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Gospel Conversations takes a creative approach to attaining a deeper understanding of the gospel and what it means to us today. Our speakers are not ministers, but range from a diverse community of Christian thinkers who lead their various fields of knowledge in history, design thinking, theology, philosophy, and organisational leadership—among others. Each month we host a live event in Sydney, then publish it as a podcast.
Episodes
4 days ago
What is Creation? with Iain Provan
4 days ago
4 days ago
Here is the third and final of our reboots from Iain Provan’s epic 2011 series on the Old Testament Reloaded – “What is Creation?”. In this talk Iain concludes his magnificent trilogy of talks positioning the vast Mosaic vision of God and reality in contrast to the prevailing Ancient Near Eastern worldviews. It is so important to grasp the fact that this was a contest of worldviews – not religions. In the ANE world, the ‘cosmology’ was their total worldview – it was philosophy, reality, society and values. So Moses upturned all of this. We do Moses a vast disservice if we then put him back in our ‘religious’ box – and we can learn from these talks how to widen our grammar of the gospel from merely religious language to all of life language. This talk will echo lots of the themes that I raised in my latest Breakfast with Jesus talk on Ezekiel’s Wider Vision of the Temple where I explained some of the motifs that link the cosmos to the temple. Iain goes into even deeper detail here and weaves a vast tapestry together of OT allusions to the creation as ‘sacred space’. His overarching theme is that creation is not divine – but it is sacred. But Iain does not stop there – he moves onto the associated vision of humanity that this ‘cosmos as temple’ vision implies. That humanity is placed in the temple as the image of God – the vice regent of created space. If you like listening to Iain, then dive into more of his talks on our website. You will find two series there – the 2011 series called ‘The OT Reloaded’ and the 2015 series called ‘Seriously Dangerous Religion’. We will add a great short bibliography that Iain gave us recommending some key resources if we want to take some of the thinking further. Of course, one of them is John Walton, another valued guest of ours in Gospel Conversations. Our next talk will return to Ezekiel to continue the Breakfast with Jesus series. In that talk we will discuss ‘What is ‘glory’?’
Wednesday Mar 27, 2024
Was Dawkins right about the angry God? with Ian Provan
Wednesday Mar 27, 2024
Wednesday Mar 27, 2024
This episode is a repost of a talk by Iain Provan from his epic series on the ‘Old Testament Reloaded’ in 2011. Originally titled ‘Who is God?’ we have renamed it ‘Was Dawkins right about the angry God?’ because that is fundamentally what Iain concentrates on. It is a wonderful talk that is foundational for any Christian’s faith. With his characteristic understated Scottish style, Iain brilliantly lays down the most basic foundation for our faith – the notion that God is not only eternal and sovereign but that he is fundamentally good and on our side.
Monday Mar 18, 2024
Ezekiel's wider vision of the temple - Breakfast with Jesus
Monday Mar 18, 2024
Monday Mar 18, 2024
Tadionally we treat salvation as an individual event, but Ezekiel has a far wider scope. He sees the object of salvation is the whole cosmos not just individuals, and he sees the cosmos as the temple of God.
Monday Mar 04, 2024
How Moses disrupted the Ancient Near Eastern World - with Iain Provan
Monday Mar 04, 2024
Monday Mar 04, 2024
Welcome to Gospel Conversations We have an amazing backlog of great talks from great speakers and thinkers going back over a decade. So we've decided to republish some of them to supplement our ongoing offerings. We're going to begin with some seminal talks by Ian Proven.
Ian is one of the leading Old Testament scholars in the world. And he gave a wonderful series for us on Genesis in 2011. We want to start with a few of these talks because, as you know, we emphasize the creation gospel in Gospel Conversations. And obviously that demands we have a deep insight into the Genesis story, the creation story that set up the ground breaking paradigms of what became Christianity.
In this talk, Ian begins by explaining the ancient Near Eastern cosmology into which the book of Genesis came and which it challenged. By comparing and contrasting Moses view of God with ancient Near Eastern religions, he highlights some of the most fundamental paradigm shifts that belief in Yahweh gave to the world, and in so doing set up the foundations for our faith.
Sunday Feb 11, 2024
Paul and the introspective conscience
Sunday Feb 11, 2024
Sunday Feb 11, 2024
Did Paul have an introspective conscience over sin? The answer is “no”’according to a classic article and Tony explains the reasoning in this podcast.
Monday Jan 15, 2024
The Glory bookends of Ezekiel
Monday Jan 15, 2024
Monday Jan 15, 2024
Welcome to the next installment in the Breakfast with Jesus series. There's been a long pause since I did Ezekiel chapter one. Ezekiel is such an important book and, the more I think about Ezekiel, the more it frames a lot of the gospel.
Monday Dec 18, 2023
Monday Dec 18, 2023
In our last talk Andrew took us deeper into various metaphors for atonement – and asked which best fits scripture and gospel. In this talk, Tony supplements that deep dive by zooming back out and asking, ‘what is the real question, for which the cross and salvation is the answer?’ He concludes that Penal Substitution is the answer to the wrong question and explains why. He then refines the better question – a question for which adoption is a better answer.
Thursday Nov 30, 2023
Cross and Creation 7 - Which model fits best?
Thursday Nov 30, 2023
Thursday Nov 30, 2023
In this episode of our Cross and Creation series, Andrew continues his summarising of the metaphors for the atonement. He argues that every metaphor has its limits and cannot be pushed universally. But he argues that the adoption/sonship model of the atonement offers the best fit for the various metaphors, and that the alternative wrath of God/judicial model narrows and even distorts the grand sweep of the gospel story.
To assist with the talk Andrew has provided a short set of Powerpoint slides on the subject. Please see the "Download Documents" link on our website page - Gospel Conversations
Wednesday Nov 15, 2023
Breakfast with Jesus - #21 - Circle of Glory
Wednesday Nov 15, 2023
Wednesday Nov 15, 2023
In this talk Tony amplifies the intriguing phrase ‘Circle of Glory’ which David Bentley Hart mentioned in his final talk in our recent GC series. The phrase was coined by Gregory of Nyssa and Tony explores the extraordinary vision of the Trinity bound up in the term – and how it reveals our participation in the ‘circle of glory’. Tony does this by a detailed commentary on the original treatise of Gregory’s where ‘circle of glory’ is the climax to a transcendent vision of God and creation.
Tuesday Oct 17, 2023
GC Conference - Session 5 - An Incarnational Cosmos
Tuesday Oct 17, 2023
Tuesday Oct 17, 2023
Session 5 - What is humanity’s destiny and purpose? Is heaven more like a marriage or a motel visit?
In this final talk, David advocates the age-old vision of the Patristics that ‘God became human in order that humanity may become God’. This breathtaking vision is at once completely orthodox, but almost sounds blasphemous. Together Tony and David explore this vision of ‘deification’ through the work of Gregory of Nyssa and his touching homily on marriage as the culminating picture of the union between God and humanity.
There are a set of notes that have been written to assist the listener to engage with this dense material. These can be found on our website - Gospel Conversations