seminarians or scholars, but for the problems of providence in the life of everyone in the church.

A number of Homebrewed Community Members asked for this episode to come out of the Barrel and back into the world, so here it is. In this episode I am joined by one of my dissertation advisors for a fun conversation.

Ingolf U. Dalferth (DrTheol, University of Tübingen) is Danforth Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, California. He is also professor emeritus in the faculty of theology at the University of Zurich, where he served as director of the Institute of Hermeneutics and Philosophy of Religion for many years. He has held academic positions at the universities of Durham, Tübingen, Frankfurt, Fribourg, and Copenhagen. Dalferth is the author or editor of over forty books

Dr. Dalferth’s Recent Books

Transcendence and the Secular World: Life in Orientation to Ultimate Presence
Creatures of Possibility: The Theological Basis of Human Freedom
Radical Theology: An Essay on Faith and Theology in the Twenty-First Century
Crucified and Resurrected: Restructuring the Grammar of Christology

This is a super special conversation between two preeminent scholars and dear friends. Two friends of the podcast gathered in Claremont a few years back as part of the Emergent Village Theological Conversation on Process Theology and this gem of a conversation happened! John Cobb and Tom Oord discuss Jesus and a number of other goodies.

This barrel aged edition of the podcast is here so I can share episodes from the last 12 years no longer available in the podcast feed for your nerdy listening pleasure.

Also if you enjoy the conversation then you should totally come join the upcoming reading group with John Cobb on Alfred North Whitehead’s Process and Reality. In this series of lectures John Cobb will provide an introduction to one of the most compelling and challenging philosophical texts of the Twentieth Century. Process and Reality is a notoriously difficult text, but the goal of this course is to enable students to not only skim the surface but probe its deeper dimensions. With his decades of experience as a scholar and teacher of Whitehead, Cobb will elucidate the major themes and illuminate the major concepts in a way that is accessible to anyone.

Douglas John Hall is Canada’s greatest living theologian & emeritus professor of theology at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec. He is a theologian of the cross, a contextual theologian, and a wonderfully articulate one as well.  In this conversation we discuss his latest two books What Christianity is Not & Waiting for the Gospel, his love of music, personal interactions with Moltmann, Billy Graham, Tillich & company, and a number of intense theological topics.  It was a complete joy to chat with him.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did… and of course share the brew!

Ian McFarland has recently returned to Candler School of Theology after a few years at Cambridge. Since Candler sponsored the podcast this week I figured it was a good time to bring Ian’s first visit to the podcast out of the barrel for your listening pleasure.

Dr. McFarland is the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Theology and author of a number of books. In this interview we discuss From Nothing: A Theology of Creation and recently he just released The Word Made Flesh: A Theology of the Incarnation.

This episode is sponsored by Candler School of Theology at Emory University.

Candler offers 16 graduate degrees, including a Master of Divinity with a focus on Justice, Peacebuilding, and Conflict Transformation, plus a new program in Chaplaincy Ministries. 100% of Mdiv students get a 50% scholarship and all certified candidates for ordination in the United Methodist Church get their full tuition covered. So go check it out.

Dr. Sallie McFague is a theological legend, a pioneer feminist theologian, and one of the most powerful thinkers in my own theological development. We learned that she passed away this weekend. Over the course of the podcast I have had the honor of interviewing her twice and since hearing the news of her passing I have received a bunch of messages asking for the interviews themselves. After I found them I started listening and remembering how powerful they were. I knew that if anyone was interested in hearing the voice of this powerful theologian for themselves it should be as easy as possible. That is the main reason I started HBC years ago!!

While going back through the two episodes I decided to edit them together to make access easy. The biggest surprise I found was this amazing selection in which Dr. McFague reads the end of her last text. It is was moving then, but even more so now. I knew it needed to be shared on its own, so Elgin (11 year old son) created this little video.

Dr. McFague was the Distinguished Theologian in Residence at the Vancouver School of Theology in British Columbia, Canada. Prior she taught for thirty years at Vanderbilt University Divinity School. In the podcast we cover a lot of ground, including how Sallie became a theologian (which includes a kindergarten revelation), her focus on religious language, radical love, kenosis, panentheism, and even some member submitted questions, including:

1. How does her concept of wild spaces address privilege
2. In the revival of radical theology recently, how do you understand the reality of God?
3. Where should one start with feminist theology?
4. What do you think about the increased usage of the term Anthropocene?

And don’t forget to check out Sallie’s books, Blessed Are The Consumers and Models Of God. These two texts changed my mind in significant ways.

Who is Jesus Christ for us today?  Is there a way to even attempt to answer the question with intellectual credibility?  One of Germany’s greatest theologians, Michael Welker, is on the podcast discussing his new book God the Revealed: Christology.  In the book and on the podcast we discuss the quest for the historical, theological engagement with the natural sciences, the cultural shifts in the church, atonement theories, our shared love of Whitehead, and a bunch of other nerdy bits of goodness.

Professor Michael Welker is a Senior Professor at the University of Heidelberg (since 2013) and Director of the Research Center International and Interdisciplinary Theology (FIIT, since 2005) and an Honorary Professor at Seoul Theological University.

He is a member of the Heidelberg Academy and Corresponding Member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters and received the Medal of the University of Heidelberg. Karl-Barth-Preis award in 2016.

For lots of info on Dr. Welker check out his website HERE.

Want to check out Dr. Welker’s Gifford Lectures? Head over here and you can find the videos, audio, and written responses.

Was Saint Nick white? Did Saint Nick really slap Arius at the Council of Nicea? Whose side would Saint Nick take in the war on Christmas?

This is an all Saint Nick barrel-aged episode with Adam English. Learn about the historical St. Nick, the person behind the myths and legends and the confusion surrounding him, how he challenged systems of oppression, a brief history of Catholic social teachings, and how St. Nick provides the best model for the Christmas season.

Adam talks about the types of practical questions the christological heart of St. Nick poses to the church in the Christmas season, the ways we edit not just the historical person of St. Nick, but also the incarnation and birth narratives of Jesus to make them more palatable for our contemporary society, and he asks: do we need to get rid of Christmas to save it? or do we just give in and remove any vestige of Christ from Christmas? Plus, Tripp and Adam talk about how to negotiate (especially for parents) the history and myth of St. Nick while also preserving the mystery.

If you’re interested in reading more (and some excellent stocking stuffers) check out these books by Adam:

The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus, and Christmas: Theological Anticipations

It’s not too late to get your tickets for the LIVE podcast in DC with Diana Butler Bass and the folks from Crackers and Grape Juice in on December 16th. You can get tickets and learn more here.