Mere Fidelity
Episodes
302 episodes
Idolatry And The Shape Of Worship
Idolatry is one of those Bible words that can feel obvious until you try to use it carefully. We live far from Baal temples, yet we still talk about idols constantly and sometimes we label everything as an idol until the word loses its bite. De...
The Christian Life with Kelly Kapic
Kelly Kapic's The Christian Life — the newest volume in the New Studies in Dogmatics series — frames Christian living as a response to divine love, arguing that human agency is always Christological and ecclesial before it is personal....
The Desecration of Man with Dr. Carl Trueman
Carl Trueman joins Mere Fidelity to discuss his book The Desecration of Man: How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity. They examine why "des...
Virtues For Living Well with Dr. Alan Noble
What does it mean to live well in morally incoherent times? Alan Noble joins the show to discuss his new book To Live Well: Practical Wisdom for Moving Through Chaotic Times, which uses the four cardinal virtues and three theological ...
On Paul and The Law
Was the Apostle Paul Torah-observant — not just before the Damascus road, but throughout his apostleship to the nations? Brad East stakes out a thesis drawn from Me...
How To Approach God
How do we hold together confidence before God and a proper sense of his holiness? Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts, and Joe Minich take up a pastoral question at the heart of Christian worship and prayer. Working from the Lord's Prayer, the Psa...
Replay: Protestants & History with Paul Gutacker
On this episode of Mere Fidelity, historian of history Paul Gutacker joins Matt, Derek, and Alastair to talk about the changing and sometimes fraught relationship that Protestants have had with the notions of "history" and "tradition." Paul's b...
Between Nature and Grace
Derek Rishmawy, James Wood, and Joseph Minich trace the nature-grace debate from de Lubac's challenge to neoscholastic "pure nature" through Blondel, Bavinck, and B...
Replay: The Age of AI with Jason Thacker
When students started turning in papers written by artificial intelligence, educators were caught flat-footed. We knew that machines would replace many human tasks, but we thought the humanities were immune to that. Have our writing standards f...
The Fall Before The Fall with Philip G. Porter
What if death's presence in the cosmos is not native to creation but a wound running all the way down to its foundations, inflicted before Adam ever reached for the...
What 'Headship' Really Means with Dr. Lyndon Jost
Derek Rishmawy, James Wood, and Alastair Roberts welcome Dr. Lyndon Jost, author of Transfiguring Headship: A Figural Theology of Gender. Jost argues that headship is rooted in Old Testament figural theology rather than Greco...
The Spirituality of Aliens
Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts, and Brad East consider what Christian theology actually has to say about aliens — from the populated Christian cosmos to the angel...
Replay: Put Social Media In Its Place with Andy Crouch
In this Replay episode, Matthew Lee Anderson, Derek Rishmawy, and Alistair Roberts are joined by Andy Crouch — Partner for Theology and Culture at Praxis — to examine what the data on social media and video games reveals about the diverging for...
The Great Evangelical Hand-Off (That Never Happened) with Jake Meador
Derek Rishmawy and Alastair Roberts host Jake Meador for a wide-ranging conversation on why evangelical institutions struggle with leadership transitions and long-t...
Spiritual Formation: A Close Examination
Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts, Brad East, and James Wood trace the evangelical spiritual formation movement from Richard Foster through Dallas Willard to John Mark Comer. They explore why disciplines resonate today amid technological distrac...
A Generous Ecclesiology with Myles Werntz
Hosts Derek Rishmawy and Brad East are joined by Myles Werntz to discuss his Christianity Today Award of Merit-winning book,
Paul and the Resurrection of Israel with Dr. Jason Staples
Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts and Brad East talk with Dr. Jason Staples about his book 'Paul and the Resurrection of Israel.' The discussion explores the themes of restoration eschatology, the role of Gentiles in Paul's theology, a...
The World Is The Wrong Shape For Women with Leah Sargeant
Derek, Brad, and Alastair talk with Leah Sargeant about her book The Dignity of Dependence. They discuss why the world is built for male bodies, how pregnancy exposes universal human dependence, whether artificial wombs would help anyo...
What Is A Sermon, Anyway?
Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts, and Brad East discuss the nature of preaching, exploring its purpose, context, and the role of the preacher. They discuss the importance of engaging the heart and conscience of the audience, the need for contex...
How Do We Change Our Minds?
Derek Rishmawy and Alastair Roberts discuss how minds actually change—through paradigm shifts, careful arguments, or accumulated experience. They explore why steel-manning opponents and engaging charitably with the strongest versions of opposin...
Jesus and The Law of Moses with Paul T. Sloan
Derek Rishmawy and Brad East engage with Paul T. Sloan, an expert in early Christianity, to discuss his book 'Jesus and the Law of Moses.' The conversation explores the relationship between Jesus, the law, and the restoration of Israel, challen...
Replay: Reading Advice
Most of what we talk about on Mere Fidelity presupposes a lot of reading. What is the real use of reading? Is what we read more important than how we read? Why do some people who read for years never develop the habits of reading well? Alastair...