What do N.T. Wright, Marcus Borg and John Cobb have in common? This podcast!
In this hour, Tripp and Bo take 4 calls from hotline and respond to questions about eschatology and the resurrection.
You can call in with any questions or comments at 678-590-2739 (brew) and let us know what you want us to talk about.
Two books that we reference today are Surprised by Hope and Simply Christian. We also alude to the John Cobb prayer podcast. Thanks to Jason, Angela, Garret, and Keaton for calling in!




Great podcast, it made a Lot of sense (pun intended)
This very troubling text of the Canaanite conquest came up in a discussion I has having on the weekend so it was timely that you talked about it (for me anyway)
The thing that makes it distinctly different is that for Lot it is not commented on good or bad. But with the conquest. it is written as “God said” which is comment enough.
I like what Bo said about that He would be surprised if given the context He would be surprised if they did not write that God said to do this.
So in a sense God did not say that, that is just what the Israelites thought God said. While I like this I can just see the questions coming from my more fundamentalist friends.
I am not one that holds to biblical innerency, but when we start saying “Oh God didn’t say that, that is just what the writer though” We start down a path and I wonder when we stop taking the bible seriously.
This hermeneutical lens (and the word hermeneutical for that matter) is pretty new to me.
I think it would be good if on one of these TNT’s you guys did take some time to deconstruct the philosophical underpinning of what mostly goes unquestioned in evangelical circles.
That was a flippen interesting podcast, despite the fact that you managed to graciously disagree with my two favourite theologians: Greg Boyd and NT Wright, in one podcast.
The section on the resurrection was really interesting, you made the more liberal view point make sense and not sound so crazy.
I think in time I going to have to listen this one again.
@Jono No worries. I am just excited about getting called a liberal! All my liberal friends think my resurrection stuff is too ‘conservative’ to be a good progressive. Call in a question if one comes up in the second listen.
Best line… “What if they were just bigots?” – Tripp Fuller. You da man, bother!
I really dug this, as I do with most every HBC podcast (especially TNTs).
Just a thought about N.T. Wright and apologetics/modernist approaches to defending the resurrection: In “Surprised By Hope”, the good Bishop both presents 1) a compelling rational argument for the bodily resurrection and 2) follows it up by stating that this sort of approach can only take you so far, that it’s not “evidence that demands a verdict”/proof, and that to believe in the resurrection requires another kind of epistemology which he calls the epistemology of love, or faith hope and love. I thought this was a good balance b/c surely if the resurrection was in fact a historical, physical event, it would be reasonable to imagine there might be good reasons to take it seriously based on historical considerations. As much as I am turned off by apologetics in most manifestations I have seen (which is quite a lot!), I still believe there is a place for that sort of discourse (historical Jesus studies, etc.) What do you guys think?
and btw, I visited CST over a few weeks ago as a prospective student. I’m an East Coast guy so I can’t make it to the Emergent Village event, but I loved it out there!
Yeah, I’ve struggled with the “Santa Claus problem” quite a few times. “Well if X isn’t historical, then the whole story is a tall tale!” But I’m getting better at it.
I have a site usability comment, I had to google “theology nerd throwdown” to find this post, I couldn’t find it by navigating links in your site. If you are going to split the feeds for TNT and the interviews you might have to manually do some linkages.
As far as a couple of comments in the discussion:
I am a little confused as to how, when talking about Jesus, we are supposed to STOP looking for the differences and accept that he was jewish (and as far as we know never converted); yet when discussing the hebrew scriptures we are to BE SURE to look for the differences from the socio-religious context for the important stuff. It sounds a little dis-ingenuous to use the exact opposite argument in these two contexts. What am I missing?
I am also a little confused by the statement that the caananite conquest didn’t come with its own commentary. God told them to do it, and wasn’t happy with them when the weren’t zealous enough. You said you would be shocked if they didn’t THINK god told them to do it. So are Isaiah 58:10 and Ezekiel 18:6&7, Amos 5:24 just tacked on to suit a particular POV of a particular scribe? How do we decide which to honor and which to “learn from” as relics of a tribal viewpoint?
It is tough for me to buy into the cautionary tale POV regarding the conquest of caanan. You would have to parse through and try to excise, as later theological positioning, God’s commands from the narrative. Easy to separate the cautionary tale from later bolstering of the theology of the day with Job, but a pretty daunting challenge in this case. I have been wondering lately if, given the timeline for assembly of the written scriptures and doubts about caananite conquest historicity in the archeological community, perhaps the caananite conquest tale was an attempt to justify territorial claims of the Israelite society over and against others in the region perhaps pre-exile but certainly post. IF that is the case what do we try and learn from it?