“Humility is ultimately the gift that frees us from that selving project, as I call it. Roman Williams talks about the history of radical Christianity, focusing particularly on the desert monks as they're engaged in the crazy project of un-selfing, of trying to leave behind the ego-bound self. Trusting that reliance on God and one another is enough…

“So Jesus steps inside of that and lives a life of sheer life. And that itself was the critique of the political order. So what did they try to do? Kill him. They killed him, but then they discovered that they're trying to kill what's unkillable. Christians call this the resurrection. The death of Jesus wasn't necessary. It was the cultural reflex …

“I want to encourage Christians to stop trying to explain away evil and take people to the cross. And that is the strangeness of the Christian story. If someone has been abused, you don’t say, 'This is why it happened' or 'Look how you’re going to grow through this.' In their pain ... they ask you, 'Why would God do this? What does God think about …

"For me, it was always a challenge, on the one hand, to honor what I was feeling—the rage that was inside against injustice—but on the other hand, to honor the beauty of the Christian faith that has a particular way of dealing with these kinds of situations which is a reconciliation through embrace of the enemy." For theologian Miroslav Volf, it's …

"By our nature, we are eccentric. We're off center. The world has its own center: fallen, lost, though many ways good. Christians have a different center. Christ is our center. That makes us stand out if we're faithful in ways that are odd. That's who the saints are. The saints are the odd wads who have stood out from society—cultures they would ha…

“We must re-mythologize. We must see myth not as the flight from reality, but as the flight to reality. And if we thus love and value myth, we will make them because we are creators made in the image of the Creator. And that’s what Lewis did. That’s what Tolkien did.” Peter Kreeft is Professor of Philosophy at Boston College and has written upwards…

“How can you know flourishing if you don't understand loss? How can you know liberation if you don't understand what it's like to have your freedom taken away? So, I think that is the hermeneutical entry point for black people of faith, the role that suffering says that something has to be gotten from it or snatched from it.” Given the fractured st…

“The heart of Christianity is personal relationship, persons sharing love with each other. And so for Christians, the greatest thing for human being is not character development. It's loving personal relationship. The idea in the Christian tradition is that something about suffering enables you—doesn't make you, but it enables you—to open and open …

"We're a society that rarely acknowledges death before it happens. Christianity is ongoing training in dying early. That every politic, one way or the other, is a politic that deals with death." Stanley Hauerwas is a theologian, ethicist, one of the most influential public intellectuals in the 20th century, and perhaps most importantly, Texan. He b…

"I'm a Protestant who loves saints," says Jessica Hooten Wilson. Why do we read and write saints' lives? Hagiography is a long-practiced depiction of the holy and often wacky stories of saints and the wondrous elements of their lives as dedicated to God. Jessica Hooten Wilson identifies one of Flannery O'Connor's primary goals in her unfinished nov…

A Christmas Podcast: Evan Rosa interviews analytic theologian Oliver Crisp on the Incarnation of Christ, and how we can learn from the Incarnation about what it is to be human. Credits Hosted by Evan Rosa Produced by the Biola University Center for Christian Thought Sponsored by generous grants from the John Templeton Foundation, Templeton Religion…

"My first theological thought was: 'God does not owe me a long life.'" Our guest today is a theologian living with terminal cancer. Dr. J. Todd Billings is the Gordon H. Girod research professor of reformed theology at Western Theological Seminary and an ordained minister in the Reformed Church in America. In 2012, Billings was diagnosed with an in…

"I do not know the answer to the problem of evil, but I do know love. That's the key thing. In Jesus, we cannot doubt the love of God for us if we look at the lengths to which He went." Os Guinness is a social critic, author of more than 30 books and counting and yes, as the name suggests, great‑great‑great grandson to the famous Irish brewer of be…

Yes, vanity of vanities. You probably think this show is about you. Well, it is about you; and me; and all of us. But, as our guest today, explains: "This is not a sin and guilt, beat‑yourself‑up exercise. I'm not in the shaming and blaming game at all. What I'm trying to do is move people forward toward liberation and freedom." In this episode, "Q…

Gratitude is deeply woven into the Christian way. Believers and non-believers alike, representing many wisdom traditions, have all long practiced the act of giving thanks. Our station in life is one of utter dependence, gift, and grace. So thankfulness is fitting and right. But gratitude has deep and often instantaneous impact. Just look at the cel…

What is love? For something so familiar to the human experience, love is notoriously difficult to define, explain, and articulate, and even harder to embody. Our guest Thomas J. Oord has spent the last two decades thinking about the theology, science, and philosophy of love. In this episode, we cover a variety of themes and questions related to the…

On living and finding meaning in the "in-between"—featuring Diane Glancy, an American poet, author, and playwright of Cherokee descent on embracing liminality. What would it feel like to live constantly in the "in-between"—to feel caught in the margins, to be stuck on the causeway, at the threshold, held in the foyer, neither here nor there? There …

"This is where O'Connor scandalizes people. God redeems the moment, so violence doesn't become nihilism the way it would maybe in a Tarantino film. In her world, God is there." Flannery O'Connor is an American novelist, essayist, and short-story writer known for her sardonic Southern Gothic style with grotesque characters and violent scenes. Our gu…

In October 2016 just prior to the Presidential Election, we interviewed Dr. Russell Moore—an Evangelical ethicist, theologian and preacher who has been named one of the top 50 influence-makers in Washington. Dr. Moore was dubbed by then-Presidential candidate Donald Trump on Twitter as "truly a terrible representative of American Evangelicals and a…

How shall we think about the apparent conflict between the call to humility and the call to greatness and honor? Is it demeaning to be humble given that we are made in the image of God? Or is humility it the ultimate regard for humanity? How can we put on Christ without being guilty of "acting" or "faking it"? How can we be magnanimous, or have gre…

"My grief wasn't about grief. It was about Eric." Nicholas Wolterstorff is the Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology at Yale University and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia, a renowned scholar and author of an incredible number of books on everything from metaphysics, …

Sister Helen Prejean tells her story of how grace awakened her to be a champion of justice. A Catholic nun who befriended a death row inmate and witnessed his execution, Sr. Helen brings us into her mission of standing with people on the margins and loving the “unlovable”. Author of, Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty (whi…

A spiritual riddle to the modern mind: A desert monk burns all of his baskets as a means of fighting off the so-called “Noonday Demon.” Evan Rosa interviews celebrated writer Kathleen Norris, author of The Cloisterwalk, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, and the Quotidian Mysteries, about her 2008 book, Acedia & me…

What is love's response to suffering? Easy, mediated solidarity? Social media lowers the bar for what counts as activism. These days, we’re all activists. But as Tyler Wigg-Stevenson suggests, the danger of lowering that bar is to cut out the costliness of such work for good. This is part 2 of 2 in Evan Rosa’s interview with Catholic priest and the…

Pope Francis has criticized "the globalization of indifference" in recent years. Despite the constant cycle of suffering we observe in our social feeds, leading to unprecedented awareness of others' pain, and despite our increasing ability to reach those in need of our care, we're numb. What is the loving response to suffering? Evan Rosa interviews…

What are some aspects of social humility? Becoming humble means more than understanding one's own stature and status. It means finding oneself standing on common ground with others. This is part 2 of Evan Rosa's interview with Krista Tippett (host of On Being and author of Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living). Krista talks …

Evan Rosa interviews Krista Tippett (host of On Being and author of Becoming Wise) on humility, mystery, and self-knowledge. We all admire and praise and strive to be like humble people. St. Augustine is on record, and has been quoted across the Christian tradition: “almost the whole of Christian teaching is humility.” (De Virginitate 31). Augustin…

Evan Rosa introduces The Table Audio and gives a sneak peek for what's coming soon. Bonus: Listen to cute kids as ridiculous (ly awesome) questions. #Show Notes 00:00 - The ultimate fear of any parent face to face with a child 00:21 - Ridiculous (ly awesome) questions 01:25 - The business of big questions 01:40 - Why is wisdom is still important? 0…